TUESDAY – The Hoff is Here

#1 Peter Pan launches at Bristol Hippodrome today, starring David Hasselhoff as Captain Hook. It’s only on till the 8^th of Jan so if you want to go, I’d get in quick – I received tickets to this yesterday as my first Christmas present – hooray!

WEDNESDAY – #Kittencamp Christmas Party – no other events need be mentioned!

#1 KittenCamp comes to Bristol for a spectacular Christmas party from 6.30 pm onwards in the party room at The Big Chill Bar.

Special guest speakers, fancy dress, monthly-mega-meme-mix, drinks and monster-musical-memes-mixer - with FREE beers provided courtesy of the Viral Ad Network (www.ViralAdNetwork.net).

THURSDAY – Moomins and pies

#1 Pieminister PIES! The final event from Bristol Festival of ideas and what a grand finale it is!

Tristan Hogg and Jon Simon, founders of Pieminister share their success story, their pies (yes free samples!) and some Christmas drinks in their talk: Pieminister: A Pie for All Seasons… Excellent after work event in my opinion, 6.30 pm onwards at Cabot Circus. Free but you need to reserve a place.

#2 Moomins night at the cube – Yes this is how it sounds.

Spend an evening in the Moomin Valley with audio visual treats and Moomin-inspired food and drink in the bar – Free from 8pm.

FRIDAY – Hounded, Bloggers’ Christmas Party & Lunchtime deception

#1 Hounded – SlingShot have unleashed their latest thrilling chase game and I am SO excited about this! So after surviving the zombie apocalypse (or not in our case) and the creatures that lurk in the shadows.. You now have to survive as a fox being hounded down by huntsman equipped with REAL dogs. Ahhh!

Mulled wine and snacks can be found at St Nick’s after the event to help you recover – YES! £13 From 7pm Thursday and Friday – We’re playing Friday if anyone wants to join!

#1 MyStreetChic.com – is hosting a Bloggers’ Christmas Party and Fashion Show.

If you’re a fashion or beauty blogger keen to meet other bloggers then head over to their Christmas party and fashion show at 7pm in Java. Tickets are £5 each but for that you get a goodie bag, a MyStreetChic.com cocktail, plus free entry to the club after the event.

#3 Pervasive Media Studio Lunchtime Talk: Mystery Design, Physical Deception
and Attention Control – 1pm.

Do something interesting with your lunch break, like go and see Stuart Nolan giving a talk on his expertise in sleight-of hand, hypnosis, cold reading, psychological illusion, memory skills, and street performance. Learn how he’s applied these techniques to new areas; researching how teenagers respond to the mysterious in new technologies, how organisations are regularly deceived by the language of strategy documents, and how the art of attention control can be used in visual design, media production and sport coaching.

SATURDAY – Made in Bristol Gift Fair – From 10am

#1 Locally created gifts are spread over three floors of Colston Hall’s foyer space, to create a unique shopping extravaganza with a lively and festive atmosphere. Over 100 carefully selected creatives will be offering their affordable and original designer items.

SUNDAY – Comedy at the Chill

#1 Tumbleweed Comedy Club is a brand spanking new comedy club at the Big Chill bar. Seems to be an ‘open-mic’ event, which could prove very interesting…Taking place upstairs in the Study room.

And that’s it for what’s happening this week? #1!

TedXBristol was awesome. A really inspiring selection of speakers and performers sourced from Bristol and the surrounds. Here are my highlights:

1: It was very slick and well organised. Well presented, well run, and well curated. Well done to @khbelizaire and the team who put it together.

2: Sir Richard Noble was just incredible. He reminded me of John Cleese if John Cleese were an unstoppable force hellbent on a lifelong mission to drive cars insanely fast. He was a natural raconteur who was simultaneously inspiring, funny and informative. I could have listened to him talk about his exploits all day. And the way his team is running their Bloodhound SSC project as an open data programme everyone can learn from is fantastic.

3: Arthur Potts Dawson from the People’s Supermarket gave a great impassioned speech about how he created the UK’s first not for profit people run supermarket. A real inspiration for the potential to change the current supermarket power battle that we’ve all seemingly resigned ourselves to. Find out more at http://www.thepeoplessupermarket.org/

4: Professor Mervyn Miles of Bristol Universities Nanoscience and Quantum Information Centre gave a talk that kept surpassing itself in the sheer scale of incredibleness, as he explained how he and his team used a contact based microscope to feel atoms, then wired this up to an ipod inspired multi-touch input screen allowing the atoms to be moved around, and then wired that up to a feedback glove so the relative forces required to move nano-particles around could be felt by the operator. I mean that’s just nuts (in a good way). He wasn’t sure what it was exactly useful for yet, but its so mind blowingly incredible I’m sure we’ll know what its useful for sometime soon (like Steve Jobs said in his amazing Stanford lecture, sometimes the logic of these things only makes sense in the rear view mirror).

5: Imogen Heap’s performance using Thomas Mitchell’s interactive musical gloves was brain-fryingly cool. None of the individual elements of this project are wholy new. The gloves are like the 3 generations more evolved child of some scratch mitts that were being demoed in Bristol about 8 years ago, looping the voice and instruments has been done brilliantly by many people including the awesome TuneYards, and Imogen Heap has been brilliant before, but somehow they’ve taken all these elements and brought them together with an elegance and panache that makes it look like they just stepped out of the future to show us how they do music back there.

Here’s the only bit of video of it I can find yet:

Click here to view the embedded video.

There were loads of other great bits. Tony Bury of Mowgli talking about the importance of Mentors. Dan Efergan and Gav Strange from Aardman talking about playfulness. Chris Chalkley from the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft explaining recapping on how the area had evolved over the last 5 years.

But the great thing about an event like TedX is how it exposes you to things you didn’t expect, and so the things I enjoyed the most were the things that I didn’t go there to see. A brilliant and rewarding event.

Marcus, Rhys and Sym at Team Rubber Towers - looking happy (we'd just bought them lunch)

In an uber productive first day, the young developers have built a Geo Location Bus Spotter.

“In short its freaking cool and I’m definitely going to use it”
- Jess, Team Rubber developer & willing bus user

YRS is a network of young developers who take part in a week long event which finishes in a show and tell to government and relevant industries in the Microsoft headquarters in London this Friday.

You may ask what Burning Rubber is?  Well this will be answered in due course, mainly through the art of photography, but you never know it may also be through poetry and sculpture, who knows?  I think someone here does.

It was initially in honour of Team Rubber Inc.’s 10th (yes ten) birthday but this particular thread of celebratory banter will be a little more hushed while Team Rubber’s galavanting director Chris sits the party out in a chateau in France.

Happy first decade Team Rubber.

To celebrate ten years of Team Rubber this weekend we are off to a nearby site to burn some rubber but where will it be held exactly? Not sure Beccy knows yet that’s for sure…..

Different individuals in the office do of course work in different ways. Ben for example aids his creative process through biscuits – and has subsequently been renamed to ‘Biscuit Ben’.

Biscuit Ben

At Team Rubber we are always ensuring people feel comfortable in their working environment and Ben feels most comfortable when in his own creative working environment:

For more information on how biscuits can aid creativity please visit Ben’s Biscuit Blog.

Here’s a picture of me receiving a cheque. I’m the one in the shirt.

We met lots of interesting people. Thanks to all involved in organising the event, especially Nick Sturge.

cheers,

Andy

Last Thursday we had a Excellent meal at Ciao to say Ciao to Toti.

We had a night of great fun with great food.. and drink! Toti… Have an awesome time on your travels around Central America on the Love4Globe project – you will be missed!