I just finished attending the fantastic 2012 Mozilla Festival. I got inspired and wrote a blog post about it for work at hastac.org/blogs/ruby-sinreich/2012/11/12/collaborative-documentation-mozfest-including-joi-itos-call-maker-rev and cross-posted below.

MozFest might be the first physical event that I’ve attended that used Lanyrd.com. (I’ve seen it used for online events in the past.) It looks like about half of the 1,000 registrants (and all of the speakers) also signed up on the MozFest Lanyrd site, which makes it not the most efficent directory in terms of finding people.

But where Lanyard was truly essential was displaying a grid of the conference sessions. The MozFest site itself did list sessions, but simple as a textual list on one page which made it very difficult to understand the unusual “organic” schedule. Given that sessions were different lengths with a verity of starting and ending times and that there was no printed program available, the temporal grid was the only way to understand what was going on.

But now that the event is over, Lanyrd shines even more with a feature I hadn’t seen before. Any participant can contribute “coverage” of a session to the site in the form of notes, links, pictures, slides, videos and more. We were frequently reminded via Twitter to contribute, and the reult is this page chock-full of great reources with which to follow-up: lanyrd.com/2012/mozilla-festival/coverage/

In that coverage, especially recommend checking out the brief and inspiring keynote by MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito from Sunday morning, in which he reminded us that we’re all “a bunch of fucking weirdos” for wanting to be makers in any degree, but that makers are changing the world’s culture. He compared his own frustrating experience with formal education to his sister‘s success. Clearly they are both brilliant, but even among siblings great minds don’t always fit into neat academic boxes.

Citing a conversation with the great activist/thinker/lawyer Lawrence Lessig, Ito said “You don’t win by changing the world’s laws. You win by changing the world’s culture.” Whether you think of yourself an activist or not, “Understand that what you are doing is political. It will disrupt the system. Embrace it with your fist in the air” says Ito. Or, to put to put Joi Ito’s 21st century vision in 19th century verse, here’s Arthur O’Shaughnessy (by way of Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka, I’ll admit):

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

Photo credit: Paul Clarke

One of the downsides to having an admittedly awesome Twitter name is that I am involuntarily exposed to fools like this several times a day. I don’t usually say anything but this time I did, and hilarity ensued. Maybe someday the people on Twitter will actually understand how Twitter works.

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I don’t think I could sit through the canned B.S. that are American political debates without the deep insight and cutting snark of my friends on Twitter. So I Storified my favorite bits:

I was a doubter when Holden Thorp was first appointed to be the UNC Chancellor, but he has turned out to be the best thing to happen to South Building in decades. I’ve been surprised to see some of my friends blaming Thorp for UNC’s athletics scandal and acting as if staff abuse of med air flights was a capital crime.

Thorp clearly seems guilty of trusting Matt Kupec too much, and allowing him to waste taxpayer dollars. But Thorp is also a tremendously thoughtful and effective leader of this hugely complex academic institution. One stupid screw-up wasting money does not outweigh the great job he has done for many thousands of students, for Orange County, and for the state of North Carolina. In fact, I think he’s due a lot of credit for the badly-needed daylight that’s been shed on UNC athletics.

The Chancellor’s position has become untenable now because of athletic boosters and anti-intellectuals like Art Pope pounding the drums of “scandal.” These people are not concerned with the quality of education available to North Carolinians. Of course the Kupec/Hansbrough thing was a big mistake, but it doesn’t make Thorp unfit to do all the many things required of a good university chancellor. Let’s don’t blame Thorp for having to clean up the mess left by decades of athletic corruption and mismanagement.

And with Pope stacking the BOG with his Republican pals and getting himself appointed to a new panel on the future of the UNC system, I’m afraid the next Chancellor will be someone that doesn’t care about Chapel Hill and does whatever the Ram’s Club wants. This will also not be a person who is able to fight off Pope’s decimation of the state educational system.

I urge the Chancellor to reconsider, and I call on students, alumni, faculty, and staff to continue to show support for Holden Thorp. The reason I love the Tar Heels is that I love the institution they represent. The Carolina Way means academic integrity and fair play. If we give UNC over to Art Pope and the Ram’s Club, I won’t have much to cheer for.

Sincerely,

Ruby Sinreich,

UNC class of 1993

A few weeks ago as many of us were patriotically wishing a happy birthday to the United States of America, a coalition of organizations including the ACLU and EFF launched a Declaration of Internet Freedom. I love how simple they kept it, while also encouraging engagement with the statement in a variety of online communities. The declaration is below, in text as well as the obligatory infographic format.

Individuals are invited to sign it at  Access, ACLU, CREDO, EFF or Free Press, and to comment on it at on reddit, Techdirt, Cheezburger (yes, really!), Github and Rhizome. They have also invited organizations to sign on. I signed it on behalf of HASTAC, where I work. Have you or will you sign it?

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The brilliant Kellan Elliott-McCrea (my friend and former colleague) has put together a searchable archive of the first year of Twitter posts, and I’ve had some fun quickly going down the rabbit hole to 2006 when I had just gotten married and was enjoying travelling around to DC and other places for my job at NetCentric Campaigns.

I tweeted 170 times in that first year starting in October 2006, about 6 months or so after Twitter was effectively born.

At the risk of being narcissistic, here are a few of my old tweets that I thought were emblematic of that time. One of the most interesting things is how similarly I use Twitter today. I still talk about the same subjects including basketball, music, open source, and politics (but a little less “I had this for lunch” and no more Second Life). I still share links, converse with others, and complain about riding transit. I even live-tweeted a talk by David Weinberger at the 2007 NTC.

Plumbers gone. Rockin’ out to the awesome “Break the Chains” compilation www.iamedia.org/breakthechains/
9:43 AM – 13 Oct 06

Very excited that I have no meetings tonight! What will I do with all this freedom?
4:53 PM – 24 Oct 06 (Something I will probably never tweet again for at least 15 years.)

Just added a custom twitter bug to my blog. I’m so trendy!
3:01 PM – 21 Nov 06

Just gave up on Civimail and Dreamhost ever behaving, and sent a newsletter with Constant Contact instead. A demoralizing day for open source.
4:14 PM – 12 Dec 06

Women’s halftime score: UNC 44, Del St 22. Everything is under control.
2:54 PM – 28 Dec 06  (Already tweeting about basketball!)

Currently obsessed with Facebook.com and Change.org. Look me up if you’re in there.
10:19 PM – 20 Feb 07

Just had my brain enjoyably adjusted by Cory Doctorow, speaking at UNC.
4:02 PM – 22 Feb 07

@SteveOlson: w00t! Does that mean you are actually going to start Twittering now?
11:01 AM – 6 Mar 07  (My first @ reply.)

Stopped due to freight traffic again! This may be the last time I voluntarily ride Amtrak in the South.
6:54 PM – 16 Mar 07

Gazpacho

The weather hitting 100 degrees everyday this weekend and I can only think about cold food. So far I made ceviche, caprese salad, and gazpacho (pictured) which makes me want to watch Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown again. imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0095675/

Local politics can be difficult to follow, given the minimal media coverage and (fortunate) lack of political party involvement. Friends often ask me for my advice about how to vote in sleepy local elections such as this year’s Orange County Commissioners race. I can’t in good conscience endorse any of the incumbents. The current board seems to have invented a new form of government in which the staff sets policies, and then elected officials occasionally have misinformed or irrelevant discussions about them after the manager has already implemented his decision.

I strongly endorse Mark Dorosin and Penny Rich in District 1. Both will bring good ideas and real leadership to the Board of Orange County Commissioners. In District 2, I support Renee Price who will be
a better advocate for progressive policies than the incumbent. If you live in Hillsborough or rural Orange County, you will also be selecting 3 school board members. I recommend giving a vote to Lawrence Sanders who will bring thoughtful enthusiasm to the job. And there can be no doubt that Valerie Foushee is the best choice for NC House in every way. I’m happy to say that The Independent Weekly agrees, and endorsed all of these candidates as well.

If you enjoy living in one of the most open-minded and forward-thinking counties in North Carolina, as I do, I hope you will join me in voting for these hard-working progressive leaders. And if you have your own ideas about who people should vote for, I hope you will join the conversation at orangepolitics.org/issue/elections/2012.

Ruby Sinreich
Chapel Hill