Archive for April, 2010
Jigsaw Renaissance, Seattle newest hacker space, now has consistent open hours on the following schedule:
1p-10p Mondays
10a-10p Tuesdays and Thursdays
10a-7p Wednesdays and Fridays
10a-6p Saturdays
Starting next week(April 26th 2010).
iEdge 2010 an annual conference about current topics in information design and technology, organized by the ASIST+T UW Student Chapter. This year, conference sessions will focus on the theme of Society + Controversy. Conference sessions will encompass a wide variety of topics relating to information and technology, including legal issues, information design, access to information, and information misuse.
The opening address for this conference will be delivered by Sarah Schacht on Open Government and Social Entrepreneurship.
Sarah Schacht is the founder of Knowledge As Power, a 501c3 nonpartisan organization which provides Washingtonians online tools to track legislation on any issue and communicate effectively with their legislators. Sarah is a 2008 Echoing Green Semi-Finalist, a Ford Foundation Partnership Grantee, Sunlight Foundation grantee, and a contributor to O’Reilly Book’s Open Government book, publishing in February, 2010.
Closing Keynote Debate is on the Google Books Settlement: Perspectives and Ramifications
The recent Google Book Settlement has the potential to cause sweeping change in the way that rights and access to online works are handled. This debate will address the settlement’s ramifications and its potential impact on society, including ownership of orphaned works, antitrust and competition issues, and the rights of people with disabilities
About the Moderator:
Nicholas Mitchell: As senior associate for the Hughes Media Law Group, Nick focuses on a variety of intellectual property disciplines including strategic business development, video and casual gaming, and drafting and negotiating various online services, media development and marketing agreements.
About the Panelists:
I will be there speaking on Wikileaks.org and anonymous speech for social change also. It should be a great event.
Here is my ignite talk on Wikileak and Social Change through Anonymous speech:
Ignite 10NTC: Brian Rowe WikiLeaks.org: Social Change through Anonymous Speech from GregoryH on Vimeo. Thanks for getting it on video Gregory.
Everyone Needs a Safe Place to Save
Sarah’s commentary
I think a lot of people in the third world might be avoiding banks because of predatory practices, not just inefficiency and lack of branches. We need to have an integrated movement for nonprofit banks in addition to making banking easier. I’m also not sure that people who can’t afford to feed their children are going to see saving as a wise strategy. This seems to be enforcing the western idea of independence and wealth on people who don’t see a need for it.
Brian’s Response
/Agree
Stereotypes as Gatekeepers (Girls in CSE)
Sarah’s commentary
I like Star Trek, and some sci-fi, so maybe I’m biased, but I do have direct experience with this. I took computer science classes at University of Washington. The thing that alienated me from the field was that the expectations of time spent on the class were insane. The people who got 4.0s in my cs classes spent upwards of 80 hours a week on a five-credit class. I think women focus more on family and life-balance, and as a result we get forced out of the field.
Brian’s response
Sarah’s issue is true and one of the reasons women do not stay working at start ups or law firms which often have insane hours (or why I do not want to work many companies, I heart my family). Although it is not the hear of the issue, a lot of people in CSE professionally do not even have degrees. The stereotypes start much earlier then the talk goes into. When I teach chess at an elementary school many parents only offer the option to their male progeny. Many parents actively hide math and science from girls starting very early age.
Sarah’s commentary
I agree that privacy is dead. Everyone will know everything about everyone else and we’ll all be a whole lot more tolerant and forgiving. Much bigotry and intolerance, I think, comes from redirecting attention away from our own shortcomings. I think that transparency is more important than privacy. Favoritism and classism rely inherently on privacy. I think want Bear is trying to say is that people have a right to not be judged, and I’m not sure that’s true. You have a right to do what you do, to hold your beliefs and make your statements, but likewise everyone else has a right to make commentary on that.
Brian’s Response
Privacy is dead, get over it. Start treating people as humans that deserve respect regardless of their skeletons. We all have skeletons or we have not lived. I am concerned though that instead of embracing our diversity we will turn to placebos like religion to scrub our past of sin and in the process alienate our self from our past self. I do not want to live in a world where regret is the norm, I want to live in one where diversity leads to innovation.
When a woman has the cathartic experience of exhaustion from dance, they call it leaving her soul on the dancefloor. It is a community effort. The community stages or convenes a Fandango together.
Sarah’s commentary:
This has interesting parallels with some of the tech-related intentional communities that have popped up, like barcamps and tedx’s. The internet is clearly enabling like-minded people to intentionally create spaces and events that would not have sprung up organically. The Fandango community seems to consider themselves a family in much the same way the nonprofit technology community does. We get together and have fun and end up learning about each other’s experiences and culture informally.
Brian’s Response:
Personal, professional and private lives are often too separate for me. I hated living in the closet with dyslexia in law school and struggle to find communities provide more then a guise of openness. The performance was touching and I think there is a lot of potential to create ecstatic places that are built on community if more risks are taken.
I missed the first three talks will have to caught them online later:
TEDX Seattle is SOLD OUT with over 2x the number of people applying for tickets as they had seats for. They ran a Lottery for tickets and I lost 
maybe next year… Although my wife Sarah Davies got in and will likely be live blogging the event if there is power and wifi.
For the rest of us we have a few option on how to watch from home:
- Watch the TEDx Seattle Live Stream of the event and participate in a back-channel Twitter feed to support community participation via social technology. Speaker interviews and real-time exchanges will add to this new experience. Visit us at www.tedxseattle.com event day to see it all live!
- Become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with TEDx Seattle related news.The Master of Communication in Digital Media program at the University of Washington is proud to organize this event. We believe it represents the best of our region; a fearless entrepreneurship combined with a culture of empathy and engagement. With these 3 ‘E’s’ we connect to the world through the power of digital technology.
Thank You,
Your friends at www.TEDxSeattle.com and www.mcdm.uw.edu
Enjoy I think I will watch from a cafe on my laptop while working on my chess tactics.
PS if anyone knows of a cafe that is live casting please ping me!
Two days ago I made it public that I am going to become a chess master , well technically a chess player with a master title. This is the first step on that journey.
After 5 years away from playing competitive chess my chess game has suffered most in the area of chess tactics. I still remember a lot of strategy and even some basic endgames, but my ability to look at a chess board and instantly see combinatorial patterns has severely degraded. To remedy this I am adding two tactic quiz books to chess study plan.
For daily tactics practice I will be working my way through puzzles from Combination Challenge! by Lou Hays & John Hall. This is a great book of 1154 intermediate to expert tactical problems. I have placed my copy in my laptop bag with a notebook so that I can work on problems while on the bus, waiting in line or killing time at a coffee shop. My goal is to average 10 problems a day with 2 to 5 minutes per problem. This will get me through to the book in about a 120 days.
The second book I am adding to my tactical diet is Test you Chess IQ First Challenge by August Livshitz. This book consists of a series of timed tests. The test run 40 to 60 minutes each. I plan to complete two test a week. There are 56 tests in total so this should take me 6 months to work through.
Over all I think this is a manageable program for regaining some tactical competence, the total time commitment is about 40 mins a day on average to tactics. I may have to cut a little time out of playing late night WOW but it is worth it.
note to self: I need to improve the wikipedia chess master page.
Today I am attending a meeting of the Washington State Supreme Court Boards and Commissions visioning Process. The meeting is facilitated Bill Grace of CommonGoodWorks.com. Bill is a strong story teller who starts sessions by creating a space, Gracious Space, for the discussion of diverse ideas. Gracious space was described a place with respect, openness, free giving, head/heart, opportunity, listening, Cultural Competence. This idea was meet with at least some resistance. There were both concerns that the Gracious Space would create a wowo space of ideals but not action and that it would discourage open discussions that may have elements of conflict. I hear these concerns and am a little skeptical at the framing of a meeting as a gracious space.
How you describe a place sets the tone for the discussion. As a techie I value several things that are not usually considered gracious; failure, innovation, radical chance and relative truth. After getting into the meeting I understand a bit better why the analogy of a gracious space was used. One of the focal points of the meeting was creating a better system that takes into account Efficiency & Justice. There is a lot of concern that the process that today is part of could lead to commissions being combined or cut in a way that would result in loss of staff jobs or changes to those jobs. To be clear the committee was not formed with a mandate to cut expensiveness. My understanding is that the focus is on creating a commission system that works better and all ideas welcome. Change scares people and the Gracious Space is designed to place a value focus on the process of change. In retrospect I see value in the focusing of the meeting as a Gracious Space, but this space may limit the options available.
There are several things I could learn from Bill Grace as a facilitator:
#1 Use personal stories that paint the speak in both a positive light and stories that admit personal mistakes.
#2 Ask value questions to focus views Here is one example: What is the common good? A: Barn Raising A: Utilitarianism A: Veil of Ignorance A: Sidewalks or communal goods. These questions let the group form their values together.
Although I think the moderation was generally helpful to quell tensions, there was one area that I did not find helpful. Bill tried to focuse the group to help them find their individual core values. This was accomplished by handing out a sheet of core values with 22 preprinted values and 5 open lines. Each person was asked to find the 10 values they believed in most and they could fill in additional values. Then we, individually, were asked to limit the list to 5 and then 3. Theoretically this values assessment focused people on finding their three core values. Most people choose 2 or 3 of their core values from the preprinted values. We were then asked to share our core values and it was then pointed out how similar those values where. I did not find this to be very values as it biased people to the values on the list. If we had started with a blank sheet the diversity of the group would have shone through. My core values included Rashomon & Failure these were not held in common with others. The exercise created artificial unity at the cost of diversity & creativity.
I am very curious to see where this process leads. We need an integrated strategy that shares best practices and serves more people effectively. We have a ways to go.
Best Quote of the day:
“We must speak the truth in love to power“, Dr. Cornell West
I find that when I let people know what my goals are I am much more likely to reach them. My community of friends become more supportive of my efforts and reinforces the steps I am making to accomplishing the goals. With this post I am taking this idea of sharing goals to a more public level and asking for your help to keep me on track. I will be updating and revising this post at least once a month with progress and challenges that arise. Each post will contain 12 goals; three short term, three medium term, three long term and three other. Short term goals can be done in 10 or less days. Medium term is 10 to 30 days. Long term is 30 days to a year. While other goals have their own dates.
While I find goals very useful as a long term motivation, I also find that it can be difficult to accomplish longer term goals without a more concrete short term strategy. Two years ago, while working for CC my roommate Tim introduced me to an amazing system GTD. GTD recommends taking each goal and creating a next action item to make longer goals more manageable. I will be adding the the next steps to each item on the list.
Short term goals:
1. Visit Jigsaw Renaissances‘ new physical site
Next Action Item: Watch email Friday & Monday for a key holder to show up.
2. Launch New in IP – a video blog where I can can cover IP issues from a FC/Pirate view.
Next Action Item: Make first Vlog post on the site over takedowns.
3. Blog or Vlog (video blog) at least 5 times a week.
Next Action Item: post over chess goals tomorrow
Medium term goals:
1. Read a book for Fun! (I graduated from law school a year ago and have only read 2 books for fun since then. I use to read a fun book a month or even a week. I need to get back in the habit of having fun reading)
Next Action Item: Choose a book to read for fun and Read the 1st chapter.
2. Finish reading and review Confessions of a Public Speaker- Scott sent me a copy months ago and interviewed me during the writing. I have been meaning to finish this for too long 
as it is on one of my favorite topics.
Next Action Item: Read chapter 6&7
3. Vlog (video blog) about a personal topic – maybe health care, dyslexia, activism, tattoos or ….
Next Action Item: Choose a topic and outline the vlog post.
Long term goals:
1. Teach 2 more class – I loved teaching @ the iSchool last quarter and want to teach more.
Next Action Item: target three programs for class pitches.
2. Give an Ignite talk on Dyslexia. (i did this for NTEN last year to a small audience of less then 100 and got a great response. I this a topic I have a lot to say about and would love to share with a wider audience. Unfortunately I did not get video of that talk. PS if you know anyone with video of the 2009NTC Ignite talk please ping me!)
Next Action Item: Find out when the next Ignite session is.
3. File NPO paper work for FFIP. FFIP has been a volunteer project for 5 years now and it needs to take the next step into being an NPO so that it can provide more opportunities for the people that give time to the org.
Next Action Item: Identify and reach out to 3 possible board members
Other Goals
1. Publish a wikileaks paper. I am speaking for the third time on wikileaks later this month, I should really finish the paper and get it submitted to some law reviews.
Next Action Item: Contact my editor and get moving on a final draft.
2. Couch surf in PDX.
Next Action Item: Choose dates to go down and see people.
3. Make chess master title by June 15 2012. I have been out of competitive chess for about 5 years now. I quit when I started law school and miss it a lot. This year I started teach chess classes at Gwen’s School it reminded me of how great the game is.
Next Action Item: start a study plan and post it to the web.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and help my along these paths. Now off to start on the Action Items!
Disclosure: I have recently joined Powel’s partner program. If you decide to buy GTD or Confessions of a Public Speaker using the links in this post I get paid 7.5 percent of the sale price. I will be doing a short post about the partnership program and why I choose Powel’s Books in the near future.
I ran talk yesterday in Atlanta on Sharing Content, Terms of Service, and Copyright Best Practices which covered Creative Commons licensing and included information on the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), Privacy, and Terms of Service.
Here are the slides from the presentation: