The Refinement Club

Tuesday, May 21st we got together with Thuy, Mikkel and Elvis to talk about the future of toys. It was a lot of fun and in our opinion the ideas we came up with meet the criteria we set beforehand.

1. Fun. 
2. Versatile. 
3. Spark the imagination. 
4. Contribute to development/be educational.

Take a look and tell us what you think! Do you have an idea for a future toy? You’re welcome to share on our Facebook page.

Go outside!
We’d like to encourage kids to explore the real world more, to be more curious of their surroundings. To do that we need to get them early, while they’re still curious. Kids now a days have so many virtual/digital options that are much more exciting than the real world. And this situation is very comfortable for the parents as well, since the real world is much more unsafe than the interactive game world. There’s no reason to believe that this development will stop, but we have an idea that can combine the fantasy and safety of the digital world, and at the same time encourage kids to get out and explore more in the real world.

Teddy 2.0

What sparked this idea was the thought of “SIRI inside”. Inside a teddy bear. Sounds kind of sad, but think about how much affection and loyalty you had for your favorite stuffed animal as a kid? Didn’t you imagine it with a personality and speech, and wasn’t this toy your very best ally in the world? Wouldn’t it have been awesome if your teddy could have been more active when you two went on adventures together?

The idea is as follows: Combine classic, loveable stuffed toys with digital wonders including powerful voice recognition, GPS and a database of stories and missions. The parents control the functions. They define the area, location and time of all missions. They can pick the storylines/missions that they think their kid will respond to the most, and also upload new missions. They can also pre-approve missions so that the child can initiate adventures on its own.

So, for example, if a kid is skeptical to the little forest close by, the parents could trigger the toy to suggest that they went on a little adventure in the forest to look for squirrels. And it could give different assignments that would give different badges. Like “find a pine nut that a squirrel has nibbled on” or “take a picture of a squirrel”. The toy could have camera and a touch screen incorporated so the child could google things, look at maps, video chat with the parents … Basically be alone and adventurous  but at the same time safe and accessible.

Physical Smartgames
Another way to encourage more outdoor activity is to make a new kind of playground, more suited to engage older kids as well. They could be more like outdoor arcades, kind of like what you find at technical museums. We think playground equipment that combines problemsolving and physics challenges is something that would inspire kids to go out and meet their friends, and continue to do so when they get older. Of course if it could spark an interest in science as well, that wouldn’t be a disadvantage!

Be creative!
Playing with Lego is something we look back upon with longing eyes. Therefore we talked a lot about how to do stuff with Lego to enhance the experience. 

Lego Rewards
A community where you can share your creations and get rewarded based on difficulty, complexity and creativity. You share your creation with a smart phone application that scan the building and recognizes the Lego pieces used, based on that you get rewarded. People can also explore other peoples or friends creations to get inspired to build new stuff as well as praising the builder. Of course there should be some kind of level system, where you start out as a novice and progresses onto become a master builder.

Lego Missions
Lego Rewards could easily expand and become a real game, but with a twist; you have to build stuff with Lego to progress in the game. First you buy your regular Lego kit, build it and scan it with the smart phone app/Xbox Kinect or what not and the story begins. E.g. the car crashed and now certain pieces are missing. Your mission is to make something new out of the pieces you have left to continue to … (new storyline). When you finish you scan and upload again, and get a new score and a new mission.

It’s social, fun storytelling, and it gets kids to use Lego the way it used to be used once again. More creative.

Lego XXL
With Technic Lego and Mindstorm you can build almost anything. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could build these in real size? Of course, everything that’s small and becomes big are ten thousand times cooler. So let’s just make Technic Lego in human size, then we can build stuff we can actually use. Like for example building a gocart or a crane or a human sized robot…

This commercial  gives us the right feeling …

Combine and compete
Competing against friends makes everything more interesting. So we thought about some games that were based on dueling, but with the bonus of being educational as well as encouraging exploration and experimenting.

Spell War
Everyone dreams of wielding their own wand, cast spells and do magic of all kinds. What if you could? With the SpellCaster mobile app you get your own wand that obey your orders and cast spells based on your skills.

Imagine you’re attending Hogwarts, or some other wizard school, and have to learn lots of different spells. You have a spell book, but you have to learn it by heart. As you go through the book you progress into a powerful wizard. Along the way you test your skills and duel your friends. When you practice or duel you use your phone as a wand. Holding and pointing it infront of you. You have to move the phone in a certain way as well as yelling out your magic words to cast the spell. To cast more powerful spells you combine different spells to make an endless range of spells. 

The fun thing about this is that it leaves room for the imagination. You and your friends make up the story, the goal of the game and the rules beyond the spells.

Robot duels

Programming is fun and kind of like a game, at least if you make it into a game. What about easy programmable robots? Which you have to program to fight your friends robot. Turnbased, each round performes one action. So you have to program based on what your opponent does. When you start the duel you could also add some conditional statements. Eg:

if (hit) {
   launchShield()
)

A round of robot dueling would look something like this:

for (int i = 5; i > 0; i++) {

   raiseLeftArm();

   moveLeftArmForward(10);

   moveLeftArmBackward();

}

while (beingHit) {

   bringBothArmsUp();

   counterAttack();

}

There’s nothing cooler and more exciting than toys. Toymakers are quick at adopting new technologies and applying them in unexpected ways to make fun, engaging and addictive toys. So we thought it would be interesting to take a look at what the future of toys beholds.

There are some properties we think every fun and long lasting toy should have:

1. The toy should be versatile and work in many different ways and situations.
2. It should spark our imagination.
3. It should contribute to one’s development, or be educational, in some way or the other.

But most of all the toy should be fun to play with, both with friends and alone.

If we manage to come up with some ideas for new toys that nail more than one of these three points in addition to being fun, we think we have something exciting!

Join us and share your ideas on the Future of Toys at 657 Tuesday – May 21st, 18:00.

Join the Facebook event to share and get ideas, updates and inspiration.

Some inspiration:

• The 5 Best Toys of All Time
• Alice Taylor: Inventing the Future of Toys
• Tactile Digital Play, Part 1: Sifteo Cubes and Hasbro Zapped Toys
• A Future Of Toys And iPads
• The joy, wonder, and weirdness of Toy Fair 2013
• Top 12 New Toys at Toy Fair That Make You Want to Be a Kid Again 

Two weeks ago we held a MassRefinement about Urban Farming. We were a diverse group of people, some with extensive knowledge on the subject while some of us brought more enthusiasm than farming skills to the table … Which is a good thing! A mix of people generates the best ideas, we believe, and this bunch of people inspired some great conversations and ideas.

We set out with a challenge: ”How can we convince more people that urban farming is a good idea and help them discover the resources that are out there?” Read on to get the essence of what we talked about.

If any of these ideas inspire you to take action, contact us at post@therefinementclub.com and we’ll put you in touch with the right people.

We organized all the ideas in different actions; Inform, Recruit and Meet, let’s start by digging into the ideas on how to inform!

INFORM
First of all we need to inform people about urban farming and show the possibilities. Let people see the joy and fruits of farming at home. 

Reality show
A reality show we’d actually like to watch! The idea is that we can follow a family or several through a season. Every week they get new challenges to solve, like growing herbs inside, making a window farm, build a small green house on the balcony, make and maintain a vermicompost etc. In classic reality makeover style they get help from professionals to get started, and who evaluate their efforts. The point is that as they learn, we the viewers learn as well. People talk about the tv shows they watch, and hopefully a show like this would get people talking about urban farming. And it would make it seem easier to start growing your own food!

The reality show could of course be a big tv-show on national tv, but it could also work online where the families run their own blogs and share their experience through text, pictures and video. The viewers/readers could engage and help out with advice and tips, or ask for help themselves.

Show off
Get more urban farms into the face of people. Into the streets. Let people smell the roses. Several people are working to do this, but we feel it needs to be accompanied by more information. How about adding small signs which says something about the plant in question and gives some tips on how you can grow it at home? 

RECRUIT
Secondly we should recruit people. Make some gateway drugs that get people hooked on growing plants and craving more. 

Pass it on
What if everybody who plants and practice urban farming became ambassadors and shared their love and passion for plants? A quite easy and fun way to do it would be to pass on a plant. Just give a plant to a friend who you think would appreciate to take care of it. This will hopefully work like a charm and get your friend hooked on growing plants. Just pass it on.

This could easily be marketed through growing communities like Majobo and so on.

Starterkits for sale
Small and simple kits with a easy growing plant, like cucumber. The package should be accompanied by easy and simple guidance, both text and videos on YouTube that help you out with sowing and caring for your plants.

“Maternity groups”
It’s good to have someone to talk to about your plants, someone who’s in the same situation as you. So we came up with the idea of giving seed buyers access to a sort of maternity group. You buy a bag of seeds and on the bag there’s a unique number you register with on a web site. By doing that you automatically joined with a group of up to nine other people who have bought the same seeds. The web service is a mini social network for urban farmers, specified by type of seed, where they can share experiences, photos and get help and tips from each other.

MEET
When we’ve gotten people hooked on growing plants it’s time to leverage their passion and knowledge and to get them to help each other out.

We’d like a meeting point, both digital and physical place, where information on urban farming in Oslo is collected. A place where experts can give guidance and you can find related products, books and courses. A place where people who are interested can become part of a community, where they share knowledge and advice. A place for distribution, information and making connections.

It would be perfect if this also could be the place where Oslo Kooperativ set up their weekly deliveries.

Everyone in the group felt the need for this kind of meeting place, but Annikken went as far as to give it a name, and we love it; “Oslo Mikrodyrkeri” (it’s one of those nontranslateable things, but it’s a play on “microbrewery”)!

Pop-up restaurant
In connection to this meeting place there could be a pop-up restaurant where groups of people could bring their own produce and a professional cook would make them a meal with the ingredients they bring. In this way the cook could inspire people with new ways to use the results of their urban farming work.

Thank you to all of you who came, it was a great session! Do share your thoughts and new ideas on facebook.

Hope you can join us for MassRefinement #09: The Future of Toys on Tuesday May 21st.

The MassRefinement we had on Urban Farming went great! It was an awesome group of engaged people, and we came up with some excellent ideas on how to get more people into urban farming. We’re working on the summary, but in the meantime here are some resources that was recommended.

One of the participants was Ingvil who has vermicompost at home. She told us how amazing soil the worms make and shared this video of how to get started. Check it out!

Annikken is engaged in several urban farming projects, among other things she’s involved with Geitmyra and Geitmyra Hønselag (urban chickens!). She recommends that you also follow Herligheten, GrowlabOslo, Geitmyra matkultursenter for barn and ByBi on Facebook to stay posted on all the urban green stuff happening in Oslo.

Tarek works with MAJOBO, the organization that inspired us before our workshop. He left very inspired and that made us very happy. Tarek made us aware of that MAJOBO often arranges hands-on workshops, like beginners course for balcony gardeners, so follow them on Facebook for updates and tips!

Tim mentioned a kickstarter project to Johannes who was initially sceptic, but then he went home and bought one. Apparently so did everyone else so we have to wait until this amazing “Smart Herb Garden” is out on the market. Pretty neat!

Thanks to all of you who came and contributed with your ideas and resources! As mentioned we’re working on contextualizing all the ideas and we will post them next week organized by “Inform”, “Recruit” and “Meet”.

We’ve been talking about transhumanism and the future of an enhanced body and mind. Since there’s been so much focus on Google Glass lately we ended up spending much of our time talking about ideas and wants for further use of it. While what we’ve seen from Glass is quite impressive it’s also quite basic functions at the moment, not anything you can’t do with your phone, so here’s some wants and thoughts for the future of Google Glass.

Contextual data

We want Glass to give us contextual data about our surroundings. Relevant information based on your current situation, for example, it could pick up on key phrases during conversations and meetings and give you more information when needed. Like when we started discussing how many people Socrates meant the ideal polis should consist of, the word “polis” and “Socrates” came up several times and would trigger Glass to get the relevant information without the conversation stalling and someone getting distracted on the interwebz …

It would also be very helpful during a workout – showing heart rate, hydration level, need for electrolytes or other key vitals. Or let you have a virtual competitor running by your side or in front of you.

With the inclusion of a thermographic camera Glass could help you out with cooking. By converting the information to show core temperature, and prompt you when the meat is rare enough and the vegetables just right and so on. And by recording everything you eat it would definitely help with dieting, e.g. calorie tracking using image recognition.

Looking out the window and into the sky would give you more information about the weather – like humidity, temperature, wind speed and other basic weather data including the forecast. Tips on what would be appropriate to wear could follow.

Then we have the learning possibilities! Imagine being in biology class, going out into the forest and really see how photosynthesis works!

And of course guided instruction would be a key feature. Both for professionals like engineers, surgeons, construction workers etc. but also for home projects. Wouldn’t it be appreciated to get guided help to setup our IKEA furniture or fix a leaking faucet?

When it comes to journalism and crowd sourced information, this would be a game changer. Imagine being able to switch view to another person on the other side of the world, giving you a whole new perspective?

And it seems like the virtual entertainment future that’s been predicted for ages is finally close. Your life can be turned into a game and enemies can be on every other corner. Video games and live roleplaying could totally merge. Now, where’s that haptic suit?

Google Glass has plenty of potential and we can’t wait to see what people will do with it once it’s out. If the speech recognition is good enough to make navigation natural.

Transhumanism is an exciting topic that we’ll definitely revisit, but what would you want to use Google Glass for?

The topic of our last AfterWorkShop was how we could improve the way we consume news and current affairs. But we ended up with three ideas on how we could become more knowledgeable. Or more well rounded as we like to call it. Here’s the idea which was most related to news, the other two will follow.

Deep into the matter

Many of the news stories we read every day are linked together. For example the same historic conflict – like everything that happens in the Middle East. But understanding deep rooted conflicts and seeing how current events relate isn’t done in a quick read. We wish there was a service that would focus on helping us understand the news, not just letting us know it happened.

So here’s our wish list:

• A newsroom of talented editors who handpick the three most important news stories of the past week.
• Experts on different subjects are also included in the editorial staff
• Together with journalists and producers etc they put each news story into context. This job would be quite extensive in the beginning, but would naturally decrease as the historic foundation is laid.
• The material should be possible to consume in several different ways, and the best relevant imagery and listening options should be included.
• The main goal is to educate and inform, but we feel opening for crowd sourcing will add an interesting real time aspect.

This news service should give you the choice between different levels of engagement.

1. Bite size information
2. The “Cliffs Notes version”
3. Timeline

Sometimes you just have time for the headline avec, so you should get that. If you have more time and the story interests you (which it will because the copy will be awesome), then you can expand to the “Cliffs notes version”. Here you will get more information on the current event and how it relates to other recent events and history. With relevant imagery like infographics, photos, video and links to other sources. There’s also an audio option so you can listen to it on the go.

Lastly there’s the timeline view. This is the most in depth version of the news story. You start out with the current event and can scroll backwards through time, or let the audio guide you. As you listen the timeline will move and bring up other relevant articles, videos etc. that you can check out while listening (or put on hold if you wish).

As mentioned earlier we think crowdsourcing should included at some point. Users could link to related news stories and articles, comment on specific parts of the text, save notes, there could be a section for real time twitter updates from the area in question, a discussion area etc etc. All reviewed and moderated by the skilled editorial staff. The way this is included should be clutter free and optional. Kind of like Kindle notes.

In addition this service can be expanded by introducing different topics, so that you can get weekly in depth updates on the subjects you’d like to follow. Like politics, war/conflict, environment, science, technology, art, music …

What do you think? What do you think is missing from the news services of today?

At AfterWorkShop 15.01.13 we met up with Greenpeace and people from Startup Weekend Norway to warm up for Fundlab 2013 – Startup Greenpeace which will be held this weekend at 657 in Oslo. Mainly we talked about ideas around getting more members and volunteers, as well as different ways of getting funding and involving people in Greenpeace’s different causes and missions. It was a really interesting session with quite a lot of good ideas and thoughts around environmental engagement.

If you feel like it, you should definitely join in this weekend and share your ideas, knowledge and skills and help Greenpeace save the world :)

Ps. Designers are especially wanted 

Our last #MassRefinement was about The Future of Learning which became a very interesting workshop, and we could have talked about many different topics within this, but we decided to choose three different challenges to work with.

Challenge #1: How to solve distributed learning on a local scale?

Challenge #2: How to use global resources in local education?

Challenge #3: How do I document the knowledge I acquire outside of an institution?

Read about the results here.

This MassRefinement was in collaboration with Pop Up Hub Oslo. We haven’t set a date for the next MassRefinement yet, but if you’re interested – let us know by filling out this form.

Only the educated are free. 

– Epictetus

In the ever evolving world we live in it seems like every field and every aspect of life are being disrupted by the emerging technologies and the internet. But is it really so? A recurring topic here at The Refinement Club is education and learning. How is technology and the internet changing how we share and obtain knowledge? The required knowledge to become a well educated mind haven’t changed in the post-Berners-Lee era, but how we acquire that knowledge is beginning to change. Maybe the best example of this is Kahn Academy with their extensive video library and practice exercises. The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. The content haven’t changed, but the format has. Kahn Academy is democratizing the way we learn by reinventing how to teach and how to learn.

Coursera is also an interesting way of bringing the class room to the web, and expanding the campus to the whole world. As well as all the different classes from a broad selection of universities on iTunes U.

All this is great initiative which broadens the reach for the education institutions and gives the knowledge-hungry a vast amount of high quality knowledge to tap into. But it’s still the same age old way of learning, only a little bit more lonely. How can we make use of all this great content and take it one step further?

Learning by doing
In school most of what you learn is fairly abstract, there’s mostly theoretical knowledge being exchanged and it’s hard to grasp what this knowledge actually could be used for. Experimenting and learning by doing is powerful tools to get the key insight and obtain hands-on experience with the things you’re learning. Either it’s physics, mathematics or art. Embrace the inner maker.

Take a look at this amazing talk by Bret Victor about inventing on principle.

Codecademy is a really good example of learning by doing. Where you learn the basic of the coding language JavaScript by being guided through tasks and assignment in a friendly coding environment in your browser.

Rethinking the liberal arts

In the Middle Ages, the liberal arts were synonymous with introductory courses in branches of the sciences, mathematics, and in the study of writing. Some subsections of the liberal arts are trivium-the verbal arts- logic, grammar, and rhetoric, and quadrivium-the numerical arts- mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy. Analyzing and interpreting information is also studied. Experience in Liberal Arts gives experience forming and expressing well rounded opinions.

– Wikipedia

Expertise are becoming the standard and what we strive for. Most of us live in intellectual silos where we hone our skills and exchange our thoughts and ideas with like minded people. The Internet is only enhancing this with its almost infinite amount of information and content to please your intellectual wants and needs.

Even though it’s extremely important with experts and specialication in different fields of knowledge it is also very important to nourish and facilitate broader and more holistic knowledge. Give people the tools to cross-connect disciplines and become hybrids who can utilize their diversified knowledge to unlock the undiscovered.

So what is the modern version of the liberal arts? What does the modern wo/man need to know to be able to execute his or her ideas?

Life long learning

…the internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter. If you don’t know how to use it, or don’t have the background to ask the right questions, you’ll end up with a head full of nonsense. But if you do know how to use it, it’s an endless wealth of information. Just as globalization and de-unionization have been major drivers of the growth of income inequality over the past few decades, the internet is now a major driver of the growth of cognitive inequality. Caveat emptor. 

– Kevin Drum

The Internet is a perfect platform for life long learning, it’s easy to find what you’re looking for and learn more about your interests. This is good for honing your skills and your knowledge, but not so good for expanding your knowledge field. How can we facilitate lucky discoveries in knowledge and fields of interests? And how can we create new and interesting learning platforms which encourage life long learning?

Embrace the creative mind
To push forward and innovate we need creative minds. People who see the unexpected and connect the dots. We need to educate individuals who thinks on their own. People who use the knowledge they have acquired and remixes it to form totally new ideas. That is what will take us to the next level.

How can we encourage individuality and unleash people’s inner creativity?

Degrees
How do we rank knowledge in the new era of education? Is your degree from an prestigious school relevant when the same knowledge and skills are freely available? Do we need to rethink how we rate and acknowledge skills and knowledge?

Start small, but think big

Be the change you want to see in the world.

– Gandhi

It’s hard to change the education system and there will not be any radical revolution in the near future. The system will evolve and be shaped based on our ever evolving world. So what can we do? Basically we should start doing it our self. Make tools, services, clubs, movements etc which we as citizens can use to keep on learning. We should pave the path to help the next generation to learn and obtain knowledge and skills in a more intuitive way, to encourage exploration and cross disciplinary sharing and exploration.

The power is in our hands and the reward for a more refined education and learning regime are endless and extremely tasty.

Join us in the discussion on the future of learning.

Last Wednesday we arranged our fourth Mass-Refinement, hosted by Katachi Magazine, about the future of books and refining the ebook. The whole event was a blast and all the guests shared tons of interesting thoughts and ideas and together we all came up with some interesting insights, ideas and concepts. We are currently working on structuring and elaborating it all into a presentation worthy of all the stellar thoughts conceived during the Mass-Refinement.

Meanwhile you can read the opening speech based on the Brief for Mass-Refinement - 04 Ebooks.

Somethings to think about:

1. Connecting readers to authors

Last week Amazon launched the interesting Kindle feature @Author which lets you ask authors questions directly from your Kindle. A pretty neat feature. Browsing the questions we stumbled upon this question:

Question @Steven Johnson:

“Steven, you’ve often written about the ways in which a city’s density enables great ideas to flourish. You’ve applied the same metaphor to the web as a engine of creativity and innovation. What about book-reading? Do see our natural inclinations towards socialization spreading to e-books as innovative tech enables us to engage texts more collaboratively?”

2. Reading the question above confirmed something we have been thinking about for a while; how can we connect thoughts and ideas related to individual books and its passages? Make notes in books public and let people share their ideas and thoughts related to their readings.

3. Contextual connections; connecting books and passages with other books and passages (hyperlinks for books?)

4. Rethink notetaking in ebooks.

5. When reading paper based books your constantly getting tangible feedback everytime you turn to the next page, as you feel the one side of the book gets thinner and thinner while the other side gets thicker and thicker. Digital books lacks this feature.

6. The bookshelf. Books are trophies and badges showing off how well read you are.

7. Bookstores provide expertise, social interaction and lucky discoveries. The same thing goes for libraries.

8. Typography in ebooks sucks.

9. There is a confusing amount of different ebook platforms and solutions that are available.

10. Primetime vs. whitespace time - we are constantly consuming content, but are using different devices at different times.

11. Money - how will the authors earn money in the world of tomorrow?

12. Tomorrows books and ereaders will be free, ad supported, connected both contextually and socially, and independently published.

13. A book is worth more than a thousand words. 

This kicked of the event and hopefully it sparked of some interesting ideas. Stay tuned to read more about the future of the book.

Head over to our Facebook page to take part in the conversation and look at pictures from the event. Also you can follow us on Twitter to stay up to date.