ChangeMedium

The emerging system of social technologies carries the single greatest potential to enable a better future sooner. We call it the medium of change.

ChangeMedium is a charitable initiative working at the intersection of researchers, developers and changemakers. We facilitate initiatives that advance and apply the medium for a better future sooner.

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ChangeMedium

Archive

Jul
13th

Tue

And finally, one last question: why are we only doing humanitarian design in Asia and Africa and not Native American reservations or rural areas, where standards of education, water and health match the very worst overseas?

— Is Humanitarian Design the New Imperialism? | Co.

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Jul
12th

Mon

OStatus discussions will be held at the Federated Social Web Summit 2010! | OStatus

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Jul
1st

Thu

Technology, society and the future: Changing the world through the internet
After an incredible first year, the Guardian’s Activate summit returns for another packed day of ideas and inspiration, providing insight into how the web and the myriad technologies that weave it all together are reshaping our world

— The Guardian Activate Summit 2010 | Activate 2010 | guardian.co.uk

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Jun
29th

Tue

This is the first G20 with its own hashtag. This is the first G20 with a steady stream of Flickr uploads, with constant YouTube videos of the scene, and with, most importantly, reporters tweeting out from the trenches. This is the first G20 where user-generated content of happenings outside was faster and clearer than the six o’clock news’ stale press conference soundbytes.

— G20, Moderates and Mobile Technology: A Recipe for Democracy « For Serious?

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Jun
28th

Mon

Schoeben has reason to be proud of his accomplishments - and maybe we all do. The one rationale for checking in no one I talked to claimed for themselves - but that one very perceptive person quietly told me was probably more common than not - was showing off. “To non-explicitly brag about your coolness and/or importance, based on where you eat, drink, work, and travel.” That makes sense to me. Heck, I’ll own it myself, to some degree.

— Why We Check In: The Reasons People Use Location-Based Social Networks

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Caught in the storm, penned in at Queen Street - The Globe and Mail

A great example of twitter reporting in journalism.

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May
25th

Tue

We are natural villagers. For most of mankind’s history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us, and our communities became too large and disparate for us to be able to feel a part of them, and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But that is changing.

— DNA/How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet

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May
22nd

Sat

Never before has a social media website played the kind of role in a conflict that Twitter has played in Thailand’s nine-week-old anti-government uprising, keeping people informed even as it amplified the hate on both sides of the country’s divide. Some say Twitter – or rather its users – may have even saved lives as fighting consumed the streets of Bangkok.

— Twitter’s role in Bangkok conflict unprecedented - The Globe and Mail

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May
18th

Tue

A (belated) update on last month’s ChangeMedium San Francisco

A few weeks ago we had our first ChangeMedium event out on the West Coast in San Francisco, CA. Entitled “Open Technology & The Medium of Change” the evening was themed on looking how open technologies are playing a part in defining this medium of change. While sites like Twitter may have given the medium it’s initial push, it’s the open technologies that are emerging to extend its capabilities and reach.

A couple of conflicting events (the curse of remote organization) unfortunately meant for a slightly more ‘intimate’ group than we’d hoped for, but the people we did have there were certainly the right kind of people to have out and they made for some interesting conversation.

After I delivered a quick introduction to ChangeMedium, Evan Prodromou of Status.net outlined their technology - a tool that allows any organization to implement their own micro-messaging service.

He also delved into oStatus, an emerging standard which they are actively developing & pushing that allows micro-publishing services, and other applications, to pass messages between each other (i.e. a decentralized Twitter).

Following a few questions, Evan stepped aside and Jean Russell, Co-founder of Thrivable.org & Inspired Legacies, took over to share her story of how she used a combination of social and open publishing technologies to create the book “Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch” a book that was co-created by herself and 60 other contributors from around the world.

The evening concluded with about an hour’s worth of discussion that ranged from the technical to conceptual and back again. All in all it was an insightful evening with an interesting mix of people.

We were glad to be able to kick off the ChangeMedium conversation in San Francisco and anticipate watching it evolve going forward. In the time since the event we’ve even heard from one of the attendees letting us know they have implemented Status.net within their organization as a result of this meetup.

- Ryan

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Apr
10th

Sat

OStatus lets people on different social networks follow each other. OStatus is an open standard for distributed status updates. Our goal is a specification that allows different messaging hubs to route status updates between users in near-real-time

— If you use or work with #twitter and you don’t know about OStatus yet… check it out! About | OStatus

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