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A selection of thoughts, notes and scribbles from yesterday's She Says event. We headed along to Google Campus to witness and contribute to this year's event 'Where Actions and Ideas Collide.'

I went along to SCAMP 2012 yesterday and what a fantastic event it was. Friendly, inspiring, smart - there were some great speakers  and just as interesting attendees. I particularly liked the format. The curators of SCAMP deliberately selected speakers who wouldn't just stand up and talk to some slides. Clare Reddington brought a  lucky dip of props - the audience members picked one and then she spoke about it in relation to her work. Nange Magro presented a prototype of a dress which can be controlled with brainwaves. Salena Godden floored us with her fiery poetry performance. Mixing up talks with performances, conversations and audience participation gave the day a really nice rhythm and flow. One other conferences could learn from.

BUT. This is not what I want to talk about right now. There was one thing yesterday which irked me. Where were all the men in the audience? There must have been about 5 men there, 4 of whom were speaking. What's with this? No need to come because it's just for the ladies?

For a while I've been thinking about the process of design in two very different ways.

I’ve been thinking of what agencies do for their clients and how they are paid to think about problems on behalf of the client. Agencies design for people outside of their building and they tinker around at the edges of a problem space unhindered by the day-to-day firefighting that's endemic among large corporations - They can see the wood for the trees.

The App Store has just approved our latest release of Picle - version 1.0.4 - and it is ready for download now. 

As one of the new recruits to the many, I thought I would introduce myself with a wee snap shot of what I have been up to in my first 2 months in the city.

For the last few months, we've been working with Skype to create a new service proposition for small businesses. Today, we're launching in private beta. If you’re an entrepreneur, or working in a small business that’s looking to grow, Skype in the workspace is a place to meet potential partners, suppliers, or customers anywhere in the world. You can promote your service, send messages, talk, or meet face-to-face over Skype. And it's free. 

Since I joined Made by Many on March 5th as a Service Design intern, I have been involved in various interesting situations and conversations. They have propelled me into taking some time to reflect where I was before I started, to where I am now. For many reasons I feel I've been quite fortunate so far, and here I tell you why. 

Apologies for the radio silence on how Picle has been developing since the last release. The reason for this is that we have been wrestling internally over what Picle actually is. It sounds rather existential, but by watching how people use Picle and feedback to us, we have had to ask some deeper questions than 'How can we get more people using the app?'.

^{Here is a panaromic shot of some sketches, printouts and timeline up in the Picle den.} 

Time for a new mural in the office, based on a famous Edward McKnight Kauffer poster design from 1919.

New office mural

So this isn't an actual Smiths lyric, but this bastardised version has been rattling around in my head while thinking about the whole Instagram + Facebook thing over the last week. In trying to figure out how I feel about it I keep returning to a couple of ideas.