Code for America is a recent project in the US. The elevator pitch: attract high-quality programmers to speed up the process of ”opening up” government data. The non-profit brings together Web 2.0 talent with city managers, government officials. This is a great idea, a model for collaborating across traditional industry/government lines.
That said, I’ll be interested to see how this [...]
Dr. Adrienne Burk convened an amazing conference last month on behalf of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University, and I was lucky enough to get a chance to speak on one of the panels. The conference was called Witnessing the World: New Possibilities for Citizenship and Social Change, and while it was [...]
It’s no coincidence that 2012 (the latest in a long line of disaster movies from director Roland Emmerich) is timed to release during one of the worst weather months North Americans experience. Yep, November is storm season, bringing with it power outages, floods, snow, wind – and that’s only on the west coast. We’ve written [...]
We’re happy to announce that Channing will be speaking at Simon Fraser University on Oct 16!
Their Institute for the Humanities is holding a conference on Oct 15-16 called Witnessing the World: New Possibilities for Citizenship and Social Change. If you’re in Vancouver, please come! Specifically, Channing will be talking about play and the internet, and [...]
It’s election fever in British Columbia right now. Interesting to see how the three major parties are handling their web presence…
The Green Party seems to have a pretty good handle on things – nice website with lots of useful tools and information, good presence on Facebook. Looks like they’re using Drupal behind the scenes – nice [...]
Our European guest writer Sven Haertig checks out a proposal to teach social media in British schools. A committed human rights activist based in Warsaw, Sven is the leader of Amnesty International Poland’s international volunteer group. Want to connect with him about non-profits in Europe? You can find him on Facebook where he’s working on [...]
Happy Ada Lovelace Day!
What? You’ve never heard of her?
Ada Lovelace was born in 1815, and she wrote the world’s first computer programs for the Analytical Machine, a device invented by Charles Babbage. Women’s contributions to tech aren’t talked about enough – today is aimed at changing that. You can read more about Ada Lovelace Day [...]
I just discovered the coolest widget on the New York Times website, and it’s making me think about new ways to represent community opinion.
The New York Times asked 200 people in an unofficial poll what their hopes were for the Obama administration. But it’s how they represented that information that’s really fun: they combined cloud [...]
Do you ever stumble across something, and wonder how you could have missed an entire field of study? Not just an interesting fact, but an entire body of research, whole teams of grad students slaving away…with you none the wiser? Okay, maybe it doesn’t keep you awake at night – it’s just me.
Still [...]
Remember the moment when Facebook went from the exclusive realm of your cool friends, to something that your grandma was on? That same moment just happened on Twitter…and not just to me. How can I tell that Twitter has hit the tipping point?
Well, first, check out the latest series of Doonesbury strips. It’s funny because [...]
or