bitdepth

Ada Lovelace Day – Inspiring Women

It’s Ada Lovelace Day and I’ve signed the pledge to create a blog post drawing attention to women excelling in technology following in the footsteps of Ada (the first programmer), so here are some women who excel in technology and inspire me:

Carolyn Campbell

Carolyn helps people learn online with the Nova Scotia Community College. Based in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, she’s passionate and works harder than anyone I know as a teacher, a designer, a programmer, and a manager. Carolyn told me why I should blog and started doing it before I did. She’s also active in Second Life and occasionally tweets too. Without her there would be a lot fewer people doing cool things online. We collaborated before and bounce ideas off each other often and my favourite project was making our three children together. That’s an ongoing project that’s going quite well.

Marie-Chantal Turgeon

m-c is an Montréal-based artist who I first found out about through a podcast and blog called Vu d’ici / Seen from here where she was one of the very earlier podcasters playing interesting music that expanded what I listen to (and made me want to create my own podcast too). She creates and inspires using the web and makes real, physical pieces of art and always has interesting things to say and show on her blog (and through her tweets). m-c is a driving force behind Creacamp which is happening quite soon.

Gia Milinovich

Gia is a highly talented UK-based American ex-pat geek who manages to combine a great attitude, drive and intelligence to popularise science and films. I first found out about her through her work on the web site to promote Danny Boyle’s film Sunshine and I still point my students at that site when I talk about the possibilities of promoting a film on the web. Following her blog and Twitter feed is entertaining as she combines the personal, professional, and scientific together that lets you learn and laugh as she brings endless enthusiasm and curiosity to whatever she’s interested in.

Lisa Rein

Lisa is a multitalented musician, XML afficiando, and all around political / technical / artistic activist on the left coast of the USA who always seems to be on the cutting edge of interesting and exciting things. It’s difficult to even piece together the wide range of things she’s done in the past few months. Years ago I found her through the videos of The Daily Show and other politically interesting things that she posted and found out that she was also heavily involved in technology, XML, Creative Commons and music. I really don’t know how she does it all and finds the time as I’d be happy to do 1/10th of what she does. Her latest exciting project has her serving as the Digital Librarian for Timothy Leary’s archives. You can keep up with her through her blog or her active tweets.

Katie Schwartz

Katie is an all-around great dame, who writes and blogs and tweets from Los Angeles, California. I met Ms. Schwartz (electronically) through her blunt, hilarious, personal and wonderful Twittering. She shoots from the hip and has a gift for writing and inventing perfect and new words and always makes me laugh out loud even though I’ve mainly only had contact with her via chunks of text of 140 characters or less. Those tiny gems led me to her blog and other writing which unsurprisingly revealed that she’d done stand-up comedy. I think that she may also be Jewish and a feminist. A Blackberry-toting writer who uses technology to connect and write, she gets things done with a wide range of projects including a filmed theatre production – Three Dames With A Clue, and the inspirational blog Dear Thyroid. Whether it’s an essay or a tiny text message, I always am glad to hear from her.

March 24, 2009 adalovelace, carolyn campbell, gia milinovich, inspiration, katie schwartz, lisa rein, m-c turgeon, women

Friendly Rules

At the recent and wonderful Podcamp Halifax, the first session that I attended was Joel Kelly‘s “Unfriend Someone Today“, which was all about pruning and managing the people who you count amongst your friends (online). There was a great discussion and I kept thinking about the number of people I follow on Twitter and how I add (or remove) friends with various social networking services. It also was strange to see many people in person who I follow on Twitter, but I hadn’t met in person.
I’m most stingy about following people on Twitter and more open in following people on Flickr, and Facebook is somewhere in the middle. With the social networks where I have fewer friends, I’ll check in on them several times a day, where I’m not so picky it will be every few days or longer before I check in.
Continue…

January 31, 2009 darkslide, facebook, flickr, friends, people, twitter, twitterific, web

small, specific, and real

What makes something compelling in any form, mediated or not? Popularity means an audience but in that crowd, people form the connection.

Memories are not big. They are made of glances, touches, sounds, tastes, and smells. Shared transient moments that resonate in our heart.

Stories we love have details that are unique and individual. They’re the seeds inside narratives that grow – a time, a place, a person.

Authenticity is vital. We crave the truth on many levels and when someone shares something, they are vulnerable and it is a leap of faith.

Twitter started me thinking about this as it forces you to cram things into a very small and specific box of 140 characters.

Constraints boil things down to what is essential in the same way that maple syrup is formed from boiling the sap from the maple tree.

We connect with things that are small, specific, and real. It’s the essence of good storytelling as we share mediated bits of ourselves. Continue…

November 22, 2008 minifesto, people, real, small, specific, story, web

Community

I’ve been lucky to be part of many different communities in my life. At the time you don’t necessarily think of them as communities as they just seem to be the cool people that you are hang out with. One of the first communities that I was involved with (and I’m still connected to) was the NB Filmmakers’ Co-operative in Fredericton. I was born and grew up in Fredericton and when I found the coop I felt like I belonged. There wasn’t a lot that I had to explain why I was there and we shared a lot in common. We also made films and that becomes addictive. Filmmaking and community are closely connected.
Technology has seemed to also play a role in the communities that I’ve been involved with. Film is built around cameras and tape recorders and it is filled with specialized terminology like the NPR, the Bolex, the Nagra, and the Steenbeck. I love those things and for members of the filmmaking community they mean something. But filmmaking isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about the equipment. It’s about the stories and the people. That’s what keeps you there.
With my use of email via the universities where I studied I was able to connect with other communities thanks to that technology. As with many new communication media a lot of time and space was taken up with discussions of the technology itself and what it meant. Email was more complex then and numbers played a far bigger part in what you did online. I still have the black notebook where I wrote down the addresses that I used to connect to other systems. But what was amazing and fun and addictive were the connections that I could make with other people. I could be in touch with people from all over the world and we could discuss things and share our interests. Another place where I didn’t have to explain why I thought that this was so amazing.
But as a new technology becomes more widely dispersed we grow accustomed to it and take it for granted. I don’t have to think about using email now, I just use it. That’s how I stay in touch with people and keep track of things. This blog is one extension of that. With bitdepth I try to keep it fairly original and think a bit more and not just post collections of links. I’m part of the blogging community, but I like reading and watching others more than putting a lot of stuff out. So while I’ve been part of this blogging thing for a while (bitdepth has been up for 2 1/2 years now!) and with the new Screen Arts site I’m over 100 posts, which is quite amazing.
One of the things that has prompted this more reflective post is the recent US election and the IRC chats that I’ve participated in with some bloggers that I’ve been reading for a while. Kevin Marks combined the log of one of the chats that David Weinberger set up with QuickTime and an MP3 of the debate and then I felt a bit more connected. Then on election night I was able to chat again and it was still snarky, but not as much fun (most of us in there would tend to the left side of the political spectrum) since things weren’t going the way that we had hoped. During that chat Halley mentioned about posting that day and I checked out her posts and they changed my perspective a bit as a bit more of the personal side started in to my consciousness. She had a health scare which is the big shift, but a smaller thing is that I realized that we both do the same yoga routine. It made me realize again that it wasn’t just technology or topics, but humanity that connected us. More cool people who were human and good and sharing part of themselves.
So we commiserated and the evening got a bit more depressing and many people had colds and everyone started drifting away. But even though I wasn’t in the best mood I was happy that I shared the experience with other people and I felt that I was part of a community and that made me feel pretty good.
Yesterday was a great day at work as well. I get to work with a very talented and committed person every day in teaching a group of very cool people who share our interest in film so I love going in every day. What made yesterday great was that I was able to have two guests in to speak about filmmaking. One of them was one of my oldest friends and the other was one of my newest friends. But both love making films and the day reminded me of why I love this stuff and why I do it. It’s about people and stories.
The other thing that prompted this is my latest obsession, which is Flickr! and how my use of that has meant that I haven’t been doing much in this space. I noticed today that I’ve uploaded 500 pictures since I’ve started, which I didn’t think that I’d do. The reason I’ve been there so much is the sense of community that is there. It’s not sharing the photos, but it’s a way to communicate visually and get another perspective as you get to see how people see the world and the people around them. So it was appropriate that some of the first images that I uploaded to Flickr! were from a workshop that I took at the Film Coop in NB recently. The more recent pictures are from where I’m working now in Halifax. I was wondering if there were many other people taking pictures in Halifax and then one of those strange connections happened as I found through the tags that AKMA, who I occasionally read and who was in the election chats had been in Halifax a few months ago and had taken pictures there. So my communities had connected again and that made me think about how great it is that we can connect and share no matter what is happening in the world. We’re part of a virtual community, but there are real, live humans at the other end of these electronic connections. It’s about people and sharing and that’s why I love making films and why I’m glad that I have this space to share this.
I think that I’ve made up for the lack of recent posts… thanks for sticking with me!

November 5, 2004 community, filmmaking, flickr, fredericton, halifax, irc, nbfilmmakerscoop, screenarts, technology

Filling the Void

Hugh MacLeod draws cartoons on the back of business cards and he’s been sharing those cards as well as his great insights into the creative process through gapingvoid. I’m keen to follow the conversation and to point others at him. He gets it and it’s fascinating to watch the shape of how things are working now emerge. A lot is changing and Hugh is starting to trace around the edges of it. How is he different from others pronouncing on trends and how to be successful? He listens, he’s generous and he’s got a wicked, cynical sense of humour. He doesn’t have to do the blog or draw the cartoons, he wants to. That makes a big difference. I’m glad that he’s doing it. I wish more people would.

October 20, 2004 art, blog, creativity, gapingvoid, hughmacleod

blog1979

Daniel Dugas found an old journal in a box and he’s putting parts of it up. 25 years ago he took a trip around Canada and the U.S.A. starting and ending in Moncton, New Brunswick. He obsessively wrote in a journal during the trip. If he did this today he’d be posting to a blog with a cell phone and a laptop. What’s neat about how he’s doing it now is that the entries are going live 25 years after the fact in blog1979. The other cool thing is that it’s not just a documentation, but he’s got links as well. In his first entry he mentions the 375th anniversary of the arrival of the Acadians in this part of the world (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) and when I read that I thought about the Congrès Mondial Acadien, which is all over the place here in Wolfville and Grand Pré and he helpfully links to it. It’s a link from the past into the present. Sometimes we’re obsessed with things that are live or wireless (guess where I’m blogging from!, etc.). This project shows that you don’t have to put something up right away. It also makes me feel better about the boxes of stuff that I have laying around… maybe they’ll be useful someday. I should have a look at them soon. But for now I’m looking forward to following Daniel’s chronologically offset adventures.

June 28, 2004 acadian, blog, danieldugas

1 / 2