A Week in October

photo: dbrightwell

About four weeks ago I moved to Newcastle or, more specifically, to a little coastal town to the South East (I think, don't quote me on it) of the city. I'm not sure if I'm officially in Whitley Bay or not, but I do know that I'm close enough to the beach to enjoy it whenever I want. I've had a couple of long walks along it this week but, in a sea of dog walkers, I felt a bit out of place.

I moved here to live with my boyfriend but he works at sea and is away at the moment so I've had a lot of time to explore the local area. Whitley Bay seems to be quite cheap and cheerful in areas, the street with all the bars/pubs is quite the meat market on a Saturday night! However the town centre does have lots of teashops, and I am a sucker for a good teashop. I also live across the road from a bakery which sells pretty epic cupcakes, so all in all I hope this is going to be a good place for me.

Other things I've enjoyed this week:

• Coffee with Katy Trouble - a very talented little lady, well worth reading
• Goodbye, New York, and Thanks for Breaking my Heart -  the NY Times is one of my favourite online reads and this article struck a chord with me for some reason
• 15 Signs You'll Be Rich - some interesting statistics on wage statistics. Sadly being small and rotund, things aren't looking good for me. But hey, being blonde counts for something apparently
• Unicorn After Wisdom Teeth - so funny, not sure how I haven't seen this before now!

xo

Back in the Game

I've been really caught up in various things over the past couple of months, so I'm ashamed to say I haven't found time to update since July! However, I am back now so hopefully I'll manage to write more often.

I spent my summer thinking I would be beginning a PhD at Culture Lab in Newcastle this month, but at the end of August I was told my funding had fallen through. At the time I was devastaed, but my mother always tells me that everything happens for a reason - and only good things have happened to me since.

In September I founded my own company, Little Riot Ltd. I have a lot of ideas but felt I needed a platform on which to develop them, so Little Riot has been set up as an interaction design company. I'm primarily doing research at the moment, but I'm also going to channel my consultancy and freelance work through it.

I'm also thrilled to be able to say I won £25,000 to develop Pillow Talk, my degree project. The lovely people at the Technology Strategy Board selected me as one of the three winners in their recent "Disruptive Solutions" competition, so I am now able to finally start pushing the concept towards market. I also got to present my work to a live audience at the Innovate 10 conference - it was really strange to be a "business woman" (I had to wear smart clothes and everything!) but I got some pretty good feedback about what I'm doing. I have several people interested in collaborating with me or using my concepts so fingers crossed there are lots of exciting things to come.

It's a huge opportunity and I'm both proud of myself and incredibly grateful to have gained the support. As a graduate, I am really lucky to be working on my own projects and interests instead of slaving away for a larger corporation. Still very much living the life of a poor student, but hopefully that will start to change in time.

I'm also doing a Masters/some research work at Culture Lab, a part of Newcastle University. I think I've really lucked out with it to be honest; I am part of a very small group of people who are resident researchers within the lab. We spend the year working on our own interests and projects, and at the end of the year we write it up and will receive a Masters degree for it. It only came about when my PhD fell through, but I think it may in fact be even more perfect for me as it allows me time to work on my company and sample life as a PhD student or researcher. Again, I'm so lucky to be working in the interaction design field - I always thought I'd end up doing whatever was available when I graduated.

Six Items or Less

I spend quite a lot of my online time reading the NY Times, over the years they've published some of my all-time favourite articles - they never hesitate to make me think a lot. One that recently sparked an interest was this article about shoppers on a diet. 

"Imagine that horrible though all-too-familiar feeling: You are standing before a fully stuffed closet and yet have nothing to wear. Now, imagine something worse: Your closet contains only six items, and you are restricted to wearing only those six items for an entire month. Now, if you can bear it, imagine something unspeakable: No one notices."

The article tells the tale of Stella Brennan, a 31 year old insurance sales executive, who wore just six items of clothing for a month. This self-imposed exercise in frugality was prompted by an online challenge called Six Items or Less. The challenge was to go an entire month wearing only six items you already own - not counting shoes, underwear or accessories. Motives include a way to trim back on spending, an outright rejection of fashion, and a concern that the mass production and global transportation of increasingly cheap clothing are damaging the environment.

Aside from the challenge of mixing and matching the same six items for 30 days, what is really interesting about the outcome is that no one noticed. Not even Stella's husband - the man responsible for doing all the laundry in the house.

This has made me question my own life. Do I own too many clothes? Definitely. Could I survive on six items or less for a month? Probably, but I don't do washing often enough; I'd be out of clothes by the end of the week. I've suddenly realised how much stuff I own that I don't use. I have four bedrooms full of material artefacts, yet I managed to backpack round Australia for months with only a rucksack full of clothes. Do I need to go on a shopping diet? Almost definitely.

I also hate wearing the same thing more than once a week, incase anyone thinks I haven't washed it. This undoubtedly makes the "what shall I wear today?" dilemma every morning all the more difficult. But the fact that even Stella's own husband didn't notice has made me question if I'm worrying unnecessarily. I bet my boyfriend wouldn't notice (and he does most of my washing) so would anyone else? Would I notice if any of my friends recycled their outfit for many days in a row? I'm not all that sure that I would. I used to have a lecturer who wore the same outfit every time she taught us (including on a uni trip where she seemingly wore the same outfit for 3 days straight) but even then, how many weeks/months did it take us to notice?

Almost tempted to try the Six Items or Less challenge. Watch this space.

Update

Oh by the way, I officially graduated a few weeks ago.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of project publicity, job offers, a wedding in Glasgow, a party in Aberdeen, my graduation ceremony, my graduation ball, etc etc. I had plans to chill out over the summer but the summer is rapidly disappearing. Some exciting events are taking place soon, don’t want to say anything until it’s all confirmed though! Watch this space.

Recent Events

Last week I went to Super Freelancing - an event organised by the wonderful Super Mondays crew. You can even see my wee blonde head in the audience. Super Mondays is a creative and IT community in the North East of England who meet once a month and host a selection of speakers from across the industry. As I have recently branched out into the world of freelancing - to tide me over until I decide what I'm doing with my life - this month's even was of particular interest to me.

Paul Easton of Easton Media was first up, who gave us some hints and tips on using PR to our advantage. He urged us not to underestimate the power of good old fashioned newspapers and journalists, and some provoking questions from the audience resulted in us all learning what to avoid when offered a feature-and-ad combo.

Paul was followed by Laura Maddison of Altitude Recruitment  who gave some insider information on presenting our CVs. Always valuable advice. Rob Lavendar followed her, giving a talk titled "The Freelancer's Toolkit". I found this very interesting as it laid out some of the key tools and programs which aid the life of a freelancer. He has kindly uploaded his keynote here, which I highly recommend you check out. Lee Simpson was last up with tips on how to generate a passive income. Very interesting but not really applicable to me, unfortunately.

The following Thursday, I attended the Design PhD Conference at Northumbria University. The keynote speaker was Mike Press, a lecturer of mine from Dundee University, so it was nice to catch up as well as hear his lecture.He showed and described a broad selection of work from Jewellers to Animators, each of whom had made international impacts in their subjects from human computer interaction to cleaning up the planet. This brought the audience to a conclusion that the way ahead for design is in Social Innovation. You can read more about the conference and the lectures at the link above.

The past week has definitely given me some food for thought.

New business cards

Got my new business cards in the post today from the wonderful Moo. Really pleased with them :)

Wedding Photographs

A few weeks ago I took my first foray into the world of wedding photography. The bride to be, Sarah, emailed me saying she'd been recommended by a friend of mine, Clare Doogan, and could I photograph her wedding. I was a bit nervous as capturing someone's big day is a pretty big deal - and I'd never photographed a wedding before - but today I got confirmation that she'd received the photos and was delighted with them. I am so pleased - I'm not sure if I'd ever have been able to forgive myself if I'd messed them up.

With kind permission from the bride and groom, here are some of my favourites from their big day.

I've had a pretty relaxing few weeks which is really nice - also have some exciting opportunities coming my way but can't say too much at the moment :)