A few weeks ago, I was introduced to Greever Wemyss (Second Life name) by a mutual friend who realized we both have an interest in local government and its use of Web 2.0 and virtual worlds. After a few discussions, we decided that we would create a Second Life group that is specifically focused on local government to work in parallel with our involvement in the Real Life in Second Life Government group. We felt it was important to create this additional group to avoid cluttering up the other group with specific issues that might not interest those in state and federal government.
Our first meeting will be Mon., Sept. 8, 2008, at 1:00 p.m. EST. in the Civic Forum area on Public Works Island. We will start with an open agenda. Anyone working in or having an interest in local government is encouraged to stop by and contribute. If you can’t make the meeting, you can also join the group MuniGov 2.0 in Second Life to receive notices of future meetings and meeting minutes.
How can the building industry use Web 2.0 tools to enhance delivery of services and better integrate new concepts like sustainability? These are some of the questions and issues that will be discussed at the upcoming barcamp, Be2Camp, to be held at The Building Centre on Store Street in London on Oct. 10, 2008. This event will begin at 10 a.m. and will adhere to the delivery method of a traditional barcamp event.
The agenda continues to evolve, but to date those attending can look forward to hearing about topics such as Web 2.0 technologies, collaboration through document management, use of open souce or public data, use of charrettes, peer production, virtual worlds, green technologies, and post occupancy evaluations. Other proposed topics include the use of voice over IP services such as Skype, carbon footprints, cloud computing, discussion of BIMstorm, social networks, and podcasts. A Pecha Kucha session will take place after the close of the barcamp.
As usual, the pace and organization of these events evolve over time even changing throughout the actual day of the event. The focused and fast-paced delivery has become one of the more attractive components of this type of conference. Those working in the building industry who may have an interest in attending are encouraged to visit the Be2Camp network site, sign up as members, look through the agenda, and register to attend for free. Anyone who may want to volunteer to speak can also sign up at this network site.
BIW Technologies, EMS Ltd., and The Building Centre are the designated sponsors to date – other companies or suppliers to the industry can sign up for sponsorships by e-mailing Martin Brown, one of the Be2Camp organizers.
Ok, I am really starting to get a complex about my avatar. For the second time this year, I have tried to join a social/business network and been told by the administrator that they don’t let people stay in their network unless a “real” photo is used in the profile. In other words, “No Avatars Allowed.” The network this time is a CAD-related ning network named Space Claiming. Pam Broviak's Avatar - Banned for being non-real
Because I already have blogged about “avatar discrimination” here, I will not go into all that again. But each time this happens, I cannot help but wonder why the network administrator makes this decision. Are they so superficial that they need to actually see what someone looks like in order to adequately judge if someone is worthy of being admitted into their special group. They certainly cannot think I am nonhuman – I post blogs, upload photos, comment on other’s posts, respond to messages. Maybe they hate the way my avatar looks. All of these thoughts go through my mind, and then I realize if someone can only accept my contributions if they can see what I look like, then I probably don’t want to be part of that group anyway. It is kind of like what happens in high school, but I never thought 28 years after graduation, I would still be dealing with that mentality.
Maybe next time, I will just upload a photo of my crazy Aunt Sophie – God rest her soul. Would network administrators prefer this because it is real? My Aunt Sophie (now deceased).
Today, I am giving a presentation at the 2008 APWA Congress; my topic – virtual public works. My portion of the presentation will focus on the use of Web 2.0 tools in the public works and government sectors. Representatives from TEEX and World2Worlds are also participating. You can check out my presentation at this link. Those who would rather view the document in more of a book-like format can click here.
There is also a video that goes along with the presentation showing engineering and public works related sites in Second Life. I will post this later and add a link to this blog.
Photo of the dancers in the APWA New Orleans parade
Yesterday my husband and I attended the opening day of the 2008 annual APWA Congress, held this year in New Orleans. APWA always schedules outstanding speakers for their general sessions, and yesterday was no exception. Benjamin S. Carson, MD, a pediatric neurosurgeon, gave an inspiring talk about taking risk and how it affects our lives. One of his remarks hit home with me. He told us how at one pivotal point in his academic career when things were a little tough, a counselor tried to talk him out of going into medicine. Of course, Mr. Carson did not take his advice and went on to become an outstanding doctor.
How many times did someone try to give me bad advice about choices in my life? The first time was early in my engineering career when I had gotten an Associate degree and was looking for work as a civil engineering technician. An older and well-respected engineer in my community met with me and seriously told me that civil engineering was a dying field. If I really wanted to stay in the engineering field, I should switch to petroleum engineering – that was where the future was for engineers. Wow, good thing I didn’t listen to him.
The next time I received more advice like this it came from closer to home – from my mother. I was only a year away from graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, and I happen at that time to be facing a few challenges in my life – personally and financially. Her advice: quit school and give up your dream of being an engineer. Find some nice young man and settle down. That close to achieving my degree, there was no way I could actually take her seriously no matter how upset she was that I did not follow her advice.
The last time someone tried to talk me out of doing something, I did take their advice, eventually realized how wrong they were, and finally decided once and for all to politely listen to people who try to talk me out of things and then do my own assessment of the situation and follow only that. Fortunately that time only involved a sales clerk who talked me out of creating a tiled shower – he said it couldn’t be done, and at the time I was too young and inexperienced in building to realize that tiled showers are created every day. So at least I only missed out on a tiled shower and not a career opportunity.
But I started to wonder, how many other people are talked out of following and achieving their goals by others who give them poor advice or try to discourage them from facing up to adversity and following through. And why do people do this? People question why the United States seems to be losing ground with education and achievement, and yet it seems we are our own worst enemies.
The final speaker I listened to yesterday was Carole Copeland Thomas. She focused on helping others do well and empowering ourselves and our colleagues to achieve goals. So I thought is was interesting how I went from hearing the problem in the morning to focusing on the solution in the afternoon. (To Dr. Carson’s credit, he and his wife are also working to overcome our nation’s slide into oblivion by running the Carson Scholars, a foundation that recognizes achievement in young people.)
I was also able to speak with several exhibitors and collect information about fuel management systems and stormwater components – two of the primary purchases I am focusing on at the moment. And finally the day ended in true New Orleans style with a Mardi Gras type parade from the convention center to the aquarium where we were treated to traditional New Orleans cuisine.
Ok, the pizza in the title probably caught your attention, but the real focus of this blog will be “barcamp” since I am beginning to become more involved with this concept and thought others might be interested in hearing more about it. Not really sure how familiar the average person is with that term, but until my friend Martin Brown – a building professional from England – brought it up in a conversation, I had never before heard of it. According to the all-knowing Wikipeida, a barcamp is defined as: “an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.”
Martin certainly piqued my interest in this type of conference venue but I was not sure I would get a chance to experience one myself. But then last month I noticed that there was one scheduled to be held in Chicago on Sat., August 8th covering a topic in which I have a lot of interest: Social Media (here is a link to the event site). So I registered which meant that I simply added my name to the list of attendees on the wiki that was used as the Web site for this particular barcamp. No fees were required, although they did take donations of $10 to $20 at the door. For those of you who attend regular conferences, you will notice how completely unlike a normal conference this registration process is. But that is only the beginning. Photo from the 2008 SocialDevCamp in Chicago
The basis of the conference seems to be that it is totally informal and completely engaging. Participants are encouraged to not only present but enter into discussion during the presentations. The dress and meeting site is informal. We met in a building on the IIT campus in Chicago. Most were in jeans and t-shirts although some did dress up a little more. Each session was 30 minutes long and consisted primarily of Powerpoint-like slides. The event started at 8:30 a.m. and lasted until 6 p.m. with coffee and doughnuts in the morning, pizza for lunch, and a get-together at an Irish bar in Chicago after the conference. Because of the informal nature of the barcamp idea, sessions changed throughout the day so a volunteer updated us after each presentation, letting us know what would be next in each room.
Another aspect that was totally different from the type of conferences I attend was that everyone had either a laptop or an iphone. And everyone was on the Internet on and off throughout the presentations.
Because many of us were following each other on Twitter, we could post comments or converse online with others in the room or even with people we knew who were not there. And this is where something incredibly interesting happened that illustrates the awesome power of social media. One of the presenters was giving his session using an Internet-based slide show. I noticed that a few others in the room had picked up on this and were actually following the slideshow by going directly to the URL he was “broadcasting” from.
Wanting to share my new-found knowledge of this online tool with others, I sent out a Twitter about the online tool with a link. Martin Brown picked up on this, as we follow each other on Twitter, and he visited the Web site noticing that it was run by someone in Hungary. So Martin e-mailed this person in Hungary asking about using this online tool for the barcamp we are organizing (which will be covered in a future post). The person responded indicating he was often in London and would be very interested in presenting at our barcamp. So within hours, information from a presentation given in Chicago reached London and then Hungary resulting in the participation of a professional in Hungary at a future barcamp in London. Again, this was all set up within hours!
Overall, I think I retained more from this conference than I normally would at a more traditional event and met more people. And so of course I cannot help but think of how to apply this to public works – I have to think that it would work well. Those of us in public works have a lot of experience to share and as someone said at the barcamp, all of us are smarter than one of us. Perhaps a barcamp like this could be set up at one of the APWA conferences – either at national or state – to try it out for a day and run it parallel to the regular conference. If anyone else has attended a barcamp, I would be interested in hearing your opinion of how well you would think this would apply to our industry.
