PBS Frontlines’ Digital Nation: from information overflow to virtual worlds, Rachel Dretzin and Douglas Rushkoff do a great job on highlighting some of the challenges of the Millennial generation.

Also engaging was BBC’s 3D Documentary Explorer for “The Virtual Revolution: How 20 years of the web has reshaped our lives”.

Even with the 3D eating the CPU, the videos (with plenty testimonials of key web figures) are worthy of your next lazy Sunday. Beats watching American Idol anytime.

Oops … seems the exit train station is Oeiras. Google Maps, don’t be evil.

Fired up and ready to OFFF ? If you’re packing your stuff and looking for a way around Lisbon, look no further. Here’s a snack size post with all you need to know to enjoy your time in Lisbon and find your way to the festival.

Lisbon

The city of seven hills, the Frisco of Europe, with the yellow trams and the iconic bridge, it’s asking you to be discovered with their hospitality and unforgettable gastronomy (try the fish).
Start at St Jorge’s Castle and go downhill to Alfama’s historic district, or explore Belem and the two World Heritage buildings: Jeronimo’s Monastery and Belem’s Tower.

Photo by Pedro Moura Pinheiro

When you’re done with monuments, get ready for a bit of shopping at the commercial district near Restauradores and take a ride on Santa Justa Lift to Carmo, one of the landmarks of Abril’s peaceful revolution. You can then rest for a while at Brasileira or walk a bit further to see the sunset at Graça. Now ready for the nightlife, head to Bairro Alto district, where you can eat on the more traditional Fado houses or have a go at the several ethnic restaurants, getting strengths for the non-stop movida (well, until 3am at least). For those still standing, time for a few clubs at Cais do Sodré or dance until the day dawns at Lux.

If you’re looking where to stay, there’s plenty to choose from, with accommodation for all budgets, starting with Hotel Açores to the hostels of 2 close friends: Lisbon Calling and Albergo Odisseo (I did the website of the last one a few years ago . You could try any of these, and even if all booked, they’ll point you other good choices.

How to get there

Now that you got acquainted with Lisbon and the hangover from last night at Bairro Alto is long gone, time to OFFF.
The easiest way is by subway taking the green line all the way to the end (even if you’re commuting from the blue line), reaching Cais do Sodré station.

Photo by ghostboy

Get to the street level and buy a ticket to Oeiras, on the train leaving to Cascais (PDF timetable).
Now don’t you get distracted with the seaside scenery and forget to get out on time.

If you’re driving there, take N6 (Avenida Marginal) and exit in Oeiras (at the right side of the beach). On the roundabout a few meters ahead turn left and then right all the way up to Fundição de Oeiras, right across the train station.

View OFFF 2009 / Oeiras.Portugal in a larger map

Hope to meet you there on Thursday.

Following yesterday’s news, i’m sharing a collaboration between blog network Prt.Sc and OFFF, that are inviting all portuguese bloggers to OFFF Screen Challenge and win a chance to be at this renowned festival of post-digital culture, taking place in Lisbon, from 7th to 9th May 2009.

*Disclaimer: As an executive member of Prt.sc, I’ll be judging the entries. That leaves all other portuguese bloggers more chances to win the 3day ticket and show your project at the venue.

The Challenge

OFFF and Prt.sc are showcasing the best of portuguese digital culture: from the garage hack to your web project, OFFF Screen is giving the chance for those using social media to showcase their projects to a wider and interested audience.

The submitted projects are preferably within the broader Catalogue theme “THIS ISN’T FLYING, THIS IS FALLING WITH STYLE · FAIL GRACEFULLY @ OFFF”.  Unleash your creativity, don’t be afraid to fail.

How to apply

Each application must be submitted by a member of  the project that has been writing for a blog at least since December 2008.

Each blog must write at least 3 posts until the 1st of May, related to the project or OFFF Festival, and tagged with  offf and prt.sc. On this date, judges by the OFFF and Prt.sc team will select the 3 best projects. These will be awarded with a 3 day ticket and the chance to present the project on the venue.

Submissions should be sent to offf@prt.sc, with project description, name and contacts, and a permalink to the post announcing the challenge entry.

All posts related to the challenge will be agregated at offf.prt.sc. For further info, contact offf@prt.sc.

Missing the OFFF Festival posts lately?  It’s time with some fresh OFFF news, then:

• Amit Pitaru and James Paterson are in. Some experimental trippin’ expected.
• If there was an A-list for digital creators, if would probably be at OFFF: Paula Scher, U.V.A (United Visual Artists), Robert L. Peters, Chris Milk, Grey London, Stefan Sagmeister, Digital Kitchen, PES, Joshua Davis, Hillman Curtis, Neville Brody, Eva Vermandel, Kyle Cooper, etc, etc,
• Loopita rolls a customized venue for Raster-Noton, the german experimental music label.
• Nerdference panel is premiering, with a lot of D.I.Y. technologies, from open software and hardware, control surfaces, Arduino, tangible interfaces, the works. It’s evolution baby.

So, what’s your excuse to haven’t yet booked your flight to sunny (beach is within walk distance) Lisbon?

P.S.: There’s a open slot for sponsors, a great chance for companies working in creative business to be amongst a creative crowd of +3k and showcase your services.

Photo by occhiovivo

Photo by Mark Busse

Photo by midnightglory

Photo by fensterbme

Photo by william addington

Photo by DHdesign

All pictures were selected from Flickr, under a Creative Commons license, so make sure you credit the authors if you use them.

As i’m never short of passion of explaining to regular “offline” folks the outstanding opportunities that the web has brought to us, let me share one of my central arguments that you can also use to bring more people in to the conversation.

The Third Place

The Third Place refers to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace, or as i call it the private and professional spheres. The concept was created by Ray Oldenburg , arguing that these places were central on their community building role on a society.

A monthly meeting of twitter.com users in Lisbon, © twittlis

The web pushed this whole concept further, as citizens increasingly rely on digital tools to stay connected, with social media becoming their main third place. With shopping malls and other consumption temples getting emptier in a year of crisis, this trend will deepen and it’s up to us, early adopters, to show the Yellow Brick Road to newcomers.

Show your friends the best community tools available so we all can build a better society. From Kiva.org to Twitter.com, these are not only tools for digital democracy but effective agents of change.

So when those folks tell you to get a life, just reply: “Get a Third Place”.

Kyle Cooper, UVA (United Visual Artists), Multitouch Barcelona, Stefan Sagmeister, Paula Scher (Pentagram), Renascent, James Paterson (Presstube), Digital Kitchen, Joshua Davis, Karsten Schmidt (Toxi & PostSpectacular), Universal Everything, Aaron Koblin, Hillman Curtis, Si Scott Studio, Chris Milk, Kozyndan, Jason Bruges Studio, Ivan Franco, Neubau Berlin, This Is Pacifica, Alva, R2, Musa Worklab, Robert L. Peters, Suprb and Eva Vermandel are lined up for Roots with more to come the next few months.

The new venue is really close to the beach and will offer better conditions, with lots of space for artists who want to show their work at the catalogue. The Swedish digital media school, Hyperisland will be around (though not as part of their World Tour) for a special workshop and a 2 hours lecture.

Personally, it will be the chance to finally meet the men who inspired me to work in interactive, Mr. Hillman “MTIV (Making the Invisible Visible)” Curtis. Almost 10 years since his first Shockwave Flash animation for Macromedia, it will be a great year to discuss the state of digital creativity with him and the other great speakers.

Photo by sushi-sunday under a CC license

Starting next January, i’ll be posting profiles on the artists and projects, with a few selected interviews so you can get a feel of what to expect at the festival and help you to choose which talks to attend.

Grab your tickets before they’re gone and visit Portugal next year. Besides the great weather and delicious food, we’ll also have a wicked digital culture festival.

12:00

Entering the afternoon with several directors from Boolab, a motion studio, and an almost oficial partner of Psyop.

13:00

Adobe misses their talk. Missing evangelizing opportunities like this one brings no good karma. Chris, of Crashmedia, Canada, is filling their shoes.

14:00

Oh great, porn ! The Shai project, with compliments by Agence7seven.

16:30

Onesize, Gmunk and Minivegas answer how creativity and technology shape motion graphics. Minivegas showed a impressive software to create generative station ID’s, based on live footage. And also, more penis.

Gmunk debunks motion-fx houses, claiming they don’t know shit about design. The discussion goes into the domain of pushing interactivity (live data, user input) into motion graphics.

18:00

Group 94 is now on stage with a behind-the-scenes of their web design work. They applied a panorama transition of Jeronimos Monastery to their Nokia project.

Awesome.

19:00

Devoid of yesterday premieres the event titles. Lots of fish. I’ll post it as soon as it’s available.

20:30

Fallon talking about the power of ideas.

Ideas are leaps of imagination … with commercial consequences.

Of course they showed Cadbury’s gorilla. Which is just a stunt by a production company (Glass and a half full) whose goal is to deliver joy.
Digital makes ideas more useful and involving.

Ok. we’re done. As the conference organizers just confirmed, see you next year at OFFF 2009 Lisbon !

12:00-12:30

50Done & friends is presenting. For those who don’t know yet 50Done & friends is a project of Rui Vieira ( currently Creative Director at Fullsix Portugal) to do out of the box projects in the areas of digital creation and communication they work with real clients but in a diferent way of communication. Rui presents the Body and Soul, a project for Nokia that showcases beautiful models (one component shows the body , the other a more emotional soul) .

Ingrediente X – A motion design showcase.

Carlos Matias – Dialectica shows his creative work applied on t-shirts and shoes, and some of the illustrations shown here at the venue.

Pedro Pinto, a 3d motion designer at Fullsix with some sample work.

13:00

Karlssonwilker with a weird piece: a spoken portfolio, on audio tape.

14:00

Regine is on stage, sharing how We-Make.-oney-Not-Art evolved and reflecting on emerging art and the relation with technology. Right next to her, Andy Cameron, now creative director at Fabrica, talking about his work and what interactive media means. They both hate Second Life, and finish their talk with a discussion on the challenges of nem media art.

16:00

Hellokimori is now on stage.

17:00

A great panel on information visualization. Quite more useful than the usual showcase that we’ve seen today.

18:00

FakePilot rolling his impressive ground of work. Feels a lot like Chris Cunningham.

19:20

Now a Interaction Deigin Panel, starting with the folks from naninka. Beats me why the organization decided to this “panels” when no interaction with the audience kicks in. Surprised to find out that Nanika was involved in the BBC radio (below).

20:00 -21:00

After some astonishing works by Alex Trochut, we’re ending with Hi-Res.

12:00

Loads of people outside (an estimate of around 2000). Collecting their tickets, getting a sun tan and drinking beer. I’ll need to do an errand, but i’ve been told the doors are already opening.

12:30

TheKDU is showcasing their works.

12:40

Just found out that some conferences are being broadcasted at
http://videos.sapo.pt/offf. For those abroad, Sapo is a xtra cool portuguese portal, and i’ve met with some of their team here at the event.

13:10

Dino dos Santos, one of Portugal’s most famous type designers, talking (in English) about the process and themes that inspire him.

18:00

Late lunch and more errands, after watching Eric Natzke (North kingdom cancelled their talk).

Now watching Trafik and their several interactive projects.

19:00 – 22:00

Last but not the least, the all exciting Joshua Davis, with his humorous talk, inviting everyone to get naked. The day wrapped with the work of PsyOp (and a wonderful making-of their latest commercial for Absolut). See ya tomorrow.