Speakers in the News »

1/27/06
GRACE DAVIS

"State of Grace" blogger Grace Davis has announced plans for the first-ever Woolfcamp, to take place on February 18 and 19 in Santa Cruz. As she explains on a recent post on her blog, the inspiration behind this idea came from recent do-it-yourself events in the emerging technology space: "The 'camp' concept is based on the barcamp and brainjam innovative models of conferencing- cooperative, participatory, zero bureaucracy, zero power tripping, total immersion, big fun. Historically, these camps and jams have been geek-based. WoolfCamp will differ in providing a focus on the creative aspects of blog content. The goal is to help each other with writing on our blogs, in whatever form we wish to explore - memoirs, creative non-fiction, fiction, poetics. . . Come, evolve with us. Come teach, come learn, come eat a lot of M&Ms, come hang out. World peace through blogging." Speaking of world peace, Davis will be part of the "Us and Them: A Blog Conversation Survival Guide" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.

02:43am CST | +

1/26/06
danah boyd

On her blog zephoria.org, danah boyd posts a thought-provoking essay about how our society has become much more willing to tolerate extended adolescence: "I'm kinda torn in resolving all of this. In many ways, i feel like half of my generation doesn't want to grow up while half is working hard to do so. How much of this has to do with our inability to inherit certain other privileges of adulthood (power, money) and our lack of interest in dealing with adult responsibilities that are getting increasingly harder like money and health? As adults live longer, there is more pressure to remove youth from the workforce, from any position where they can compete. How much is this fucking with the dynamics? How much is the generational divisions and the efforts to legally regulate young people (both now and in their futures by faulting them for their youth) part of adults' need to maintain power at risk of losing it to a larger liminal generation?" A PhD student at UC Berkeley, boyd will explore similar themes for the "Designing for Global and Local Social Play" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.

08:59am CST | +

1/25/06
NIKOLAI NOLAN

Finalists for the Sixth Annual Weblog Awards have been announced and online voting on these sites remains open through Tuesday, January 31. Founded by Nikolai Nolan (pictured above) and organized by the online community, this competition honors the best of the blogosphere in 30 different categories including "Best Web Application for Weblogs,"Best Tagline of a Weblog," "Best New Weblog," "Lifetime Achievement," and "Weblog of the Year." Nolan will emcee the awards ceremony for the 2006 Bloggies, which occurs on Monday, March 13 at 12:30 pm at the Adobe Day Stage Cafe in the SXSW Trade Show & Exhibition. The Bloggies are not to be confused with the SXSW Web Awards which take place on Sunday evening, March 12 at the Downtown Hilton Hotel.

10:00am CST | +

1/24/06
JON LEBKOWSKY

Watch Jon Lebkowsky talk about his book "Extreme Democracy" in a short interview posted on Author Views. The author explains that the genesis of this collection of essays emerged "from thinking that goes back to the earlier days of the Internet. It is the idea of having many smaller groups that may be networked and work together on projects. So we put up a group blog where people blogged about politics, democracy and technologgy." Transitioning from governments to gadgets, Lebkowsky will lend his expertise to the "How to Develop for (Convergent) Personal Devices" panel at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival. This session is part of the digital convergence track that is co-organized by the Digital Convergence Initiative, a public / private venture that encompasses the cites and economies of Central Texas.