The Life of light E06 – April 2019

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The Life of light E06 – April 2019

Singapore – Melbourne – Perth
Weekend 6-7 April 2019

Once you let go of discipline, its easy to lose track of what your goals are…Settling down to write my blog I realise that my last blog was 3 weeks ago, not my intended 2 weeks! It just shows that my mind is gradually moving away from blogging. Changes in the media environment I have been active in such as Lighting Magazine, the Via-Verlag PLD’s website and other media interests, have now given me clear direction on what I will be focussing on over the next year. So here is the deal…

Light Talk Blog
I intend to continue blogging till PLDC 2019 in Rotterdam, but as you have already noticed, the frequency maybe unreliable. The target is twice a month…I may miss a beat or two but I will endeavour to maintain that target. By the end of the year I hope others in my team will take over the blog as it is a really good tool to reflect on what was and what happened. You take a step back and take a helicopter view on what the events were and your or other peoples involvements in that. As always it is not about personal finger pointing or victory claiming, it is about the generic experience, the successes, the challenges and the failures, all from which we can learn to improve ourselves.

Light Talk Video
My next project is already well underway as reported in previous blogs. The Light Talk live chats have and are being edited for publication and if all goes well they will be online very soon (it always takes longer then you think with day to day priorities taking precedence…).

Light Talk Books
Light Talk 2, is also well under way and should see the day light in Q3 this year with the intention to have copies available at PLDC 2019 in Rotterdam. I am further working on Light Talk 3 (provisional working title) a book or subscription series that will be more educational in nature…still exploring the format that this will be made available in as with todays social media, there is strong shift towards Podcasts or YouTube materials…

Singapore
My week in Singapore saw the usual busy meetings, specifically as we are getting more and more projects in Singapore. We have always been fairly content having minimal project exposure in Singapore as local projects generally put a heavy strain on our man power because of the “over the top” demand for presence in regular coordination meetings. After the success of some of our local projects (e.g. Atlas Bar etc.) our local projects have no tripled and with it demand to attend coordination meetings and workshops. One of those was with Tony Chi for the renovation of the Ritz Carlton, a very detailed and very intense two-day workshop and coordination meeting. Further meetings for Atlas 2 and another high-end restaurant kept me fairly busy. And these are just those projects I am personally involved with, the team luckily flying the flag in other projects.

LDoT partner portal
LDoT meetings also keep producing a steady flow of activities, from face to face meetings with key real estate developers, project managers and IT facilities managers in Singapore to ongoing conference calls with some of our existing partners and explorative chats with potential new partners, resulting in a few more NDA’s signed. We intend to create a portal platform for our partners on our LDoT website soon.

Melbourne
Strangely enough in all those years I had never had the opportunity to visit Melbourne, so the inaugural Light Space Design Lighting Design Forum I attended as invited speaker on the 27th March provided me with the opportunity to visit this iconic city. Staying in a cosy little boutique hotel on Flinders Street I was uniquely located to explore the city in the evening hours. Federation Square, Flinders Train Station and Flinders Lane all with easy walking distance (see some mood pictures below).

Basing myself on the feedback received the event itself was by all accounts highly successful. High class speakers, great subjects and a very well contained and moderated program resulted in a full house from start to finish. It is rare to see attendees (certainly for those living and with offices in the city) stay from morning 9am till the closing networking event at 7pm. It just shows the strength and attraction of the program, I was duly impressed…Specifically the format where speakers were given a TED style directive to keep the presentations short and sweet between 15to 30 mins max. excellent moderating kept the program on the dot and highly attractive for all participants. Specifically the speed talks at the end where sponsors and requesting participants were given the floor for a max 3 min presentation was highly interesting. The event concluded with a networking session with drinks and canapes allowing everyone to find down and chat with whom ever you still wanted to catch up with or still had questions to clarify…great inaugural event.
I took the opportunity the next day to catch up with some that I had met during the event before flying off to
Perth.

Awards
We also received some further awards, this time from Lux Magazine, who awarded KLD Architectural Lighting Designer of the Year Award 2019 for Asia Pacific. Not sure about the value of the award and how they came to award the title as nowadays issuing awards has become a commercial activity…

Enjoy your time ahead…