Description:
design + dialogue + technology
Contents:
AkiraChix: Awesome Girl Geeks in Nairobi
AkiraChix is an association that inspires and develops women in technology through networking, training, and mentoring. They launched in April 2010 when a group of young female techies got together at the iHub and decided to create a network that increased visibility for women in tech. And they have a really cool promo video :)
7Beavers: Stimulating Citizen Engagement & Reclaiming the Commons
7Beavers is a Montreal-based group of writers, filmmakers, painters, poets, dancers, actors, musicians all concerned citizens, thinkers and doers. On May 25-27, 2012, theyre organizing a weekend symposium to coordinate and host participatory actions, events, and conversations to stimulate social innovation and promote the networking and consolidation of creative resistance movements working for change throughout Qubec and Montral. (Personally I think they should have gone with "7honeybadgers").
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)
A few excerpts from "The Massive Open Online Professor", by Stephen Carson and Jan Philipp Schmidt, which appeared in the May 2012 issues of Academic Matters: The Journal of Higher Education.
Aggregating Election Social Media to Prevent Conflict
Mike Best and his team at Georgia Tech have designed a real-time election monitoring tool that aggregates social media content from about 20 different sources, including Twitter, Facebook, Ushahidi, blogs, and SMS messages.
Jellyweek DC January 18 @TRYST in Adams Morgan
Jellyweek is a self-organized global gathering. The idea is to get together, get some work done, and raise awareness about the global coworking movement. The event will be casual and informal. No programming. Just bring your laptop and work. I'm hoping local DC coworking folks will come represent and let us know about all of the options in the metro DC area.
Innovation Grounds 1.0
This mind map lays out a framework for thinking about innovation grounds spaces where people can come together and generate ideas, solutions, knowledge, culture, and relationships. It emerged from perceiving coworking spaces as next-generation telecentres; seeing connections between telecentres, coworking spaces, hackerspaces, and libraries; and being somewhat exasperated at how libraries are often overlooked as key actors in community development despite the fact that theyve always been places where people convene, learn, and create (especially information... and were in the information age, Hello!).
Policy & Technology: Edward Tufte at the Tech@State Data Visualization Event
Despite the title, Tufte's keynote for the Tech@State event on data visualization was the same that he gave at a one-day workshop I attended in 1999. It was a brilliant talk then, and its still good now. It could have been better if Tufte addressed implementation. The how. The practice of creating good infographics for decisionmakers.
Using mobile technology to collect data
A few snippets from the "Mobile Technology and New Media: Trends and Opportunities" panel at the September 23 Tech@State event. No analysis. Just stuff I wanted to remember.
Hey! Im gonna speak at the Creative Commons Salon
The first Creative Commons Salon Montreal is taking place on December 21, 2010. The theme is open culture. We are going to talk open education, open web, web standards, licensing and the change that occurred on the internet, open publishing, open culture, remixing, video, DJing, and food.
Artefatica at the DIY Citizenship conference in Toronto
On Saturday, November 13th, Emily Rose Michaud and Owen McSwiney are presenting the Roerich Garden Project at the DIY Citizenship conference in at the University of Toronto. Leslie Reagan Shade is moderating the panel, called Making Space. Theyll also have a spot in the Hack Space. How cool is that?
More on open development
I realize from delving more into this that several of us have come to the same conclusion. I'm repeating myself but here goes: It's not about building a big repository. Stop that. It's about aggregating, not centralizing. Making it easy to find, aggregate, and mash up.
Global Impact Study: Montpellier workshop report
I'm finally sharing this workshop report. It's a personal account for those who were not able to attend. Ive tried to give a sense of the flavor of the meeting and the range of topics and issues that came up. This is a large and complex project, presenting many challenges from the methodological to the administrative. I did my best not to air dirty laundry, but also not to sanitize what I heard.
WordPress taxonomy unions
How do I get Wordpress to display everything in my website tagged "publications" AND "employability"? After looking for "WordPress multiple tags" allover the place I realized my novice self was not even searching for the right terms. What I should have been looking for is "Wordpress taxonomy intersections unions" (e.e.: always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question).
Create an open access repository
Joe and I are overhauling the Technology & Social Change Group website. I took a step back this week to think about what's most important for this first version, and how we're going to transfer over our existing content. I've dubbed TASCHA website 1.0 the "does-not-suck version" in order to keep us focused on the basics, pull together all of our content, and push discussions about feature requests to the point in time where we have something up that works and something concrete to react to.
Collaborative consumption
I was telling a friend this weekend that bike-sharing a la bixi is one of the fastest-growing forms of transportation in the world. But then I faltered: Really? I forgot where I got this little factoid. Good thing for me the lovely peeps at Station C posted the video up on their blog pointing out that coworking is also part of this trend. So... I still don't know if it's true for real. (I want it to be!) but at least I know where my factoid came from.
Microhistory, margins, methods
All historical narratives are hypothetical to greater or lesser degrees, but what makes them plausible? By reducing the scale of observation, microhistorians argued that they are more likely to reveal the complicated function of individual relationships within each and every social setting and they stressed its difference from larger norms. Nearly all cases which microhistorians deal with have one thing in common; they all caught the attention of the authorities, thus establishing their archival existence. They illustrate the function of the formal institutions in power and how they handle peoples affairs.
Open research, open data, open development
I've been thinking about this for a while now, gathering resources, printing out stuff to read. Waiting for the right time to pull it all together into a tidy package. Well forget it. Instead I'm going to dribble it out bit by bit.
Nathan Englander reads Isaac Bashevis Singers Disguised
Nathan Englander readsIsaac Bashevis Singers Disguised for The New Yorkers monthly reading and conversation with Deborah Treisman. Englander’s voice couldn’t be more perfect.
One-dollar books and why reading history matters
I'm loving Orlando Figues's A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 18911924. This summer, I read it to Liam at night before bed. How do I get my teenager to listen, you ask? Trust me: plenty of blood and guts in here to keep any 13-year-old happy. Then along comes an Economist story about Chinese workers full of the same themes. Uncanny.
The Morticians Daughter
This was the song of the day a while ago, but I think I cheated and only posted it via Twitter. It's by Freedy Johnston. It's sad in a perfect way. It came to me via the hippest theologian ever.
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