Here’s a short audio file i recorded at the close of the Civic Media conference this week at MIT. I’d like to add my own thanks to the sentiments expressed herein; thus was a fabulous antidote to the general malaise afflicting so many of our traditional media brethren… http://audioboo.fm/boos/395702-final-thoughts-and-thanks-at-civic-media-conference-at-mit-media-lab [...more]
Here’s a short audio file i recorded at the close of the Civic Media conference this week at MIT. I’d like to add my own thanks to the sentiments expressed herein; thus was a fabulous antidote to the general malaise afflicting so many of our traditional media brethren…
This is a short clip from the recent “Town Hall” type meeting that brand-new Rep. Karen Bass had with her constituents here in Cal-33. This has got to be one of the most diverse districts in California, if not the entire U.S. in these Gerrymandered times.The room was a real mix of black, white, Asian, [...] [...more]
This is a short clip from the recent “Town Hall” type meeting that brand-new Rep. Karen Bass had with her constituents here in Cal-33. This has got to be one of the most diverse districts in California, if not the entire U.S. in these Gerrymandered times.The room was a real mix of black, white, Asian, Latino, old, young, male, female … there were even a couple of Tea Party types loudly blaming Bass in the hallway outside the room. I half expected them to act the fool during the meeting, but somehow these old white angry men wilted in the face of the loud cheering that Bass got.
Which is my one objection to the whole exercise. There was a lot of preaching to the choir here. She told the people in the room what they wanted to hear – that the GOP is planning on destroying Medicare, jobs, the economy and basically everything else. Which may have a bit of truth to it – but seems to be the kind of exaggeration and spin that seems to piss off so many of the constituents when they see it coming at them from the other side on Fox News.
The best part of the meeting was when Bass brought up one of her pet issues – foster care. She mentioned that she was working with Michelle Bachman. The room erupted in boos. But to her credit, Bass stood up there and said that despite not agreeing on just about every other fact under the sun, she and Bachman were working together on reforms to the foster care system. And that Bachman had fostered 14 kids on her own, and graduated each kid from high school, while simultaneously raising five of her own.
The room went quiet, and you saw a lot of people raising their eyebrows and looking sideways at each other.
“Respect,” muttered a guy in the row behind me.
In these polarized times, that kind of reaching across the aisle, no matter how out of the limelight the issue, is something that we need more of.
This got written up in the Congressional Quarterly; considering that the constituents in Cal-33 overindex for mobile web use, this is a real stroke of genius. After the meeting was over, I helped at least 3 people load the QR reader software onto their phones so they could take advantage of this… IF QR codes [...] [...more]
This got written up in the Congressional Quarterly; considering that the constituents in Cal-33 overindex for mobile web use, this is a real stroke of genius. After the meeting was over, I helped at least 3 people load the QR reader software onto their phones so they could take advantage of this…
IF QR codes are starting to cross over into political messaging like this, does that mean that they’re finally going to make the jump from gimmicks on soft-drink cartons to something that’s actually useful in our daily lives? I know that they’ve done the “BoomSplat” at least two times in the last four years, since I first started studying them as part of the case study I did on mobile advertising for the NAA. Part of that is the hucksterism of some of their more ardent proponents, who have harebrained schemes like affixing QR codes to every object of note in an urban environment, all in service to the concept of providing “historical context” to the objects we encounter every day. Which sounds like a really great stoner-grade dorm room concept, but which breaks down right about the time that a muffler shop owner gives you the Louisville Slugger shampoo for slapping what looks like graffiti on his store.
Because surfing the Internet is like drinking from a firehose, David LaFontaine braves the torrent to tell you what trends and technologies to gulp down, swirl in your mouth, or spit out.
