The week that was 11-15th December 2017

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The week that was 11-15th December 2017

Singapore
Weekend 16-17th December 2017

An eventful week!
It was a real mixed bag of everything this for last week of the working year! We finalised the dates and venue for PLDC 2018, with the Via-Verlag team issuing the call for papers, I had a midweek trip to Hong Kong for a crucial project design meeting, two articles saw the daylight, one my long awaited interview with the now renamed Arc magazine (formerly Mondo Arc) and a feature report on our Lighting Design Agora in Shanghai that was held in September. To top of the week I presented a paper about the future of lighting and lighting design at a networking event for young tech entrepreneurs at District 6 here in Singapore and discussed the same in meeting meetings with Gooee and Philips with an eye on the Big Data revolution and the development of Light as a Service. A busy week for sure. Along the week a steady stream of customary panettone’s and Xmas hampers found our way into our office in appreciation of the collaboration with our business partners in the year gone past.

PLDC 2018
First an update on PLDC who have now listed me officially on their website as their steering committee member in Singapore: https://pld-c.com/about/steering-committee/
During the week final negotiations went on with Marina Bay Sands to log in the venue and the dates which are now officially confirmed. In the week from 23rd to 28th October 2018 we have the venue of our choice allowing for bump-in and pre-convention activities 23-25th October with the official 2-day convention scheduled for 26-27th October…mark it in your calendars! It will be a historic event and the venue could not be more iconic and representative of what we want to achieve! With the dates now fixed a call for papers was issued yesterday which can be found in this link: https://pld-c.com/call-for-papers/. The four tracks to choose from for either a presented paper or self-running poster presentation for PLDC 2018 are:

1- IoDT – the Internet of Design Things
2- Hospitality Lighting
3- Experiential Environments
4- Professional Practices issues
The Experience Room, always a crowd favourite, is also available for selection. Sponsors have been alerted and invited to link up with the Asian lighting design community in the a networking exhibition space.

Hong Kong
My midweek trip to Hong Kong was for a design presentation to the Hong Kong Jockey Club, an institution in Hong Kong for more than a century surely, where we are involved in the lighting design of some packages of the new to build massive 8 storey club house. I remember Happy Valley from my early Philips days (Philips provide the lighting for the race course at the time) and being invited at the VIP Lounge for dinner and watching the races was a cool conclusion to an otherwise successful day of meetings with the client and project team. I could not resist taking a bet and was stunned that my pick for race 6 won! At nearly 5 to 1 a neat little win (which covered for my losses in the other races 😊)

District 6 and the future
On Thursday night I presented a paper about the future of lighting and lighting design to a group of young tech entrepreneurs here in Singapore who all operated from Singapore’s latest co-working space, District 6 in Odeon Towers. It was their annual year end networking night to which they invited me as the guest speaker of the night.

Purely coincidentally I met with Gooee and Philips the next day in separate meetings to discuss exactly this future, the control of big data using light as a host and the future outlook of light as a service. Both, in my opinion will have tremendous impact on our future (just think of the likes of Uber, AirBnB, Amazon, etc) and understanding the role of the lighting designer and crafting our place within this revolution is one of my key interests at the moment. Gone are the days of individuality, in this new interconnected service world partnerships will be the way to go…

Magazine publications
Finally to top of the week, my long-awaited interview with (Mondo) Arc Magazine (issue 101) was published on line. Read the full article here: https://issuu.com/mondiale/docs/arc_101/72
Thanks to Paul James and Robert Such for the article. Knowing how much work goes into distilling a readable feature from all the information and pics provided, I can only appreciate the result. Well done. Coincidentally sister magazine Mondo Arc India, published by Amit Gupta and his team, featured a report on our highly successful Lighting Design Agora event in Shanghai earlier in September. Thanks for the acknowledgement of a lot of blood sweat and tears to get it organised! https://issuu.com/stirmondoarcindia/docs/mondo_arc_india_issue_17_nov_dec201/150

This will probably be the last blog of the year, as we are closing our offices and winding down our activities in the coming week and ready ourselves for a well deserved Xmas holiday.

To all our business relations and friends, thanks for your support this year, have a great Xmas and see you back in what shapes up to be an exciting 2018! All the very best! 😊

Have a great week-end