Nptech Videos

Our friend Debbie recently returned from 7 months in India, working with the people in this video. Beau (the Pantless Knight) visited her & they shot this amazing footage. Learn more at http://iwantagoat.com If you like the video, please share it on facebook, twitter, email, etc and consider donating a goat to help one of these amazing families at http://iwantagoat.com.

TechSoup Global: SOUP OverviewView more presentations from Marnie Webb. Here's a note from Marnie Webb on the TechSoup blog about TechSoup's makeover that will be debut on Monday.  They're not taking a big bang, flip the switch approach, but doing it in phases.   Marnie's deck is a goldmine of information about site redesign.  Thanks so much for sharing it!

Peter Deitz of Social Actions presented at the Ethos Roundtable in Boston on July 21, 2009. This is the full and unedited audio recording.

David Moore interview

A short film and a podcast, all part of a series of four pieces on an experiment on in Birmingham which is allowing residents a more control over how public money is spent. Here you can see and hear Neville Davis of the Sparkbrook Neighbourhood Forum talk about the pro cons and a huge effort they made to clean up rancid sites in their neighbourhood - all with a £10,000 grant from the Birmingham Community Safety Partnership and it s Neighbourhood Performance reward Grant. Click here to view the embedded video. The reward in all of this is that if residents hit targets with the first £10,000 then a further grant of £15,000 is to hand. The four-neighbourhood pilot is currently being evaluated bu the Digbeth Trust.

NESTA was in Birmingham today to entice us into innovating. The Big Green Challenge is a two year climate change project with a £1 million pound prize at the end. Any community group (or similar) can win if they find a communal and repeatable way to cut CO2 emissions by 60%. Easy then! There were queries/criticism at the launch (which you ll hear in the podcast), some on the blog post of the media partner for the prize and also here. I approve of ideas with ambitious targets. Too often public life offers mediocrity born of easy targets. As one Brummie told us (if anyone remembers who please tell me) at today s regional launch it may well work best if people collaborate on ideas. Indeed I was wondering of the prize fund could have been split to reward a winner and reward those who collaborate to innovate - something on the lines of that audacious open source bid for the Third Sector Innovation Exchange. Listen to our podcast at the bottom of this post, watch Sarah Beeny s video, read the website, subscribe to the blog and let us know if you apply. Click here to view the embedded video. By the way I heard interesting ideas from Jerome Baddley of Nottingham Energy Enterprise - so hello Jerome. The prize is also on partnership with Unltd. Birmingham was the first launch, more dates in other cities throughout November.

This is the story of Chris Hoare: a grandfather who s worked for years to clear prostitution from the Waterworks Estate on the borders of Edgbaston and Ladywood in inner-city Birmingham. His neighbours were so fearful of the pimps that they asked Chris to step up and take action. To find out why he did it this way please listen to the podcast. The tower over Chris s shoulder is Perrott s Folly - a building with links to Tolkien. He worked with the Birmingham Conservation Trust (declaration - I m a trustee!) to prevent the building s collapse. Next steps are to use it as a tourist draw, turning what was once a neighbourhood riddled with vice into an international family attraction. The residents have also transformed many of their communal areas. Chris is standing in front of Anderton Gardens, a new garden named after a police sergeant who worked with them. (created with help from Groundwork Birmingham) The pragmatic approach of Chris and others in the Birmingham South West residents group reminds me of so many others we ve spoken to on the Grassroots Channel, especially the people of Perry Common and Masood Yasin in Washwood Heath. Thanks to Paul from the Chamberlain Forum for introducing me to Chris.

Crisis in Darfur: Live from Second Life with Mia Farrow, John Heffernan, Ronan Farrow, Ron Haviv, and Bill Lichtenstein (moderator). Mia Farrow, actress and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, appears live in the virtual 3-D on-line community Second Life to discuss and answer questions about the crisis in Darfur. The Second Life event in January 2007 takes place in front of a virtual replica of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and a dramatic exhibit of photographs depicting the genocide emergency. Speakers include: John Heffernan, Director of the Genocide Prevention Initiative of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience; Ron Haviv, an award-winning photojournalist, whose images of Darfur are part of the virtual event; Ronan Farrow, UNICEF Spokesperson for Youth in Sudan, Genocide Intervention Network representative, and author of numerous articles on the crisis in Darfur; and Bill Lichtenstein, president of Lichtenstein Creative Media, who served as moderator. The event in Second Life took place at a virtual replica of "Our Walls Bear Witness - Darfur: Who Will Survive Today?" the powerful, outdoor photography exhibition highlighting images of the Darfur crisis by leading photojournalists that were projected onto the exterior of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC during Thanksgiving Week 2006. The virtual event in Second Life allowed visitors from around the world to experience the traveling photography exhibit with its moving, thought-provoking photos, as well as to view video of the real life outdoor installation at the Holocaust Museum. The event comes as the situation in Darfur continues to worsen dramatically. The conflict, now in its fourth year, has driven 2.5 million Darfuris from their homes, with an estimated death toll of 200,000. The world's largest humanitarian operation involving 14,000 humanitarian aid workers, is becoming increasingly threatened. The event in Second Life is held on the LCMedia sim at The Infinite Mind virtual broadcast center, and simultaneously broadcast in Second Life in Camp Darfur, and Global Kids, on the Second Life teen grid. The virtual "Our Walls Bear Witness" photography exhibit remains in Second Life until February 15, 2007. For more on the event and the Crisis in Darfur, visit www.LCMedia.com/darfurevent.htm

Mikko Kapanen and Shauna Magunda are two students at UCE in Birmingham who used their final year project to experiment with podcasting to tell the stories of refugees in the city. This programme talks to them about how and why they did it and also hears excerpts from some of the remarkable people who spoke to Shauna and made it onto Refucast.

This is our second podcast from Change in Progress, a gathering of UK based neighbourhood activists in Birmingham. This time Adam Askew from Oxfam UK tells us about the ten steps which can help you improve your public speaking, get your message across and manage those nerves. If you re looking for other tips which may help you campaign in your neighbourhood then you might like to listen to this earlier podcast on the mysterious art of lobbying politicians and the powerful.

September 22th 24th, 2006 WinecampFrance at Chambolle-Musigny, Burgundy, France http://winecampfrance.com

Paul Saffo at NetSquared on how to make it last. The answer is to change policy so we have to become policy wonks or find and educate policy wonks who advocate for us.

Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices at NetSquared (60 seconds).

Elisa Camahort on BlogHer.

Chris Messina speaking about engaging the community by putting yourself out there.

My introduction to the fabulous NetSquared conference.