Author: chris

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5 reasons why we’ll be at UrbanLabs!

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urbanlabs Around a year ago I went to Citilab-Cornellà for the first time to participate in UrbanLabs 08 – you can see my first impressions here. A year later I'm working at Citilab and taking part in the preparations for the event, which we will also be going to as cataspanglish. So here are some of the reasons cataspanglish will be attending:

  1. UrbanLabs is a hands-on get down & dirty event which aims to have a real impact and not just be a talking shop although there are some…
  2. Great keynote speakers – Adam Greenfield, Juan Freire, Ben Ceverny & Dave Harte. These are not your boring "circuit" speakers, but people with a real passion for what they're doing & thinking, people who get involved in things such as…
  3. The Ideas Bank which Platoniq are coordinating – real ideas & projects will be presented and the participants of UrbanLabs will be voting on the "best" one to give some financial aid to from the (low) fee from the event because …
  4. the motto for Urbanlabs  (a contribution of one of its founders, Enric Senabre)  is (read this post by Ramon Sangüesa): "Technocitizenship" (geeks with civic conscience and citizens with digital abilities) and "Socioinnovation"  (let technocitizens invent their collective future) – so come &
  5. let's invent our collective future!

See you there…

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Developing Birmingham’s Digital District – big pipes, money, creativity, innovation and chest wigs

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digitalbirmingham

Last week I was in Birmingham to talk about Citilab-Cornellà at Developing Birmingham’s Digital District. The aim of the event was:

… to  provide an early opportunity for policy makers and stakeholders from Birmingham and the West Midlands to quiz other major European cities that are further along the journey in developing their own digital district. This dialogue will inform Birmingham’s policy thinking and ideas as the city embarks upon developing its own digital district.

Here’s my “presentation” which doesn’t make much sense on it’s own but thanks to Rhubarb Radio, you can listen along by clicking on the button below:

Developing Birmingham’s Digital District

View more documents from Chris Pinchen.

Listen to Developing Birmingham's Digital District Seminar on Rhubarb Radio

Click here to listen to all the presentations

Paul Hadley filmed the panel session –

Birmingham’s Digital District Part 2- the Panel Session from Paul Hadley on Vimeo.

There was some pretty lively twitter stuff going on too: #bhamdd

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PodCamp Barcelona 2009

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Well PodCamp Barcelona 2009 last weekend was a great success and we'll be writing more about it over on the PodCamp Barcelona website. I just wanted to say a quick thank you here to everyone who participated and made it such a great event. Cheers! We've put together a page to gather all the media generated by PodCamp '09 here and plans are underway for 2010 – WATCH THIS SPACE

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The Birmingham School?

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Jon Hickman: MA in Social Media from Kasper Sorensen on Vimeo.

When it was announced that Birmingham City University was going to be offering the first MA in Social Media anywhere, the blog & twittersphere went crazy here in Spain. One of the many reasons for this is the power of validation that events from elsewhere have here, something I will explore later in another post as part of a wider analysis of cultural differences & social media. I like this video of course leader Jon Hickman presenting the MA because it’s the antithesis of academic presentation in Spain. It’s in what I’m becoming to think of as “the Birmingham School” – in a pub and with an appearance by Andy Mabbett!

The video by Kasper Sorensen was recorded  “At WxWM Jon Hickman from Birmingham City University gave a presentation about the Uni’s plans to launch an MA in Social Media.WxWM is the West Midlands’ answer to Texas’ SxSW if you hadn’t figured that out already ;-)”

MA Social Media blog

twitter hashtag #masocialmedia

“Official” University page

Twitter Jon Hickman

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Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation

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mb

I met Michel Bauwens, the founder of the P2P Foundation, at UrbanLabs which took place at Citilab in Cornellà, Barcelona. He kindly agreed to record an interview for the PodCamp Barcelona Podcast, but due to his hectic schedule it was impossible to do until recently. I finally caught up with Michel when he was in Amsterdam and we recorded this conversation over Skype from his hotel room. I think the recording provides a very good introduction to the work of the P2P Foundation and Michel’s vision.


About the P2P Foundation (from the P2P Foundation wiki)

We function as a clearinghouse for open/free, participatory/p2p and commons-oriented initiatives.

We aim to be a pluralist network to document, research, and promote peer to peer alternatives. Our political aims could be summarized under the following maxims:

  1. ending the destruction of the biosphere by abandoning the dangerous conceptions of pseudo-abundance in the natural world (i.e. based on the assumption that natural resources are infinite);
  2. promoting free cultural exchange by abandoning the innovation-inhibiting conceptions of pseudo-scarcity in the cultural world (i.e. based on the assumption that the free flow of culture needs to be restricted through excessive copyrights etc…).

For more information, or to get involved with the P2P Foundation, check out these sites:

p2pfoundation.net

blog.p2pfoundation.net

Michel Bauwen’s extensive collection of bookmarks http://delicious.com/mbauwens

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