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By Marcus Foth, 04/11/2010 6:02 pm

Making Links and the QUT Urban Informatics Research Lab present Dr Tanya Notley, Tactical Technology Collective (and QUT iCi PhD graduate), in conjunction with the Participatory Design Conference PDC 2010 at UTS in Sydney:

Visualising Information for Advocacy

Tuesday 30 November. Half Day Tutorial (Morning)
Presenter: Dr Tanya Notley, Tactical Technology Collective

http://www.pdc2010.org/programme/tutorials/#Tutorial4

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128689197186692

So you’ve got great data. Now what? Tactical Technology Collective are an NGO that helps rights advocates make sense of data, focus its use on their issue, and produce clear, compelling and accurate visualisations than can strengthen their campaigning. In this tutorial we’ll consider the process involved in analysing and then visualising information in collaboration with communities, organisations, researchers and other potential change makers so that it will resonate with the hearts and minds of a specific target audience. This workshop does not require you to have design skills: it will be an enjoyable, hand-on session that will focus on learning a transferable, participatory approach to conceptualise creative campaigns that visualise data and information. Creative campaigning examples from around the world will also be shared, decoded and discussed and the participants will take away copies of Tactical Tech’s guides, Visualising Information for Advocacy and Tactics for Turning Information into Action.

This tutorial will be of interest to social change designers, researchers, rights advocates and anyone else interested in turning information about an issue into action that can address it.

Registration: http://www.pdc2010.org/registration/

About the trainer:

Dr Tanya Notley is the Info-Activism Programme Lead with Tactical Technology Collective. Tactical Tech is an international NGO working at the point where rights advocacy meets information management and technology. Tanya has 15 years experience working with on media advocacy with research institutes, international development agencies and community-based organisations in Australia, the UK, Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. Tanya has produced training manuals and book chapters on radio production, digital storytelling, info-activism and participatory research methods and has delivered many workshops around the world on these topics.

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By Marcus Foth,

Guest Seminar by Douglas Schuler

17 Nov 2010, 2pm – 3.30pm

Queensland University of Technology
Kelvin Grove Campus, S Block, S403
Victoria Park Rd, Kelvin Grove QLD 4059, Australia

Please RSVP by 15/11/2010 to julieanne.edwards@qut.edu.au

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=154584687915847

Will We Be Smart Enough Soon Enough?
Putting Civic Intelligence into Practice

Civic intelligence names a phenomenon that takes place every day but is rarely recognized for what it is. It’s a manifestation of collective intelligence that is directed towards social and environmental progress. In short, it’s focused on attaining civic ends through civic means. Civic intelligence has particular relevance to people who are involved in education and work with the people in the real world. It helps describe examples as diverse as Evergreen State College’s Sustainable Prisons Project where prisoners are engaged in biology exploration, Seattle’s all-ages music venue, the Vera Project, and the Beehive Collective where art, popular education, and political action are creatively interwoven. Civic intelligence can help us determine the relative importance of projects and help us identify directions that are most likely to be relevant and fruitful in the design of projects. One of the most important tasks facing us is asserting — and of course demonstrating — the legitimacy and effectiveness of this orientation. And, of course, this task will require that we sharpen and employ our civic intelligence.

Biography

Douglas Schuler has been focusing on the intersection of society and technology for over 25 years. He has written and co-edited several books, including Participatory Design: Principles and Practices (Erlbaum, 1994), New Community Networks: Wired for Change (Addison-Wesley, 1996), and most recently, Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution (MIT Press, 2008), a multi-year undertaking (still in-work) with 85 contributors. He is president of the Public Sphere Project and former chair of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. For CPSR, Doug organized the Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing symposia series which was first convened in 1987. He is also a co-founder of the Seattle Community Network, a free, public access computer network supporting community and civic engagement that first went online in 1994. He is a member of the Faculty at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, a non-traditional liberal arts college, where he teaches programs that focus on the idea of civic intelligence. Doug has a masters degree in computer science (University of Washington) and a masters in software engineering (Seattle University). He is working on his PhD.

More information about Doug at: http://www.publicsphereproject.org/

Doug is in Australia courtesy of the QUT Urban Informatics Research Lab presenting a keynote at the Research for Action workshop on 15 Nov 2010 in conjunction with Making Links 2010, Perth, WA: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=101543753238750