tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184681940 2009-06-29 11:01:00 -0400 Center for Future Civic Media <strong>With Chris Csikszentmihályi, Ben Fry, Matt Carroll, and Martin Wattenberg</strong> <p>What we know, how we know it, and what we do with it are all tightly coupled, and the relationships between them change as do our systems for producing, representing, and communicating knowledge. Moveable type and universal literacy ushered a dramatic reformulation of society: many historians believe it made contemporary democracy possible. Today, information and communication technologies are having similarly sweeping effects, and the need for technical understanding and data literacy -- and laws to ensure free data -- may be just as great. The possibilities opened (and closed) by information technologies are profound enough that entire industries and institutions have had to radically alter their structures and practices to adapt, but in many cases they cannot and do not. How can one understand the major structural changes these technologies can afford? And how can we advocate for technologies that will help to co-create the society we want?</p> <p><strong>Christopher Csikszentmihályi</strong> directs the MIT Center for Future Civic Media. Drawing on work from the Center, he will offer 33 Variables of Community and Information in 33 Minutes, looking at how the history of media and technology help us to understand these transformations.</p> <p><strong>Ben Fry</strong> directs the Seed Media Group's visualization strategy and research labs, and co-directs the Processing project, a programming language for visualization. He will talk about data literacy and his work to increase it.</p> <p>Discussants:</p> <p><strong>Matt Carroll</strong> is a reporter at the Boston Globe who specializes in computer-assisted reporting and handles the paper's growing library of databases. In 1994 he started the Globe's first internal website; he will speak about data journalism and the city paper.</p> <p><strong>Martin Wattenberg</strong> is a computer scientist and artist. He is the founding manager of IBM's Visual Communication Lab, and will update us with the view from his project Many Eyes.</p> 5814 tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184654980 2009-06-29 13:49:39 -0400 Center for Future Civic Media <strong>Alberto Ibarguen, Eric Klinenberg, and Henry Jenkins</strong> 6171 tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184635280 2009-06-30 12:00:48 -0400 Center for Future Civic Media <p>The <a href="http://newschallenge.org/winners.html">2009 Knight News Challenge Winners</a>, as introduced by John S. and James K. Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen. Held as part of the Future of News and Civic Media conference MIT, hosted by MIT's Center for Future Civic Media. The 2009 winners represent a remarkable diversity in ideas for developing new tools for news and engagement.</p> <p>After opening remarks by Ibargüen, the introduction of the winners starts around the 15:30 mark.</p> 3377 tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184615820 2009-07-01 09:01:28 -0400 Center for Future Civic Media <p><strong>From the Future of News and Civic Media Conference, June 17-19 2009, co-hosted by MIT's Center for Future Civic Media and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.</strong></p> <p>One of the little gems that the Knight Foundation introduced at the Future of News and Civic Media conference last week was to award five grand to the best collaborative projects created <em>at the conference</em>. We thought it might be a tall order, what with everything else the attendees were doing, but boy did they ever respond.</p> <p>Attendees pitched <a href="http://pedia.media.mit.edu/Future_of_News/Cooperation_Competition">19 brand-new projects</a>, and three of them--TweetBill, Hacks and Hackers, and the WordPress Distributed Translation Plugin--won cold hard cash to develop the ideas further. And the creators can thank their fellow attendees, because everyone used Mako Hill's preferential voting tool <a href="http://civic.mit.edu/projects/c4fcm/selectricity">Selectricity</a> to vote on the spot.</p> <p>About the winning projects...</p> <blockquote><strong>TweetBill</strong></p> <p>TweetBill sends you notification via Twitter when a bill reaches the stage in the US Congress where it's useful for you to call your Congresscritter! Sign up, tell us where you live, choose your issues, and you will get a tweet when your representative is slated to vote on a bill, along with the rep's phone number.</p> <p>See the prototype http://www.tweetbill.com</p> <p>Team Members: Nick Allen, Pete Karl, Ryan Mark, Persephone Miel, Aron Pilhofer, Ryan Sholin, Lisa Williams</p> <p><strong>Hacks and Hackers</strong></p> <p>The problem: Scattered through the worlds of journalism and technology live a growing number of professionals interested in developing technology applications that serve the mission of journalism. Technologists are doing more and more things that are journalistic; journalists are doing things that are more and more technological. These people don’t have a platform or network through which they can share information, learn from one another or solve each other’s problems. These people are scattered in organizations such as IRE, ONA, SND – and are in both academia and industry.</p> <p>Proposal: Establish “Hacks and Hackers,” a network of people interested in Web/digital application development and technology innovation supporting the mission and goals of journalism. This is NOT a new journalism organization (SPJ, ONA, IRE, ASNE, etc.) . In fact we would call it a “DIS-organization.” The goals of this network are: (a) Create a community of people in different disciplines who are interested in these topics; (b) Share useful information (e.g., a tutorial on how to install Drupal); (c) Networking; (d) Jobs; (e) Professional development; (f) Etc.</p> <p>How this network will work: (a) We will establish an online network that will aggregate and link out to relevant information provided by members; (b) Membership costs $0.00; (c) We will establish a system through which contributions to the network are rewarded – for instance, via some kind of points system that rewards members for, for instance, solving one another’s technical problem or creating a great tutorial; (d) We will seek to build bridges between journalism and academia, generating interest among computer scientists in the problems of journalism and media and among journalists in the opportunities presented by technology.</p> <p>Team Members: Aron Pilhofer, Rich Gordon </p> <p><strong>WordPress Distributed Translation Plugin</strong></p> <p>Description: A WordPress plugin which extracts and divides text and meta-text from blog posts into segments that are delivered to The Extraordinaries smart phone application so that bi-lingual users can volunteer five minutes while waiting in line at the supermarket to help translate news articles and blog posts. The plugin would also reassemble the translated segments into a single blog post and, optionally, give credit to all involved translators.</p> <p>Background: Global Voices is the largest volunteer translation community in the world, both in terms of volunteers and the number of working languages. (New York Times article here.) On a daily basis the community translates independent media between Indonesia, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Malagasy, Dutch, Portuguese, Swahili, Serbian, Macedonian, Arabic, Farsi, Bangla, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Hebrew, Russian, Albanian, and more. Developing a mobile interface to social translation would allow Global Voices and other organizations to recruit volunteer translators who don't have regular access to a desktop internet connection.</p> <p>Background -- The Extraordinaries (http://www.BeExtra.org):</p> <p>The Extraordinaries delivers micro-volunteer opportunities to mobile phones and web browsers that can be done on-demand and on-the-spot. Currently available as an iPhone® application through Apple's iTunes® store, The Extraordinaries enables organizations to connect with their supporters through these micro-volunteer opportunities, strengthening relationships while leveraging their "crowds" to complete real work such as image tagging, translation and research.</p> <p>Team Members: David Sasaki, Jacob Colker</blockquote> 6142 tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184596860 2009-10-28 16:20:35 -0400 Center for Future Civic Media <p>Rick Borovoy, Visiting Scientist at the MIT Media Lab and the Center for Future Civic Media, proudly unveils the first Lost in Boston sign.</p> <p><href="http://lostinboston.org">LostInBoston.org</a> is a general-purpose web tool that cities can use to get citizens involved in civic improvement projects.</p> <p>It's about helping Bostonians work together to make their neighborhoods more visitor-friendly. Community groups are partnering with local businesses and institutions to design signs that call out the key spots in their area. Signs are placed on private land. LostInBoston.org is a collaboration between the Urban Arts Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT. To get involved, contact info[at]lostinboston.org.</p> 559 tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184577960 2009-11-16 16:25:36 -0500 Communications Forum: What's New at the Center for Future Civic Media Redink, a project being developed by <a href="http://civic.mit.edu">Center for Future Civic Media</a> fellow Ryan O'Toole, empowers isolated consumers to exercise their collective purchasing power to support the issues they value. Organizing your friends or your organization’s members for this free platform will enable you to identify exactly how much money your network spends at any business you are interested in targeting. You can then invite your friends to join a campaign to spend more or less money at that business. Learn more at <a href="http://www.make-them-think.org/">www.make-them-think.org</a> 304 tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184557340 2009-11-17 11:41:49 -0500 Communications Forum: What's New at the Center for Future Civic Media 321 tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184538440 2009-11-17 13:50:43 -0500 Communications Forum: What's New at the Center for Future Civic Media <p>Chris Csikszentmihalyi presents the Extract program and its Landman Report Card tool.</p> <p>A landman is an agent that represents oil &amp; gas companies in negotiations with landowners: their job is to get the best terms for the company. This interaction is perhaps one of the most important elements of the oil and gas exploration and extraction process.</p> <p>Though many landmen sign onto and abide by codes of ethics, some landowners have accounts of landman dishonesty and misbehavior. Landowners are particularly vulnerable to misinformation at this moment as it is often the first time that they make contact with the oil and gas industry. The Landman Report Card was started to assist landowners in this tricky process by allowing landowners to educate and assist each other.</p> <p><a href="http://www.landmanreportcard.com">landmanreportcard.com</a> provides tools to learn about landmen and their companies through reading reviews submitted by users. It also allows users to submit their own report cards, contact other users and use the site as their own private diary of interactions with this industry.</p> 292 tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184519540 2009-11-17 14:52:57 -0500 Communications Forum: What's New at the Center for Future Civic Media 299 tag:techtv.mit.edu,:Array/184500580 2009-11-17 15:18:48 -0500 Communications Forum: What's New at the Center for Future Civic Media <p>The Open Park project looks to define an 'ideal' or at least improved model and practice for online collaborative news-reporting and -writing.</p> <p>As newsrooms across the country and beyond are grappling with the new economic realities of reduced budgets and news media professionals are busy drafting and testing plans for new models of news production and distribution, the little-explored practice of 'Don't compete, collaborate!' is well worth considering.</p> <p>Collaboration and the sharing of skills and resources have already proved in other professional spheres that it is a winning formula--one especially well adapted to these economically demanding times. It is thus only logical to explore what this new practice could do for the future of journalism.</p> 230