Wednesday, February 29, 2012

TNS#79: The Maker Faire & Maker Revolution

TheNextStep#79 was taped 6/23/11 and featured 4 guests all involved with the Maker movement in some way... the show was inspired by the highly successful 6th annual MakerFaire in San Mateo in May2011 (makerfaire.com). Joining the panel were Alex Peake founder of PrimerLabs.com and CodeHero.org, Joe Mathes co-founder of Hack the Future, Laurence Miotto Dir. of IT for the Museum of Art & Digital Entertainment (themade.org), and Antonio Gussenhoven of CodeHero.org. Lively show, thanks, guys!

At the 2011 Maker Faire I was particularly inspired by Nolan Bushnell's talk about his new online highschool initiative Speed-To-Learn, with curriculum to be provided via the Apple AppStore; and by Massimo Banzi's talk about how he was motivated to start the Arduino project. (The Arduino is a wildly successful open-source single-board microcontroller design that now has hundreds of compatible plug-in boards and thousands of shared code files; it's been especially popular with students and do-it-yourselfers.)
The show has been uploaded here:
http://blip.tv/the-next-step/thenextstep-79-the-maker-faire-and-maker-revolution-5993284

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

TNS#78 - Men's Story Project

The Next Step #78 was taped 4/12/2011 and featured Josie Lehrer talking about her Men's Story Project (mensstoryproject.org) as well as multiple clips from the many dozens of short films on the site. The show has been posted here:
http://blip.tv/the-next-step/tns-78_mensstoryproject-5582992

What Josie has done is send out a call for submissions soliciting for men to share personal stories that address their issues/experiences with masculinity. This curated group of men was then coached on developing and sharing their stories for live audiences. The live Men's Story Project events are filmed, and video clips from these events are then posted on the mensstoryproject.org youtube channel (see link on the home page), as a means of crowdsourcing culture change on male gender norms and gender relations.
There are about 35 pieces posted to date - all of them poignant, many funny, some brilliant. She has done this in multiple cities now, and there are two feature films available which document the live events - one in English, and the other in Spanish. Very inspiring... thanks, Josie!

From her website: The Men's Story Project is a replicable community arts and dialog initiative in which local men explore social ideas about masculinity for the purpose of health and justice. The longterm goal is to help expand the presence of genuine personal expression of peace and social justice in communities.
“This program is about healing.”
Storytelling: For preserving and passing on traditions, for challenging and breaking traditions, and for the creation of new traditions.
Mission: To strengthen social norms that support healthy masculinities and gender equality, and to help eliminate gender-based violence, homophobia and other oppressions that are intertwined with masculinities, through ongoing events of men´s public story-sharing and community dialogue.