Inspired by the local Team In Training teams that rode the Solvang Century this weekend to raise funds for blood cancer treatment, I wanted to share a new collaboration between clever teams at design consultancy IDEO and Stanford. They’re using the former’s community platform for brainstorming and project development to encourage more people to consider donating bone marrow (the transplant of which can be a life-saving course of treatment for people with leukemia and lymphoma). Current concepts consider how Girl Scout cookies, lemonade stands and the launch of Gmail can all inform a public action campaign. Won’t you consider adding your own ideas and, in the word of a friend who works on the initiative, consider how your own acumen can inform the community at large?
I so enjoyed the second Digital Media & Learning Conference last weekend in Long Beach that I’m still playing notes catch up. Between researcher danah boyd hosting Ignite talks and talking about everything I never knew I always wanted to know about 4Chan, I was a happy camper (and one without a computer, as part of my Wisdom 2.0 resolution to pay better attention when people are presenting their work).
And some of that work that I most enjoyed came from Jonathan McIntosh, an open video advocate who created a “Gendered Advertising Remixer.” Forty toy commercials and their pink vs. blue/black approach are yours to rearrange with the free online tool; I’m hard pressed to think of a better environment to mash up The Eye of Judgment and Barbie Island Princess in celebration of International Women’s Day.
On Tuesday the first event in Nokia’s Mobile Musings series will focus on the intersection of technology and humanity with “mobile technologists”–a catch-all term for researchers including Stanford computer science professor Terry Winograd and UC Berkeley bioengineering and biophysics educator Daniel Fletcher. I’m headed to Sunnyvale with a few SF friends in the space to hear about current projects in Haiti, Kenya and other emerging markets. Of most interest is hearing from Fletcher about CellScope, a microscope and camera combination that is intended to help with medical diagnoses in remote places. (Despite extensive camera school instructions from the maker of the N95 camera that was used, I’ve still got a lot to learn.) The event is open to the public. You will them that you’ll be in attendance, won’t you?
PeopleBrowsr on Bryant and Girls in Tech will host a Social Media Week panel on Tuesday on a topic that I’m unsurprisingly excited about: women and the social web. The conversation about online influence is to feature All Things D’s Kara Swisher, consultant and friend Cathy Brooks, BlogHer co-founder Jory des Jardins, Intel Capital director Christine Herron, and Women 2.0 CEO Shaherose Charania. Great group, methinks.
A nice man let me pass his car on my Vespa the other day only to have me smile back at him with my scrunched-up-as-a-Wonka-esque-blueberry face from inside an oversized motorcycle helmet. Unfortunate to say the least. So it makes me happy to see that Piaggio is finding other uses (and better styles for) head buckets with a new campaign to get people safe and sharing photos of their innovative uses for DOT-approved headgear.
Fans of the brand on Facebook who submit images of how they use their helmets can get their own trading cards made (not to mention a bag of scooter loot). Especially in light of Kenneth Cole’s Twitter gaffe over Egyptian riots, it’s fun to see a brand use social sharing so well.
I try not to post promotional video content with too much frequency, but the latest from the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (“social consciousness through digital culture”) may just have you friending, favoriting and donating. The Tenderloin-based educational and art space can’t be quickly described in terms of reach or single medium, and that’s how I know it’s needed.
Starting tomorrow, it will host Global Game Jam, 48 hours of game dev and experimentation fun. Institute for the Future’s game researcher Jane McGonigal will kick off the weekend, whose schedule promises “WORK!” of the best kind from 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM for the better part of three days.
It may be months away, but I’m most excited for ODC’s creativity symposium with women artists slated for April. The day and a half event “Women Who Frame the World” will bring creators and artists to the Oberlin Dance Company (as in, the Ohio university for which the now Mission-based theater hails). Performer Laurie Anderson, feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan, and novelist Mona Simpson will be presenting, and after seeing ! Women Arts Revolution this week, I’m looking forward to Lynn Herhsman Leeson’s talk in mid-April.
I hit the road with Federated Media Publishing and our partner Clever Girls this week for the Altitude Design Summit, a meeting of design bloggers in Salt Lake City. Last year left me most inspired, as evidenced, and I’m excited about today’s conversations about strategic content sponsorships and determining which metrics matter most. Some of the FM partners presenting include:
I had fun sitting down with Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz recently to talk about addressing the causes of poverty and her book “The Blue Sweater.” She talks about simple technologies and “patient capital” as ways to combat hunger, energy needs, housing, and other issues that philanthropy alone can’t tackle.
Thanks to JustGoodTV for shooting, and you can see more about how the fund works below (I like the Girl Effect-esque approach to text and illustration).
Kiva co-founder Jessica Jackley sat down with Women 2.0 recently to talk about her goals for improving company fundraising with her latest endeavor, ProFounder. The LA-based startup looks to make it easier for entrepreneurs to raise capital and give returns to investors they know (or don’t–there service has a new offering for public investment). Do take a look.
