Gijs Huisman

In other workshop-related news: I’m co-organizer of two workshops that were accepted at EuroHaptics’16 and ICMI’16. The workshop at EuroHaptics will focus on the use of social touch in human-robot interaction. We are actually planning to design a small experiment during the workshop which we will then run during the conference. Should be exciting!

The ICMI’16 workshop is related to the Tasty Bits & Bytes project that I’m involved in, and will focus on technology in human-food interaction. More information about paper submissions for this workshop will follow soon.

This Friday, the 1st of April, I’m co-organizing a hands-on ThingsCon Salon workshop about the Internet of Touch. In the workshop we’ll be talking about how we can use insights from research into social touch for the design of haptic wearables and connected products. We will look into the role that haptic will play in a variety of applications, and you will get to experience and design some haptic interactions yourselves. The workshop will be held in Amsterdam at Info.nl. There are still a few places available for the workshop, so register quickly if you want to participate. Hope to see you Friday!

Every year at HMI we organize the Media Technology course in which students build installations that focus on unusual uses of technology. This year the theme of the course was related to our very own Tasty Bits & Bytes project: Future Foods. We are very happy to announce that we are collaborating with Fooddock in Deventer to exhibit the students’ work. On the 28th of January from 17:00 until 20:00 six student groups will showcase installations that combine technology with food in interesting ways. Check here for more info (in Dutch).

My TEDx talk about Social Touch Technology and the importance of social touch is now online! Check it out here! Also, please feel free to share the video with as many people as possible! More views means a higher chance of it ending up on TED.com, which would be awesome!

On the 3rd of July of this year we organized the first Dutch meeting on the study of social and affective touch (see here for a report). I am happy to announce that our second meeting will be held on the 20th of January 2016, from 13:00 until 17:00 and is again sponsored by the 3TU research centre Humans & Technology. Everybody who is interested in the topic of affective touch can register (for free) for this second meeting. We will discuss a number of issues central to the topic, look for ways in which to collaborate, and offer you the possibility to showcase your work in the form of a demo.

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There I was. On THE red dot in front of a 1000+ audience. And what an audience! It was an immensely pleasurable experience to be a speaker at TEDxSaxionUniversity The Pursuit of Happiness, last week. After a great introduction by host Brahma, I stepped onto the stage, obviously nervous, but it all came together in what turned out the be a wonderfully interactive talk.

Everybody in the audience seemed happy to take part in, comment on, and talk about my message as I was delivering it. All in all I think I succeeded in sparking a discussion about social touch and the future of social touch technology, which is great!

As soon as the video of my talk is up, I’ll share it here.

Big day tomorrow! I’ll be giving a TEDx talk at the TEDxSaxionUniversity Pursuit of Happiness conference. The conference is completely sold out meaning a big, really big audience. I’m looking forward to it! Talks will be available later online, so if you missed the conference be sure to check back here later for a video of my talk.

December 4th will be the second ThingsCon organized in Amsterdam. ThingsCon is a one-day conference about the future of hardware, and the Internet of Things.

For this edition in Amsterdam I was invited to organize a workshop on haptic interactions. I’m still working on the exact program, but the workshop will focus on the affective (and social) aspects of haptic technology. Co-starring in this workshop will be Iskander Smit from Info.nl and fellow HMI PhD Christian Willemse.

More info will follow soon, but in the mean time you can register for the conference or try your luck at getting a free ticket!

On the 23rd of November I’ll be giving a talk at the Design by Fire Cafe in Utrecht. The talk is titled “Caress to Impress: Social Touch Technology”, and will be about the design of wearables for social touch interactions. The event is currently fully booked but you can still be put in the waiting list. More info at: http://www.designbyfire.nl/cafe/049-050. Hope to see you there!

Last month the UT Nieuws ran a two page story on our Tasty Bits & Bytes project. It was a nice opportunity to talk about our vision and aim with the project.