Thursday, June 28, 2007

Pre-blog: 1st day of Communities & Technology conference

Well, here I am in beeyooutiful Michigan, at the MSU campus. I saw lightning for the first time in a long while. Thunderstorms are one of the things I miss living in San Francisco.

Anyway, I just got in last night and met up with a few people at the cocktail reception. It looks like it's going to be a great conference. I met a woman from Australia who's presenting on a generative 'what's the community mood' sculpture, and chatted for a bit with Joe McCarthy from NRC. I went back and re-read his blog, which is always inspiring.

This morning, I'm presenting my paper at a session called ICT for Business Clusters in Emerging Markets. I think it's going to be great. My basic idea for this paper is that media education, in particular mobile or digital storytelling can always be effective for participants in self-expression and digital education. And when it's properly aligned with industry and government, there is huge potential for job opportunities and even job creation.

I'll try to blog throughout the conference.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

A picture's worth ten thousand miles

We've been having a great series of videoconferences with Keio University as part of their English Language Lounge (E-Lounge). In particular, here are two really cool ones.

In this picture, you can see me, Hernan, and Edgardo (three Digital Vision Fellows) chatting with some E-Lounge students. We had this chat last week, where we explained our projects and their subject areas; mobile storytelling, micro enterprise resource planning, and financial services for the poor through cash cards and SMS.

This week, we presented projects about San Francisco culture. Three interns walked around the Potrero Hill neighborhood in San Francisco to take pictures with our camera phones.

Afterwards, we created stories (two web pages and one video) about San Francisco culture. I think they are great. Check em out!

Rowvin (WEB PAGE):
http://mobilestorytelling.org/sfculture/sf_culture_rowvin/sfculture2.html

Anton (WEB PAGE):
http://mobilestorytelling.org/sfculture/sf_culture_anton/sf_culture.html

Seanne (VIDEO):

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Doing Good With POWER!!!

Quick linkblog today. I saw two noteworthy items about power, big and small.

On the big end, I saw a link to powering the Google-plex with rooftop solar. They have a cool Flash realtime graph about how much power they're saving (and what it means in real terms. Like how long it would power a flat-screen TV).

http://www.google.com/corporate/solarpanels/home?gsessionid=NZZ6-gaUEBo

On the small end, I got a newsletter from Nokia about alerting you that you can unplug your phone when it's charged.

It's a great idea, actually. Phantom loads actually account for a lot of power overall.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Show your culture


The Project VIEW team (me, Anton, Rowvin, & Seanne) had a great time today prototyping a new project.

We talked a lot about culture, and what is American culture, San Francisco culture, and each of our own. Then we tried out a empowerment evaluation, which I just learned about from Dr. David Fetterman here at Stanford. It was quite interesting to involve the students in thinking about how they would measure cross-cultural impact based on the framework we were using.

We did a little field trip to a nearby Safeway and shot some other camera phone pictures to document American and San Francisco culture around the neighborhood. Here are some of the highlights. They're great photographers.




Thursday, June 07, 2007

Project VIEW expands international finance operations

Nothing so grand actually. But one of my initial Kiva loans has been repaid. Senora Llanas from Mexico has repaid her loan to buy more videogames for last year's Christmas rush. So now I've invested the grand sum of 25 bucks into a new business. This time, I'm funding the purchase of two cows.

Microfinance is a very interesting topic, but it makes it even cooler to directly participate.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Newsletter 4

Website launch


It's been a little while, but I have great news! My project at Stanford is going amazingly well, and I'm proud to announce the launch of my website,

http://mobilestorytelling.org

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| Digital storytelling videos
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The last few months have been a flurry of activity, in addition to building the site. I have been working with Bay Area Video Coalition, the oldest media arts center in the bay area. Four interns (props to Nick, Seanne, Anton, & Rowvin) from the YouthLink program have been working on Project VIEW, and in particular, have used camera phones to create interesting videos about their neighborhoods. And the twist is there are no voiceovers; they are just using local sounds or music. This was done deliberately, to make them more accessible to a global audience who may not speak the same langugage.

Please post your own videos! There's a link to the instructions and place to post them.

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| Mobile Storytelling Film Festival
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Project VIEW is also hosting a Mobile Film Festival at the end of the summer. Details will be coming soon, but get started with your ideas! The basic idea is use a camera phone to use create a 2 minute movie (or less), nonfiction, with a personal perspective.


+-------
| Partnership with Keio University in Tokyo
+-------

My other big news is a partnership with Keio University, the oldest private university in Tokyo. In conjunction with the Foreign Language Labs, we have launched a series of online videoconferences starting with an introduction to some of the Digital Vision Program fellows.

Thanks very much for your interest! As always, if you have any interesting ideas for collaborations or questions, please email. Also if you'd like to unsubscribe or change email addresses, let me know.

Warm Regards,
John


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| Links
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Project VIEW Website: http://mobilestorytelling.org

Project VIEW Blog: http://projectview.blogspot.com

BAVC: http://bavc.org

Project VIEW Place Videos: http://projectview.ning.com

Keio University: http://www.keio.ac.jp/

Monday, June 04, 2007

At the Wharf (no voiceover movie) by Seanne

Pilot neighborhood video about Fisherman's Wharf, by Project View intern Seanne. Filmed on a Pure Digital Videocamera