This year's TEI took place at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. The research group at this place, the Human Media Lab, is currently much involved in the field of "Organic User Interfaces", hence the conference's subtitle "FOLD - UNFOLD".
The event lived up to this motto, with several talks and exhibits focusing on the topic of folding interfaces, origami, and e-Paper. My personal highlights included Chris Harrison et al.'s "On-Body Interaction: Armed and Dangerous", Eva Hornecker's "Beyond Affordance: Tangibles’ Hybrid Nature" and Saskia Bakker "Exploring Peripheral Interaction Design for Primary School Teachers ".
The demo session (which I had organized with Ivan Poupyrev) featured a selection of interesting exhibits (30 in total, combined with the Arts+Explorations track, which was chaired by Alissa Antle and Thecla Schiphorst). Among them were a canvas that drew a painting for the artist, who would only have to hold the pen still (by Shahar Zaks), a singing machine (Machine à Turlute by Mouna Andraos et al.), EasyGami (Origami-style computing by Yingdan Huang et al.), and "ChronoTape: Tangible Timelines For Family History" by Peter Bennet et al.
Next year's TEI will be in Barcelona, and I am much looking forward to submitting a paper to it!