After three years of activity, meetup.com displays 103 members, 22 meetups and 10 reviews for IxDA Limerick.
We had an impressive number of invited speakers, networking events and workshops. Two of our members organised the firstDesign Jam in Ireland this spring. Together with milklabs, the Limerick hackerspace, we organised the first series of Ignite talks in Limerick.
At the moment, we are in the process of collating all the information we have on meetup.com on an independent website. Alan Ryan, who is doing an internship at the Interaction Design Centre at the moment, joined me as event co-organiser for this first event.
I would like to renew my invitation for the members who would like to get involved in the organisation of this local chapter of the IxDA to step forward. We’re looking for new ideas, new activities, new people to run theLimerick chapter of IxDA. We’re looking for more practitioners to join our ranks and lead the conversation.
The meetup on Wednesday opened this year’s series and was scheduled as part of the Design Week.
As the speaker we had in mind couldn’t make it for Design Week, we decided to take the opportunity to present our own work in progress:
Urban Social Technologies are information and communication technologies applied in an urban setting and with a social purpose (Pedersen and Vallgarda, 2004). Emerging at the intersection of Social Media with Ubiquitous Computing and enabled by the wide scale adoption of smartphones, Urban Social Technologies are increasingly pervading our lives. The effects are multifold and invite to reflection. A presentation by a team of researchers and students from the Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick will provide the material meant to trigger a conversation on the participants’ practices and opinions related to location-based practices, with a special focus on the Limerick urban space.
We couldn’t have wished for a better group of attendees on the night! We had a very interesting mix of people from various backgrounds, although current and former IMedia students formed the majority. The big map of Limerick we borrowed from Limerick Smarter Travel was excellent for triggering memories related to places and supporting the conversation.
Although it was lashing rain outside, I decided to go to this event organised by Limerick Local Heroes. Walking is good for the soul and is good for the body, and even more so when you walk for a good cause.
The rain stopped about 10 min before the walk started, and it started again when we finished – so I guess we were really lucky! It’s been years since I walked on the Island, it was good to see how much things have changed for the better there! Over €1300 were raised this morning for the Cancer Foundation through the donations people made when registering for the walk.
Well done to Kevin Haugh, the organiser of the event, and to all the other people involved: stewards, walk leaders and especially to the walkers.
Everybody knows by now about the attraction Social Media exerts on me. I am “Social Media-curious”, and I love trying new things!
I started blogging back in 2002, hard coding a project website where I was sharing frequent updates. I started Coniecto back in 2004 and I was involved in starting and maintaining at least another dozen of blogs. I got a Twitter account in the winter of 2007, but I didn’t “get it” until I started following Leisa Reichelt, whom I met two months later at reboot 9.0. I must confess that foursquare intrigued me from the beginning and I got an account when my friends started talking about it. But without a smartphone it was kind of impossible to “get it”!
In 2010, I bought my first Android phone and started “playing”. It’s been 2 years now, and I am still struggling “to get” it. I’ve read everything that fell in my Google Reader, I’ve listened to conference presentations (the Local & Mobile Conference in Raleigh had a whole session dedicated to location-based social networks), I’ve checked in 476 times, but I am not hooked yet. Just curious!
I can’t deny having my moments of delight. I remember going to Dingle back in 2010 for a bicycle tour. I had my sandwich under an annoying drizzle out in the Marina, and checked in. I discovered that Bernie Goldbach was the mayor of the place. Next day, while waiting for the bus back to Limerick, I had the inspiration to check in again. Guess what? I ousted Bernie:) Checking in to Philly Airport on the way to a conference and getting a swarm badge was fun as well…
Ok, you’re checking in and you discover that a friend is (or was there). Or you get a free coffee after 5 checkins. You tell your friends you’re at a show everybody wanted to go to, but didn’t make it. But is there anything more to it?
When my friends are sharing their foursquare statuses on Facebook or Twitter – most of the time it makes me dream about how these places look like. Sometimes there’s a photo: foursquare is a very nice vehicle if you want to post a photo on other social networks with one click! Reading status updates from my friends is great most of the times: I know where they are, I know they are well and going about their lives. I know when there’s something exciting happening in their lives and they want to tell the world! There’s that ambient intimacy Leisa Reichelt was talking about.
Every now and again, I hear about new places in Limerick – like in the case of Canteen. A few others are extremely popular among foursquare users: LaCucina, where the food is to die for, the Absolute Hotel – my favourite place for business meetings in town, the Milk Market that got a new life and sees things happening 3 days a week now…
Adoption of Social Media applications, foursquare included, is influenced by a whole series of factors. Practices are shaped by culture, by the availability and reliability of underlying technologies, by the example of peers, and so on.
I really hope to find the time to do a foursquare study this year!
The Interactivos?12 workshop brought together about 30 engineers, artists, architects, developers interaction designers, activists and hackers from around Europe to work on six topics that had been selected from a huge amount of submissions. The six projects focused on a wide range of topics, from making energy consumption visible and raising awareness about recycling, guerilla gardening and collaborative cooking and eating in public spaces to encouraging inhabitants to unveil the city’s hidden potential or report cycling accidents/incidents.
I decided to join the Mobile Cityscapes team when Corelia Baibarac, whom I had met at the Local and Mobile conference in Raleigh earlier this year, told me that her proposal had been accepted. Cora is an architect doing a PhD in Trinity taking an interesting angle on encouraging mobility. We were joined by Kathryn Maguire, Christine Gates, Alessio Chierico and Eulalia Guiu. I commuted for most of the workshop, although I spent a couple of nights in Dublin. The representatives of MediaLab Prado insisted on continually documenting our work, and I took responsibility for the daily accounts, helped by Eulalia. To give you an idea about the daily activities, here is the account for each day of the workshop:
On the 25th of August, the space we were occupying in the exhibition was altered to display the results of the workshop, and we had a big launch party. We were amazed to see how many people came in and spoke to us about what we had done!
During the workshop, we used random walks in the area selected as testbed to involve potential users. We developed scenarios, a rough video prototype (thanks to my collaborator Alan Ryan who made it possible in the short amount of time we had!) and a prototype for the web-based platform (thanks to Tim Redfern, our team’s mentor, and to Max Kazemzadeh, who worked with us as technical assistant).
It was really tough work, but I had the privilege to work with some great people and to get to meet the mentors, people working on the other projects and the staff of the Science Gallery. Teresa Dillon, the curator of Hack the City, did a great job pushing us the whole time to find better ways of describing what we were doing. Jane Chadwick minded us during the 3 weeks, making us to feel at home at the Science Gallery. And it was not an easy job, with the hundreds of people coming in every day!
Being “an exhibit” in the gallery and doing work at the same time is quite a difficult task, but it had its advantages: I met friends I hadn’t met in a long long time passing by and saying hi!
I also had the chance to re-discover an area of Dublin I thought I knew well – with its hidden corners, contrasts, mysteries and great people who stopped to talk to us.
In short, it was a fantastic experience and I enjoyed it , although my body cried for rest after a busy year!
As Corelia is continuing her work on the Mobile Cityscapes project as part of her thesis work, and I am working on developing Connected Limerick further, we decided to continue our collaboration. The InfiniteCity native mobile app will be the next step, replacing the one that we have used for generating data during the workshop (EveryTrail).
This is the 5th year of 3Dcamp – when did time fly?
When we started back in 2008, there were a number of similar events running in various cities. There was a podcamp in Kilkenny, a barcamp in Cork, and in 2008 we had a webcamp in Cork before the BlogTalk conference.
When we started discussing the idea of a barcamp at UL, James put forward the idea of branding it as 3Dcamp. It was a time when 3D representations were seen as the coolest thing after sliced bread, Second Life and other virtual worlds were just surfacing. Google Earth and Sketchup were trendy, and everybody was interested in wii hacks. I didn’t know much about 3D technologies at the time, but I was definitely ready to learn!
This year, we discussed about how appropriate the 3D name is for what we are planning to include. Not very appropriate, but myself and James decided to keep it for this year, as it is a sort of brand by now.
So, for this year we encourage speakers to focus on:
Mobile applications
The Internet of Things
Augmented Reality
Maker/hacker-spaces
Open Data, Open Culture
Gestural Interfaces (Kinect)
3D visualizations (Blender, Sketchup),
Virtual worlds & gaming (Second Life, the Metaverse)
Mapping mashups, GPS, geotagging, geocaching
Location-based Services (LBSs)
Urban games, location-based mobile games
Robotics
Haptics and augmented toys (eg. Wiimote hacks),
Interactive art installations
Please keep an eye on the 3Dcamp website, our Twitter and Facebook page for news and updates. Speaker names and topics will be added closer to the date.
The hashtag for 3Dcamp 2012 across all social media will be#3Dcamp12
My poor blog looks really abandoned! I guess I should talk about what’s keeping me so busy these days.
The Connected Limerick initiative started back in 2010 with an event organised as part of the tweak festival. Another event followed last year, and Connected Limerick developed into a real project, focusing on the interplay between the way both locals and visitors are navigating the city and the digital overlay that informs and influences these journeys. And of course, there’s an associated Facebook page.
I’m one of the founding members of miLKlabs, the Limerick hackerspace. I post there and on the miLKlabs Facebook page every now and again.
In November last year, I joined the Limerick Local Heroes initiative group and helped organising the townhall meeting and the Ideas Summit. I set up their first website, later transferred to an own domain. Taking care of the Facebook page and Twitter account together with other people was a very interesting experience. Collaborative work felt a bit like magic: posts simply appeared one after the other without any need for formal coordination. I am still marginally involved in the Community Pillar, which is preparing its Action Summit at the moment.
I also joined Transition Limerick last year, a group encouraging reflection on sustainable development.
Together with Miriam Lohan, we started an action group called “We love Plassey Riverbank”, in order to reach out to people interested in the conservation of the canal and river Shannon banks. We had two successful clean-ups and we are in the process of planning further actions.
I am still running the IxDA local chapter – that’s a group I would really need help with! We had a couple of excellent meet-ups this year, and there’s a Design Jamin the make– the first of its kind in Ireland!
I am also involved in the Limerick OpenCoffee Club, and from time to time I manage to go to the Limerick Open Source Meetup. I don’t manage to write about that, except for the odd picture or tweet every now and again.
And there’s 3Dcamp as well. But that’s a story for another post!
miLKlabs and IxDA Limerick are joining forces to organise the first Ignite talk series ever in our city!The event will happen on Wednesday, April 6 2011, 7 pm in the Absolute Hotel.
Why this event?
The idea is to spread the news about miLKlabs, bring together likeminded individuals, create synergies between people from different backgrounds and highlight possible collaborations. We are also trying to shed a light on the creativity and talent of Limerick people and bringing them to the attention of the public. IxDA Limerick is hosting the event as part of their United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development programme.
What is Ignite?
In talks that are exactly five minutes long, Ignite presenters share their personal and professional passions, using 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds. Ignite events are run by local volunteers in many locations around the world, as part of the global Ignite network. Talks are video recorded and shared on the Internet, allowing local Ignites to share the knowledge and passion with the world (more about Ignite here ).
What is miLKlabs?
miLKlabs is a collaborative community space based in Limerick City, Ireland. The name is derived from ‘made in LimericK’. It is meant as a shared physical space for any and all creative projects: art, woodwork, software, photography and electronics – to name but a few. The aim is to provide Limerick with a place for people to work and collaborate on creative projects, to learn and to share their knowledge.
What is IxDA Limerick?
IxDA Limerick is the local chapter of the Interaction Design Association, a global network dedicated to the professional practice of Interaction Design.
If you have an interesting idea or project you’d like to talk about, there’s still room for speakers! Please drop us an email at ignitelimerick@gmail.com with your name and a title for your talk.
Back in August, when I was appointed Enterprise 2.0 Summit Ambassador, I discovered Jenny Ambrozek’s name on the workshops’ page. The name rang a bell- together with Joe Cothrel, Jenny had produced a report that generated a lot of reactions in the corporate world. It was one of the first publications that spoke about online communities in corporate environments, mentioning social software and backing it up with solid research. Until then, my interest for social software wasn’t taken seriously by any of my employers, and that was kind of torturing me.
I started following Jenny on Twitter(@sagenet) and we exchanged a few direct tweets (I was so honoured when Jenny asked for my opinion on the workshop outline!). Later on, the E2.0 Summit organisers asked me to do an interview with Jenny; I said yes right away, although I knew it wasn’t going to be easy for any of us to find time for it. In the end, after many private tweets exchanged, and days&nights of going back and forth via a shared Google Doc, the (asynchronous) interview is here:
Can you tell me a bit about yourself? What was your professional trajectory and what were the circumstances that led to your involvement with Social Networking?
Jenny Ambrozek: My interest in collaborating online began in my native Australia with a pre-Web Videotex venture. Moving to the United States I worked at Prodigy, the pioneering online consumer service. Always intriguing to me is how the skills I learned about developing relationships in early online environments are as timely and relevant today, regardless of technological changes or advances. Facilitating human interactions and sharing underpins successful collaboration. By the early 2000’s, working as a consultant, I’d confronted the human and structural realities within organizations that limited the success of collaboration initiatives. In 2003 I met Patti Anklam and was introduced to social network analysis. I’m convinced applying what we know about the science of social networks is vital for value creating enterprise collaboration and productive stakeholder engagement. (More about my professional trajectory is available in my Enterprise 2.0 Profile and a Knowledge Magazine article).
When I first read about your workshop at the E2.0 Summit, I had a revelation: “this must be THE Jenny Ambrozek who co-authored the famous 2004 report “Online Communities in Business 2004: Past Progress, Future Directions”. I was a member of AOK at the time, and I remember you and Joe Cothrell participating in the Star Series conversations. I remember being absolutely thrilled when I read about your report, it was exactly what I needed to convince the people around me that blogs and wikis were there to stay, and online communities in corporate environments were important for the future of the companies. I’m wondering if you estimated the huge impact this report was going to have when you started to work on the survey. What lead you to that initiative?
Jenny Ambrozek: I’m delighted that you found our study useful although you are perhaps too generous in crediting our report with a “huge impact”. However, I do think Online Communities in Business 2004 is important for capturing the perspectives and thoughts of leading practitioners in the field at the cusp of the Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 transition. In 2003, Joe Cothrel and I were watching the pioneering online services disappear and social software attracting a mass audience. We wanted to understand the enterprise impact so we initiated the study, reached out to practitioners we knew as thought leaders and sought their insights. Beyond our findings summarized in the report, I recommend reading the full free text comments wiki that SocialText provided. While the technology has evolved, the industry leaders’ wisdom about the practicalities of facilitating sustainable online communities, networks and teams is timeless.
You are writing a blog in collaboration with Victoria G. Axelrod, 21st Century Organization, where you share a lot of interesting material. Can you tell us what is the mission of this blog?
Jenny Ambrozek: Victoria Axelrod is a leading organizational strategist I was fortunate to meet in 2005. We instantly discovered a shared concern to understand the impact of low cost emergent collaboration tools (Web 2.0) on organizations. We started blogging seeking answers to a simple question: “What defines a successful 21st Century Organization?”
One of your presentations posted on Slideshare 3 years ago, Open netWORKing Organizations Co-generating Business Value, advocates that strategy drives all initiatives(slide 17). However, you seem to place the culture of the organisation at the centre of any initiative. This is the context, the playground where the action takes place, the canvas we’re trying to work on. Can you give us your view on fostering a culture of collaboration in an organisation? Is this always feasible?
Jenny Ambrozek: Your question goes to the heart of the matter. There is a difference between organizations who embrace Enterprise 2.0 and those who resist. This slide was developed by my blogging colleague Victoria Axelrod , who explains there is no culture when a company starts up. It derives from the values, beliefs, practices, the key players act out as they interact with the marketplace (stakeholders) to make their business happen. That complex, messy human process is captured in the slide as the interaction of the 4 S’s: Strategy, Structure, Systems and Shared Values. Because an organization’s culture develops through interaction and is dynamic, not static, it cannot be dictated, making “culture change” almost impossible.
Given those complex interactions, my workshop builds from the 1990’s Xerox Parc Research that identified the simply profound principle: “Organizations are webs of participation. Change the patterns of participation, and you change the organization.” (John Seely Brown & Estee Solomon Gray 1995 “ People are the Company, Fast Company.)
Look around for a moment and envision the companies who are identified as Enterprise 2.0 leaders. Those companies have accepted the value of allowing employees different patterns of participation, of more open knowledge sharing within their organization and beyond—bringing outside partnerships and knowledge into the organization.
By viewing organizations as networks, we can draw on knowledge from social network science to intentionally facilitate the networks and patterns of participation essential to achieving a business objective. A “Social Networking Culture” is a by-product.
And finally, can you tell us a few words about what are you planning for the workshop you’re giving before the E2.0 Summit in Frankfurt, “Social Networking Culture – Made Simple”. Two of the items on the agenda, “Thinking Networks – Personal Network Drawing Exercise” and “Applying Network Mapping to Participants’ Enterprise 2.0 Projects” made me very curious. What will you ask us to do ( if you can disclose this, of course)?
Jenny Ambrozek: Of course. The network mapping exercises will help participants understand how their work and organizations are accomplished through networks. (The Personal Network Drawing exercise is public, published in The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook, Chapter 8.) Then we apply that network mindset to participant projects, thinking through key people to be engaged, interactions to be facilitated and contributions needed for success.
I’m delighted that Mark Masterson will be joining the workshop to share his company CSC’s use of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) as a foundation for their award winning, enterprise-wide C3 collaboration platform. Understanding the networks of people to be engaged underpinned CSC’s C3 implementation and ensured employees across the globe joined immediately and participated actively.
The workshop introduces participants to the network analysis ideas that CSC applied.
There are many days when I feel proud to be part of various groups of people that work on things that matter. And today was one of them.
It started with the Limerick OpenCoffee in the morning. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish by having coffee with like minded people once a month! Talking about a possible home for the MiLK Labs and the many things that could happen once we find it with James, planning joint events for our students with Bernie, exploring social graphs and couchsurfing, adding events to my diary and meeting new people.
And it ended at the university, in the Concert Hall, where I went for this month’sICO concert. We are so lucky to have this world class orchestra in our vicinity and to listen to them every month!
Tonight, after the interval, this little video was shown, and Kathleen Turner, the ICO education officer explained how part of the money we pay for tickets goes to support initiatives like Sing Out with Strings:
I felt proud. My finances are not at their best these days, but this is a really worthy cause. Music can bridge many differences and transform people!
At the end of the video, the signature of Shannon Images brought back nice memories from Padraic O’Reilly’s talk at 3Dcamp back in 2008.
Life is good. And I am a very fortunate human being to live around so many people who work on things that matter – to them and to me!
Last year, I had my conference ticket and booked my flight, but I was appointed on a PhD examination committee and couldn’t go. I tried every possible solution to go over even for one day, but it didn’t work out in the end.
I am absolutely thrilled! And I am so grateful to those who recommended me for the job – I will finally get to meet the members of this vibrant community!
The pre-conference day (Oct 26) has two workshops scheduled:
From Social Messaging to Social Sharing, lead by Joachim Lindner, and
How to Establish a Social Networking Culture, lead by Jenny Ambrozek.
They both sound extremely interesting – it is so important to understand that social media tools can’t work on their own! The right culture has to be in place for people to adopt and use them before any benefit can be realised!
