The places you will go, the people you will see 2: how I managed to meet Hiroshi Ishii

This post will detail how you too can meet Hiroshi Ishii serendipitously.

One: Make contact with the director of the National University's Center for the Arts (who also happens to be your mate's mum)

Two: Casually state your areas of focus to said director.

Three: Said director happens to have a meeting with the director of the Interactive Digital Media Lab (Adrian Cheok) and a Visiting Professor from MIT so she asks for your advice on digital media.

Four: State desire to meet with director of Interactive Digital Media and inquire who said Visiting Professor might be.

Five: Find out that professor is Hiroshi Ishii!

Six: Mention that you are familiar with Ishii's work and suggest some ways of approaching upcoming meeting. Coyly decline sitting in on meeting but nonetheless allow yourself to be persuaded to come along anyway.

Seven: Have a wife who will grudgingly help you edit the University Arts Festival press release thrust upon you by above-mentioned mate's mom so that you can attend said meeting with little knowledge of its agenda.

Eight: Smile alot at first meeting with Hiroshi Ishii, nod knowingly at all he says, and remember to ask someone to take a photo of you together so you can tell yourself at a later date that this serendipitous meeting was not a figment of your hyperactive imagination.

Nine: Accompany Ishii's entourage around the University and before you know it, you'll find yourself in several meetings where deans and faculty members of various departments will wonder what you are doing there ;)

On a more serious note, getting the chance to talk to Ishii has been great. I also attended his talk today, which is the first of a Distinguished Lecture series that the faculty of engineering @ NUS has launched. Ishii's talk was highly inspiring as he detailed his prior work in tangible user interfaces (think I/O brush). But more than that, Ishii's talk was also a call for a more interdisciplinary approach towards technology development. Specifically, Ishii is calling for more high-level vision and concepts rather than reinventing the wheel with technology. During the talk he revealed that Nicholas Negroponte had asked Ishii to abandon his research on augmented tables and to think about new and original ways in which people can interact with technology. This message seemed to not have gone down well with the engineering students as during the question and answer session, they seemed to be overly focussed on the technical details of Ishii's prior work during the Q&A segment of the talk. This seemed to disconcert him somewhat. Kevin has captured the talk on video and when he puts it up on his blog, I will be sure to link it to this post.