more on sameAs, citizen science, and a ‘data bonanza’

Serving you up another sameAs video this Thursday afternoon, again compliments of Steve Allen. I know, so much goodness for a Thursday. It’s *almost* too much. Like too much chocolate cake.

(I take that back – one can never have too much cake. M’mm cake.)

Now available, our second speaker from sameAs – Arfon Smith, astronomer extraordinaire, and citizen scientist. Here he is speaking about a project he’s a part of called Zooniverse (GalaxyZoo being a part of that), an effort to crowdsource problems such as classification of galaxies by involving members of the general (non-astronomer or even scientific) public. For more on the project (beyond, the video, of course), check out Ars Technica’s latest on the effort.

And many thanks again to Arf for joining us. John Buckman’s talk, coming soon.

the first sameAs, david byrne, and the web

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I’ve been on quite a Talking Heads kick this week – quite possibly prompted by the first sameAs this past Monday evening  (or quite possibly because I just *really* love “Stop Making Sense” )

//cue “Once in a Lifetime”

Right, back to the event. First off, an enormous thank you to all of you lovely folks who made it out for our inaugural event (and special thanks to Carolina and Steve for their fine media additions). The first video of David Weinberger’s talk is now up, thanks to the fine Steve Allen – with Arfon’s and John’s to come. And if it’s not clear from the fact that I’m in some of these photos , many thanks to Carolina Ödman for her stunning black and white photography (all images featured here under a CC-BY-SA-2.0 licence, full set available here, and flickr group here.) We’re really grateful to you both for helping us capture the event.

Given some of the back channel response during but largely after the event, I’d venture a guess that the talks struck exactly the right note:  informal, provocative, with a bit of humor wedged in to keep the audience on their toes. Personally some of the gems for me included David’s quip that “Skulls don’t scale, networks do”, Arfon’s data comparison to the Oprah viewing audience, and John’s eloquent way of describing his main task at Magnatune of “selling customer happiness”. There is quite a lot more to add to that, and I hope you check out the videos and podcasts when those become available to see for yourselves. I’ll be posting links to them here as they’re posted.

And do take a look through some of the images of the night. Many of you will spot some familiar faces, and hopefully some new ones, as well.

Thanks again to all of you who joined in person or sent support through the interwebs. And mark your calendars – the next sameAs is scheduled for 22 November (we’re putting a bit more fun into Mondays). More to come at sameas.us.

upcoming web geekery in london

I hinted at a new side project in my last post. Tomorrow night is the first night of that side project – a new kind of science and technology meetup here in London we’ve decided to call “sameAs”*. The lovely Matt Wood joins me as co-host and the token tech-savvy half of the organising team. It kicks off at 7 pm tomorrow night at the Coach & Horses in Clerkenwell, and we hope you can join us. We’ll be hearing from three exemplary folks from three very different sectors, all stitched together with the common fascination with the Web and how it can transform the way we process information, collaborate and share.

Here’s a look at the speakers:

* David Weinberger: Fellow at the Berkman Center at Harvard, library innovator, and author (“Everything is Miscellaneous”, “The Cluetrain Manifesto” to name a few)

* Arfon Smith: astronomer, citizen scientist / crowdsourcer of galaxies and other things

* John Buckman: Digital Entrepreneur (of books and music), EFF cardholder

Admission is free, but space is limited. I hope you can make it out, and stay tuned for future events. Our hope is to have these monthly, with varying formats and a theme that loosely weaves together conversation. For more info, visit our website or follow us a @same_as. We even have a facebook page and posting on lanyrd (hey now, all the cool kids are doing it).

* bonus points if you get the reference

sunday morning linkfest

(perhaps this will help with my tab-overload problem.)

Here are this week’s posts of interest in the world of KT web-surfing.

To ease into your Sunday morning, pretty data visualization. It makes the world go ’round, really. See some here and here.

Over on dataists, Hilary Mason and Chris Wiggins list 5 areas that data scientists should be comfortable in (and IMHO, are spot on). – A Taxonomy of Data Science

To follow on that, OUseful.Info asks the question on many of our minds … what are we going to do with all this data?

Jim Caryl writes about molecular / plasmid jigsaws over on Nature blogs, and why it’s important to list full sequences and provide comprehensive instructions, well, to make his life (and many others in his research space) much easier. Take one look at the image and you’ll understand why.

If you haven’t read Mike Loukides’ most excellent post “What is Data Science” on O’Reilly Radar already. Go. Go now. I may be a bit late in posting, but it doesn’t get much better than that.

Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams – coiners of the term “Wikinomics” – are revisiting the mantra laid out in their 2006 work, now adding “macro” to the title, and focusing more on the power of monetary incentives and profits. Interesting use cases on entrepreneurial approaches to enacting change in the public sector from the US to Kenya, Palestine to Estonia.

From the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke – a brilliant new comic on Copyright’s Futures, and Pam Samuelson from Berkeley writes about how copyright law needs a digital-age upgrade (and rightly so). (HT @thepublicdomain)

Girl Power — All girl robotics team shows the boys what’s what. More on the Fe26 maidens. (love this).

For a complete sidestep from online collaboration and data science, former Globie Francie Latour has a phenomenal piece on the hidden history of New England, and its complicated relationship with slavery. Lo and behold, the North wasn’t so innocent.

And that’s all for this week’s installment of random linkage. Until next week.

** Also, stay tuned for announcement of a new project, Londoners. October 25. Mark your calendars.

back to old stomping grounds

I swear I didn’t get deported. Travelling back so soon after relocating that my shipped belongings have yet to arrive raises some eyebrows. Nevertheless, I boarded a plane to Boston for the week. The reason? EmTech at MIT the 21-23, and two days of meetings / catch ups with interesting folk of past, present and future.

This post isn’t to get into the nitty gritty details of last week’s highlights — that’s saved for a day less soggy with  redeye induced jetlag. For now, a few photo reminders of my beautiful Boston home, from old office space and the walk to my old apartment (not a “flat” there, sorry) to a friend’s Rubix cube creation. Full set can be found here.

Needless to say, it was wonderful to be back on old stomping grounds with familiar faces of all sorts (and new, as well). The exhaustion is massive, and Boston, you shall be missed, but it’s good to be home.

utilizing games to battle neurodegenerative disease

HT to Lesa Mitchell at the Kauffman Foundation for this one.

The Myelin Repair Foundation, in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Institute for the Future and a number of others, has posted a truly inspiring challenge to the broader community to battle neurodegenerative disease and the inefficiencies of the system. The means? An online game called “Breakthroughs to Cures“, where the year is 2020, a new neurodegenerative disease is sweeping across the masses, with no cure, no outward symptoms, and a seven to 10 year survival rate. The disease (a made up one for the sake of the game) is said to affect 100 million in the US alone, and the President is asking for the public to rally together and brainstorm what works and doesn’t work with the existing system, and how to accelerate the pace of research to stop the widespread contamination and cure the disease.

If you suspend disbelief for a second and leave your scifi opinions at the door, this is really inspiring – especially if you’ve ever had a loved one who’s suffered from a neurodegenerative disease (I have). The resources are slim, if any; the knowledge is scant and locked away in silos; and the outlook is often dim save a few measures known to help slightly slow the decreasing quality of life of most patients. I spent quite a bit of time in my previous job working with various disease research foundations and “venture philanthropy” groups, and I have to say, if this helps push the envelope even the tiniest bit and brings attention to the broader inefficiencies of neurodegenerative disease research, then I’m 100% behind it.

The game goes live on October 7th and lasts 24 hours. Click here for more.

for the mildly homesick out there

A dear friend back in Rochester passed this along with a note saying “it’ll help you remember home”. Having recently shipped off from the states to start a new, pithier life in the UK chock full of british slang and mannerisms, this sort of message makes its way through the wire pretty frequently. It’s the care-package stage, really, loved ones trying to ease the transition but also make sure my mental snapshots of “home” don’t fade.

I didn’t get around to checking out what my friend sent. It’s the new Arcade Fire HTML5 video, and by god, it’s brilliant. If you’re even slightly homesick, or even just want a tinge of nostalgia to go with your cup of coffee and biscuits, do check it out. You’ll be glad you did.

Moving on up

// cue the theme song from the Jeffersons.

The last few months have involved quite a bit of transition – from leaving my post at Creative Commons, to starting a new job (more on that later), moving to London (see Dr. Bunsen above looking after the cargo), to switching blog domains (the other one was quite sleepy, I know). But, alas, it’s time to get back into the swing of things, dust the cobwebs off my writing abilities and take the plunge.

So with that, welcome to my new sandbox, as if these boxes weren’t enough (luckily, those are still on a boat. out of sight, out of mind). Here you’ll find the latest in my world of digital science, the intersection with technology, life in London, and conversations at the edges – at least, my take on them. Be kind, I’m a bit dusty.

Oh, and for those of you that follow, the food blog is still where it always is, albeit in desperate need of an update.