Fade to Play

Ok. I have been delayed on getting this up. These are the slides and an expanded version of my corresponding prepared speech from my Barcamp Vancouver 2007 talk entitled “Performance and Creativity in a Digital Playground”. As I had limited time, I focused my time on a focus group discussion about Facebook with a promise to post my slides and text.

Slides (on Slideshare.net)

Speech

Relevance: Always looking to share Facebook knowledge

technorati tags: barcamp barcampvancouver barcampvancouver2007 facebook creativity f8

The Learning Centre is very pleased to announce the inaugural session of its Fall 2007 Brown Bag Lunch series!

Please join us this Tuesday for a seminar presented by Phillip Jeffrey, a UBC graduate student at the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC).

Topic: “The Role of Facebook in Everyday Student Life”
Where: MacMillan Room 350
When: Tuesday, September 11th, 2007, from 12:30pm to 1:30pm

Facebook is a social utility originally launched in 2004 by Harvard University undergraduates exclusively for students. Facebook has over 35 million active users ( 3.3 million in Canada) and 68% log-in daily. It has become a primary tool among students for communication, information sharing, and for organising events among their real-world friends. The phrase “I’ll facebook you” is a regular part of student vernacular. Facebook is the top website in Canada. Last September it became accessible to anyone with an email address.

The goal of this presentation is to discuss what can be learned from the popularity of Facebook among students and to explore what some of the educational and academic applications may be. Mr. Jeffrey will begin with a discussion about what Facebook is, how real world campus events such as the potential closing of the UBC Aquatic Centre Weight Room mobilized the UBC community through Facebook, and provide insight into why it has become such as integral part of everyday student life. He will conclude by addressing what appropriate social behaviour is within this digital space and outline potential privacy issues regarding Facebook usage.

Phillip Jeffrey is a graduate student in the Interdisciplinary Studies program and his home department is the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC). His research explores social and cultural issues in user-generated spaces through ethnographic study. He has a number of media appearances to provide Facebook expertise on CBC Radio One Vancouver and his research blog is http://fadetoplay.com.

Please RSVP to duncan.mchugh@ubc.ca. Refreshments will be served. Feel free to forward this email to any interested parties.

The Brown Bag lunch series is a series of discussions, presentations and hands-on workshops about technology use for teaching, learning, research, everyday use and (hopefully) fun. The sessions are open to all.

For information on future sessions, please visit http://brownbag.notlong.com/

I hope to see you there!

Duncan McHugh
Multimedia Developer
The Learning Centre
t: 604.822.1628
duncan.mchugh@ubc.ca

UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems
Suite 264C-2357 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
www.landfood.ubc.ca/learningcentre

Relevance:

Opportunity to talk about Facebook and improve my public speaking skills

technorati tags: facebook ubc brown bag lunch series learning presentation

I will be heading to Artcamp 07 this year for the first time. I am pretty excited to be meeting digital artists and creative people within Vancouver and hope to socialise with some of my interesting friends. I will be giving a 30 min talk and group discussion about Facebook entitled “Artistic Expression in Facebook”. I want to talk for 15 minutes about what Facebook is, lead into how creativity is expressed there, and conclude with my theory into why artistic expression exists within this social utility. I will allow 15 minutes for a group discussion among the artists regarding how Facebook and digital media may/may not be meeting their needs.

If you are interested, sign up to attend.

Relevance:

An excellent opportunity to meet and mingle with artists in Vancouver.

technorati tags: facebook artcamp artcamp07 creativity

Last Saturday night I attended the Tiësto concert here in Vancouver. Although, it was an amazing concert, rather than focus on the music, I would like to share my experiences as an ethnographer, regarding the mobile technology which I observed.

Before Tiësto even appeared, as the music began everyone at the front had their mobile phones or digital camera out to record the moment when he would appear. Throughout the concert, although, some people took pictures, many were recording the music onto their digital devices to listen to later. What is interesting is that, we have now become accustomed to being allowed to digitally capture significant moments in our lives, whether a birthday party, a gathering at a club, or a concert.

Relevance:

Recording special moments to share later with friends or to help ourselves remember ‘being there’ are now an expected part of the concert experience. Could you imagine attending a concert where digital recording wasn’t allowed?

technorati tags: digital camera mobile phone tiësto vancouver concert

I am still feeling the warmth of my weekend at Barcamp Vancouver (Aug 17th -18th) . I had been excited to attend this un-conference since Northern Voice back in February. There are really alot of interesting and creative people in this city and attending meetups and -camp events here provide an informal opportunity to chat and discuss our common interests regarding the Internet and digital technologies.

As this was my first Barcamp, there were a number of highlights for me. As I had for some unknown reason woken up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep, I spent the morning drinking lattes on the couch to stay awake. The benefit of this is that I had some really interesting conversations, although I did miss some cool sessions (sorry Todd). I chatted with Darren Barefoot whom I hadn’t seen since Barcamp and was able to learn about life in Malta, a fascinating European country.

It was very cool to meet Todd Sieling from ma.gnolia and be able to tell him what I love about this social bookmarking service. I have been using ma.gnolia from early summer and I like that I can give someone thanks that shares a bookmark that I like. I also trust Tara Hunt and Chris Messina and like being kept up-to-date on relevant content that they bookmark. I also feel that the community is tighter and I have more friends in Vancouver and San Francisco that use it. Thomas Vander Wal sums up his appreciation for ma.gnolia quite nicely.

In the afternoon I attended Todd’s session about ma.gnolia and twitter which was informative in helping me understand how ma.gnolia uses twitter to keep users informed about status updates. I didn’t even know ma.gnolia was on twitter until his talk. I also attended Kris Krüg’s photography session although I could only stay for half of it since it overlapped with Todd’s talk.

The day ended with 2 sessions on Facebook. First, I had planned to spend 30 minutes talking about Facebook applications from a socio-cultural perspective and then spend 30 minutes answering questions. However, I was bumped to 30 minutes total, so I decided to forgo the talk and to post the powerpoint slides and talk online as I believed people would rather get questions answers about Facebook that see slides. The slides still aren’t up yet, but I will post then along with the talk I was going to give sometime in September. Following my session, Greg gave a cool talk on Facebook applications from the perspective of a developer.

I will be putting my slides and the text of the talk I was going to give later in the month.

Relevance:

I enjoyed attending -camp events because I can meet interesting people and I can improve on my public speaking skills.

technorati tags: barcamp barcampvancouver barcampvancouver07