Making Geek Chic: Can Tech Crafting Outfit More Girls for Technology? is an article in the new issue of Bitch magazine.  I was inspired to write about tech crafting after participating a core conversation about the subject at SXSW Interactive this year.  It’s available online, so please feel free to read and comment!

LEDs are the New Sequins: Fashion, Craft, and Wearable Technology, a new post for Zeitgeist.  This is basically where I geek out about the rad potential of wearable technology – now and for the future.

Zeitgeist. Freyja and I have been busy dreaming and scheming for Zeitgeist.  We’ve got some newish posts up over at the blog on Agile development as well as DRM/copyright madness.

Big Chop. I cut off all my hair.  Fourteen inches of it, to be exact.  Say goodbye to hair inertia.  (”Goodbye, hair inertia!”)  I haven’t felt this light and determined since the very first time I ever went in for The Big Chop, and that time wasn’t entirely my doing, anyway.  (It was 1995. I was in Berlin.  The stylist and I weren’t communicating so well.  He got annoyed.  He told me, “I’m going to make you look like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby.”  It was a declaration.  Off it went.  And off it mostly stayed, until I moved to NYC and had hair indecisiveness of epic proportions.  And then off it went again!) I’m keeping the long haired earrings, though.  Yes.

Concert of the Summer. The XX at Central Park Summer Stage.  Yegods, I love this band and I loved this show.  The XX have done something nifty: they make better post-punk than most actual post-punk bands did, mostly because they produce a sound that we’d like to remember as post-punk.  It’s derivative, but really new and shiny.  And that came out in smart, gentle waves of awesome during their Central Park show.  With a limited and stellar lightshow, they managed to fill up a giant space with their drowsyhappy songs.

The XX at Central Park Summer Stage. Photo by jamieleto, courtesy of the internets. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieleto)

Milestone. I celebrated my third anniversary of self-employment!  I’m especially glad and grateful to have  so many great (and sometimes challenging) clients.  Here’s to another great year!  (With new health insurance, even!)

But, as usual, the Whitney delivered in an unexpected and truly great way.  I’m hard pressed to pick my favorite museum in New York City, but the Whitney is surely among the top contenders because of its size and general density of awesomeness – there’s just enough to keep you delighted during any visit, and not so much that serious museum fatigue sets in.  One of the museum’s current exhibitions is Christian Marclay: Festival, and it’s quite innovative: a performance space houses daily interpretations of Marclay’s works by musicians, multimedia stuff abounds, and visitors are encouraged to participate in the creation of a collective musical score.  All of this is cool, but I’m particularly excited by incorporation of Flickr into the experience: visitors are encouraged to photograph the performance space and upload photos to a group Flickr pool to document the exhibition.

Photography is one of those ubiquitous museum no-nos.  And when photography is allowed, visitors usually engage in it for solely personal purposes – to say, “I was there.  I saw THAT.  I kind of now own my own piece/copy of it.”  It’s exciting to me that the Whitney is extending Marclay’s collaborative and community-minded work to social sites – and encouraging visitors to create their own works with it.  It’s so encouraging to see these tools used in such a way.  I look forward to seeing even more of it.

I snapped a few pics with my Droid camera.  They’re not great, but I enjoyed the experience and I’m glad to contribute my few images to this creative effort.

Christian Marclay: Festival @ the Whitney

“We are living in a science fiction novel that we all collaborate on.” – Kim Stanley Robinson

A few months ago, I was having brunch with my ubersmart friend Freyja Gallagher, reflecting on the energy and excitement of SXSW Interactive, and talking about all things digital.  Freyja and I had the same conversation I’ve had a lot with people who work in various digital places and spaces: there just doesn’t seem be very many awesome and productive opportunities to meet and learn from all the cool people in digital media community. There are networking groups, and conferences, and unconferences, and events focused on thought leaders, and the like.  But many of us are looking for a different kind of group experience: one that fosters cross-pollination of interdisciplinary knowledge, one that uses the tools we apply to client projects in the service of social change or creative fun, one that gives us the chance to explore digital culture, and one that gives us opportunities to grow in interesting and meaningful ways.  Building a way to cultivate that experience seemed to be a challenge too good to pass up.

We decided to build Zeitgeist.  We launched it all official-like yesterday.  We put our brains together and summarized our thoughts on the state of digital culture for our blog, and we’ll be featuring more think-y kinds of pieces going forward.  We have a Zeitgeist Social coming up in September, and a whole series of events to follow.  We’ve got our social media channels up and running, so I hope you’ll find us on Facebook and Twitter.  Most importantly, I hope that you’ll come out and share your thoughts.  After all, we might be building one big brain together – right now.

Digital people, come together!

"Together we float through space" by Sam Brown @ explodingdog.com

This year, we piled into a couple of mini-vans on the 4th of July and made our way to the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial.  We weren’t going there particularly because it was July 4th, but it was a great way to spend the afternoon – moving and reflective.  Despite the fact that many in my family have served, we don’t spend a great deal of time truly celebrating that service during the holiday (and I spend less time doing so when I’m not with my family).  One artifact that really engaged me was a copy of H.G. Wells’ pamphlet, “The War That Will End War,” published well after his best science fiction stories.  I can only imagine how it must have felt to believe so strongly in WWI – and to be such an imaginative creator – and then feel such disappointment and horror at the world of WWII.

The museum was marvelous.  I really admired their use of interactive/multimedia elements, the breadth of their collection, and how much was packed into the experience.  I was particularly impressed by the use of large panel infographics.  That sounds weird and maybe a little trite, but I mean it sincerely.  I really loved these large-scale data visualizations.  They seemed some kind of a product of a digital culture.

Infographics, how I love thee!

On the family front, I found myself knee deep in nieces and nephews.  My oldest nephew is about to start his senior year of high school.  My youngest niece is due in November.  That’s quite an age span, and the weekend was noisy and full of games.  At the same time, I spent a fair bit of time helping my parents consider their life insurance choices.  Life insurance policies, rates, and provisos seem scandalously difficult to understand.  I built spreadsheets.  We looked at a range of coverage and premiums.  The scary reality of my parents’ age and their mortality became more clear.

We gathered for fireworks in the pouring rain at a high school parking lot.  I watched Ghana’s heartbreaking loss in the World Cup.  I ate my weight in potato salad.  That just seemed like the right thing to do.

I flew in over New York City late last night and the city was twinkling.  There were fireworks going off over two ballparks, and the explosions were lovely, but small – dwarfed by all the electric awesomeness of a normal NYC night.  It reminded me, again, of how amazing this place really is.  As I stepped out of the airport into the sweaty summer night, small dogs got very excited about being freed from their purse prison, a man walked by me wearing a “Go (heart) your own city” t-shirt, and a taxi cab cut off a police cruiser.  Go, New York!  Go, America!