Digital Media & What Gendered Advertising Has to do With It

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.

Stanford Screens The Entrepreneurs on Tuesday

I’m hoping to zip (as in shared car rental) to Palo Alto today for a screening of and discussion about “The Entrepreneurs,” a new documentary that chronicles Zambia’s first large scale women’s leadership program. The film, which was created by Helen Cotton and Academy Award-winner Ross Kaufmann, is being presented by the San Francisco-based non-profit Camfed (which is no stranger to film now that it’s projects have been screened in 81 countries and more than 1,000 homes). Stanford’s Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research will host “The Entrepreneurs” and dialogue about young women who–despite coming from extreme rural poverty and sometimes being orphaned–launch furniture stores, preschools and other business through the 10,000 Women Program.

The Great Ones from Camfed on Vimeo.

Heading South for Mobile Musings

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?

The Women Driving Social Media

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.

Helmet Head

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.

On Support for Digital Arts

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.

FM Authors on Strategic Content at Alt Design Summit

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:

Follow the dialogue at #AltSummit.

Photo by Ecofabulous’ Caitlin Bristol.

Get FITE

A friend tipped me off to a new project, Financial Independence through Entrepreneurship (FITE), that has me excited about the potential to make more money available to female founders. The global empowerment platform powered by Kiva.org and sponsored by Dermalogica hopes to combat the low level of investment in women’s work (“women are traditionally more likely to be denied a loan by a bank, and often face high levels of financial discrimination,” they explain, “more than 70% of people who live below the poverty line are women.”) Loans can be made for women in industries ranging from health to construction and to places as diverse as Honduras, Congo, and Cambodia. A current global challenge to inspire people to help in the growth of new business has cheerleaders including actress Geena Davis, reporter Nicholas Kristof, and Isobel Coleman, director of the Women and Foreign Policy at the Council for Foreign Relations.

Lunch Love Community in School

Just as President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act into law, a series of videos have been released showing the difference fresh foods have made across the Bay. The Lunch Love Community Documentary Project explores the community-based school lunch reform movement (in Berkeley, though I know you were wondering where such a thing could possibly come to be).

Webisodes showing “how passionate and dedicated people coming together can change the way their children eat, how they think, and how they learn in school” were supported by Kickstarter investments and are intended to be part of a full length documentary next year. If you watch the spots, I’d start with the one that features sixth graders watching what happens when they burn a Hot Cheeto. It’s not pretty, but then again, neither is the state of vending machines in schools.

Coming of Age This Tuesday

I’ve been writing up a storm lately (though not for TheSanFranista–my apologies), and mostly at The Summit on Valencia. The home of the i/o Ventures incubator is hosting a reading of local writers’ favorite tales for the purpose of creating a community zine on Tuesday night. As a longtime Salinger fan, I appreciated the “Franny and Zooey”-inspired poster for the event, which will include storytelling by Kelly Kate Warren of The Okcupid Chronicles and Veronica Christina, founder of Sex+Design Magazine.