Having a PICNIC at the Microsoft Creative Park

Hi All,

Those of you who follow me on Twitter might have noticed I’ve been working towards PICNIC09 on 23-25 September. For the first time Microsoft is a premium sponsor of this event and we’ll be showing some really cool stuff.

As PICNIC is not your every day event we’ll be at PICNIC with a participation that is not what you expect and or know of Microsoft.

We’re inviting everyone to come have a PICNIC @ the Microsoft Creative Park! The great thing is that for 95% of the Microsoft activities you only need a Festival Ticket which costs only €90 a day compared to €300 for a conference ticket.

This park will be created in the Gashouder on the PICNIC festival ground and in the Creative park you can have a refreshment and chill out like you would in a normal park. There will be Microsoft people in the park with who you can have a conversation and tell them what you think of Microsoft.

Create LAB

Besides a PICNIC festival ticket you need to register for the lab that’s why I list it first.

Microsoft Social Network Design Camp
On Thursday and Friday Morning Antoni Dol of Macaw will lead a lab to prototype the ideas for the next social network. We’ll be prototyping using Sketchflow. We are collecting ideas for the camp so if you have an idea about the next social network please send me a DM on twitter @bramveen or leave a comment here. If you want to participate in the Design Camp please go here.

Activities in the Park

Visit one of our silent announcements
We’ll be revealing something at PICNIC which I can’t talk about yet but we’ll be doing this at the park using a “Silent Disco” system. Seating is limited so make sure you don’t miss it.

Upgrade your digital identity
You know those people who have a great personalized twitter page? A good example is the twitter page of my friend, founder of Het Nieuwe Werken Blog and former Microsoft colleague Alex Vermeule.

. In the Microsoft Creative Park you can have your picture taken and you can create a great twitter background or image to use in your personal marketing.

Learn to know the Expression Suite
If you are interested in getting started with Silverlight or any other MSFT web technology you can try them out in our Creative outlook. We’ll have labs building a twitter client, a game, troubleshooting browser layout problems and rapid prototyping.

Catch up on the rest of the festival
We are working together with Inholland to bring you all the video and pictures they created in a Media Half Pipe (don’t ask) you’ll be able to check out all you’ve missed during the festival.

Drop of your Pictures to have them put into the PICNIC Photosynth
If you shoot pictures during PICNIC and upload them to Flicr or drop them off at the Creative Park we will photosynth them a 4 times a day to create a photosynth of the festival.

Participate in the Microsoft Logica Marble Competition
Across the festival terrain there will be several Surface units build into PICNIC tables that will display the backchannel of PICNIC on Flicr and Twitter. More important is that if you put your PICNIC badge on the table you will be able to plarticipate in the Marble competition.

And there is more I’ll probably drop some tidbits every day we have left in the road to PICNIC.

Come have a PICNIC in the Microsoft Creative Park get your PICNIC tickets here.

See you there (I’ll be the guy looking really tired) ;-).

Bram