At the 2024 conference we announced our plans for a new edition of our RIOT publication, The State of Responsible IoT 2025, and positioned the conference as a launchpad for publication.
We started this publication in 2017 , delivering four impactful editions in subsequent years. After some years of with the ThingsCon turning 10, we are rebooting RIOT for its 5th edition.
Theme and Format
As we connected this to the last conference and the celebration of 10 years of ThingsCon, we invited authors to explore the theme of Generative Things. That can be interpreted in various ways, from diving deep into things with AI capabilities and their consequences, to a more distant view, discussing the expectations for the next decade of Things. We invite you to pose new questions that we can address, rather than providing the answers.
We also specifically invite workshop hosts at the conference to build on their experiences. We can imagine different forms, such as using the topic and learnings for a new article or creating a more comprehensive report on the workshop. We also welcome adapting existing articles as long as they are not direct copies. We also plan to include exhibition projects as part of the publication.
We are also open to different formats, from a (short) essay, an op-ed, an academic paper, a pictorial, an annotated immersive experience, etc.
Authors and articles
We are proud to have a great list of authors covering different perspectives on the theme. This is the list, in alphabetical order:
- Albrecht Kurze, Andreas Bischof, Arne Berger – Smart, simple, sincere – Why and how we should rethink connected things in our smart homes
- Eva van der Born, Anna Merl – Embracing More-Than-Human Perspectives in a Transforming World
- Heather Wiltse, Johan Redström – On finding our place in a world
- Iohanna Nicenboim – More-than-human-AI
- Iskander Smit – Ubiquitous immersive relations with generative things
- Joep Frens, Mathias Funk, Janet Huang – Distributed everything – a workshop on weird modularity
- Jonne van Belle, Pieter Duysburgh, Willemien Laenens – Find the blind spots in your use of generative AI
- Karola Köpferl, Albrecht Kurze – Machines, AI, and the Past//Future of Things
- Kars Alfrink – Embodied AI and Collective Power: Designing Democratic Generative Things
- Matthew Lee-Smith, Garrath T. Wilson, and the Poly Collective – Exploring Diverse Forms of “Generativeness” Through Flash Fictions
- Mike de Kreek, Tessa Steenkamp – Reclaiming the human dimension in automated urban enforcement services
- Ola Bonati – From Generative to Re-generative technologies: empowering creatives to adapt regenerative practices
- Omar Heuves – The effect of Things on our everyday rituals
- Sabine Reitmaier – (Un)making the future: Some Thoughts after Reading ‘The Importance of Speculation in Design Research’
- Tejaswini Nagesh, Francesco Sollitto, Marina Castán, Troy Nachtigall – From Glitches to Fixes Hacking Loopholes for Sustainable Innovation
- Zeynep Ugur – Urban Emergence through Data: promise or paradox?
The RIOT 2025 report is curated, edited and designed by Andrea Krajewski and Iskander Smit. The report was officially launched 6 June 2025 in Rotterdam.
Download or request a printed copy
You can download a full report here.
We can also send you a printed copy, provided there is stock available. Please let us know, and we will be in touch to arrange the shipment. The cost of printing and sending will be around 25 euros.
