drumbeat Archive

OpenUN and the Future of Real-Time at SMW

The age of real-time has changed media, humanitarian aid and my life’s path. I am a community manager and communications emergency/incident manager by trade who also volunteers with digital crisis response. Social Media Week has provided great opportunities to attend events in person or participate virtually. Today I am attending OpenUN and digging into how

Bushfire Connect: An Australian Ushahidi project

Bushfire Connect is a project to help Australians crowdsource reports about bushfires. The Australian bushfire season is during December and January. The Bushfire Connect team is monitoring the current bushfires on their Twitter account: @bushfireconnect. They need help testing their Ushahidi site. In June 2010 for Random Hacks of Kindness 1.0 in June 2010 (Sydney,

Drumbeat Overview – The First Date

Mozilla Drumbeat was a hybrid, chaotic event full of engaging people and ideas. I’m still processing, but in one word “Overwhelming“. The only model I can compare Drumbeat to is “The First Date“: new, so full of potential, contradictions, sometimes awkward, and sometimes magical. Trying to balance actions, participatory learning and some brilliant oration/creation is

Traveling the Open Web

If learning is about the diverse journeys, then travel metaphors seem appropriate. Mozilla Drumbeat’s Learning, Freedom and the Web brought over 400 people to Barcelona, Spain for a 3-day event. Normally, I save highly personal introspective writing for other spaces. But, there is value in reflection on the greater journey of learning and the open

Video Lab Dispatch – Drumbeat Festival

The room is full of people working on an open video HTML5 script, transcribing content, tagging photos and collaborating for Drumbeat’s closing night video. Video interviews, photos, tweets and other content are being transcribed, edited, designed and morphed into one master. The script on the projected screen is foreign to me. There are 6 people

Open web with the Arduino xBee Bicycle at Drumbeat

Two university students: Vasileios Georgitzikis and Pierros Papadeas, spent yesterday in the Hackerspace Playground and Arduino. Their goal: create an Arduino xbee open web powered bicycle. The night before they worked on their script. Then, they refined it by creating the device and testing speeds without a bike until about 3:30pm. How it works What

Create Joyous Insurgency

Inspiration! Mitchell Baker and Cathy Davidson kicked off today’s Drumbeat activities with their thoughts on the future of the open web and open learning. Baker said that the future of the web means we need to: see, touch, get your hands on it and pull it apart. Mozilla’s goal is to provide opportunities to create

Dispatch: Drumbeat Festival – Day 1

Barcelona is the perfect location for the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival. With attendees are from around the world, you get the sense of “otherness” and “innovation” by the city and the Raval location. Raval is a revived district. The Barcelonian city government situated the MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona) in this area to drive

Help Hack Open Source Software for Social Good

Geeks without Bounds is running a hack-a-thon on October 9/10, 2010. I met up with Geeks without Bounds‘ Johnny Diggz at the International Conference of Crisis Mapping. We talked about his event and I promptly introduced him to some of the attending Open Source communities: Sahana, OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi/Crowdmap, Swift River, and Frontline SMS. These open

Mozilla’s Learning Freedom and the Web Festival, Barcelona

The Internet is revolutionizing how we learn. It’s exciting. And it’s only the beginning. Mozilla’s Learning, Freedom and the Web Festival will gather teachers, learners and technologists from around the world who are at the heart of this revolution. Taking place Barcelona from November 3-5, we’re planning three days of making, teaching, hacking, inventing and