Reflections from a Better World By Design Conference
http://www.core77.com/blog/news/reflections_from_a_better_world_by_design_conference_14916.asp
“The second annual Better World by Design conference took place this past weekend in Providence, RI, organized and run by students from Brown and RISD. Participants and presenters alike gathered under the common goal of fostering relationships and sharing ideas that will positively impact our lives, communities, and environments. The diverse and young community of attendees kept the weekend inspiring, but this often limited the conference discourse to an introductory level. Still, the biggest topics were human-centered design and cross-disciplinary collaboration--good frameworks for any kind of discussion around social change.”
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Factual Makes Publishing Open Data Easy http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/factual_makes_publishing_open_data_easy.php...While Factual allows any user to make changes to the database, Factual's model is slightly different from the standard wiki approach where only the last edit is generally visible to the public. Changes made to a fact in a Factual database are more like votes for a certain entry. If three users or data sources say a restaurant doesn't offer vegetarian food, for example, and one user says it does, then the table will display the fact that the majority of users entered. Factual, however, will also display a question mark next to this disputed entry. Users can click on this question mark to see all the editors and data sources.”
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10 Big Ideas From Jan Chipchase
http://www.psfk.com/2009/10/10-big-ideas-from-jan-chipchase.html
“At our recent Good Ideas Salon, Jan Chipchase explored numerous insights gathered from his extensive travels around the globe.
Note: I had a chance to talk to Jan at the Better World by Design Conference (see above). An interesting guy, and his work for Nokia certainly deserves the attention it receives. Not everyone approves of his motivation - selling more phones - but I think his methods are spot on. Go to your customers, observe their behaviors, ask them what they want. For more reading refer to the New York Times Magazine article, “Can The Cellphone End Global Poverty” (
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html) to learn more.
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Brogan Battles Backnoise – and wins!
http://decker.com/blog/2009/09/brogan-battles-backnoise-and-wins/
“BackNoise is an isolated conversation backchannel tool, centered around a single topic (or rather a single conversation name). Created by Keith McGreggor of Atlanta, BackNoise lets anyone establish these topical conversations quickly and easily, allowing those who know the name of the conversation to join in. These virtual conversations can occur during meetings, lectures, presentations and speeches – anywhere YOU may be presenting your message to your audience – whether you like it or not.
There have been many recent blog posts on BackNoise, (several listed at the end of this post) – most of which reference what transpired at the New Media Atlanta conference on September 25, 2009...”
Further, on speaking of one of the presenters are the conference
“...I’ve watched the video of Chris’ presentation (and you can too on Chris Brogan’s blog). My daughter is right. Chris is an excellent communicator. He masterfully created, facilitated and led an effective communications experience for his audience. Realizing the effect of BackNoise in the shadows of laptop screens, Chris yanked the furtive chatter out of the laptops and threw it on the screen for all to see and for him to confront and control – which he did, artfully. Chris has demonstrated in Atlanta how communicators can tame the lion of backchannel distractions. (A more in depth review of how Chris Brogan tamed the lion is the material of a forthcoming blog post.)”
