Visualising our good and bad intentions globally

I took part in an extremely inspiring meeting with Euan Semple and one of my clients in London recently. We talked about technology, communications and many other aspects of our work but also personal approach to technology. At some point our discussion drifted to the idea of visualisation of global efforts to drive change, improve our lives and strive for goodness as opposed to evil intentions. Do we remember those who are mean, evil, inhumane more often than inventors, scientists, artists or any other individual or cause which brings happiness to our lives? Can we visualise it?

I am sure that today it is pretty impossible to measure human intentions. We had countless discussions with our IT team in my previous work place about monitoring of on-line conversations with specific focus on intentions (to purchase, to get involved, to act as brand ambassador or detractor) and I am sure that there are a lot of wise people out there digging into this area. On the other hand increasingly we see better and better attempts to visualise quite interesting sets of data. We have managed to visualise reactions to World Cup 2010 on Twitter or just in the UK reactions to elections. There is a great study of reactions to iPad launch on Twitter too! (worth checking out also for the points on noise analysis made there). There is a great visualisation of sentiments around economic outlook of the New York Times readers which I think is the closest to what we had in mind.

But can we really measure real-time sentiment of all human beings living on this planet to see if good or evil is in the lead? Will we ever be able to do so? And if yes, would we want to know?

Kids and Technology (Facebook) for #MCN4

Photo by @markspoff

I just had a great discussion with attendees of Media Camp Nottingham 4 on kids and technology. As I need to run to join my family, I will just include the slides and recording of the session for now, hoping that I can add my points a bit later too! In the meantime, enjoy the bits below;)

Thank you to the organisers for having me over!

Kids and Technology (Facebook) for Media Camp Nottingham

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"I may cause a scene"

My son is a geek. It's obvious.

How about his mother?

The campaign I am posting below made me realise how important it is to clearly manage the time with kids, specially for someone working in or with social media/Internet.

In my case (and I strongly advise you do the same) a clear schedule of the day does the trick. Mornings are for all of us to wake up, which seems to be a very slow process, so there is not place for Internet. Actually, I belong to those who check their e-mails in bed before getting up. Remember, if you do so, make sure your partner is ok with it too;) If I check the list in my inbox I can relax, even if there are new todo tasks in my mail - at least I know what awaits me. I walk my son to school and before I sit down to work I am spending at least few minute staring at the garden, playing guitar or sipping my coffee on the sofa - to balance back the hours I am to spend in from of my screen!

After work and school we spend time away from laptop. I am trying to follow the rule of using the Internet for my son's games and education only, not my own work (unless the virtual worlds fall apart;)). I am resting from the noise. I get back on-line once he is asleep. So even if we just sit together engaged in separate tasks, I am trying to avoid the web. There is this element of attention and different space that worries me. I do not want to be present-absent in front of a child, for whom I AM the world. At least for now. At least as much as I can.

So if you are a geek parent, please remember - the virtual reality is a part of our live nowadays, but only PART of it;)

Oxford Girl Geek Dinner - Launching

I know, I posted about it ages ago;) And yes, we did have our first event, however we treated it as a pre-launch, basically initial meeting. But before I tell you more about the launch event, let me remind you the basics (taken from  central website):

The Girl Geek Dinners were founded on the 16th August 2005 as a result of one girl geek who got annoyed and frustrated about being one of the only females attending technical events. She was tired of being assumed to be marketing, tired of constantly having to prove herself and decided that she just wanted a change and to be treated just the same as any other geek out there, gender and age aside.  After all to be geeky is to be intelligent, have passion for a subject and to know that subject in depth. It’s not at all about being better than others, or about gender, race, religion or anything else. Those things just detract from the real fun stuff, the technology, the innovation and the spread of new ideas.

So what did this geeky girl do to change the world of geeks and girl geeks everywhere… well she got in touch with a few well known bloggers, posted online about her idea of getting geeks to educate one another over dinner and then arranged the first girl geek dinner event with a little help from her friends. The first event had 35 people at it all from London and the surrounding area, shortly after people started to hear about the events and companies started sponsoring them to cover the food and drinks cost.

Then they started popping up in other UK cities as she trained others up in how to run the events, spreading the formula for them… so they then started popping up in Europe… and shortly after that over in Canada… Now they are starting to pop up in New Zealand and Australia. Who knows where will be next.

Our Mission Statement:

To break down old fashioned social stereotypes.




To identify routes around barriers to entry for anyone to get into technology.




To encourage and nurture those interested in technology.




To work with local schools, colleges and universities to encourage more women into the technology industry.




To support those currently in the industry and work together to figure out the issues and the solutions.




To include men, women and children in this journey…. and not exclude men from Girl Geek Dinner Events

Now, Girl Geek Dinners is a series of events currently active in many parts of UK, Europe and the globe, so I am really happy to see it kicking off in Oxford as well. On Tuesday, at 6PM we are meeting in Cowley Rd, at White October offices (thank you for sponsoring us, once again!) to discuss personal branding on-line, various tools for social media marketing and to network. Later on int he evening we will move to Cafe Tarifa for sponsored (by Oxford Innovation) drinks and further chat with live music in the background. I really hope this small but crucial for women in technology event will take off and turn into a regular occasion to share experiences, tips and business cards;)

Join us on Twitter! To attend our Tuesday event go to the event page here. Really hope to see you there (boys are more then welcome, you just need to find a girl who will join you;)).

iPad apps for kids

If you ask me, iPad is a device designed for kids (and if for grown ups then just because we ARE big kids in disguise). So when we talk about safe, but effective and in dept Internet usage for children Ipad apps become an increasingly important topic. I have found two interesting blogs dedicated to iPad apps for kids, iPadforkids and apps4kids. Over at Online Classes there is a good list of learning apps for kids. TechRadar in the UK posted the best 10. Mashable includes kids apps in their usual updates, like this one on books re-designed for iPad. Now, I will obviously have my own opinions about various apps my 5 year old is using, so let me start with just a few we really like, and maybe one or two we had to delete.

First of all, Angry Birds - classing game for all ages. It's brilliant, it's funny, and it gives my son great feeling of success. Simple thing, but the fact that he can go back to all previous levels helps every time he gets stuck with the highest one.

NASA app - great solution to the issue of YouTube browsing (which cannot really be controlled). Here, everything happens within the app, so parents can be sure that the child accesses only kids friendly content.

Kid Art for iPad - great tool for kids creativity with few nice pre-defined themes and options to save creations easily.

Drawing Pad - even better than Kid Art for iPad. Dawid loves the stickers idea and endless options for tools and colours.

Intro to Math and Intro to Letters gave us a good start to accept the notion of learning on iPad. When faced with the choice of various action games, kids might think learning is boring. Those two little apps are very simple, visually friendly and engaging.

Simon's Cat iPad app - now, we love this one simply because we love Simon's Cat.

Lego Ninjago - we love it, because we love lego;)

Dinopedia by National Geographic - great app for dino lovers!

And now we are getting more and more interested in apps related to books, but the only one we like so far is Peekaboo Forest.

That's all from me - let me know, what YOU like, so we can test it too!;)