.:WBP presents DIY DAYS a roving conference series for those who create -

Thanks

lw — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:58:28 +0000

Big thanks to all the volunteers, speakers and to those who contributed funds to help make DIYDays NYC a reality. Over the coming days and weeks we’ll be releasing videos from the event on WorkBookProject.com. We’re also in the process of merging this site with the new version of the WorkBook Project site.

Next up for DIYDays is a stop in LA later this fall. If you’re interested in lending a hand and / or know of someone who would make a good speaker please let us know.

FULL DIY DAYS NYC SCHEDULE

lw — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 10:00:32 +0000

Speaker Highlight – Ethan Rublee

lw — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 03:55:38 +0000

Ethan Rublee is a researcher at the Computer Fusion Laboratory in Temple University’s College of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also a software engineer with Seize the Media, working on transmedia application development. As of late, Mr. Rublee’s research involves augmented reality, computer vision, novel human interfaces, and mobile apps. Ethan is currently developing mobile and web applications for Lance Weiler’s transmedia project, HIM.

Q & A:

What excites you about the future?

What excites me about the future: There are so many brilliant people being connected by the ethers of the net, sharing knowledge freely and collaborating. Everyday, someone shares this piece of code or that circuit. People are even trying to make open-source fusion reactors! I can see the day coming when the fusion reactor in my kitchen breaks and I print out a new one with a Makerbot.

What is on your playlist, reading list, or movie queue?

modest mouse, neutral milk hotel, wolf parade, broken social scene, mirah, M.I.A.

What are some of your favorite sites and / or blogs?

sparkfun.com, kickstarter.com, wikipedia, last.fm, makezine.com, pandora.com, xkcd.com, wolframalpha.com, makerbot.com

Speaker Highlight: Sree Sreenivasan

jim — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 03:46:44 +0000

Sree is a Columbia J-school digital media professor and Dean of Student Affairs; contributing editor to DNAinfo.com; and one of AdAge’s 25 people to follow on Twitter. More on him at http://sree.net and you can see how he uses social media by connecting with him on: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.

Q & A:

What excites you about the future?

There will be as many changes in the 10 years ahead of us as there were in the 10 years that just passed.

What is on your playlist, reading list, or movie queue?

As I write this, I am listening to the only song to immortalize a student of mine, “Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance,” about the WNYC Morning Edition anchor, by Jonathan Coulton.

What are some of your favorite sites and / or blogs?

Too many to name here, but everyone should be adding Mashable.com to their media diet.

Speaker Highlight: Josh Cramer

jim — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 03:35:36 +0000

Josh is a film-editor and founder of House of Trim. Over the past year, Josh has worked on WBP Labs’ RADAR as an editor, producer and director. Recent commercial work includes spots for Nike, Stoli, History, & David Yurman. Josh also edited Lance Weiler’s Head Trauma, the PBS doc La Lupe, edited/co-produced Tommy Pallotta’s American Prince, and recently won a Best Editing Webby Award for a New York Times video he also directed.

Speaker Highlight: Cyndi Stivers

jim — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 03:29:33 +0000

Cyndi is managing editor of EW.com, the website of Entertainment Weekly. She also teaches a magazine workshop at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Previously, Stivers was EVP of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, where she supervised the launch of Martha’s 24-hour Sirius satellite radio channel. From 1995 to 2005, she launched and led U.S. operations for Time Out. Stivers is a trustee of Barnard College, of which she is a proud alumna.

Speaker Highlight: Alex Johnson

jim — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 03:20:05 +0000

Alex is an interactive strategist and filmmaker, with a background in the convergent fields of advertising, communications, new media and film production. She worked in music video & commercials at Radical Media & Partizan before heading up interactive & cross-media initiatives at Sally Potter’s Adventure Pictures where she also created the social learning/archive platform, SP-ARK. She then joined digital marketing agency Deep Focus (HBO, Vitamin Water, New Line, Universal) guiding thinking on audience insight, branding & strategic approach. Alex consulted for Massify, IFP, Filmmaker magazine, Seize The Media & independent filmmakers before setting up the agency/project producer WBP Labs with Lance Weiler last year. Their first project RADAR, a weekly mini-doc series, has been nominated for a Streamy, featured on Gizmodo, Flavorpill & CBS & is currently airing its third season on Babelgum.

What excites you about the future?

What excites me about the future is that we are at a point when autodidacticism is really starting to become a reality within the creative industries, which is definitely something I focus on in RADAR. Due to the availability of information and instant social connection online you can now learn how to do anything, and that’s amazing. In addition, the majority of people I choose to work with have little or no formal training but instead are self-taught, engaged, and not afraid to ask a lot of questions. For the first time the personality traits of the generalist rather than the narrowly specialized are becoming more suited to the creative landscape with traits defining work rather than vice versa. I’m fascinated to see how that will revolutionize teams, work-flows and business, as well as the type of big thinking and exploration creative generalism and a DIY ethos encourages overall. We’re already seeing the impact of this, as well as the crowd, on traditional agency structures and I think we’ll soon start to see these changing models overflow into other industries too.

What is on your playlist, reading list, or movie queue?

Music- I’m currently setting up a new music supervision department at Labs, so I’m lucky to have a constant stream of great breaking bands fed to me by our team of music researchers as potential material. I”ll play through the research library whenever I want a break from other work. They find some really great stuff, you can listen to a selection here.
Movies- To switch off I’ve been watching reality shows The Rachel Zoe Project and Kell on Earth. Not highbrow content in the slightest, but I find it interesting to watch the inner workings of creative businesses run by driven women, even if they are reality-fied and scripted to the extreme.

What are some of your favorite sites and / or blogs?

Curating and producing a weekly show necessitates having a constantly updated list of potential projects and personalities, which means that my reading is almost entirely dictated by an ongoing, always-on, curation for RADAR content. This means devouring a lot of blog content at speed but in different ways to more usual consumption. I don’t have favorite sites or blogs per se, I’ll go deep into archives and jump around a lot, often with dozens and dozens of tabs open and text edit notes. An idea in a video might spark an episode idea I’d previously had or a reminder about someone I’d met that could be a good subject and need to research further, or an article on a trend will take me to further reading for something that’s more “RADAR” so my search and reading is dictated by tangents, ideas and trends and will often go deep into archives or niche blogs. That said, I’m developing an extensive netvibes account for the WBP Labs team which will aggregate what everyone on the team is reading, from curation to music to gaming, social media, strategy & planning.

Speaker Highlight: Janine Saunders

jim — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 03:01:57 +0000

Janine is a producer, media collaborator, and DJ living in NYC. She has worked as a producer since a very early age, in music, video and publishing. Her foremost interest is in exploring media environments in a variety of mediums. She has worked closely with writer/ documentarian / graphic novelist Douglas Rushkoff, and directed and edited Life Inc: The Movie, a nine-minute history of corporatism, to support his latest book. She recently finished working on a Frontline documentary and interactive website, Digital Nation, which continues to explore what it means to live in a digital world. Janine is currently Segment Producer of RADAR and Producer of WBP Labs.

Q & A:

What excites you about the future?

The kids who are growing up now, and what they’ll do.

What is on your playlist, reading list, or movie queue?

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth – Buckminster Fuller
Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility – Stewart Brand

What are some of your favorite sites and / or blogs?

Speaker Highlight: Bre Pettis

jim — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 02:49:49 +0000

Bre is a founder of Makerbot, a company that produces robots that make things. Bre is also a founder of NYCResistor, a hacker collective in Brooklyn. Besides being a TV host and Video Podcast producer, he’s created new media for Etsy.com, hosted Make: Magazine’s Weekend Projects podcast, and has been a schoolteacher, artist, and puppeteer. Bre is passionate about invention, innovation, and all things DIY.

Speaker Highlight: Scott Beibin, Elizabeth-Jane Cole

jim — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 02:11:58 +0000

Scott Beibin is a founder of the Evil Twin Booking Agency. In the 90’s he ran seminal punk label Bloodlink. or the past decade he’s toured as VJ and storyteller for Lost Film Fest (the only film festival with an fbi file!). His new project is Scientists Are The New Rockstars, a live broadcast stageshow exploring the intersection of science, art, and metaphysics with a heavy emphasis on environmental and social issues. Through his messaging organization The Redefinery he’s campaigned for issue oriented documentary films (The Corporation, The Weather Underground, etc:) and promoted environmentally sound and organic vegan products. In 2009 the prank he pulled on the Jerry Springer with Justin Pearson of The Locust won video of the decade on NME.

Elizabeth Jane Cole co founded the Evil Twin Booking Agency which spearheads revenue generating publicity tours for such notable speakers as The Yes Men, Ed Begley Jr, Vandana Shiva, Bernardine Dohrn + Bill Ayers and Lance Weiler. She also specializes in non-traditional distribution of issue oriented documentary films. Elizabeth’s writings on technology, film, activism, and debauchery in the man-machine continuum have been published in WIRED magazine, Filmmaker, Plenty, Alternet.org, Greencine.com and ShootingPeople.org, among others.

Q & A:

What excites you about the future?

Scott- Obama at Burning Man on Ayahuasca. Solar powered open source machine assisted telepathy over IP. Bicycle powered Sybian Karaoke. Urban farming and permaculture. Ethical futurists. Collaboration rather than competition. Delicious vegan snacks. Pranks. Spaceballs 2.

Elizabeth-Jane- Space elevators, ethical futurists, popularizing big ideas, mo betta entheogens, 2012 part 2, mitchell Joachim’s designs becoming real, son of 2012, connecting scientists to the art world, evolving, planting seeds, connecting dots, and proving that the future is still real.

What is on your playlist, reading list, or movie queue?

Scott-

NOLA Sissy Bounce
Shpongle
Glitch Mob
Coco Rosie
Amanda Palmer
Salif Keita
Slavic Soul Party
Philip Glass
Brian Eno
Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy
Seed Magazine, Alex Theory
Goran Bregovic
MS Stubnitz
Geo Dome
2012 Time For Change

Elizabeth-Jane-

Seed Magazine
Stranger in a Strange Land
Bank Swirled

What are some of your favorite sites and / or blogs?

Scott-

Elizabeth-Jane-