February-March projects & ideas

[leila johnston]

Afternoon,

Everything's gone busy again. 

Feb

Tim and I have ONE WEEK left to finish our book about spoof new age/magic stuff, The Inner Head, published by Snowbooks this Christmas. A week doesn't seem like long enough, but we'll do our best. It still makes me laugh, which is more than I can say for most things, so I think it's going to be OK.

I was recently asked to contribute to Artomatic's "Container" – a limited run of "physical magazines". From what I can gather, it's boxes of paper things. The theme is 'hot and cold' so I'm taking the temperature of things, taking photos of them, and printing them out with captions on a thermal printer. 

I've been doing some rebranding work for an interesting agency in London this month, too.

I've agreed to be a mentor on the new Sheffield start-up accelerator, DotForge. It will take place over the summer: http://dotforgeaccelerator.com/people/leila-johnston/ 

I'm writing something about Pepper Spray for Wired UK.

I have a week left to get my pitch together for the Dublin Maker Faire, my EVENT OF THE YEAR. I'll probably be returning with my pal from last year's Maker Faire (who I used to work (and constantly invent impossible things) with), the brilliantly clever Duncan Gough. We've got lots of mental ideas about neurotic objects we'd love to make, if money and time were no object. 

Roo and I managed to record some snacks with our snacks chief, Lee, and are assembling an Easter episode of Shift Run Stop while you sleep.

I'm still the editor of The Literary Platform, constantly on the look-out for articles and reviews. Our R&D season is still running and it's been a big hit, as these things go. Have a look – it's very likely someone you know/like/have heard of has been a contributor/mentioned recently.

March 

I'm demoing some stuff at the Women of Tech City showcase on Friday 8th. Not sure what I'll be showing/telling yet, probably some things I've made and some things I'd LIKE TO MAKE. But I was really pleased to see Natalia Buckley and Anjali Ramachandran will both be there, they're the best.

Then I'm going to a massive conference called South By SouthWest in Austin, Texas on the 10th-12th. I'll be speaking on the Culture Hack panel. Never been to America or indeed, on a proper plane before, so I'm quite nervous. I imagine I'll be saying similar things to what I said in my Guardian article last month and speaking a bit for Caper, and a bit for, well, punk.

I've agreed to be a judge on this fund pairing writers and technologists being run by the Writing Platform, which unfortunately probably means I can't enter as either.

I'm still helping the Site Gallery here with a great pitch for some budget and a good bit of work for later in the year that will allow me to work with former Happenstance partner James Jefferies again.

For a long time now, I've really wanted to write a talk about the Terminator films. As I don't have a new 2013 talk yet, I've been offering a "Technology of Terminator" talk around, for free (initially!) if anyone wants it. It's already had some bookings, so let me know if you'd like it! April onwards, really – I've got to actually write the thing. There's stuff about my other talks here.

I've just been asked to do a guest blog for a successful author's blog, so I need to think about how not to waste that.

I've also been trying to socialise a bit more so I'm generally quite tired and hungover. Come on spring.

Thanks for reading, let me know if I can help with your things.

Leila xx

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