Tag: design

Be2Camp in Birmingham, story telling and designing places.

This is not so much a blog post as an assemblage.

I’m very fortunate to have people tag things in delicious for:podnosh, which means I get to see stuff that I would otherwise have missed, or many never knew that I was interested in (what Stef calls accelerating serendipity).  One such lovely person is Dominic Campbell who tagged this for me:

Story and Emergent Design

View more documents from Hugh Graham.

I would love to have heard what Hugh Graham was saying, espcially during the final few slides.  Fortunately though you can read a lot of his idea on his blog.

This leads me to assemble some stuff:

Be2Camp is coming to Birmingham on August 12th 2009. “It’s for people interested in how the latest web applications and web design techniques could help build a better, more sustainable built environment – from planning and design through construction to occupation and management of buildings, infrastructure, landscape, etc.”  Organised by Rob Annable and Lorna Parsons, you can register here: http://be2campbrum.eventbrite.com/.

Paul Slatter at the Chamberlain Forum has been experimenting with the Structured Dialogue method which is “an approach to storytelling circles designed to produce robust evidence (as opposed to anecdotes) which can be used in influencing policy.”  There’s a more detailed outline at the Evaluation Trust.

In Sheffield in May I met Tony Quinlan from Narrate.  He reminded me of some mass story collecting techniques, like these on Cognitive Edge.

Somehow I also connected this with Jon Bounds wandering Moseley drunk.

Moseley BarCamp – Blogging & Psychogeography from bounder on Vimeo.

Finally may I just add Karl Binders My Dad’s on Twitter experiment combined with Drawnalism.

There you go, it’s like assembling an Airfix kit without a picture or a plan. Have you any idea what that lot looks like?

Things I've spotted June 14th from 17:10 to 21:15

Here are some o the things I’ve been reading June 14th from 17:10 to 21:15:

  • One Page Guide to Google Groups E-mail Lists : Tim’s Blog – Even with all the amazing social web tools available out there – e-mail remains a key communication tool for most people.
  • CHANGEit IdeasFund for Young Creatives | VCS Matters – CHANGEit, which is an organisation that recognises, supports and rewards young people who want to, or have already spoken up and taken constructive action about something they want to be improved, changed or created in their community has announced that it is seeking applications to its new £50,000 IdeasFund.
    The aim of the Ideas Fund is to support creative enterprise and seeks to promote new and exciting ways of working between young people and organisations that are driven by and for young people
  • Imagine: School Design for the Future. – Imagine’ is a database which captures school design best practice from around the world. Architects and researchers from the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield [BDR] have conducted a critical analysis of over 150 schools, highlighting excellence in design according to different themes. It considers integrated ICT, environmental design and flexibility for space and learning.
  • The growth of social lending – Third Sector Foresight – Anyone heard of Twollars? Well they're a new online 'currency of appreciation' that you can use on Twitter to reward positive actions. Each Twitter user automatically has 50 Twollars in their account. So they're great news for VCOs as people can give Twollars to the charity of your choice and once the charity has created an account, they can sell their Twollars to businesses and people who support their cause and want more Twollars. So, Twollars are designed to go back into circulation.
  • ASH-10 » A Local Blogs Blog for Birmingham – Over the weekend it became apparent to me that I couldn’t keep all the local blogs that have sprung up in Birmingham straight in my head. I was also aware that what defines a “local blog” is somewhat, well, ill defined. so I started Local Blogging Birmingham, a quick and dirty Tumblr blog to record them as I find them and add a bit of commentary.
  • ASH-10 » Towards a Theory of Yurtification – I superimposed a photo of a yurt on a volcano but fits current thinking about the digital divide and needs to be considered when thinking about these things.

    So that’s my Yurtification theory. In short, the pyramid will be softened, Mongolian style.

  • Videopress | DavePress – Well, VideoPress looks like it might be worth looking into. It’s been created by Automattic, the guys behind WordPress and various other cool things. It’s a video upload and hosting service that uses WordPress.com as its back end, as far as I can tell. But you can embed your videos wherever you like.

Links for May 10th

  • NewBizNews: Hyperlocal « BuzzMachine – The value of volunteering: This is the hardest to calculate but is critical to the local models: People are contributing to the newssphere because they want to, because they care. With help, I’m confident they’ll do more. That’s part of what we’re trying to discover at CUNY in our work with The Local at the New York Times: how communities can be supported to report on themselves. This could be podcasting a school-board meeting or crowdsourcing projects or looking up records. This, like new ad models, will be the subject of some speculative brainstorming. And it will be difficult to put numbers to it. But it’s critical.
  • Mediabox – New strand Mini Mediabox – with grants from £1,500 – £5,000 is now open. Mini Mediabox is for grassroots and community organisations with an annual turnover of £100k or under, designed to enable smaller organisations to access funding for their youth-led projects.
  • Home | Nominet Trust – We aim to support distinctive and inventive Internet-related projects that can make a difference to people, primarily in the areas of education, online safety and inclusion. With our grants we back programmes and organisations using IT to benefit society. The Nominet Trust is a charity created by Nominet, which maintains the .uk register of domain names and is one of the world’s largest Internet registries.
  • The Straight Choice | The election leaflet project – Election leaflets are one of the main weapons in the fight for votes in the UK. They are targeted, effective and sometimes very bitter. We need your help to photograph and map them so we can keep an eye on what the parties are up to, and try to keep them honest.
  • Murdoch: Web sites to charge for content – CNN.com – “I suspect within any readership there is a small slice — maybe three percent — that is willing to pay. News organizations are going to have to find a way of getting money from that slice without driving away everybody else,”

Stuff I've seen March 29th through March 31st

These are my links for March 29th through March 31st:

  • The fundamental media bias | The Democratic Society – " “narrative bias” – the fact that newspapers favour reportage that create narratives over stories that are factual. The strong narrative line is that we’re in a uniformly disastrous situation, and the PM, or Obama, or whoever, can personally shift the global economy for good or ill. The weak narrative line – as ever – is that it’s very complicated and hard to read the signs "
  • The power of serendipitous findability and the end of bullshit – "Why am I more optimistic now than at any time in my life? Because I think we’ve never had such good small-group making tools or such good information-connecting tools. We’re developing a global social nervous system. As a result, I think bull-shit is in trouble.
    And it’s all because of serendipitous findability—the odds that you will fortuitously connect with someone you don’t know but share an interest with, or the odds that you will learn something timely or surprising or valuable to you."
  • Matt Lock Commissioning for Attention Part 1 – Read Me! « TEST – "‘commissioning for attention’, a phrase I’ve been using for a while to describe what I do at Channel 4 Education. I hate phrases like ‘360 content’ or ‘multiplatform’, as these encourage people to get hung up on technology or to have a box-ticking mentality to where ideas can exist, rather than really focusing on users and understanding what they’re doing."
  • Wirearchy · Hierarchy is a Prosthesis for Trust … – Just to quite: :We are increasingly using attraction and negotiation to arrive at what needs doing, by whom, for when and with what. Many (but certainly not all) areas of economic and societal activity still operate with traditional hierarchy, and more and more often the trust it offered or symbolised is being betrayed in order to serve the interests of those who hold the power. History suggests that 1) it has ever been thus, but / and that 2) when practiced to excess, dire consequences eventuate."
  • Ten Tips For Creating a 21st–Century Classroom Experience – Tessy Britton writes about David Barrie's ideas on what would create a great classroom experience, including:

    "2. Create from relevance. Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them, and you’ll capture their attention and imagination. Allow them to experience the concepts you’re teaching firsthand, and then discuss them (or, better yet, work to address them!) instead of relying on explanation alone.
    3. Stop calling them “soft” skills. Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they’re the core capabilities of a 21st-century global economy facing complex challenges.""

    Great read