Lukas Koster's Space

David Mitchell reading

On Saturday June 5th, 2010 I was at Teylers Museum in my hometown Haarlem to attend an interview by publisher Lidewijde Paris with author David Mitchell on the occasion of the launch of the Dutch translation of his latest novel “The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet”.
The story is set around 1800 on the small artificial Island Dejima (Deshima, Decima) in the harbour of the Japanese town Nagasaki, a trading post of the Dutch East Indies Company VOC. The Dutch at the time were the only western people allowed in Japan during the Tokugawa period. One of the novel’s main characters, doctor Marinus, is based on one of the first directors of Teylers Museum, Martinus van Marum.

The event was more a smart and witty conversation between friends than an interview, although Lidewijde Paris tried to get wandering off David back on the right track a couple of times.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet the author whom I admire very much since I first read Cloud Atlas. I have actually used him as an example of an author in a couple of posts on my library blog.

This time however, David Mitchell gave me an idea for an entire new post when he explained about the way his “oeuvre” is constructed: every single novel is part of one grand work, and several “virtual” sub-stories and characters live their own lives within this intertwined pool of stories. This implies that a story is not confined within the physical or virtual boundaries of one volume. Interesting!
When afterwards I had the chance to have my copy of “The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet” inscribed, I tried to explain my idea to David. I did not expect him to hear everything everybody told him. But when I walked away and saw what he wrote, I noticed he had listened…

It was a very enjoyable afternoon.

LJC

On June 4, 2010, the 4th Dutch Library2.0 Happe.Ning event took place in Haarlem. This is a kind of un-conference that is un-organised by different groups of members of the Dutch library 2.0 online social network Bibliotheek2.0.
This time the Happe.Ning was un-organised by people from my hometown Haarlem: Wilma, Jan, Peter, Ad, Janneke, Erik-Jan and myself. We work for a number of different organisations in the library and information area. The funny thing is that, as Jan pointed out, we probably would never have met in the first place without the Bibliotheek2.0 and twitter social networks.

The 2010 event was aimed at giving participants hands-on experience with a number of web2.0 applications that are interesting for libraries: videoblogging, mobile location aware services, Twitter, Foursquare, focusing on the central theme: the old story that printing was invented around 1430 in Haarlem by Lourens Janszoon Coster, and not by Gutenberg. Historians now say that Coster never even existed! This became the secondary theme of this un-conference: information and truth. How can you know that information is valid, but also: does it always matter?

After the introductory session with coffee, tea, cake and cookies the participants went out on the streets of the old medieval town in small groups, with their own assignments: videoblogging, finding historical Coster related objects and photographing them, or tracking a virtual/real life Coster through Twitter/Foursquare.

My own part in this was to play the role of Coster (my last name being Koster) and check in on Foursquare at a number of historical locations. For this purpose we had created a Foursquare account ‘Lourens Janszoon Coster’ and a linked Twitter account ‘ljcoster1’.

But during my field trip through Haarlem the large degree to which web 2.0 is dependent on the techological infrastructure made itself very clear: I just did not have a mobile internet connection on my smartphone, due to the T-Mobile network capacity problems in The Netherlands at the time. My smartphone was nothing more than a dumb phone.
But what to do to save the day and not let the participants wander aimlessly around, waiting for guidance?
Fortunately, there was a workaround. After going back to our HQ it became clear that you don’t have to actually be at the location you sign in for on Foursquare. You can just do it from a laptop or pc via a client like Tweetdeck that allows you to set a different geolocation and check in from there, even if you are somewhere else completely. So that’s what I did. I just conveniently checked in to a number of Foursquare locations sitting on a chair in our HQ. After entering the final location (Coster’s alleged residence and/or place of birth of printing, now a pub) all I had to do was to rush over there and sit down enjoying a nice glass of beer, waiting for the participants to find me.

This incident illustrated even more the fact that on the web it is very hard to judge the reliability of information. This, and the technological problems, were part of the end of the day’s evaluation. Of course there were also positive experiences. All gathered information will be mashed together in the event’s website as soon as possible.

See also:

• #hap4 on twitter
• twub for #hap4
• #hap4 on flickr

Last Sunday, first day of spring, March 21 2010, I visited the Dolhuys (“Mad house”) psychiatry museum in my hometown Haarlem, together with 4 people I actually got to know on line. All are working in libraries or information management and all are active on twitter, blogging etc: Wilma, Janneke, Erik-Jan, Peter.
Apart from work-related things, we also have social and cultural events like this, and we are also organising a library 2.0 unconference “Happe.Ning” in Haarlem in June, together with a couple of other local library twitter people.
All because of twitter and the like.

Went to a Claw Boys Claw gig for the second time this year (see Claw Boys Claw Bevrijdingspop Haarlem). This time indoors in Het Patronaat.

Great show! I also bought their latest CD “Pajama days“.

KvM2008 – De zwaan
Originally uploaded by lukask

September 20, 2008: meeting old schoolmates from 1967-1973 in our old School Building in Haarlem

See the official website, and my WordPress fansite.

Just visited Bevrijdingspop 2008 Haarlem, and saw a great Claw Boys Claw show, my favourite Dutch band from 1983-1997, now back on stage with a new CD.
See the pics on flickr.

On Saturday, March 15, I visited a gig by the band Purplex at the Patronaat pub in Haarlem. The band presented their new cd “The ice above”.
The bass player Rikko (second on the left) is one of the guys of our gang of friends from the mid seventies.
A nice evening with music and old friends.

Stedelijk Gymnasium Haarlem School hall
Originally uploaded by lukask

My son Timo’s school Stedelijk Gymnasium Haarlem today opened the new “old” wing.