VIRTUEEL PLATFORM HOT100 2011 @ PICNIC The HOT100 is Virtueel Platform's special talent program for new graduates in e-culture curricula. E-culture includes the fairly recent disciplines of interaction design, game design, media and electronic arts, and social media communication in parallel with digitally informed processes and artefacts from older cultural disciplines such as architecture, film and performing arts. HOT100 2011 is the fifth edition – the first jubilee! – of the HOT100 programme. HOT100 Day at the outstanding PICNIC Festival brings to gether and highlights the most promising 2011 graduates from Dutch ar t academies, universities and universities of applied science in the fields of design, ar ts, theor y, communication or development skills. These graduates, from all cor ners of the Netherlands, are people we expect to come to the forefront in one or other e-cultural practice in the near future. HOT100 Day also connects this upcoming generation with more established organisations and institutions that undertake interesting work in the field of e-culture. In the afternoon seven strategic questions and issues will be presented to the HOT100 by the VPRO, the Amsterdam Public Library (OBA), the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Dropstuff with NIMk and Hermen Maat, the Institute of Network Cultures with publisher Valiz, NOSop3 and Virtueel Platform itself. These questions serve as case studies in seven pressure cooker workshops that should lead to design solutions or input for new operational directions for the questioners. Later in the year all these organisations will invite the HOT100 graduates to visit to their workplaces and see what has happened with their input. SO WHAT MAKES THEM HOT? Virtueel Platform asks all Dutch educational institutions with relevant e-cultural curricula to carefully select their 3 to 5 most promising 2011 graduates. These are the HOT100, minus the ones that couldn't make it. Their nomination is not only based on the quality of their graduation work, but also on the expectations that the institutes have of these graduates' future.
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