Brian Suda's 2nd quarterly email newsletter. I hope didn't miss the first one!

Hello Summertime!

02012-Q2 Reykjavik, ICELAND: It is week 28. Over half the year is behind us and the future is looking bright. Q2 was interesting and exciting, it saw some excellent travel and conferences. Much learning, eating and friendship forming was done. To everyone I met these last three months, hello, thanks and welcome to this newsletter.

Resilience: PopTech 2012 Iceland

The last few days of June saw PopTech make their first appearance in Iceland. It was a great mix of both international speakers, along with the local expertise. It show-cased to the world some of Iceland's unique talents and achievements. Videos will be available on the PopTech website in July 02012.

The sessions that stuck in my head weren't the technical or forward thinking projects, but rather the good storytellers and people who are passionate about their work.

Tim Harford gave a great presentation without using a single slide. He regaled us with the history of the Piper Alpha accident and tied it back to the recent financial collapse. With his media background he really inspired the audience. He presents the weekly BBC Radio 4: More or Less, and has perfected the art of storytelling.

An other session that stood out was Joy Reidenberg's. Her whole presentation was about whales, which was interesting, but the combination of her knowledge, experience and passion for the topic made it really remarkable. She has a TV show on PBS entitled Inside Nature's Giants which I encourage you to watch.

Finally, the session I was most interested in listening too was Geoffrey West discussing the rise of cities. I've listened to his presentation at the Long Now Foundation and his TED Talk. So getting to see him in person was an honor.

Summer Solstice

8 years ago, in 02004, I created a time-lapse video in Reykjavik, Iceland of the longest day of the year.

The quality isn't great, but you get the feeling for what 24 hours of sunlight is really like in only 24 seconds.

Long-Form Writing

We've been diligently writing and have several great items in the queue. In the mean time, you can catch-up on the last few popular articles.

Four articles since last newsletter:


Presentations

A few older presentations are available to watch and listen:

The Next Microsoft: A Re-Identity


We're always fascinated by a good brand identity discussion. As an experiment Andrew Kim took three days to try and rethink the Microsoft brand. He wrote about the new identity on his site. Sadly, it is unlikely to ever be implemented. After looking at all the great designs we regret not using the slash "/" instead of settling on the parenthesis "()" for our logo.

Contest Winner

Q2's Reykjavik Center Map Poser winner was Bernard from Spit Junction, Australia. The randomly chosen co-ordinates where Lat: -38.016 Lon: -148.373.

Q3 will continue the poster series with a new hand drawn map of Iceland. The map took several months to draw and digitally water color. You can see a version online at IcelandIllustrated.com

Remember, You can't win, if you don't enter! So be sure to add your submission.

20% off in July

Designing with Data is now being shipped from warehouses in both the UK and the US. This means cheaper shipping to US destinations. If you have hesitated buying due to shipping costs, you have now excuse any longer! If you want to skip the whole dead tree media, the books are always available in Apple's iBooks store for $9.99 (£4.99/€4.99) and the Amazon Kindle for $8.39.

In July, Five Simple Steps is offering 20% everything they offer, including books and videos.