PaperCamp

It’s been a whole week since PaperCamp (a fringe event to Jeremy, Russell and James‘ BookCamp) organised by Matt Jones.

I drifted between the two events (meaning I missed a couple of things, including Karsten Schmidt talking about fiducial marker generation and machine readable origami markers). I mostly stayed at PaperCamp though, so here’s a handful of what I did catch…

• Aaron Straup Cope talked about a lot of great stuff including papernet and pocketMMaps.
• Tom Taylor demonstrated his adorable microprinter project, an implementation of something like Matt Webb’s social letterbox idea, which made pretty much everyone in the room drool. I’m making one as we speak.
• Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino got us making things. I made a thing. The first time I’ve used scissors and Prit Stick for ages.
• Chris Heathcote gave a charming talk entitled Pirates and Scalpels about travel guides. He makes me want to cut things up. You know, in a good way.
• Nick O’Leary shared his paper graphs, with a pop-up paper pie chart. I can’t wait for the big pop-up book of statistics and the pop-up topological travel guide to San Francisco.
• Sawa Tanaka shared some lovely projects, including Spot nocturnal animals (a glow in the dark book), The Egg Book (a thermochromic ink book) and a breathtaking book about Hiroshima (with photos from 1945 printed using soy sauce, overlaid with modern photos shot from the same angles).
• Beeker Northam got us thinking about taking and sharing photos of books. There is something about the texture of paper and the uniqueness of an individual copy of a book which LibraryThing (et al) don’t capture. Someone (?) suggested taking and sharing a photo of the front cover when you start reading a book and the back cover when you finish it. Genius.
• Jeremy Keith started a discussion about an idea: a shared social guide book which grows over time. (Incidentally, Jeremy probably made the best notes about PaperCamp).
• Matt Ward wrapped up, coining a new phrase.

A very good time was had by all. I hear that a PaperCamp is happening in New York in a couple of weeks. Whatever you do, don’t miss it if you’re in NYC on 7th and 8th of February.