ckaman's blog

I attended the Mobile Tech 4 Social Change barcamp in New York with MIT colleagues Audubon Dougherty, Nadav Aharony, and Danielle Martin last weekend.

Unfortunately, I missed Ethan Zuckerman’s keynote (hoping it will be posted online) but according to Patrick Meier’s informative post about the day, one of Ethan’s biggest takeaway points focused on the importance of using of multiple technologies together:

(The) convergence of ICTs is far more powerful than the increasingly ubiquitous mobile phone. When mobile phones and SMS are paired with radio talk show programs, the combination replicates much of the functionalities that characterize the Internet. Once information is broadcast over radio, it becomes public knowledge.

I find this to be a valuable take away not only because of my own interest in radio and mobile but also because it suggests the larger need to focus on strategies over technologies. Mobile phone by themselves probably won’t solve entrenched issues, particularly those that extend beyond geographic and disciplinary boundaries, but they can be a valuable part of larger tactics.

Many Eyes, a shared data and information visualization technology from the Visual Communications Lab at IBM Research, offers some fun ways to see the most commonly used words in President Obama's inaugural address.

You can look at the speech as a text cloud ...

.. or a word tree.

Perhaps because Obama has been compared to John F. Kennedy quite often, someone has recently posted Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address on the site.

Many Eyes allows users to publicly post data sets to visualize them in different ways. Incidentally, the technology is also powering the New York Times' Visualization Lab.

Wondering what innovative media projects are following President-elect Obama’s inauguration? We have a few suggestions.

One of the most exciting is Inauguration Report, a collaboration between NPR, CBS News, American University, and volunteer programmers. Users can participate via Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, an iPhone app by including the phrase #inaug09 0r #dctrips09 (pound signs are not required for flicker and youtube content). The site is also mapping the location of reports nationwide. As of late Thursday, a couple of days before the start of the festivities, the feed was already jumping. Some posts offered congratulatory remarks to President-elect Obama and others looked for last-minute rides but the majority explained how to participate.

Other media outlets also gearing up for the events:

The New York Times is calling for inauguration photos. CNN and Facebook are partnering to allow viewers to watch the festivities live streaming, update Facebook status, and follow friends’ updates.

Current and Twitter have teamed up to offer use to follow and post their own Twitter messages real-time and in conjunction with the live broadcast of Obama’s Inauguration.

Fellow C4FCM reasearcher Nadav Aharony notes that Hulu has a countdown to the swearing-in, an option to embed the feed into your website, and many other Obama/election related clips.

Of course, you can always post or link your photo or video links to the C4FCM site here.

If you're going to Washington DC, before you post your blogs or photos you need to check out Citizen Media Law Project’s guide to covering the event. The guide offers valuable information about heightened security, credentialing requirements, permits, and who to call if you have any legal trouble while at the events. The guide is also available as a handy one-page printable summary you can carry with you.

Both the Presidential Inaugural Committee and The Washington Post have set up guides that include mobile texting services about event, scheduling changes, and transportation alerts for attendees.

If you know of any of other ways to prepare for or participate in Obama’s Inauguration, pass them along.

In my work at the Center for Future Civic Media, I’ve been investigating ways that emerging technologies could be used to better the quality of healthcare in local communities. I’ve been particularly interested in exploring ways to improve the communication between doctors and their patients.

Last weekend, thousands of people around the country took part in rallies aimed to convince Congress to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

There are, of course, numerous innovative initiatives emerging worldwide that make use of mobile technologies. To date, mobile devices have already been used to encourage learning, monitor elections, organize protests, play games, share images, and share vital health information. But sometimes the issue is figuring out how to identify what’s right for a specific community.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to listen to Ethan Zuckerman speak during MIT’s Communications Forum, “What is Civic Media?” After the event, I spoke to Ethan Zuckerman about Global Voices Online, an organization that he co-founded with journalist Rebecca McKinnon through Ha