The Wisdom 2.0 Conference that started today at the Computer History Museum is a rare opportunity to hear sequential mentions of “psycho-sensory emotions” and “Twitter fail,” and I think it’s long overdue. Not to fear–I won’t get too yoga teacher trainee on you but find a lot of genuine value in dialogue about mindfulness in the way we interact with technology and one another.
Should you also be interested in talks about real-time meditation and advice for the over-stimulated, a trip to Mountain View on Saturday or Sunday could be most worthwhile. Soren Gordhamer, the author of the book Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Teachings for the Creative and Constantly Connected, is hosting the conference to congregate people as diverse as “technology leaders, Zen teachers, neuroscientists, and academics to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology-rich age.”
While attention deficit is nothing new, Roshi Joan Halifax, a Zen priest, end of life caregiver and social network fan (it’s true) spoke about the challenge of knowing how to best divide and dedicate her consciousness. She discussed trying to bring the same rigor that enables her 5:30 AM daily meditation practice to being selective in how she spends her time connecting online. Halifax said she does a few gut checks, asking how the tools serve and whether they allow her to be better in touch with the suffering of the world. Consider it technology-enabled compassion.
The art and music summer fest Wanderlust will be hosting a local teaser of sorts with a party and performance at The Fillmore this Sunday. Lest you’re thinking Janice Joplin, Rupa & The April Fishes and Kula Yoga Project founder Schuyler Grant will be teaching, singing, and essentially getting down. I’ll be trying to disregard memories of an unfortunate bluegrass show I saw at the theater last, but if it helps me get through the time until the late July event at Squaw Valley, it’ll be a small price to pay.
After writing recently about a McSweeney’s publication, The Believer, and their comedic advice antics, I couldn’t resist featuring the 34th issue of their Quarterly Concern. What I like about the mail-based volumes, beyond intriguing packaging and highlighting the work of good writers, is their “roughly quarterly schedule” for publishing–sound similar to a weblog that posts approximately daily? The editors do a better job of describing the contents, which include the following, than I dare to try:
Issue 34 features new stories of shipwrecks and kidnappings and bad vacations by (among others) Anthony Doerr, Daniel Handler, and T. C. Boyle, new letters about wine and Hawaii from John Hodgman and Sarah Vowell, twenty-one dead-on self-portraits drawn by the likes of Michael Martone, Michel Gondry, and Sarah Silverman, and, beyond all this, in a standalone volume, Nick McDonell’s stunning exploration of the latest iteration of the war in Iraq—a ground-level account from within the 1st Cavalry Division.
Should you be more intrigued by the opportunity to listen live, writers Daniel Handler and Nick McDonell will be giving readings tonight at Books Inc. and Thursday at Book Passage at the Ferry Building. This is all before McSweeney’s celebration of the illustrated mystery “Clock Without a Face” on Capp Street on Saturday. Sounds like coffee consumption is up at their Valencia Street headquarters of late.
It may be two months out (and just after Federated Media’s Conversational Marketing Summit in NYC with Arianna Huffington and Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.), but I’m most excited for HIT Barcelona. The two-day June conference will feature a large-scale international Global Entrepreneurship Competition with the Bay Area’s own Haas School of Business entrepreneurship expert Jerry Engel determining which 25 business plans should receive capital.
Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, Better Place’s Hans de Boer, and executives from The Competitiveness Institute (which I’m curious about) will also be taking part in the Summit. Richard Florida, author of “The Rise of the Creative Class” and a Director of Business and Creativity (covet-worthy title) at the University of Toronto, will be part of the plenary congress around entrepreneurial success. An an Ideas Marketplace is intended to provide investment trends and startup/funder matching for companies in multimedia and clean tech, among others. Consider it a 40 country cultural exchange.
I’m not the biggest short film connoisseur, but at last year’s Sundance Film Festival I was struck by “The World’s Largest Shopping Mall” about a massive shopping center in south China that stands nearly empty despite housing space for hundreds of stores and a Venice-style canal system. It was shot by local filmmaker Sam Green and producer Carrie Lozano, who worked on two other projects that are well worth watching and discussing: “The Weather Underground” feature and the live documentary “Utopia in Four Movements,” which had its California premiere last night as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.
With on-stage musical accompaniment by the Brooklyn band The Quavers, Green narrated a set of four stories about utopian ideals, socialist and capitalist politics, the intended universal language Esperanto, and (of course) the merits of forensic archeology at Kabuki Cinema. The combination of audio and Keynote slides and video clips were mixed live by co-director Dave Cerf for an audience of local filmmakers and critics on the fourth day of this year’s festival. I found focusing on the stories themselves a bit challenging given the on-site production elements–cue ADD–but found it a compelling take on filmgoing following last year’s live episode of This American Life. (The undertaking isn’t a small one either, as evidenced by website FAQs that include “what is a live film?” and “what is utopia?”) And the gathering aspect seems to have been part of the point: in the show notes, SF essayist Rebecca Solnit wrote:
Television chopped up movies with commercials and put them in the middle of domestic distraction, but that was nothing compared to this moment when films are on your iPhone and your laptop and in fuzzy tiny windows on YouTube. The worth thing about these new modes of viewing isn’t that they diminish cinema as visual and imaginative spectacle. The worst thing is that they’re watched furtively and alone. Cinema, which was once a great banquet in a dream palace is now often a snack devoured absentmindedly in isolation.
A 16th Street-based biking and yoga pal introduced me to Mission Workshop, a bag retailer that is opening its operations to the public with a neighborhood barbecue tonight from 5 to 9 PM. The Rondel neighborhood shop says that its introduction is not to be mistaken for being “Johnny-come-latelys to the world of utility bag design,” having been involved in the business of creating an alternative to “impossibly ugly graphics” since 1994. Their Vandal and Rambler bags are currently showcased on oil drum apparatuses with a Rolltop messenger bag to be released in May.
The currently running spring performance of Alonzo King Lines Ballet is well worth a visit, especially for people who think they haven’t seen much that’s unique in SF dance of late. The 7th Street company has combined a powerful duo of performances: a first act that includes four SF Opera’s Adler Fellows interacting with dancers with a second act set to tabla music created by Zakir Hussain for Lines. Like the music, almost nothing happens rapidly, and I didn’t want it to.
Pared-down costuming and well-considered, delicate lighting highlight strong physiques. The only standout coloring was that on choreographer King’s cowboy shirt when we walked on stage to answer questions. “Getting back to what you already know is a long process,” he said of his creative process. I only know that it was the hardest time I’ve had leaving the Novellus Theater.
Ignite Bay Area is pulling together local whiz kids for the next series of local tech talks on May 3 to coincide with Web 2.0 Expo. Mezzanine will play home to entertaining five-minute, 20 slide presentations from the likes of Jen Bekman, Derek Dukes, Jesper Andersen, and Tobias Peggs thanks to sponsor .CO. Expect to be wowed by discussions on democratizing planetariums and surviving both TV news reporting and hungry hippos (over cocktails, of course). This event will feature limited seating and will be free.
What: Join Web 2.0 Expo, Ignite co-founder Brady Forrest, and local hosts Carmel Hagen and I for the third set of @IgniteBayArea talks
Who: Web 2.0 Expo conference attendees will be given preferred admittance and the event will be first come, first serve.
When: Monday, May 3, at Mezzanine (444 Jessie Street, SF)
7:30 PM: Doors open for Web 2.0 Expo Conference Pass & Expo Plus Pass holders
7:45 PM: Doors open for the general community
8:15 PM: Talks and networking begin
Print and two-dimensional designers Andrew Schapiro and Brad Mead’s Designer’s Notebook will be released today from SF publisher Chronicle Books complete with in-book rulers, a picas/points converter and tracing paper. But before you think this is just a souped up Moleskine, typography anatomy charts and InDesign shortcuts helped the soft cover book become the first project in the publisher’s six-month Design Fellows program to be available to the public.
After polling designers across specialties (including architects, industrial designers, web designers, and environmental designers) in developing the book, Schapiro said, “We were determined to keep the book as functional as possible while always staying true to our original concept—that this tool will remind professional and novice designers what is essential in their process.”
He describes the reference section as not being meant to teach designers “but rather [to] serve as a reminder of measurements and standards—information that can transform ideas into viable designs. Simply put, we want to be better designers.”
Free dance aficionados rejoice: Bay Area National Dance Week starts this week with a flash mob-esque Union Square party and continues for 10 days in SF and the East, North and South Bays. Lest you think your style preference won’t be available, options for classes and events include “fire dance, ballet, modern, Argentine tango, same-sex tango, classical Indian, jazz, hip hop, hula, Samba, Chinese classical, belly dance, aerial dance, West African, Scottish country and more.”
An outdoor performance by the Mark Foehringer Dance Project|SF at the Golden Gate Park band shell, an open rehearsal of Deborah Slater’s “Men Think They Are Better Than Grass” and international dance film at the SF Conservatory of Dance are all planned. And the numbers aren’t bad either: 29 (years of the annual week of dance celebration), 2,500 (number of participating artists), and 20,000 (number of expected participants based on past years).
rested in talks about real-time meditation and advice for the over-stimulated, a trip to Mountain View on Saturday or Sunday could be most worthwhile. Soren Gordhamer, the author of the book Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Teachings for the Creative and Constantly Connected, is hosting the conference to congregate people as diverse as “technology leaders, Zen teachers, neuroscientists, and academics to explore how we can live with deeper meaning and wisdom in our technology-rich age.”
