Data Stories: Q&A with Hilary Mason Some see science as the flipside of creativity. Not Hilary Mason. We spoke to the data scientist, who recently moved from bitly to venture firm Accel, about using data to tell unexpected stories. For a lot of us, when we think data science we think pocket protectors and lab coats. We have this cultural assumption that scientists are not creative and that is absolutely untrue. Generally there is some problem to solve and there’s a ton of creativity in how you construct your analysis to address that problem. A lot of what a data scientist does is communication. Do you think there’s an opportunity for scientists to partner with journalists or marketers to tell great stories? Some of the best collaborations I’ve seen have been a pair of people, one of whom comes from a mathematics background and one of whom comes from a creative background. The team that wrote the popular OK Cupid data blog, for example, was a comedian and a data scientist. You work as a data scientist in the private sector.
365 Surfboards Explodes Onto Bookshelves in a Blaze of Color and History One year, 80,000 words, 7,384 emails, 3,000 miles and 600+ surfboards later, 365 Surfboards is off the boat from Hong Kong and on the truck to Minneapolis for a short turnaround in the warehouse before it explodes onto bookshelves in a blaze of color and history – just in time for Christmas (hopefully). 365 Surfboards is exactly that – a mish-mosh of begged, borrowed and bartered-for surfboards from a wide range of collectors and aficionados, presented in full color with colorful captions that explain the story behind every board, but also show where that surfboard fits into the evolution of surfboards from the koa and wiliwili, alaia, and olo of old Owyhee to the modern carbon fiber, epoxy, wood and fiberglass variety of the 21st Century. This is the 16th book I’ve written, and I worked with fotografista Lucia Griggi on it. Assigned on December 19 of 2012, the original goal was to collect 365 surfboards and write 40,000 words on them in three months with a four-figure photo budget.
Amazon Delivery by Drones and Thoughts for Libraries In a 60 Minutes interview, Amazon CEO & Founder Jeff Bezos dropped a marketing bomb by unveiling a plan to use unmanned aerial drones for ecommerce delivery. The plan wouldn’t come into reality for years to come, but the impacts are being felt immediately, including for libraries. The big reveal also shows that once again the next battles in innovation will be expansions of traditional areas. The What: On 60 minutes last night, Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos shared Amazon’s plans to use octo-copters, unmanned autonomous aerial aircraft, aka drones, for delivery dubbed Amazon Air Prime. The service would deliver purchases of up to 5 pounds (which covers 86% of what they deliver) to a radius of 10 miles within 30 minutes time. Impact and synthesis – Some of my preliminary analysis. This is about three things; media access, competition, and in line adaptations. Although there is a lot potential for media delivery this is more about the ecommerce war. Other Aspects of Note:
Google Maps Out Tolkien’s Mythical Lands [Video] Tolkien tourism is the phenomenon of J.R.R. Tolkien fans traveling to the sites of his fictional world, Middle Earth. In reality, Middle Earth is New Zealand, the film location for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the current Hobbit trilogy. Now, fans who want to go to Middle Earth no longer have to book a long flight and imagine Orcs amongst New Zealand sheep, they can simply use Google Chrome. Google and Warner Bros. Chrome Experiments are intended to show off the capabilities of the browser. It was a natural fit because of all the geek fans everywhere. Click here to explore Middle Earth for yourself. Source: The Wall Street Journal Image/Video: The Hobbit – Middle Earth// YouTube Can Book Clubs Thrive in the Digital Age? When most people think of book clubs, they picture intimate gatherings in living rooms or libraries. People rarely imagine a book club as a collection of GIFs, memes, fan fiction and cosplay, all of which are staples of how readers respond to media in the Internet era. But a new Tumblr blog, Reblog Book Club, wants to give the traditional book club a digital update. While bloggers have previously hosted book clubs on Tumblr, Reblog Book Club is the first book club that's founded and moderated by Tumblr itself. Rachel Fershleiser, the microblogging platform's director of literary outreach, launched the club in September as a way to engage a passionate and diverse online community, but faced challenges in organizing a discussion group. “I ran book-store events, and synchronous IRL book culture is super, super important to me,” Fershleiser told Mashable. Image: Reblog Book Club Fershleiser also partnered closely with Rowell, the book’s author. Image: Zabrinah Image: Flickr , Spykster
The Drowned Man – A Review (from an LIS perspective) – Part II | Ludi Price 22 November 2013 by Ludi Continued from Part I. Part Two: The Drowned Man as a participatory culture. Further to my previous discussion of The Drowned Man as a universe encapsulating its own internal logic and narrative structure, it is perhaps unsurprising that some members of the ‘audience’ choose to take that universe and give it a life of its own in the ‘real world’. Immersion, is after all, is “the complete involvement in some activity or interest” (Miriam-Webster, 2013). For some who participate in The Drowned Man experience, the original site of immersion is not enough. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I believe that that is all fans are doing – extending the sense of immersion in a particular text, narrative or cultural artefact into the ‘real world’. I’m not sure whether followers of The Drowned Man would call themselves fans, but there are some points of intersection with what I will call fans of popular culture. As Daniel Cavicchi (2008) explains: Continued in Part III
lynrobinson : .. Conrad Taylor talks about... Postgraduate Open Evening This Open Evening is for anyone wishing to pursue postgraduate study at City University London. If you are applying for your first degree (BA, BSc etc) please take a look at our Undergraduate Open Day instead. View a full list of our postgraduate courses Why should you attend? Meet staff and students from across the University and discuss the wide range of postgraduate courses we offer Learn about the courses we offer from the School of Arts and Social Sciences, the School of Health Sciences, the School of Engineering and Mathematics, the School of Informatics, and The City Law School. See the facilities in which you will be studying (certain Schools only) Have your questions answered by faculty members Attend talks on the subjects you are interested in (certain Schools only) Get advice on the application process, accommodation, fees and funding Obtain information and guidance on all aspects of university life. Presentations and tours School of Arts and Social Sciences School of Informatics
Announcing… My first ‘proper’ publication | Ludi Price 9 November 2013 by Ludi Many thanks to the fantastic folks at The Comics Grid for reading, accepting and publishing my book review of The Adoring Audience. For those interested in fan studies who haven’t read the book already, it is a recommended read. I suppose I can’t ‘highly’ recommend it, as it’s about 20 years out-of-date. But as a grounding in fan behaviour it is still entirely relevant, and is wide-ranging in its scope. Anyway, please do read the review if you’re interested, and I welcome any comments or thoughts you might have on the book.
Fanning Flames: A Review of 'The Adoring Audience' | Price | The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship Upon writing this review, I was struck by two things. First, that I was writing a review on a book that was written over twenty years ago; and second, that when I originally rated it on Library Thing, I gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars. The fact that I gave The Adoring Audience a 3.5 is slightly misleading, as it is, to tell the truth, a fascinating read. The reason why I gave it such a relatively low score is because it is now hopelessly outdated in many ways. This is not to say that this isn’t an important book. The year 1992 turned out to be a bumper one for fan studies. Indeed, The Adoring Audience provides a wide-ranging evaluation of fan behaviours, and as such claims to be a useful resource for those seeking to ground their research through analysing the history of fan culture. Fiske also highlights the appropriation of official cultural artefacts by fans in the production of derivative texts and objects. After reading this book, I’m not so sure.
The best hypertext tracts Imagine it’s 1994: you’re wearing basically the same thing you’re wearing now, but things like ‘hyperlinks’ – something without which we cannot function today – are a wildly exciting phenomenon, if you even know what they are at all. A couple of decades ago, new media artists and writers were blown away by the complexity not having to be grounded in space would afford them. Finally they would be free of the constraints of one-page-in-front-of-the-other. Things didn’t pan out exactly as planned. It’s true, then, that from certain angles it seems that e-lit and hypertext fiction have been relegated to quirky reaches of media theory, interesting only to literature PhDs patting themselves on the back for studying something of a recent century. The Unknown by Scott Rettberg, William Gillespie, Dirk Stratton and Frank Marquardt Luminous Airplanes by Paul LaFarge afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce If such a thing as classic hypertext fiction exists, then Joyce’s ‘afternoon, a story’ is it.
lynrobinson : .. Pembroke College Cambridge... Sherlock and the Adventure of the Overzealous Fanbase When I was nineteen, I briefly shared a flat with a young lesbian couple who liked to go to parties dressed as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. They accessorised with moustaches and dapper little hats and their own interpretation of what went on at Baker Street after Mrs Hudson had retired to bed. I had read and loved Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories as a kid. It was these girls, though, who taught me what fannishness could really mean - loving a story so hard, so shamelessly, that you let it change you, and maybe you change it in turn. Some years later, I lived just off Baker Street, and walked to work past the Sherlock Holmes Hotel (complete with “Watson Burger” for American pilgrims) and a tube station plastered with tile profiles of a familiar figure with a deerstalker and pipe. You can almost hear the wrinkle-nosed whine in Guardian critic Mark Lawson’s voice when he describes the latest episodes of Sherlock as “blog-aware”. Chaucer and Shakespeare lifted plots from everywhere.