Through the Interface

In the last post I talked about my trip across to Pittsburgh and the day before the Encoding Experience Summit started properly.

The summit kicked off in the gorgeous Singleton Room in Roberts Hall.

The facilities at CMU are really first rate.

The discussions started the evening before continued with barely a pause.

Katherine Flanigan, head of the SALUS Lab at CMU, kicked things off. She and her team did an absolutely incredible job of preparing the event.

The morning session was spent building "nutrition labels" for different experiential scenarios. A fresh and incredibly compelling approach for capturing cross-disciplinary thoughts about a complex topic.

Each table had their own scenario. Ours related to eldercare.

I really loved this exercise.

I can only imagine how much time and thought was put into developing the material, too.

The view outside of the room was really nice, too.

Once the various labels were ready we entered the "audit" phase, where some people stayed with their table while others went to other tables (all pre-assigned) to provide feedback.

This was a really valuable part of the exercise, I found.

Time had to be managed, as otherwise we'd have continued discussions for far too long.

A wonderful detail was the chance to stretch our legs and visit the nearby Botanical Gardens after lunch.

The weather, and the company, was very pleasant.

We gathered at the entrance before wandering through the gardens together.

There are often season themes: the current one is Alice in Wonderland.

It was such a great group of people.

This trip has been so colourful.

We were really happy that Will McCarthy - who works in the AI Lab at Autodesk Research and has a background in cognitive science - was able to join the Summit.

This is a partial group photo - some folks had to head back sooner - but it's better than nothing.

Much refreshed, we headed back to the afternoon session.

It was focused on data, and the kind of efforts that would support our collective goals.

The respective tables gathered their thoughts on the topic, and we also had a live voting to establish priorities.

There was a feedback session where people could up-vote other teams' ideas.

Once the long but productive day was finished, we walked back towards the hotel. CMU is a crazy place. Someone was out walking their robot dog...

… and across the way a deer was grazing. A real one, I'm almost certain.

The sun was setting as we got back to our rooms to drop off bags.

From there we were bussed across to the CMU Robotics Center for an evening event.

Elizabeth Dickey, CMU CEE's Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Research Initiatives and Partnerships, gave a welcome speech.

A string quartet played for much of the evening.

I do like a good branded bar.

Once dinner was over we gathered for a group photo, which I hope to receive before too long.

There were a couple of robots on display above our heads.

Back at the hotel some of us stopped off for one last drink,

The morning of our last day of the summit was gorgeous.

We walked across to the CMU campus, led by Brandon.

Many of us were heading directly to the airport afterwards and were grateful Brandon found a route that avoided stairs.

This last session was in Scott Hall.

The day kicked off with a keynote by yours truly.

Thanks to Lily Prasuethsut for snapping this!

Afterwards we had a really productive discussion about how best to continue this community.

Sihui interned with us during the summer, and it was great we had the chance to catch up with her in person (for me this was the first time).

These few days in Pittsburgh were precious, both in terms of the vibrant and valuable discussions but also the opportunity to reconnect with longtime friends.

We were genuinely honoured that such interesting and prominent people chose to give up so much of their time to participate!

By the time we left the CMU campus I was tired but very, very happy with how we'd spent the last few days.

I took an Uber to the Pittburgh airport with Paul Chavez.

It's a small but beautiful airport.

Paul has a strong background in experience design, so pointed out intriguing aspects.

It was one last chance to catch up before taking our respective flights.

Dagmara and Esen were heading in other directions, but we did catch up briefly before having to head off.

My own flight was to San Francisco: it was always a required leg on my way to Portland (at least with United), so I chose to spend the weekend in a city I know well and catch up with old friends.

More on that in the next post!