ANNOUNCE: City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community (in SF)

Posted on February 8, 2010

Our good friend Kari Gray is helping to create a technology arts festival in San Francisco this year called “City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community“. Kari originally contacted us about Spectropolis, our Wireless Arts festival from a few years ago, wanting to create something similar out on the west coast. What her team came up with is significantly and impressively more than Spectropolis was, while keeping the core goals of wireless technology and community engagement (leave it to a San Franciscan to one-up us on these concepts!).

There’s an open call for projects, and we think everyone should submit something to the festival. NYC has a lot of innovative, creative, artistic nerds and nerdy artists, and more representation of our great city in SF can only be a good thing!

Recent exhibitions, festivals and conferences across the US and in Europe have taken wireless networks, public space, locative media and urban environments as sites of intervention, creativity, and critique. Formulated within the emerging context of networked urbanism and mobile media, City Centered: A Festival of Locative Media and Urban Community will focus upon dynamics of the shifting, locative, cartographic and social space of the city. It is organized by educational, arts, community-based and civic organizations and asks how locative media can act as a platform and venue for community-led expression.

From within San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, this festival will celebrate the rich possibilities that art and technology offer for urban communication of place and place-based media. City Centered focuses on the use of locative media and wireless technologies for site-specific and neighborhood-based interventions. Artists, designers, architects, community and cultural workers –people, places, and devices — will meet for four days of street-side celebration, public exhibitions, a symposium, and workshops. The festival seeks new work aligned with the themes of creative mapping, urban storytelling, sentient space, body awareness, local history, contested spaces and gaming.

The festival’s main goals are:

to promote creative public use of free wi fi and open networks in the city of San Francisco

to encourage meaningful collaboration between artists and local organizations in connection with wireless networks

to introduce site-specific locative media art to urban places

Announcing: New York's Technical Community Holiday Party

Posted on December 15, 2009

NYCwireless is joining forces with a number of other prominent technology organizations in NYC to help host the 2009 Technical Community Holiday Party.

Be sure to RSVP!

More than a palindromic number, 12/21 is an evening for drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and special guests at the professional networking event for New York technology.
Our mission is to bring together all aspects of technology and the business of technology in one event.

Come rub elbows and connect with colleagues from every segment of NY tech, as we unite the technical and business communities that we’re all a part of.

All are invited – CTO/CIO, junior admin, engineer, developer, entrepreneur, manager, author, speaker, media, and business professional.

This, our third groundbreaking event, is co-hosted by Bootup and Girls in Tech (see our 2007 and 2004 events).

Space is limited and we may have to close RSVPs early.

Date: December 21st, 2009 at 7:00PM
Location: Forum, 127 Fourth Avenue
Business casual attire is required.

Community Broadband Hearing at Columbia University on Dec. 11

Posted on December 4, 2009

UPDATE: This is a Community Broadband Hearing by Columbia University, not an FCC Field Hearing. Sorry for the confusion!

Friend Bruce Lincoln, Entrepreneur in Residence at Columbia Engineering’s Center for Technology, Innovation & Community Engagement, sent us an invite for a Community Broadband Hearing taking place next Friday, December 11 at Columbia. I’m planning to attend, and suggest those of you that fill the different roles outlined below attend as well.

If you are planning on attending, leave a comment so we can find you!

It is important that members of the local community have an opportunity to participate in the National Broadband Planning process which is currently underway in Washington.

Toward that end, I invite you to participate in an FCC Field Hearing on Friday, December 11, 2009 at Columbia University in New York. The meeting will be held in Davis Auditorium from 8:45 am until noon.

The field hearing will bring together policymakers, elected officials, not-for-profit organizations, small businesses, anchor institutions, public agencies, broadband providers, foundations, community-based organizations and community leaders, academicians, and researchers. Together we will share thoughts on how collectively we can ensure all New Yorkers have access to broadband and the educational, economic and social opportunities it can provide.

I hope you will be able to attend as a representative of your organization or constituency. To fully understand the importance of broadband access from all points of view, your participation is vital. The agenda includes a “community visioning session” where you will have an opportunity to share your thoughts, ideas, and concerns with the group.

You can confirm your attendance via e-mail to bl2317@columbia.edu.

Agenda

Friday, December 11, 2009
Davis Auditorium, Columbia University
8 am-noon

8:00	Registration and Breakfast
8:45	Welcome (Bruce Lincoln, Columbia Engineering)
8:50	Opening Remarks (Dean, Feniosky Pena-Mora, Columbia Engineering)
9:00	“An Overview of the New York State Broadband Vision and Strategy” (Edward Reinfurt, Executive Director, New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation, NYSTAR)
9:30	“Vision of New York City’s Broadband Future” (Gale Brewer, Chair, Committee on Technology and Government, New York City Council)
9:40	Short Break
9:45	Practitioners Panel Session
10:15	Audience Q&A
10:30	Community Visioning Session
11:30	Wrap-up
12:00	Adjournment

Come join us for Breakout Festival's BETA Session: What's The Craziest Place You'd Work?

Posted on August 17, 2009

Do you do your best thinking on a bike racing through traffic? Do you get inspired in the shower? Is blaring techno music the only way you can clear writer’s block?

If so, then join us at the second of a series of Breakout! Beta Sessions taking place in Manhattan in August and September. We bring the Wi-Fi and some gimmicks to get your creative and collaborative juices flowing. This Friday, we’re going to brainstorm locations for outdoor coworking during the festival in September, and record them on the Breakout! Wiki. We want to get off the beaten path, and find the craziest, most stimulating, electric environments for creative work in New York City.

When: Friday, August 14th, 2009, 3 pm – 6 pm

Where: Bryant Park (Look for the Breakout! signs and balloons in the southwest corner along 40th St. – see map)

7 to 5th Ave, B, D, F, V to 42nd St – Bryant Park

RSVP: Via Meetup or email elysse@breakoutfestival.org

Breakout! BETA Sessions happen every Friday through September 4, in preparation for the Breakout! Escape From the Office Festival September 17–October 16.