decisions, decisions

These past weeks I have been sending out a flurry of emails to different companies asking for a graduation project. I have also been picking the brains of everyone I know for contacts and project ideas. Finally, this last week I have finally been making some headway, which of course means that I am being bombarded with too many possibilities all at once. Here are a list of graduation possibilities that I am currently weighing and pursuing:

1. NorthernLight (www.northernlight.nl) - NorthernLight is a 10 year old exhibition design company in Amsterdam started by two product designers from the TU Delft. They are involved with all different sorts of science museums and do a lot of international exhibition design competitions. I visited them on Monday, and the office climate is really young and cool. They are interested in talking to me on developing some exhibits or fitting new technologies to exhibition design.

2. Kossman en de Jong (www.kossmandejong.nl) - Also an Amsterdam based exhibition design company founded by two architects. Their projects are less technical but more arty than NorthernLight as far as I can tell from the website. I have an appointment to speak with them on Friday (I conducted my talks with the secretary in Dutch!). More to come later on this!

3. Philips Lighting in Shanghai - Details of this project are still blurry. Many people are interested, and I do not know if I will be able to get this project. The most attractive thing about this project is the chance to work in Shanghai and to do another project with Philips Lighting.

4. Waanzinnig! (www.waanzinnig.nl) - Game development company based in Rotterdam. I went to visit them last week. They are developing a new innovative game for the city of Rotterdam to help them achieve their initiative to reduce CO2 emissions by 50% in the next 10 years. The project is headed by Han Brezet (big sustainability dude at IO) and the company Waanzinnig! Today I found out I have another competitor who is also interested in the same project.

I am also waiting to hear back from a couple of other places.. but no news yet.

In the meantime, I will be doing some freelance work with NorthernLight starting next Monday to help them in a design competition they are involved in. This can also serve as a sort of orientation and to get my feet wet in case I am resolved to work in exhibition design. Also, I am busy with doing student assistant stuff for Internationalization and contacting professors as possible graduation mentors or chairs.