Category Archives: current events

Interactive Art Installation in Berkeley explores environment on Earth Day

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One of the tree sculptures in the interactive installation "In The Forest"

“Do not touch, please!” Ever heard that phrase at an art gallery? If you have, this Earth Day (and in fact, all of April and part of May) you should come by The Art Thou Gallery on Solano Ave. in Berkeley. A group of six artists from the East Bay have created In The Forest, an installation featuring 2D and 3D sculptures of trees suspended above the gallery floor that visitors are invited to interact with. You can see an example of the sculptures in the gorgeous image above…

At In The Forest, visitors are invited to explore the exhibit through touch, sound and sight, shifting the configuration of the sculptures on the suspended tracks, altering images, video, audio recordings and even adding live sound to the installation by voicing into amplification tubes extending from above.

“Each individual is acknowledged and felt In the Forest,” said Kaitlin McSweeney, one of the installation’s creators. “We hope the exhibit will inspire visitors to consider how their presence is felt and is significant in the environments we live in every day.”

The artists all met through the 23HAM collective, and have known each other for well over a year. “The collaboration among us started many months ago. Now we are excited to see how people will interact with the installation as it continues to evolve,” said Andreina Davila, one of the other artists.

This Friday, April 22, come celebrate Earth Day between 6 and 10 pm at The Art Thou Gallery (free admission). Enjoy hors d’oeuvres and beverages, be part of the creation and support local Bay Area art and music by celebrated local bands Whiskerman and Foxtails Brigade… In The Forest.

About In the Forest
The exhibit and pieces were conceived and created by Andreina Davila (my wife, whom I am SO proud of!), Claire Tompkins, Chrysta Giffen, Drew Dara Abrams, Kaitlin McSweeney and Susanna Davy. Adam Scradam offered precious technical support.

Update (April 21, 2011): A version of this post just got published on BerkeleySide.

Do I REALLY need to go to this conference?

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In the past three weeks, I have “participated” in 4 conferences:

How did I do this without going broke with plane tickets and conference registration fees, more importantly putting my family in a far distant second place? The answer to this question has a lot to do with the reason I put the word “participated” in double quotes: I really wasn’t physically at the conference (in all cases, except for a morning that I actually did swing by the Web 2.0 Expo Exhibit Hall).

How can you be at a conference and not BE there?
An interesting trend I’ve observed this year is that more and more portions of conferences (in some cases all the presentations on the main stage) are being streamed online:

  • NTC online streamed a fair number of sessions at a cost of $150 for NTEN members, aside from the amazing coverage of the conference through attendes via the #11NTC hashtag on Twitter.
  • JDRF Government Day made the JDRF Government Day Blogger Roundtable session available for free via Ustream and also helped those of us on Twitter to follow the conversation through the #JDRFGovDay hashtag.
  • In the case of “Ideas Economy”, all main stage presentations (there were a number of breakout sessions) were streamed through FORA.tv at a cost of $150 (early bird passes). Twitter conversations about this conference could be followed through #ideaseconomy.
  • As for Web 2.0 Expo, their Exhibit Hall pass was available for free if you used a discount code they offered through Twitter and all the keynotes were streamed (are being streamed, as a matter of fact, as I write this). The hashtag #w2e served as a container for comments about the conference on Twitter.

Can you really BE at a conference without BEING there?
This is a tricky question because ultimately you do get what you pay for. Was the experience and the lessons I took with me from “participating” in these conferences comparable to the opportunity of being THERE? Heck no! I couldn’t network equally. For sure, I couldn’t attend all sessions I would have been interested in and talked with the presenters (if I sat close enough to the podium to run for it at the end) with more specific questions for them or to get a chance to meet them personally.

But also, I didn’t spend as much money AND I didn’t travel, except for the BART ride from Berkeley to San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo! This seems like a convenient tradeoff for me considering that I work on a (very) limited budget and the fact that most of the time conferences are not worth attending every year, but (I’ve found to be the case) every other year.

So, though a first take on this trend of conference content being made available online at a lower cost may make you think that the business model for conference organizers is being questioned, I see it differently. They are growing their audience and bringing in additional income that was not available to them until streaming technologies have made it more affordable to offer this kind of content live.

What do you think is going to happen with conferences in the coming years?

The 3/50 Project (or how to save local economies)

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This morning, as part of my morning stroll on the way to the office, I ran into an unusual sign: one that asked me expressly to commit to spend at least $50 each month in independently owned stores to help save my local economy. It turns out this poster was not a stand-alone thing: it was part of a bigger movement, the 3/50 Project!

To support your local economy, visit the350project.net and learn more.

Save the Berkeley curbside recycling program

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The City of Berkeley is considering terminating our curbside recycling program based on a a consultant report (read the full report here) which is seriously flawed (read a summary of the problems with the report here)

The Ecology Center urgently needs our help to save this community-based program:

1) Call or email your City Council representative today. Council members’ phone numbers and email addresses may be found here. To find your district, refer to the district map on the City’s website.

2) Do your best to attend the Berkeley City Council Meeting Tuesday, March 8th at 5:30pm in the City Council Chambers, 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way.

3) Sign this petition (below) letting the Berkeley City Council know why you disagree with this decision.

4) Use your Facebook status update to spread the word. Here’s some text you can copy and paste: “The Ecology Center is at risk. Please voice your support! Like their Facebook page (http://facebook.com/ecologycenter.org) for more details.”

5) Above all, spread the word to friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers.

The future of our the Ecology Center, the Berkeley curbside recycling program is at stake!

Content Phishing: "African Mango" make-believe health news review

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This morning, I was curious enough to click on an ad on a web site (I click on very few ads) and I was led to a web site that talked about “African Mango”. Here’s a screenshot of the page I was taken to: you can click on it for a longer version, including all the content, down to the first “comments”:

As a patient advocate and a web user, I am always curious when I learn about these kinds of things… like the “reporter” from the “news web site”, I was curious to learn more about this new diet… Notice my use of quotes.

Why do I imply with my quotes that this is not a reporter writing about a new diet, or that this is not a news web site:

  • The page you land on when you click on the ad has the URL http://newshealth6.com/LoseWeightFast. If you visit it and you try clicking on any of the U.S., World, Business, Politics, etc. sections of the news site and guess where it leads? BACK to the same page. This is a 1-page web site that only seeks to promote this so-called African Mango diet!
  • If you try to leave the web site, you are presented with a very classy “Are you sure you don’t want to take advantage of the African Mango and LeanSpa Cleanse Free Trial?” popup (see below). When was the last time you saw a news site doing this? Let me think…. ah…. right! NEVER!

  • Best of all, if you dare to post a comment in reply to this scam, you are (not surprisingly) taken to a broken page… I rest my case…

It’s not a real news site and they are not really doing what they say:

As part of a new series: “Diet Trends: A look at America’s Top Diets” we examine consumer tips for dieting during a recession

These guys are “content phishing”. I am not sure if it’s even a term that exists, but it’s the name I give to these kinds of practices, similar to the ones by people trying to make you believe you are visiting your bank web site, to steal your banking data (and money) from you. These kinds of practices are unethical and should not be allowed!

When you read about something that seems too good to be true, maybe it is! Please take a few moments to navigate around the site you get to. You may discover a lot, simply by clicking around as I did…

What’s sad is that, when I see practices like this one, I don’t even care any more if what they somehow got on Reuters Health about African Mango two years ago is true or not. Anyone willing to go to this extreme to promote their product is not going to get my money… and I hope they don’t get yours and they get sanctioned for deceiving people this way!