There are a few places I missed the screens so I am talking about some things you cannot see, but worse! What a major “umm” fest this was! Ca I plead fatigue? I think it might be “49,000 Ummm Web 2.o Ways…”

But here it is for your viewing torture. Man, do I like Slideshare!

| View | Upload your own

Okay, if you use my materials (and I hope you do)- please go to http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/50+Ways but please, please, do not request to join this wiki! It is mine! See the reason why on the wiki entrance. Not all wikis are shared space.

And if you do any work with this stuff, please use the discussion tabs to leave URLs for the stories produced so I can add to the examples list.

There must be 50 ways…..

Assembling content for an online database project regarding hurricanes Katrina and Rita provides daily opportunities to assess personal and community losses throughout the Gulf Coast. It also puts one into contact with the vast array of documentation efforts flourishing along the coast, particularly New Orleans, which serves as this catastrophe’s “Ground Zero.” Each individual’s story constitutes one invaluable piece in the immense debris field stretching from Texas to Alabama. New Media drives the documentation of the tragedies and ongoing recoveries; similarly, New Media must assist in making these invaluable materials accessible to both web surfers and scholars.

Collecting what has already been created, information, memories, including works submitted by students. Even collect information submitted via distributed postcards, collected statements by anonymous call in via cellphones. Interesting statements of rights “You may submit the account anonymously and retain ownership over all materials submitted to the archive.”

The archive is a giant archive of media including documents, images, etc as a full searchable database

Example:

Making it Home Again: Our Return in Words in Pictures:

Ten students of Capdau Charter Middle School wrote and illustrated this book during an after school New Orleans Outreach class in the spring of 2006. The students wrote the book to tell their story of coming back home to New Orleans. It includes their personal coming home stories as well as poems about New Orleans, drawings of houses in the city and self-portraits. The book project originated through a partnership between Young Artist Young Aspirations (YAYA) and The Neighborhood Story Project. Abram Himelstein taught the writing portion of the class, while Jessie Perlik helped teach the students the art techniques they utilized to create their book.

Noted that few people are adding tags to database, starting to teach the tagging concept.

Not interested in “polishing”, grammar checking the original writings of contributors.

Site contains different “Collections” including 900+ Smithsonian images, Katrina’s Kids Artwork, specialized museum contributions, Coast Guard photos, video documentaries, Student stories, Katrina stories- a play by Tulane law students, Student Hurricane Network, many more.

Family collection of photographs -example, very sad and moving- http://www.hurricanearchive.org/object/1853, http://www.hurricanearchive.org/object/2166

Mary Gehman http://www.hurricanearchive.org/browse/?tags=gehman
Family group with tent sheets http://www.hurricanearchive.org/object/12540

Pre-Katrina web database Do You Know What it Means?

Do You Know What it Means is a collaborative, educational effort designed to help the public better understand what life was like in New Orleans before the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. Our mission is to collect the untold stories of the people of New Orleans by chronicling and preserving them in an accessible and public digital archive comprised of collected photographs, videos, family histories, interviews and other artifacts. The archive will result in a virtual representation of New Orleans that will in turn help bring a divided community back together.

Katrina’s Jewish Voices more of a archivists collection

The Jewish Women’s Archive organized Katrina’s Jewish Voices in collaboration with the Center for History and New Media. Through the contributions of individuals and organizations nationwide, the project is creating a virtual archive of stories, images, and reflections about the New Orleans and Gulf Coast Jewish communities before and after Hurricane Katrina.

Student collection of experiences, wheelchair bound woman’s story of survival http://www.hurricanearchive.org/browse/?search=giarrusso includes update of her graduation with cap and gown. Importance that people can update what happens after, beyond the event.

So this is not a detailed blog coverage- pretty much as I said in the talk, the entire pile of stuff is freely, openly available for use, re-use, lining bird cages at http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/50+ways. This is the workshop I prepped for workshops done during my October 2007 Australia tour.

[download MP3] 51.2 Mb 1:14:05

The idea for the 50 Ways came at a time early in the summer of 2007 when I was taking notice of new web -based tools like Voice Thread and Slideshare’s Slidecasts that made it easy to create audio narrated slides shows. I knew of flickr based tools for assembling slideshows, and I began to wonder if there was a whole range of these kinds of tools. At around the same time, I watched on TV when Paul Simon was awarded by the Library of Congress the Gershwin award. I’ve always had immense respect for Simon’s range of talent across music genres and his brilliant lyrics, and my mind went almost of course to the toe tapping 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover “Hop on the bus Gus, Make a new plan Stan, Don’t need to be Coy Roy…”

So I had a light bulb go off as I felt I could 50 different Web 2.0 tools to tell multimedia stories. Or maybe there were only 30.. or 60? The criteria were they had to be completely web based tools, free to use, and provide some functionality to mix together images and text, images and sound, sound and text, sound, images, and video, etc to create a multimedia “show” that could be viewed by others on the web.

As this was intended as a workshop, the materials are designed that can also be used standalone. It starts with some suggestions for generating ideas for a story, with some simple writing prompts, or using flickr to find images to stimulate ideas. They are asked to develop a bullet point outline, ideally about 6-10 outline items. A key is encouraging participants to pick something that would be easy to find images to represent the steps in a story.

The next step is using a collection of resources to locate media that can be used copyright free, preferably creative commons.

It while I was still just compiling lists of tools that it struck me to be able to teach and recommend the tools, I’d have to use them myself. So this is where I decided to take a single story and try to recreate it in all 50 tools. Brilliant? Or crazy?

So I resorted to one I had done a few years ago for the 60 Second Story contest- where people were invited to submit a 60 second video story. The original site is gone, but Grand Text Auto has a copy of the prize announcements, where I actually managed to come in 11th place! My story was about my first dog Dominoe, who disappeared while hiking, and eventually returned after I had given her up for lost, and our adventures traveling west. It is very hard to do a 60 second story! So my Dominoe Story is available in video (from YouTube, the original) and the versions done in the 50 tools.

A rather staggering discovery is that the majority of the 50 tools (I think 38) offer what I call the “YouTubed” effect of offering cut and paste embed code, a bit of HTML you can put into your own sites, blogs to embed the video in your own content. So my list has links to versions that are stored on the tool sites, but also links to examples of how they look embedded into wikispace pages.

So in using this project, I had all of the media I needed- I had the 18 images, which I had on my computer and as a flickr set (A fair number of tools can import directly from flickr). I had the script I had used to record the audio of the story, which I posted as a storyboard (the text is easily cut/pasted to the tool sites). I had the audio stored on my web site as an mp3 file. Video took a bit more work- while I had the entire story as a single video, that was not much help in the tools that allow you to mix video clips together. So I found a few slightly relevent clips from the Internet Archive and I recorded my own videos with my laptop camera. The clips are stored as a YouTube playlist, as like the images, a lot fo the tools allow you to use video directly from YouTube.

The bulk of the presentation was walking through the 50 tools, showing examples for each one, and trying to remember in some cases what I had liked/disliked about each one. I cannot even resurrect what I said for these, but there is the audio recording available above.

The audience here seemed very excited and appreciative, and like the series of sessions in Australia, I just had fun doing this.

A panel of five community activists (Ted Cash, Bart Everson, Alan Gutierrez, Sandy Rosenthal) will present their perspectives on how the levee catastrophe in New Orleans catapulted the need for digital information and communication in the community. In various ways, the panelists have each been involved in using technology since the storm to assist in the transformation of the city. They will share their perspectives on why technology has been critical to the lives of New Orleanians since Katrina, and how.

Moderated by Chris Reade – never expected to be involved in rebuilding or recovery. “Digital in the Wild” coined by Alan Gutierrez not about “cool new tech”- technology was not even the pivotal role. After the storm, you would ave thought a Treo would be useful, but it was a brick. Every switching station was under water, but the key tool was text messaging. Before the storm few people here text messaged, but now it is common. Broadband cards have revolutionized social services in the area.

Sandy Rosenthal intro. Began as education mission that the effects of Katrina was not a natural disaster but a man made one. Investigative assessment about what happened here, outside of Corps of Engineers. Needed citizen support. Created a one minute PSA to Youtube. Got 24,00 views in 24 hours- not accident, they reached out and alerted membership and contacts. (see YouTube channel)

Alan Gutierrez intro. Was in Ann Arbor during Katrina, following CNN. When levees broke was looking for more in depth and detailed info than news was providing. Started looking in web forums at local news sites, which became inundated with posts- the BBS was really old (1998 vintage tech) and clunky. But participants stepped in with tremendous user support for themselves. Having interest in social media, as software developer, understood that there was need to get more info out there. When people got to NOLA, they dropped the social tech and went back to old methods- coffee shops, human networks etc. Got interested in tools to help capture those conversations.

Bart Everson intro. multimedia artist, teacher at Xavier. Lives in mid city New Orleans, got 6 feet of water in house, but had raised basement, not much roof damage. Able to move back in quickly, but were only people in blocks nearby, no electric. Around Christmas 2005 finally got electric. Took internet a year to return. No newspaper, no mail. Text messaging was key for communication. Hooked up with neighborhood organization previously saw how it operated as opaque, but after Katrina became ideal vehicle to support recovery. Not like a homeowners organization, more like an interface to government. Helped them set up blog for them. Started working with other local agency groups involved in recovery efforts.

Ted Cash intro. Tech support for neighborhood organization, Common Ground Relief. Open source work, computer recycling. Helped people get access to tech. Set up system of repeater from cruise ship to relay network access to neighborhoods, satellite based city labs. People involved learned how to do this as they went.

Chris Reade intro. Was based in Baton Rouge- became in sense “New Orleans West”. Had work to coordinate and connect displaced businesses. Asked to help develop centralized org to coordinate relief agency activities. Need for information, to connect people. Developed “Yahoo for Recovery”- LouisianaRebuilds.info – calls it low tech– “yahoo about 6 years ago” = not fancy web 2.0 tech, basic, but filling need to share information.

Question. How did your tech needs change from before flood to today?
Ted: A lot of people still lack conventional internet access (no cable, DSL). Have no money for this. Uses open source, labs run on Ubuntu (Linux OS). Set up 300 PCs from recycled computer (Green Project).

Bart: Mobile tech became much more important. Before, did not see need to use since was on computer all day. After, it became critical. Still uses same Blackberry first bought after flood. Neighborhood has needs to compile data, wikis have become useful. Most technologies are solutions looking for a problem, here there were problems in need of technologies, deployed common tech in unexpected ways. Collected common information for per square foot costs of roofing, etc.

Alan: Still huge need for new tech to be developed here. Her there was a community but needed to find tech to bring them together. Like opening scene of Lost, looking at destroyed plane to say, how can we use this? Uses wikis, wordpress- using it less than traditional daily journaling, used it more as a database tool (see homes posted at Squandered Heritage). Site owner looks at site stats, to see for example, when contractors are looking at information. Turned into community activism vehicle.

Sandy: Wikipedia was important- as an organization had license to add external links to Levees.org to Wikipedia articles related to their work. Became number one referrer to their site. She monitor 10 articles a day.

Question: What didn’t exist pre-Katrina that exists now that makes people more vital?

Sandy: Many more activist groups, actually so many she gets confused. Who would have thought there would be so many?

Alan: Much greater savvyness, people became “Knowledge workers” looking at so many sources how to ‘triage information’, what was important, what could be ignored– towards an end.

Bart: Much more cohesion among blogger here, reading and commenting to each other. Not enough news if I just read newspaper or listen to radio. Has become a real community unto itself. Started local dinners among bloggers. Has put together local conferences, not just virtual community.

Ted: Company has developed repeater devices that are much easier to use Meraki Repeaters.

Question. What ahs failed to live up to hype for what to should do?

Ted: Earthlink free wifi was major failure.

Alan: Offers from high tech firms to do social networking not recognizing the dynamics of the local communities, who are not interested to quick hopping to new networked spaces (a digital divide?). Block Captain concept of local people who went house to house to share information, who was there, contatc info, made basic Excel database. “Not necessarily tech savvy, but are now information savvy”.

Chris: Broadmoor was not a well known neighborhood, but became significant after for its level of activism. Power of internet to mobilize local people.

Sandy: Skyrocketing cost of advocacy. To use company to help generate one click letters to congress went from $1200 to $20,000 per year.

This session will discuss a range of approaches from the field of media arts in capturing stories, from creative writing prompts, to interview techniques, to place-based recordings, and talking into images and film. Come learn what works, what doesn’t, and what might be best suited to your project.

Short writing exercise… storytelling is mainly about desire, an arc of reaching what you want. Write 10 things that you really love. Flip side, write 10 things that make you furious. One word each. Read the list of likes in normal voice, but read the second list slowly with feeling. Asks them to ask for which ones were surprising that they wrote down.

Asks each of us to pick the one word on either of our lists and describe the moment when we felt that emotion.

Joe shows digital story about New Orleans “Pralines”. Woman’s story of discovering family past of racism and her approach of overcoming the sordid past via a gift of pralines. This came from this exercise- hate=racism, love=pralines.

Anchoring stories in something concrete, where there was an emotion. Stories begin at the place where there is a core of of a powerful moment, towards your own personal center.

Core of the curriculum is the story circle, with the feedback from others in group. Helps hone in the story.. generally smaller groups, 10-20 minutes of feedback. “Listen deeply – tell stories”. Give affirmation… “If this were my story, I think this would be a good idea…”

Story example has a great hook. The end, target, needs to be a surprise. What is the big insight? What is the payoff, that is not what I thought about at first?

Resources:
Storycorps first set up booth in Grand Central station to tell stories about 9/11. The power of real voices.

BBC Capture Wales

murmur place based storytelling:

a documentary oral history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations. We collect and make accessible people’s personal histories and anecdotes about the places in their neighborhoods that are important to them. In each of these locations we install a [murmur] sign with a telephone number on it that anyone can call with a mobile phone to listen to that story while standing in that exact spot, and engaging in the physical experience of being right where the story takes place. Some stories suggest that the listener walk around, following a certain path through a place, while others allow a person to wander with both their feet and their gaze.

onBeing “a project based on the simple notion that we should get to know one another a little better. What you’ll find here is a series of videos that takes you into the musings, passions, histories and quirks of all sorts of people. The essence of who they are, who we are.”

CurrentTV producer training get the skills you need

Photobus tutorials

Oral Histories from Studs Sterkel “this web site will provide a host of educational tools and documents for students, teachers and the general public. Below are some sample documents about doing oral history and using Studs Terkel recordings in the classroom. More materials will continue to be added so check back often.”

National Writing Project resources

Story prompts:
“Tell me a story about your love of an appliance”
“Tell me a moment when your life took a different direction. e.g. ‘The phone rang…’”

It all began in 1993 with a one-panel comic called “Doctor Fun,” published on the University of Chicago Library website. Others soon followed, and today the webcomic is a flourishing medium, with thousands of authors uploading their creations worldwide. Webcomics have evolved rapidly over time, generating new and unique narrative approaches to digital storytelling. We will examine the history of the medium, the new languages it has created, and its uses in learning environments.

Ruben was nfluenced to digital storytelling by session (following a really bad day at a conference) with a Dana Atchley session on digital storytelling – Ruben sees potential for expression in web comics.

History of genre – “it would take 5 days to do it all– and there are grey areas, who did what, etc.”

• Doctor Fun by David Farley single pane style like Far Side. A web site that would have a new comic almost every day, established web as a platform for publishing comics. No ground broken for style.
• Argon Zark! (by Charley Parker) First strip regularly published on web, added interactivity of hidden items, more than just publishing.
• User Friendly bu Illiad written for web (geek) audience. Takes place at an ISP – grew popular in dot com boom.
• Sluggy Freelance by Pete Abrams – started with plan to make money (and he has done so). Pardoy, mild sci-fi.
• When I am King by Demian.5 – takes experimental art design approach- example of “infiinte canvas”- web page does not need edges like paper. Almost plays out like frames of animation. Webcomic comes of age as art form.

Keenspot and Modern Tales provide hosting.

Scott Mcloud Understanding Comics
Webcomics Examiner
Fleen

Museums now recognizing as art form.

Styles:

• Some comics take traditional form of paper comics – Little Dee
• A painted design, completely different– panel layout itself provides narrative– A Lessons is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible, stories are ones not found in Sunday comics.
• Diesel Sweeties- appeals to computer iconography, style very much like Macintosh icons.
• the Creatures in my head not computer related at all

New Orleans After the Deluge American influence with touch of European influence- use of layering, layout
Motel Art Improvement Service details of background while characters are cartoonish, like TinTin–Crossing cultural differences
Red String – manga style appropriated by non Japanese artist.

infinite Canvas
Scott Mcloud – infinite canvas concept, strains our traditional concept of panel print comics. Zot! Online 440 panels ues space outside of panels.

This story reunited the cast of my 80′s superhero series Zot! and provided a great storytelling laboratory for investigating the dynamics of comics on the Web as well as the first successful application of “trails.”

24:Three – (done in flash) interactive exploration of trails (zooms in and out), branching.

Farfield – parody of Garfield as a remix.

Permission granted by medium– evolves in form and style. Goats “Daily geek strip about a programmer in search of beer and true love. Includes such fan faves as demonic chickens and the Panties of Potency.” Audience willing to accept this as experimental medium

Bobbins/Scary Go Round – hand drawn evolves to illustrator tyle to more complex hand drawn. Audience has followed

Penny Aracde gamer comic. Theme is the same but art work has evolved, but then varies to completely different style.

The Lexicon practical approaches. How can people tell stories by web comics? It is not a natural skill that tools can just enable. What are minimal elements people need ?

From Scott McCLoud Understanding Comics

• Pictorial Vocabulary of comics– abstraction triangle from reality (bottom left) to language- abstraction, iconizayion. Top of triangle is “Picture Plane” to pictorial elements (color, shape).
• Panel-to-Panel Transitions in Comics 6 types “moment to moment”, “action to action”, “subject to subject”, “scene to scene”, “aspect to aspect” zoom camera, “non-sequitor”
• Combining Words and Pictures

Ruben covers this in an hour in his workshop.

“But I can’t draw…”
xkcd is stick figures! Author makes living from it.
Use photos- Michael’s Exciting Life, takes time to get photos to fit stories
a softer world a single photo but used with zoom and cropping of same image
photograph action figures, toys
use 3d programs to render images The Ice Queen
collage comics Wondermark made from Victorian clip art
office clip art Get Your War On
same art, change the lines Dinosaur Comics

The Toolkit
Ice breaker- how to find meaning in sequential information. Five Card Nancy – web tool… cut up five panels from Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy cartoon. Pick one to create new sequence, shuffle again… need to build a story out of what you are dealt. Can do the same with flickr search.

Comic Life – desktop tool for using photos to create comics

PikiStrips similar features that works via web

The Tarquin Engine for doing infinite canvas w/o knowing flash… flash template but it generates all scripts ($15)

Pachyderm generates flash content from media. Can create new templates with skills in XML.

Brilliant session, Ruben! I am running out to play five card Nancy.

Spitzer presenting in image and music-

In a conference devoted to the wide and dazzling array of new media in relationship to intimate community life in New Orleans and elsewhere, much of what may be extended in the classroom, broadcast or global networks comes from original human forms of expression. The implications of which are: pre-modern forms of artistic communication still speak to us, old modern forms like radio offer time-tested models of extending oral tradition and traditional aesthetics, and new media at their best often aim to recreate and create anew community experiences that we may feel are lost when the market-drivenrush to new technology values form and efficiency over content.

(note- the audio is being recorded for all keynote sessions and will be posted ASAP to NMC web site).

Opening music Tipitina by Professor Longhair – mix of Jazz, blues in New Orleans “gumbo” style. Showing photos from flood, maps, with version of music in minor key by Allen Toussaint, sets tone. Then a different version by

Now playing Louis Armstrong (1925) photo with overlay of business card of banjo player John A St. Cyr as plasterer. Meaning of word Creole with many meanings, but has to do with creativity, being from other places, but creating something new as a “mix”. Expresssed in glasswork, carpentry, trades with original styles reflecting these cultures.

Fats Domino house has a “crafty” look in a post flood photo- nothing fancy at all a “double shotgun”. “Fats speaks Creole”. More upset about loss of 9th Ward than lost of his home. “I want the city rebuilt right” say the Creoles, they want it built like their own style, not from outside.

In New Orleans, for every great musician are thousands of kids in the streets who wont make the big time, but are part of the rich culture in New Orleans. “Eddie Bo” interview after flood speaking of being a craftsman – all males learned how to build starting at age 5– he learned bricklaying and carpentry. Loves this work as much as music, sense of pride in building. Ends with jazz version of “When the Saints go Marching In”.

Pride in the trades brought home to simple houses adorned with the crafts of these people… “a Cadillac sheen to a shotgun home.”

Spitzer, as native of Connecticut, found attraction to a sense of “Creole-ness” — do not need to be born into it– “to be Creole is to be whole- absorbing all of the mixes of your ancestry- a way to understand to who you are.” New Orleans as place of tradition that was also progressive.

Tootie Montana- the “chief” of the Yellow Pocohantus elaborate architecture of buildings (“unsigned public art”) reflected on Mardi Gras dance outfits. He died speaking to City Council of injustices.

So much knowledge in this area is not in formal museums, but contained in home, family life- the “vernacular Venice of America” of blues and jazz.

Lionel Ferbos, 96 year old jazz trumpet player (oldest musician still actively playing in New Orleans), intense love for cityscape- built metal signs, lights, still in use today – again the complex mix of music craft and trade craft. Work is celebrated with music. Work is sociable too.

Elaborate funeral processions- Second Line, both somber and joyous music– “Pleasure and mourning together, mourning and hope together- metaphor for city itself.”

Saving New Orleans Culture- http://www.tipitinas.com.

Some said Mardi Gras should not have been done in 2006- “not enough resources” Spitzer says that was a “Protestant North American” view- it went off as a great success, gave a revival sense for the work that needed to be done. Does New Orleans need infrastructure the most? “No one came here because of great infrastructure!”

“Music has kept New Orleans in the hearts and minds of the world.”

Close with Allen Toussaint music. Asks us to keep New Orleans in mind, that homeland is important to take care of from the inside out, by facing our cities, keeping ideas of tradition, knowledge, we can be a shining example to the world.

Cafe du Monde, the famous spot in New Orleans for coffee and sugar piled on dough fried in fat!

As the resident diabetic, I could only photograph the carnage.

It’s the night before another great NMC event- the New Orleans Regional Conference at Tulane.

I really like New Orleans. And I miss it.

I’m off tomorrow early early for a flight to New Orleans- this week is the 2007 NMC Regional Conference hosted by Tulane University. C’mon down to the Quarter!

(also trying desperately to see if there is any chance that technorati actually picks up a *#&^ing tag)