About a year ago when I decided to study abroad in Germany, I knew that it wouldn’t be easy or cheap, I also knew it would help me in the long run but I had a hard time identifying exactly how. Now that I’m back in Seattle I’ve begun to see how it affected me. Thanks to Course Hero, I have a fancy infographic with the results of a survey to help illustrate my experience!

Two of the main reasons that I decided to study abroad was to learn more about how wearable computers can be used to change the way we communicate and to better understand the technological differences between the US and Germany. For some reason I had grand illusions that Europe and especially Germany was more technologically advanced than a lot of other countries including the US. What I found was a large digital divide between regions, age groups and social classes much like we have here in the US. Read more…

This Fall, I had the privilege of serving as a peer facilitator for a course at the University of Washington’s MCDM program. I am continually impressed by the diversity of the program, and not just by diversity in its typical measure of gender or ethnicity (though that sort of diversity is certainly present).

I’m talking about intellectual diversity: the ways in which MCDM students and faculty approach and solve problems, skills and abilities applied in novel and meaningful ways, and outcomes that far exceed my admittedly high expectations. The student work from Fall 2011′s COM 546 Foundations course - Narratives & Networks in Digital Media – exemplifies both the challenges and the opportunities that true diversity can provide.

Course Background

As a foundational course to the MCDM program, Narratives & Networks in Digital Media had the unique position of orienting Cohort 11 students both to the theory and also the application of many elements they will encounter in the program. Taking a bit of their own advice, this course was newly revamped for 2011, and co-taught by MCDM Director Hanson Hosein and Dr. Malcolm Parks. The result for this first incarnation? Engaging discussions, relevant lectures and guest-speakers, and tangible takeaways for professionals and creatives, alike.

Students in this course witnessed the rise of the Occupy movement, the start of the upcoming nomination and election season, and the death of Steve Jobs. Meanwhile, they engaged with new tools and platforms, tried valiantly to “publish then filter,” and were brought together in new and sometimes challenging ways. Students were exposed to basic principles of digital media, and become comfortable with the central tenet of the MCDM: to effect trusted and persuasive communication, professionals need to develop a compelling narrative tied to strategic network engagement.

With this post, we would like to share some of their work, some of the process, and some of the core philosophies of the MCDM program.
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As this story goes to post, Wikipedia is four hours from going dark to protest SOPA and PIPA.  Wikipedia is certainly the most public and probably largest internet property to take the unprecedented step of shutting down their service to protest the impending legislation.  Wikipedia follows other well known tech entities like Reddit, I CanHazCheeseburger Network, O’Reilly Media and WordPress.org in shutting down on Wednesday.

Wikipedia is planning on replacing their standard interface with information about SOPA and PIPA, protest links and phone numbers of U.S. Representatives and Senators.  Other protesting sites will also be providing similar information on their homepages.

SOPA/PIPA reaches deeply into the MCDM curriculum.  We teach the content authoring skills that SOPA supporters are trying to protect.  We teach the ethics and practices of free and unfettered internet access.  MCDMers are at the vanguard in strategizing to content monetization.  Its hard for many of us to take a confident definitive stance on SOPA because the legislation is like a house of mirrors when it comes to what we do here at the MCDM.

In the spirit of innovation and debate, we at the Flip ask you to weigh in on the issues.  Do you support SOPA/PIPA?  Are you vehemently against SOPA/PIPA?  Are you confused by SOPA/PIPA?  We want to here from you.  Let us know what you think about these pressing issues.  Please comment below.

If you’re one of the few people who don’t live on Facebook 16 hours a day, you may still be catching up on its list of most shared articles of the year.

No. 33 on the list, ahead of CNN’s story about the death of Steve Jobs, is a MoneyTalksNews article titled “Things Babies Born in 2011 Will Never Know.” Published on Yahoo Finance, the article was inspired by a similar Huffington Post list of 20 things that became obsolete this decade.

As we get ready to wrap up 2011 with Champagne and streamers, it seems fitting to revisit the MoneyTalks list of obsoletes.

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Ivan Pankararú and Leandro Pataxó representing the Pankararú and Pataxó indigenous peoples of Brazil traveled to the Pacific Northwest to join with the Puyallup on this year’s annual Tribal Canoe Journey. The two traveled to this corner of the globe in order to seek knowledge, build relationships and connect with the theme of this year’s journey:  “Loving, Caring, and Sharing Together.” They started their canoe journey at Owen Beach and carried on through Alki Beach, Suquamish, and Tulalip with the final landing ceremony at the host site in Swinomish.

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A little over two years ago (in the midst of the “Great Recession”) I finished my BA from the University of Washington Bothell. The degree was in Interdisciplinary Studies with an emphasis in Society, Ethics, and Human Behavior. I looked around for work and I was prepared to except almost any kind of job, but I soon found out how hard it is to get any job at all these days. But with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, I kept thinking, who wouldn’t want to hire me?

Not only was I competing against others right out of college who had degrees people wouldn’t laugh at, but I was competing with others who had been in the workforce for years and had recently been forced to find new jobs because of the recession.

After sending out resumes, cover letters, and continual rejections, I realized that it was time for a new approach. I started to think that if I couldn’t get someone else to hire me I could just hire myself.
Well, it made sense at the time.

I set up Evan West Media, as a a sole proprietorship. I was able to get modest work doing digital media consulting for local bars, restaurants, and even with the City of Everett. I found most of my work through word–of–mouth. Luckily for me I had a fiancé (now wife) with a stable job and health benefits.

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At the Great Wall (Badaling Section)

Thousands of people flooded around me. I stared in exasperation at the sign. Yet, I knew that it had to be emblematic of something about my week-long trip to Beijing — my first to China. True to my personality, I had tried to go against the tide by trying to enter the Forbidden City from the less popular north gate. But as of July 2^nd, the sign informed me, visitors to the very much once “forbidden” home of the Emperor of China, had to enter from the south, and leave by the north.

I had been happily using my Garmin GPS watch to track my weekend pedestrian expedition in Beijing.

But the thought of trudging back to the south end, only to end up back where I was presently, and then have to do it all over again to get to the subway seemed like many steps too far.

So what did I do? I skipped visiting the Forbidden City – a treasured UNESCO site – altogether. Rather I content myself with a deep hangout at Beihar Park, and then Tiananmen Square. And I spent all day using stodgy Internet connections through Beijing to download a rental of the Academy Award-winning “The Last Emperor” from iTunes for my return flight to Seattle. Bertolucci’s famed exclusive access to the Forbidden City for his film would have to suffice.

My walk through Beijing

After all, I had accomplished what I had set out to do: to get a glimpse of China for the first time, especially from a digital media perspective. My vehicle in was as a participant in transmitCHINA, where I hobnobbed with entrepreneurial digerati from both the Middle Kingdom and the New World.

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Earlier this year, Corey posted about Qwiki, a startup whose investors include Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Groupon co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky, and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim.

Qwiki has opened its alpha release to the public since January. With its stated objective to “deliver information in a format that’s quintessentially human – via storytelling instead of search”, Qwiki has generated great interest, even hyped by media as the “next Google.”

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