Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

Since we are competing with some interesting tech events this week, we are not meeting in the hopes that some of you will go to these other events, network with local geeks, and tell us about your adventure at a future meeting. See you there, perhaps! The second Ignite Boston is at Hurricane O’Reilly’s near TD Banknorth Garden and North Station. Tech Cocktail filled up quickly, but there might be some space on the waiting list. RSVP for each event through their site. Tour some computing facilities at MIT at 7:30 p.

Upcoming events of interest:

• Web Innovators Group: September 10th
• Dev House Boston 3: September 16th at betahouse
• PodCamp, October 26-28
• BarCamp Boston, possibly in October
• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• September 13 – Neither Erica nor j can attend the meeting. Jesse will tackle blog group again, place TBD.
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement? (and what about the Miro player?)
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+

Join us for Brett on EVDO, a kind of wireless, mobile Internet connection and j on Skype.

Upcoming events of interest:

• Web Innovators Group: September 10th
• Dev House Boston 3: September 16th at betahouse
• PodCamp, October 26-28
• BarCamp Boston, possibly in October
• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• September 6 – See you at these exciting tech events: the second Ignite Boston and Tech Cocktail. RSVP for each event through their site.
• September 13 – Neither Erica nor j can attend the meeting. Jesse will tackle blog group again, place TBD.
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement? (and what about the Miro player?)
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+

“Tish Grier of Assignment Zero and Lisa Williams of Placeblogger will co-host a meeting of the group on Thursday, August 23, at 7PM.

Tish will talk about lessons learned from crowdsourcing experiment Assignment Zero, the first large-scale crowdsourced journalism project for Wired.com. Tish served as Assignment Zero’s deputy director of participation (officially) online referee, uber-blogger, and last-minute
editor (unofficially). Quoting organizer Jay Rosen’s intro to the project, “In this project, we’re trying to crowdsource a single story, and debut a site that makes other such reports possible down the road. But we don’t know yet how well our site and our methods work. Our ideas are crude because they are untested. By participating, you can help us figure this puzzle out.”

Lisa Williams, founder of Placeblogger, will talk about what drives people to annotate the planet, or keep a placeblog going, even (especially) when they’re not being paid. Do these dogged types share the same do-good values that animate the best of journalism, or are
they a different breed entirely? Does the addition of “where” to Google’s “what” mean that our online time will help connect us to our RL communities in a way that’s less boring? “If I fly to — let’s pick a random city — Omaha — and all I see is a generic sprawling American city built from standard subdivisions full of brand-named chain shops, then I might as well never have left home. This is boring, and I am opposed to anything that makes the world a less interesting place to live.” — Mars Saxman

More about Tish Grier: http://spap-oop.blogspot.com/ and http://lavieonline.blogspot.com/
More about Lisa Williams: http://www.linkedin.com/in/lisawilliams“

Upcoming events of interest:

• Dev House Boston 3: September 16th at betahouse
• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• August 30 – Brett on EVDO, a kind of wireless, mobile Internet connection and j on Skype
• September 6 – See you at these exciting tech events: the second Ignite Boston and Tech Cocktail. RSVP for each event through their site.
• September 13 – Neither Erica nor j can attend the meeting. Should we take the week off or does someone want to organize something?
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement? (and what about the Miro player?)
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+

This week, please welcome Tish Grier with some cool citizen journalism stuff.

Tish canceled. We’ll improvise.

Upcoming events of interest:

• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• August 23 – Local-based media extravaganza, led by Lisa Williams. Will be awesome. (note new date!)
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement? (and what about the Miro player?)
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+

Critt’s organizing a meeting with Adam Green about Twitter and Grazr and possibly some other nifty technology.

Lisa Williams rescheduled for August 23.

Upcoming events of interest:

• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• August 16 – Tish Grier with some cool citizen journalism stuff
• August 23 – Local-based media extravaganza, led by Lisa Williams. Will be awesome. (note new date!)
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement? (and what about the Miro player?)
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+

This week, Jack Hodgson introduces us to a project in alpha that can talk about itself: Voxci. Join us to hear about it first!

Upcoming events of interest:

• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• August 9 – Critt on Twitter and Grazr and stuff
• August 16 – Tish Grier with some cool citizen journalism stuff
• August 23 – Local-based media extravaganza, led by Lisa Williams. Will be awesome. (note new date!)
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement? (and what about the Miro player?)
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? What are the best clients? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+

We have special guests this week from the Museum of Science to tell us about some of the cool projects they’re working on.

Our meeting coincides with another online event for Babbledog, the browser chat plug-in Shimon and j have been working on. If there is time and interest after our Museum of Science guests finish their presentation, perhaps we can join the event.

Upcoming events of interest:

• BarCamp Manchester, July 28
• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• SCHEDULED: August 9 – Local-based media extravaganza, led by Lisa Williams. Will be awesome.
• August 16 – Tish Grier with some cool citizen journalism stuff
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement?
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? What are the best clients? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+

Let’s talk about how we balance summer fun with our online activities (like blogging, responding to e-mail, editing Wikipedia, participating in online communites, etc.).

• How do you balance your online life with taking long trips?
• Do you feel guilty if you don’t participate in your usual online activities while you’re traveling or have other commitments?
• Do you post on your weblog or community that you will be away?
  • How do you balance safety with letting your online community know you will be out of touch?

Upcoming events of interest:

• BarCamp Manchester, July 28
• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• 7/26: If there’s interest, we could participate in an online tour of the chat and instant messaging software Shimon and j have been working on. There will be an evening event on the 26th. The time has not been set yet, but it’s highly likely at least part of the tour will be happening during some part of our meeting.
• SCHEDULED: August 9 – Local-based media extravaganza, led by Lisa Williams. Will be awesome.
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement?
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? What are the best clients? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+

We have another fun & informal summer-style meeting planned for this Thursday. Jesse Baer, a longtime blog group member, will lead discussion at the Middlesex Lounge at 315 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge. Please join Jesse for fun & food at 7 pm!

If you know you’ll be there and want to RSVP in the comments, it’d be great to get a rough headcount in advance.

Upcoming events of interest:

• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• SCHEDULED: August 9 – Local-based media extravaganza, led by Lisa Williams. Will be awesome.
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement?
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? What are the best clients? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+

We have a fun, informal meeting planned for July 5 with a guest from South Carolina who will tell us about the blog group he attends, which meets in a pub, and his series of posts about beer. We will meet at the Cambridge Common (the bar, not the green space), 1667 Mass Ave, at 7 pm. See you there!

Upcoming events of interest:

• See the Berkman Calendar for upcoming Berkman stuff.
• Feel free to publicize related events here! Let Erica or j know, comment, or add them yourself if you have an editor account.

Various upcoming & potential stuff on our schedule:

• July 12, 19, 26 – possible summer hiatus or cool guest speakers?
  • Erica is unavailable to lead meetings these weeks
  • j has an online commitment each of those weeks from 6-8 p. She could possibly be present at the blog meetings, but not able to lead any meetings.
• August 9 – Local-based media extravaganza, led by Lisa Williams. Will be awesome.
• Second Life – 1) a guided tour + how-to session | 2) a debate on it. Good? Bad? Both?
• Dan Bricklin, known for his work on VisiCalc and wikiCalc
• People to do sessions on maps & mapping: Ben Sheldon / Adam / Tracy Rolling of Platial
• Digital natives: ask Erin Mishkin
• For parents: what *are* your kids doing on the social web? Get a few students to lead it.
• What’s the latest in the Free Culture movement?
• Skype: How does it work? Why use it? What are the best clients? j can lead something
• People to do sessions on video: Steve Garfield / David Temez of Boston Media Makers
• OpenID – Why you should use it, why you should develop with it (ask Rod Begbie)
• Streaming radio – how to make your own streaming radio station, the new rules around it
• Principles of design/UI, how to learn as a beginner?
• Latest tools for blogging / Latest mashups and widgets / How have tools changed in the past year or so?
• you?
• If you want to help shepherd a potential future topic or if you have ideas of your own, please talk to Erica or j. We’d love – and could really use – your help!+