Facilitating Change

This mind map lays out a framework for thinking about “innovation grounds” — spaces where people can come together and generate ideas, solutions, knowledge, culture, and relationships. It emerged from perceiving coworking spaces as next-generation telecentres; seeing connections between telecentres, coworking spaces, hackerspaces, and libraries; and being somewhat exasperated at how libraries are often overlooked as key actors in community development — despite the fact that they’ve always been places where people convene, learn, and create (especially information… and we’re in the information age, Hello!).

Despite the title, Tufte’s keynote for the Tech@State event on data visualization was the same that he gave at a one-day workshop I attended in 1999. It was a brilliant talk then, and it’s still good now. It could have been better if Tufte addressed implementation. The how. The practice of creating good infographics for decisionmakers.

A few snippets from the “Mobile Technology and New Media: Trends and Opportunities” panel at the September 23 Tech@State event. No analysis. Just stuff I wanted to remember.

The first Creative Commons Salon Montreal is taking place on December 21, 2010. The theme is open culture. We are going to talk open education, open web, web standards, licensing and the change that occurred on the internet, open publishing, open culture, remixing, video, DJing, and food.

On Saturday, November 13th, Emily Rose Michaud and Owen McSwiney are presenting the Roerich Garden Project at the DIY Citizenship conference in at the University of Toronto. Leslie Reagan Shade is moderating the panel, called Making Space. They’ll also have a spot in the Hack Space. How cool is that?

For the next two weeks I’m in Seattle. Working with my TASCHA peeps, mostly to get our new website launched. Today it was sunny, not enough to see the mountains but nonetheless magnificent. Today I saw a home for sale with the sign: 100% Financing. I thought: Good god, people. Isn’t that how you got into this mess in the first place?