Banff summits

If you've never been to one of the Banff New Media Institute summits, I highly recommend them. Not only do you stay in one of the most beautiful places in the world, but the people and ideas are truly inspiring.

Right after DIS 2004, I would like to head to Inside/Outside: Responsive Environments and Ubiquitous Presence - discussions about living architectures, responsive materials and designs, wireless media and the corresponding philosophies, research futures and consumer products.

And the Participate/Collaborate: Reciprocity, Design and Social Networks summit also sounds promising, as it looks at participatory design and social networks.

"Collaboration" is used to describe a large set of current experiences and forms of organization, from multi-player games, to community blogs, to high performance computing grids. Is collaboration a new term for simply working together, or can it mean something more ? the potential for new ideas, forms of social organization and even new discoveries? ... The summit will consider the ways that individuals and groups are included and engaged through collaborative and participatory structures.