This week another bit is added to the trash and treasures pile in the hope to clean out my desk just before Christmas. Two items, one Video Interview and one Augmented Reality application, will be flushed up the toilet walls of the internet (this term was used to describe weblogs in 2000 when President Bush Senior had its glory). Lets start with the first one.
Maastricht University Augmented Reality Christmas Card
It is an example of applying Maastricht Universities' CORE principles in practice. I worked from intrinsic curiosity to create value for the sake of encouraging dialogue about the true meaning of Digital Innovation and Christmas.
The idea of using Augmented Reality came to mind while working with Unity3d on the Virtual Reality projects that will soon also end up on the piles this Trash and Treasures series. The plan was simple. Every employee received in the past days a blue envelope (just like the ones the Dutch Tax Service sends out) with a letter and 50 Euro in VVV vouchers. On the back of the letter I build an augmented reality scene and given my cultural heritage and simple limitations such as my imaginations and the availability of free 3d stock material I settled for the "tree and chimney" setup. The cuteness effect I tried to fabricate was provisioned by the kitten lovingly called "Martin".
I usually test my ideas on a random set of volunteers and check their reactions and make notes. Everybody adored the kitten! The results where positive throughout individuals and it was a good case of a very inexpensive, innovative (because for most people its somehow cool or magical to see this things in 3d superimposed onto "real" world objects) and instructive. So I build the application and made it available on the Google App store only to remove it a couple of days later.
My mistake was that I did not know that Maastricht University does not do Christmas. The main argument was that its a Western/Christian concept that has no place in an institution that is agnostic to its core. But while Christianity is of course a eastern religion and has itself contributed at the end of the Dark Ages massively to the concept of a "University" is irrelevant.
Christmas Wishes from a mother of two kids
The video was recorded and edited within an hour and its a telling story of how subtle the lines that separate professional posture and private imposture are when communicating effects rather then showing off affects. The fact that I appeared in the interview was not intentional. What I intended to do was to capture what I heard about the new rector. And I think I succeeded.
The volunteers that watched the video loved it and Rianne herself made it clear that she liked it and wants me to be published it as I see fit. In fact, she assured me that the College van Bestuur is also behind the decision to use this video. The in-house editors of the Maastricht University Website whom I showed the clip immediately asked if they could publish it on the website. This was never the intention. Originally the videos where just the ham to distract the watchdog of the mind when staring on a bluetooth enable mobile phone screen. But my rise to instant worldwide fame and power was put on hold within an hour anyway. Operation abandoned and the video had to be removed from UM's youtube.
What happened? The best explanation I got today is from a friend whom I showed the video. He said I committed another mistake. I interviewed a mother of two kids. And this is not what Maastricht University does. A Rector Magnificus shows integrity, leadership and radiates esteemed detachment when superimposed on any medium such as brochures, websites or in this case videos. And this is certainly not how Rianne comes across in the video. She comes across as somebody who exhibits empathy, joy, humour and a sense of irony that is deliberately not included in the strategic programme of Maastricht University and actually the antidote of what is meant by the term "professional" here.
Marketeers at Maastricht University are utterly unaware of these rethorical tools (f.e. Irony). It is very hard to preach the gospel of "Community first" while simultaniously adhering to the subconscious routines of an organisational culture with its implicit norms, rules and mind-sets. A perfect example of trying to showcase dull stuff in a more boring way then it actually is are these videos. But to translate values into the form of communication rather than into its content containers requires more know-how of the arts then is at UM's disposal. Maybe this is the CORE of Maastricht Universities spiritual bankruptcy that is subtly shimmering through these "trash and treasures" and who's currency is far more valuable then it's strategic programme tries to suppress.
