Yule Heibel's Post Studio © 2003-2009 » social_networking

Urban density and social media tools

Yule — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:40:20 +0000

It won’t come as news to those of us who love and defend cities, but it’s nice to have scientific research backing up what we espouse as urban positives: High population density triggers cultural explosions, according to a new study by scientists at University College London. The study was published in the journal Science; see also UCL’s page here (h/t Richard Florida/Creative Class blog).

The study reports that “complex skills learnt across generations can only be maintained when there is a critical level of interaction between people.”

I wonder how current social media tools mimic the benefits of density, or augment it in places that are emerging.

For example, I live in Victoria, BC, a medium-sized city that is approaching good density levels in the core neighborhoods, and I’m continually amazed by how social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and a local forum on Vibrant Victoria have allowed a speedier dissemination of ideas. The dissemination doesn’t necessarily produce “instant” results, but how much more bereft we would be without the various platforms for those conversations.

While web-based tools can’t replace actual rubbing-up against people, they do facilitate transmission of ideas as well as complex skills, particularly if those skills aren’t manual. Yet even in the realm of manual skill or physical production – say, vegetable gardening or backyard chicken-raising – I’m likely to turn to the internet to find instructional videos or a local group. Digital natives will always go there first (and I’ve been an immigrant several times over, so I consider myself fully “naturalized” here, too, thank-you!).

Online social media tools absolutely augment the benefits of “real” population density. Thinking about online density and actual urban density (and its benefits) together, as being of a piece, seems important.

Too many choices!

Yule — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:52:06 +0000

For some reason, Thursday February 26 offers a plenitude of events to choose from, but no matter which I choose, I’ll be wistfully wondering if I should be elsewhere since I can’t be at all three.

First, there’s VIAFest! February 26!, which includes a free museum tour of the Royal BC Museum’s Modern Galleries and should be a nice tech mixer. This event runs from 6-8:30pm.

But then there’s also a talk by Jennifer Kostiuk at the Vancouver Island School of Art (VISA). Kostiuk represents artists whose “works address the various ways in which the contemporary mindset has altered nature and our relationship to it. Notably are organic references to nature’s influence, impact or unconscious message its presence plays on the individual artist or collector, or society as a whole.” Damn, I really want to go to this, too. It starts at 7:30pm.

Finally, another event I’d really like to attend since I missed the previous ones, a #victoriatweetup at 5th Street Bar & Grill (conveniently close to VISA, true), which gets under way around 7pm that night.

What to do?

I suppose I could go to the ViaFest mixer, stay for one hour, then head over to VISA, and then possibly swing by the 5th Street Bar & Grill to see who’s still hanging out once the VISA event is over…

DemoCamp Victoria 02 this Thursday

Yule — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:56:00 +0000

I can’t believe that DemoCampVictoria02 is just two “sleeps” away…!

For me, time has been flying at warp speed. Keeping my attention in tatters are 1. new work projects, 2. a municipal election, 3. community volunteer adjudicating responsibilities, and 4. another article due (which admittedly is nothing, compared to the fact that some people have a new baby due…).

But here we go: in two more days it’s Thursday Oct. 30, which means that if you’re in Victoria and interested in technology, innovation, and creativity, you must check out our second DemoCamp (Facebook page here).

DemoCamp Victoria 02 is happening in the same location as DemoCamp Victoria01:

834 Johnson St. (David Chard’s “Juliet” Presentation Centre). MAP

Set-up and mingling to start at 5pm, presentations to start at 6pm, sharp.

Yours truly will be demo-ing, too. (OMFG…)

Don’t miss it!

Northern Voice 2008 — what a blast!

Yule — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:26:14 +0000

This afternoon I returned home from Northern Voice 2008, the 4th annual incarnation of this event. It was the first time I attended, and I had a great time. Learned a lot, met some terrific people, and experienced a really positive geek vibe — if that makes sense. I’ll post more later — probably tomorrow? — but right now I’m too exhausted. As soon as we (spouse & I) got off the ferry, we phoned the kids at home, ascertained that most of the food was gone, stopped at the supermarket on the way home to ransom a cow’s worth of milk and the millions of pounds of additional food required by growing teenagers, continued on our way, fixed lunch, walked the dog, made dinner, and now it’s time to clean up the kitchen and then collapse into bed. This is what we domestic professionals call being “back in harness.” Ha.ha. The drill continues tomorrow, and so on until …well, just watch birds trying to fledge their young. It gives a whole new meaning to going ragged at the edges.

Except I don’t see the birds in actual harness, but then I guess mine is invisible, too.

I did do a stupid thing after getting home — I spent over two hours going through over 60 pages of photos posted to Flickr that were tagged with nv08 and northernvoice. My god, people get busy with their cameras! My eyeballs hurt.

More later, on the actual conference and the great people. But now it’s off to the scullery…

Using YouTube to recruit for jobs

Yule — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:38:19 +0000

Here’s another way that new platforms — in this case YouTube — are affecting more traditional businesses (in this case personnel search firms) and the venues for information they relied on in the past:

YouTube – Seeking Project Architect (Midwestern U.S.)

It’s a relatively boring, straightforward read of a job description for an architect, the visual consisting of digitally-generated fly-overs (and fly-throughs) of a hospital project.

But it represents an innovative, even stealthy, way of getting the job posting out to millions of people, globally, practically for free. Headhunters, take note.

(found via Architekturvideo.de)