Adeu BCN!

After 2 years in the relaxingly dynamic Barcelona, I am now moving to the climaticaly-challenged US East Coast. I will spend 2008 as a visiting scholar at the MIT SENSEable City Lab in Boston. Looking back in my plans when I started my PhD, it seems that have reached many milestones and I keep on a good track. I defended (with success) a DEA thesis, contributed and participated to some of the major conferences in my research field including Ubicomp (’06, ’07), Pervasive, CHI, LBS, got some words out on my work in publications IEEE Pervasive Computing, e-minds, space time and play in non-academic events such as Lift, Picnic, Mobile Monday and Immotic-Domotic. Time now has come to cut a bit on the talking and focus more on the thinking/doing in the studies I lead co-evolution of taxi drivers and their satellite navigation systems, tracing the visitor’s eye and projects I (will) contribute to like WikiCity and the Wireless City. Instead of attending conference (only Lift and the AAG meeting are on my schedule), I plan to thrive on lab visits and face-to-face discussions.

My move to the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning indicates a wish to enrich my professional profile with theoretical knowledge in city design and development. Quoting the IEEE Pervasive Computing issue on Urban Computing: “Urban settings frame social behaviors. They encompass architectural forms and features that might not be harmonious with given technologies, and they’re variably permeated by wireless networks and fixed and mobile devices” it is clear that the urban space will need researchers with mixed competences in engineering, HCI (call it user experience or interaction design) and urban planning. The recent Urban Computing and its Discontents by Adam Greenfield and Mark Shepard comforts me in that vision.

Relation to my thesis: the major challenge of 2008 will be to make my different studies and projects fit into a coherent PhD thesis.