If I look back on the last 26 years, the thing I’m proudest of is helping to create Hyper Island; a place for companies and individuals to explore change in a world of digital.
Hyper Island started in Karlskrona, Sweden in 1994 as an odd cross between a Business School, an Art School and an Institute of Technology. This was in the days before the Internet when CD-ROM and interactive Kiosks were advanced technology; i.e. not that long ago.
At the time I was teaching at Kingston University in a computer science flavoured world. I was working with hypertext,digital video, computer graphics and computer based learning and wove those into my courses. But I knew I did not know enough about any of them and as they were changing so fast I needed to keep up. To be a better teacher I had to be a practitioner.
I set up a small agency Other Media and discovered clients who wanted to explore too. Towards the end of one client project, a CD-ROM for HIV/AIDS education, I discussed the future with two film/video makers, Lars Lundh and David Erixon and the idea of a new type of school was born – not just new in that it would teach people about digital but also new in how learning would be facilitated; project and client based, team work and problem solving.
Hyper Island has come a long way since then, with campuses in the UK, New York, Stockholm and Singapore plus offices and activities in London and Sao Paulo.
I quit Kingston and took up the challenge to live and work in Singapore as one of the driving team behind the Asian branch of Hyper Island. In 2021 a majority stake in Hyper Island was acquired by Talent Garden.
I left Hyper island in March 2022 to focus on scalable Learning Design, work for a wider range of clients, nature my relationship with Singapore’s most famous universities and with Teeside University, and to join forces with an exciting band of like minded educators and independent transformation consultants.