So far, I have helped:

• a movie director create a film in Brainerd, Minnesota
• a new social networking platform
• a bakery/blogging business in South Carolina
• a digital storytelling class

The most interesting aspect, IMO, is that I have some form of connection to almost every person that I have funded. For the movie, I knew someone from Brainerd through a conference and he told me about the project. So, a friend of a friend connection. The social networking platform came into my knowledge based on a tweet from someone I respect who had funded it. That influenced my decision. The blogging bakery is being developed is by a WordPress developer who I follow on Twitter and the storytelling class is also a Twitter connection but I have also met him in person at a conference. I think without that Twitter or other connection, I would not be inclined to make a donation to the Kickstarter appeal. So crowdsourcing is an amazing thing but I do see that the crowd has to be connected and willing to share that connection in order to motivate folks to share as well. It actually is more crucial than I first realized.

Now, I need to come up with an idea to put up there for funding!

From a T-F perspective, these entries caught my eye:

BYOD – Bring Your Own Device. I actually have been using this phrase for a while now at my work because we have been experimenting with checking out iPads to faculty and students and my take on the results is that they are truly “personal” computers and don’t share well with others. We need to expect to bring our own devices, customized as we want, to all kinds of locations and get the cloud based services we are using.

Social Media in the Olympics: I am a HUGE Olympics fan (yes, I braved the crowds in Atlanta!) and with the IOC now allowing athletes to use social media during the event, we are primed to see the Games in all kinds of new ways and at new levels of access.

Online Living in Print and Your Public Story: This is fascinating to me. We archive our lives online and on our phones at this point. The only hard copy pictures I get are from older relatives who still print all of their photos. But, there is also (according to the JWT) a growing appreciation for physical objects like stationery and personal postcards from digital photos. This takes it one more step with services like Social Memories that can pull out your digital archives from Facebook and put them into a book format and IBM’s Museum of Me that builds a virtual museum from your Facebook activity. Or, get more professional and use about.me (Check out my about.me profile!)or Storyvite to pull from all of the different sources and create a collated record of your online professional life.

Split Personality Smartphones: I have had this conversation with folks at work several times. While I don’t carry two devices, I do know people who do – one for work and one for personal. This prediction, that kinda mirrors what Apple tries to do with Spaces

Check out the whole thing. What grabs your attention?

I have been reading about contemplative photography and I am intrigued and challenged to give it a whirl.

What started as a quick glance through the bookstore of the Shambala Sun has developed into much more of an interest. Basically, the practice takes photography away from simply subject matter and into the mind/body/spirit of the photographer so you are more aware of noticing the image, taking the image and creating the equivalent image in your camera to what you noticed.

Of course, the website, Seeing Fresh, explains is much better than I can.

I am part of a Flickr group for Shibui, which is a Japanese term referring to a particular aesthetic of simple, subtle, and unobtrusive beauty. And I can see a relationship between the two. I just want to bring in some awareness and mindfulness into my photography and I hope this might do it. I so enjoyed my Project 365 from several years ago and I guess I am ready for another photography experiment.

Stay tuned.

As they say, your life flashes before your eyes and I see that I have been some places (or at least I only upload photos of places i have been). Give it a shot if you take shots. I might have to revisit my Project 365 set and give that a whirl as well.

This is what I have found: to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee — and that’s really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that’s excruciatingly difficult — to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we’re wondering, “Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?” just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, “I’m just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive.” And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we’re enough. Because when we work from a place I believe that says, “I’m enough,” then we stop screaming and start listening, we’re kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we’re kinder and gentler to ourselves.

Enjoy.

It reminds me of the other science related media that I have loved like:

The Element Song by Tom Leher

And, of course, any Schoolhouse Rock like Electricity (although their science entries were weaker than the math, politics and grammar ones). I was privileged to hear the creators of the series at a conference a few years ago. They related that the idea came from observing that one of their sons could not learn the multiplication tables but could memorize the lyrics for every Jimi Hendrix song.

And, the wonderful tunes from They Might Be Giants: