What’s on

I’ve been trying to avoid writing overly self-referential posts until I get back on track, but it’s worthwhile to start playing out the cards and making it known what I’m up to.

My current major project is starting a company. Ambit is in the process of being legally founded by myself and my two associates, Ómar Yasin and Herbert Snorrason. We’ve got a ton of projects but no funding, although we expect to launch our first product by mid-August if everything goes according to our very elaborate plan. I’ll post details as they appear, but you can also keep hitting refresh on http://www.ambit.is until it starts to have content, if that’s the kind of thing that excites you.

Of course, I never do just one thing. Having focus and direction is reserved for sensible people – I follow excitement wherever it goes.

• I’m still active in organizing the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. It’s been very calm of late as we’re waiting for the proposal to pass through the general affairs committee at parliament, but now that we’re expecting to see it emerge soon there’s stuff coming out. Most of my time spent on this project for the last two months has been being interviewed by virtually every news organization in the world, from Korean Broadcasting System to Le Monde, from Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service to New York Times.
• IMMI wouldn’t exist if FSFÍ, the Icelandic Digital Freedoms Society, didn’t exist. I’m still on it’s board and amongst our major projects at the moment are copyright reform (specifically related to our most recent argument against the adoption of IPRED in Iceland), press freedoms (via IMMI), and other typical digital rights issues. You know the drill.
• Another thing that kindof-sortof came out of FSFÍ is the Reykjavík Hackerspace, Hakkavélin, which we are currently in the process of setting up. We’ve moved in to a 2500m² warehouse near the harbor run by the Idea House, and will be sharing the space with dozens of startup companies, freelancers and artists. So far we’ve hosted an Arduino hackathon, see earlier post.
• Iceland is still a mess. The financial collapse of 2008 was only the beginning, and since then structural failures have been exposed in virtually every aspect of the country’s governance model. Iceland isn’t the only country to be in this situation, by far, but it is the only country I’ve seen where there’s been widespread admittance of this fact and people have gotten past their anger to a point where they’re ready to start doing something. For this reason, I am involved in half a dozen grassroots movements here, discussing changes in everything from constitution to industrial model, from democracy method to currency.

Of course, this means I haven’t been able to put enough effort into my various other projects, and for this I am sorry. Fab Lab stuff has been on the sidelines for a bit, even the Afghanistan Lab, which I try to squeeze a few hours in here and there to work on.

The nice thing about starting a company is that it means that if all goes well I’ll have extra spending cash somewhere down the line, and we might even be able to hire more people to work on some of the really exciting stuff so that it gets done anyway. We’re currently in the process of finding funding to keep ourselves going for the first year or so, but we’re trying not to loose track of the important goal, delivering products.

Anyway. That’s what’s on. See me and raise me one, ye scurvy basterds!