Another Excellent Pecha Kucha Come and Gone

Monday evening saw yet another excellent Pecha Kucha event here in Maastricht; and not just because my own husband gave a presentation. In addition to the many artists who always participate, there were also several scientists and social activists presenting.  Some videos will be up soon, and the moment I hear about them I will definately link a few of my favorites. The videos are live. Check ‘em out!

To give you a taste of the presenters we saw, here’s the line up from the Pecha Kucha Maastricht website and a few words on the ones that stuck with me.

Dan Potter: online cartoon writing: Obviously my husband, but I always enjoy how animated he gets when talking about subjects he cares about. Lots of arm waving and exciting talking about finding his creative passion in our webcomic Walking the Lethe.
Mahdi Abdulrazak: cyborgs without surgery
Bart Knols: the mosquito and the Limburg cheese: This research shows how a particular type of mosquito is attractive to a bacteria on our feet which is remarkably close to a bacteria in Limburg cheese. I find it funny that somewhere a long the line, someone decided to put his feet in a troth of milk, let it congeal and then (ludicrously) decided to eat it.
Angelo Vermeulen: open source art
Joery Wilbers: we need rock and roll
Markus Bediako: Africa = Eden: Markus gave a powerful presentation and made a powerful case that we in the “West” need to rethink our perceptions of Africa and that our governments need to work with the people of Africa as adults. He was very passionate.
Marc Smulders: 2012 – proof of the pudding: On the other hand, this garbled collection of statements about crop circles and the end date of the Mayan calendar was terrible. Even if you do believe in aliens, god, and the end of the world, his attempt to “change our lives” failed in a glorious lack of real proof or providing explanations for why what he was showing us was “obvious”.
Manfred Lueth: radical innovation
Sanjay Sharma: it’s all in attitude
Koen Beumer: scar pride: About the changing perception of scars and the practice of scarification. My scars are all from cooking mishaps.
Egid van Houtem: software thinking
Youssef Joumani: mish-mash
Tanja Ritterbex: save the holy goblin

There was also an interesting session of “Laugh Yoga“, which I had never heard of but naturally have everyone giggling.

Behind the Stage

Of course the interesting thing this time for us is that Dan was a presenter. Presenters were invited to arrive at the AINSI building at 5 pm to allow everyone a chance to run through their presentations. This was a nice touch because it really helps get the nerves out and makes sure that the slides are running properly and that speakers who don’t use a microphone get a feel for it. I got to tag along for this (I assume because I’m the partner, but maybe just because I know Sueli).

The team also fed all the presenters and gave them free drink tickets to use at the bar during the beer break and after the event. Nice perks for participating in the event.

Dan on Stage

I’ll leave you with a video of Dan’s presentation:

Klik! Animation Festival Starts This Week

The Klik! Animation Festival in Amsterdam is coming up soon and we can’t wait!

Just like this guy.

Dan & I attended the Klik! festival last year and had a really good time. Plus we got to see some wonderful, awful, and seriously weird shorts and feature length films. This year we’re only going to be there for part of the festival, but I’m looking forward to catching “Quantum Quest”, a full length animation, as well as the various shorts offerings.

We’ll also be doing some costuming shopping while in Amsterdam, but that’s another story.

The Klik! festival runs from Sept. 15th-19th in several film houses in Amsterdam. Check our their website for more information and if you are attending, please let me know. I’d love to meet up with a few people.

, The “desperate for Klik!” dancing dude above is part of Klik’s Gif Alert and is used here in exchange for props.

Why I Didn’t Blog This Week

I just realized that several days have gone by with nothing on the blog. I’ve been bad. But I have an excuse!

Instead of blogging this week I have been…

Eatting the rest of Dan’s birthday cheesecake.

Sending Walking the Lethe Volume 1 to the printer. Our first book! Terribly exciting.

Trying (and failing) to design a new Walking the Lethe website.

Building a prop rifle so I can cosplay as Ignorance, the demonic huntress from chapter 4 of Walking the Lethe, plus ordering other bits for the costume.

Cleaning my chompers (clean bill of health at the dentist!).

Yeah, no real excuse, but tomorrow we’ll be off for a “Dag Uit” with Dan’s lab, so don’t expect much more.

(Tooth image is by Jen SFO-BCN via Flickr. Licensed under CC.)

Sneaky Food: Preuvenemint Starts Tomorrow

Preuvenemint, Maastricht’s premiere culinary event, completely sneaked up on me this year. I love to eat, so food-related things typically never escape my notice. Must be a busy month. But never fear. I won’t let it completely slip by. We’ll be heading out for a meal or two over the next four days to sample the world of food that will be available at this “Colorful World” event.

You can read more about this years Preuvenemeint in my Maastricht Region article: Preuveneint 2010: A Taste of the World

Or read about our experience at last years events in: Preuvenemint 2009: Eatting Our Way Through Maastricht

Preuvenemint 2010 will run from 6 pm on 26 August through midnight on 29 August. Drinks are generally 1 preuvenelap (ticket), and food starts at 2 preuvenelap, but can run up to 10 for fancier dishes. Proceeds of the event are donated to various charities.

A Blogging Challenge Plea

As you know I’ve been working on the Problogger 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge. Today’s challenge is a reader “Call to Action”, but Day 17′s challenge was to watch a first time user read my blog. Since I haven’t done Day 17 yet, I’m going to combine the two. This is a plea, to you good reader, to visit my other blog and give me some feedback.

Please visit Fallen Kitten and just surf around a bit, noting anything you like or don’t like, as well as anything you can’t find that you’d expect to find. Here are a few ideas of things to look at:

• Content itself.
• Do you find the categories helpful?
• How easy it is to browse or search for a subject?
• How do you like the design?
• Etc.

Then send me an email with your comments. I will post a thank you post later with the names and urls of everyone who helped me out.

A bit about Fallen Kitten

Fallen Kitten Productions is the name we use for all our comics publishing activities, digital and print. In addition to the publishing our webcomic under the name, I also run Fallen Kitten Services, a web design and support business. The blog itself is focused on web design and website issues that concern webcomic creators.

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