About Me
The elevator-pitch version:
I’m a digital media researcher and journalist based in Amsterdam. My current research focus is the affective bandwidth of mobile-mediated communication. My research interests include affective computing, HCI, biomapping, emotion, the impact of mobile phones on social behaviour, analytical design and information visualization.
The unabridged version:
Everyone knows I’m easily seduced by skinny jeans and asymmetrical haircuts, so after University I went from small town academia to broadcast graphics, animation and interactive design. I loved my first job, not least of all because I could say “motion capture” and “alien” in one sentence with a straight face, because that’s what we did to produce children’s TV shows.
For the longest time I loved magazines and in 2006 I became the editor of one. In a sublime twist the magazine I edited was sold with a music CD (bless!) which meant I could tell my grandmother I was paid to listen to music. We went on roadtrips, we mused about The Next Big Indie Band and often stroked our chins and wondered why print was dying.
There was only one thing left for us to do, so we launched another magazine. This time it was purely Hip Hop. We had fun, the mag sold, and I got to say “beatbox” in editorial meetings.
But, in the words of Bob Dylan “the times they are a-changin’” and I was getting a bit old for a baggy pant. I went deep into the heart of corporate internet-dom. I worked as a digital publisher for the largest media company in South Africa and said “bottom line” many times with a straight face. I worked on truly amazing brands like National Geographic (National Geographic Kids) and the hugely popular Hearst title seventeen magazine. While the going was good we also started publishing web and mobile projects for clients like the Shuttleworth Foundation and Smirnoff.
When the office sent me to Amsterdam for the amazing PICNIC conference in 2009 it set the wheels in motion for the Amsterdam Chapter. A year later I was back in the canal city doing a year’s worth of research at the University of Amsterdam into mobile phones and affect. An MA in new media later and now I can throw “natively digital” into sentences.
I call Amsterdam home. I collaborate with interesting people by developing and researching new media projects. When I’m not doing that I write, edit, do yoga and eat.
In my next life I’d like to come back as a fly on the wall.
Interviews
BBC Digital Planet June 2010
Aficionado.co.za
TheAsphaltworld.com
See my blog about Amsterdam: butisitcoolenoughja.com.
nataliedixon.info by Natalie Dixon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
