I’m a sucker for vintage photography (as evidenced by the amount of time it took me to get through the Oakland Museum’s state exhibit), so getting turned onto Calisphere made for a less-than-productive but quite wonderful flight home this weekend. The “world of digital resources” features an extensive selection of images, artwork and articles from University of California libraries. Themed collections include “California in transition,” “emerging industrial order” and “social reform,” and there are emphases on population diversity and local history mapping. You haven’t seen interactive archives like this before.
In celebrating San Francisco designer Victoria Smith (Ms. SFGirlByBay) and her endeavor to encourage dialogue about personal inspiration, I’m taking today mention the organizations, projects, and ideas by women I admire and am motivated by, SF or otherwise.
The Blog It Forward project, which includes 300 design aficionados discussing their inspiration, is a kind of chain letter in the best way. No middle school students have their feelings hurt, and bloggers partaking in the project link to one another’s work. Ohioan Pretty Shiny Things shared her visual inspiration before me, and today I’ll be followed by the vintage-minded The Sunday Times Market, which I’ve become quickly enamored with while I should have been typing and linking away on this.
In having spent the better part of this week in the Texas state capital for South by Southwest Interactive, interactive whiz kids (and migas) are especially front of mind. I feel fortunate to be learning from especially visionary women designers, communicators and founders, and following Heather Gold’s recent live taping of her podcast episode about acknowledging the effort in making things, I tip my bicycle cap to these inspiring individuals, including:
Alison Covarrubias and Claire Fontana, whose educational Hatch Network design is admirable /// Jen Bekman for demonstrating the potential for art community growth with 20×200 /// Han Pham for her Youth Women Social Entrepreneurs collaboration /// Jamie Panzarella, for giving y’all Ladywood in the next few days /// Miki Johnson, for her visual and thought-provoking liveBooks photo blog contributions /// Tiffany Shlain for sharing her early “Connected” documentary work /// Rebecca Bortman, who I’d love to have perform at a future Ignite Bay Area event with her SF-born band My First Earthquake, for art directing another successful Disposable Film Fest /// Janetti Chon and Stacey Foreman for announcing a great speaker lineup for this summer’s Conversational Marketing Summit /// Lindsay Ronga for bringing the Cork’d wine community to vino drinkers everywhere /// Cara Jones for introducing journalist consortium Storytellers for Good locally this week //// Maria Ly, for bringing activity tracking platform Skimble to SXSW to lots of acclaim when she wasn’t allowing us to tape her climbing at Mission Cliffs time and again /// Kristy Graves and Amy Benziger for helping open the HUB community space in SF in the upcoming weeks /// Sharon Vosmek’s leadership in the Astia network’s expansion to India /// Kennedy School alum Elana Berkowitz’s contribution to the FCC’s broadband plan, which goes before Congress shortly /// High school pal-turned-producer extraordinaire Leah D’Emilio for helping Rocketboom’s programming expand /// Femgineer Poornima Vijayashanker and Liz Wilsie for rigorous prep of their new software for sole proprietors /// Caitlin Bristol, for expanding Ecofabulous’ style and sustainability video offerings while kicking leukemia butt on her bike /// Shauna Causey for leading by @Voluntweetup example /// Gayla Trail, for whom positive “Grow Great Grub” book reviews are well-deserved /// Danae Ringelmann, whose good acquisition news about the IndieGoGo funding platform is well worth celebrating this week /// Project H founder Emily Pilloton for getting the Design Revolution Road Show to kids and adults nationwide /// Rebecca Orlov for exapnding Blog Out Loud live events to Northern and Southern California /// and, of course, Victoria Smith for starting this undertaking and launching her vintage Etsy shop last week.
This is just a sample of the women who inspire your work, and I’d like to open this up to mentions of yours. Have at it!
On the morning of their South By Southwest soiree, artistic project fundraising platform IndieGoGo has announced that their San Francisco-based company has acquired Adam Chapnick’s digital distribution service Distribber. The deal, which will allow creators posting projects on IndieGoGo to sell completed works on Amazon and NetFlix from the platform, comes weeks after the founders of the two companies spoke about independent arts distribution at Sundance. Financial terms were not disclosed, though the agreement is said to enable filmmakers to sell to multiple stores simultaneously while keeping more project royalties.
I was excited to see a post on BlogHer this week about the Pledge to End Hunger, a very interactive initiative that looks to food companies and individuals to help lower the ratio of the 20 percent of American children who go hungry on a daily basis. The current economic situation makes for a good time (per Mr. Emmanuel’s advice to never let a crisis go to waste) to talk about families that are facing hunger for the first time. Bloggers and volunteers are encouraged to make their pledges online, and each raised hand will lead Tyson to donate 35 pounds of food to children who need it. If 1,000 pledges are made, the company will also deliver 140,000 meals to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas in Austin. Strategic timing with SXSW, no doubt, but certainly worthwhile if it helps even a portion of the estimated 12.4 million hungry kids in this country.
My last night in Austin at Club DeVille, one of my favorites. The images on the man’s back are from a computer dock that’s projecting photos. Dorky fun.
Feeling invigorated and want to lock myself to my monitor to look at the work from this week. While that’s antisocial and I’m more likely to make my way over to 500 Club, these are a few of the ones I couldn’t help but share:
Social graph paper I’m excited about digging into from MetaNotes
A well-written reflection on the comparing yourself to the braniacs and young adult millionaires at the interactive festival from LifeStudent John Halycon Styn
Revision3, an online TV network who I was drawn to for its easy access to some of my favorite video blogs (esp. Diggnation and XLR8R TV)
And a few blogs I found afterward that provided good roundups on social networking (Mashable) and design (upon seeing “Bad Ass Ideas,” you know you have to judge for yourself)
