A comment by Pete Stidman of the Boston Cyclists Union, in response to a proposal to build a Chicago Bike Crash Map:

I would advise against self reporting—because what you get is only crashes within whatever bike subculture is reached by the map and by the web. Boston did that before our map and the spread of accidents across the city is very different in each—and could give people the wrong ideas about priority streets and areas. (This is particularly true in communities of color, which were heavily under-reported in Boston’s self-reported crash survey.)

Boston’s bike crash map is generated from (somewhat-) public data on on ambulance runs and EMT reports; Portland has a self-reported bike incident map.

I always talk about technology as a multiplier of action; here is someone with better credentials than me making the same point: Kentaro Toyama writing in the Boston Review on “ Can Technology End Poverty? [No]”

The following excerpt touches upon how technology enables the developing world to experience the same leisure activities the developed world enjoys:

Along with differential access and capacity, a third mechanism—differential motivation—contributes to the widening divergence between the privileged and the marginalized. What do people want to do with the technology they have access to? Those of us who have worked in interventionist ICT4D have often been surprised to find that poor people don’t rush to gain more education, learn about health practices, or upgrade vocational skills. Instead, they seem to use technology primarily for entertainment. Telecenter surveys find that when a village has ready access to a PC—connected to the Internet or otherwise—the dominant use is by young men playing games, watching movies, or consuming adult content. Many become proficient at the software incantations required to download YouTube videos from a PC onto a mobile phone. But these same users typically forsake software-based accounting and language lessons. What interventionists perceive to be “productive” use of technology is trumped by the “frivolous” desires of users. Even users in the developed world rarely take advantage of their technologies for purposes of self-improvement—the most popular iPhone apps are games and other entertainments, nothing that would improve productivity or health—but this tendency is exacerbated among those who have grown up with lessons of learned helplessness and low self-confidence.

I’m not blaming the victim. None of the three mechanisms necessarily speak to failures on the part of those who are poor or poorly educated. Blame, if it must be attributed, falls readily on historical circumstances, social structures, and the rich world’s unwillingness to invest in high-quality, universal education. In fact, one reason for valuing education is that it generates the appetite for and capacity to use modern tools—all the more reason to focus on nurturing human capability, rather than trying to compensate for limited capacity with technology.

Today the Boston Cyclist’s Union (BCU) launched their interactive Boston bike Crash Map, a mapping tool that I’ve been working on with them to help share and analyze bicycle crash data. They did all the hard work of getting the Boston Emergency Medical Services and Police Department to properly code and release the data—I just helped them clean it, geocode it and put it on a map.

It is an exciting project both because the data is compelling for bike safety and livable streets advocacy, and it required some novel/cludgy engineering. We wanted to create a system that would allow the BCU to access and update the data behind the map, but because of their technical capacity, I couldn’t overly format the data or create a CMS database. The solution: Google Spreadsheets. All of the data is stored in a shared Google Spreadsheet that is automatically fed to the map on BCU’s website. Google Spreadsheets can even geocode the addresses. I had to mess about with the javascript code a bit—aggregating multiple overlapping incidents at the same location into a single marker was all me—but overall it was a fun project.

Back in March and April of this year we asked Boston Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and the Boston Police Department (BPD) to separate bike and pedestrian crash data to allow us to see where bike crashes are happening. And to theircredit, each department quickly recognized the need and worked with us to meet it, partly by adding bicycle checkboxes to their incident report forms.

Now, not only do we have over six months of data to look at (May thru October 2010), but  it’s all plugged into an  interactive Google mapcreated by Union member and volunteer Ben Sheldon. Thanks Ben! It will still be a year or two before we can have a large enough sample size to discern reoccurring patterns at particular intersections, but this first six-month glimpse of the data does give a sense of where crashes are happening in the city and a few other interesting things.

**Update: **The map has been mentioned on WBUR and UniversalHub. I’ve been told that after releasing the map, there has been a big uptick in BCU memberships and request for info too.

Colleen Dilenschneider (of the Nonprofit Millennial Alliance) recently revisited Abraham Zaleznik’s “Manager’s and Leaders” from the Harvard Business Review. I read it when I did the Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership at Boston University;  it reminded me of Goofus and Gallant; but most proposals of dichotomous identities do.

From “Assessment Overview of One Laptop per Child Projects”, an evaluation of One Laptop Per Child deployments: “Figure 1 : The current global distribution of XO laptops across the world.”

From the community created and curated http://olpcmap.net :

This second map was launched at OLPC San Francisco Community Summit. Marina Zd collected some good pictures of the other maps being created there:

I was invited to attend the summit because of my experience in organizing community events like the Grassroots Uses of Technology Conference. Bottoms-up, participatory and community-centric planning is not a core competency of OLPC (to put it gently), and I was asked to advise on how to better recognize, support and grow the existing—but poorly-connected—communities that are part of the broader OLPC ecosystem. This meant more prosaic things like making sure every session has a volunteer notetaker, but then that’s the kind of thing that helps build a participatory community. Just look at everyone who has added themselves to the map.

But not to  rip on that report either, since it verifies a lot of anecdotes about the impact of OLPC deployments:

Teachers in Ethiopia praised the ease in which they were able to adapt the XO to their existing curricula and its complimentary nature to their lesson plans. They noted that the introduction of the XO forced them to outline a daily schedule and their class objectives each morning, facilitating more effective planning and a more productive day in school. Teachers in the Solomon Islands repeatedly mention how the XO helps them to record children’s activities, monitor their progress, and track their assignments. In Haiti, most teachers noted in their interviews that it was much easier to edit their students’ work on the XO laptop and as such they were able to spend more time working one-on-one with students and less time lecturing.

….

Increased specialized attention, motivation and enthusiasm for learning, and confidence in children’s futures as a result of skills and knowledge building are huge components in building child confidence and drastically improving attendance, thereby decreasing dropout rates in the long-run, and producing a more well-educated society. Similar overwhelmingly positive statements about child confidence and the feelings of being “special” and worthwhile as a result of the introduction of laptops into the community for the children are found in reports from Alabama in the United States all the way to remote indigenous communities in Western Australia.

Interactions between people with diverse backgrounds leads to richer and more effective experiences.

About two months ago I attended the 140 Character Conference in Boston. Mostly it was a bunch of white guys using phrases like “filter disintermediation”. Fortunately there was a woman who described the need to “midwife” a process, and a crazy old guy (that is what I wrote in my notebook—though he probably made the most sense) who described the educational system as “constipated”. They were the highlights—and pretty much all I remember too.

Roy Alexander, creator of the 3-D Periodic Table, recently commented on my blog since I had posted previously about his unique construction. Below is from his “The Argument for 3-D Periodic Table” (emphasis original):

The theory of multiple intelligences has grabbed the attention of many educators around the country, and hundreds of schools are currently using its philosophy to apply to the various student learning styles.

Students generally fall into more than one of Gardner’s multiple intelligences. Those other than word-, number-, and reasoning-smart may deliberately avoid or fail at the ordinary academics. Teachers, most of them of the above intelligences, may have difficulty perceiving the needs of the others. It is important to address all the students, in Chemistry as in other school subjects.

All students have some of all the intelligences, most leaning more toward one or several. A 3-D model of the periodic table touches on some of the intelligences often ignored, as well as addressing students capable of critical thinking. The periodic table is introduced at the beginning of chemistry, and so is of great importance.

The construction of the 3-D model, an interactive and kinesthetic activity, has the student physically handle specific segments of the table, and deliberately place them in their correct locations relative to all the other parts, helping them to learn the names of the segments and see how obvious and logical the periods are.

The naturalist in students can identify the dimensionality of the periodic table with all other parts of nature - which are all also three dimensional. This association removes the table from the purely abstract to represent, as it informationally does, all of reality.

In a classroom session, the common experience of all to make their own periodic table (and to have it for themselves - perhaps to show to parents, siblings, etc. …and have to then explain something about it) provides, initially, an interpersonal experience with classmates, and then a sense (and reality) of ownership. The flat tables will always be there for quick and easy reference, but the foundation for that table, will be solid - literally.

The pictured 3-D models used in the introduction to chemistry, promote quick and easy familiarity with the periodic table for the new student.

Students characterized by the first of Gardner’s three intelligences; “ Linguistic (“word smart”), Logical-mathematical (“number/reasoning smart”), and Spatial intelligence (“picture smart”), can have the speed and clarity of their understanding of the flat table in universal use enhanced by enlisting other parts of their own intelligences.

From Patricia Fara’s Science: A Four Thousand Year History:

Armed with impressive arrays of accurate instruments, [Alexander von] Humboldt demonstrated that accumulating meticulous measurements could reveal patterns in nature’s vagaries, and so impose mathematical order on variable phenomena such as air pressure, magnetism, and plant distribution. Figure 33 [above] shows his visual argument that there must be general laws describing how temperature varies across the Earth’s surface. Humboldt’s chart stretches from the east coast of America on the left over to Asia on the right, and it illustrates a new and crucially important statistical approach to nature. Instead of plotting actual temperatures on any particular day, Humboldt calculated the annual mean temperature for each place, thus amalgamating many thousands of observations into a few curved lines, called isotherms. By averaging out fluctuations, Humboldt ordained and displayed global regularity.

Humboldt was a visual innovator. Although it now seems obvious that diagrams enable scientists, advertisers, and politicians to summarize evidence and present it persuasively (if not always fairly), Figure 33 is an extremely early example. In the first half of the nineteenth century, graphs, bar charts, and so forth were only just being introduced, and they were slow to catch on. Scientists trying to interpret diagrammatic data had to learn a new visual language—just like reading, deciphering graphs and maps only becomes automatic with practice. Even contour lines, which directly represent actual mountain heights, seemed alien and were not routinely used until the early twentieth century. Humboldt’s isotherms involved yet a further conceptual leap, because they were idealized summaries with no physical reality. By recording averages as lines, Humboldt made statistical regularities visible, short-circuiting masses of detailed numerical readings to present scientific relationships at a glance.

This impetus to think and understand through diagrams was encouraged by new printing techniques, which made it possible to reproduce images cheaply and also to incorporate them within the text rather than binding in separate sheets of paper. Gradually, ingenious visualizing techniques became important in many scientific disciplines. Faraday, for example, knew little mathematics but was an inspired three-dimensional visualizer who developed the concept of electromagnetic fields by imagining lines of force extending out through space with a quasi-real existence. Geology’s great visual innovator was Darwin’s friend Charles Lyell, who included an increasing number of diagrams in successive volumes of his hugely influential Principles of Geology (1830–3). As geologists learnt how to interpret schematic cross sections down through the Earth’s crust, they gradually acquired the skill of automatically translating the vertical scale into vast expanses of time.

From a Frank Chimero jam: “How to Have an Idea”:

Stop being a weenie and just go make something. Judge its value after you finish and before you share.

An observation: Creative people romanticize mistakes and process. But there is no process if you don’t start. No one crumples a blank sheet of paper.

I quote a lot on this blog from other places, so I wanted to post something I’ve written. I’m Program Director of the Transmission Project’s Digital Arts Service Corps: we recruit and place yearlong, full-time, stipended volunteers in support of capacity-building projects at nonprofit organizations that use media and technology to strengthen communities. We’ve placed more than 400 Corps members at 170 organizations in 30 states. We’re kind’ve awesome.

This briefing is from last Spring, in response to a key government stakeholder asking us to justify our continued relevance after 10 years in the field:

The Transmission Project (before, the CTC VISTA Project) has focused on the Digital Divide in America since its inception. Although this divide continues to exist, its nature has become more complex. No longer are we just concerned about an individual’s access to a computer; other factors such as broadband adoption and the digital participation gap can now have direct impact on a person’s ability to change their socioeconomic status. Enabling individuals and communities to emerge from poverty today relies even more upon their ability to participate in the production and sharing of information through media and technology.

The role information, media and technology play in economic development is well-recognized within government programs. The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) project on the Future of Media and the Information Needs of Communities identifies both “the role of public and other noncommercial media in serving the information needs of the underserved, including language minorities, ethnic minorities, children, the disabled, and the economically disadvantaged” and “the infrastructure needs and assets of public and other noncommercial media in delivering information to communities” as areas for development.

Supporting media and technology is a key activity of social and economic development. Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media’s (GFEM) newly released report “Funding Media, Strengthening Democracy: Grantmaking for the 21st Century” pushes for acknowledgement of the prevalence and impact of media: “Foundations and government agencies of all sizes and in all fields will benefit from recognizing the growing importance of media to the future of every field—education, health, the environment, and more.”

Recent economic stimulus measures recognize the economic benefits of investment in communications programs and infrastructure. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program, (BTOP) seeks to “expand broadband access to unserved and underserved communities across the U.S., increase jobs, spur investments in technology and infrastructure, and provide long-term economic benefits.” BTOP funded programs and organizations are a priority area for the Transmission Project in our 2010-2011 program year.

The FCC’s National Broadband Plan goes so far as to recommend a new Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) initiative, a Digital Literacy Corps, which would “help people get connected—not only to broadband—but to the educational and economic resources that broadband can bring to the next generation of Americans.” Such an initiative would mirror the impact of capacity building and organizational development the Transmission Project has supported over its 10 year history.

But broadband should not be the only focus of development. The FCC also encourages “innovative uses of social media, gaming, Internet applications, citizen journalism, mobile technologies, and other technological and organizational innovations and the possibilities for new kinds of noncommercial media networks” as solutions to the information needs of communities—areas in which the Transmission Project has long-focused.

Capacity building in media organizations takes on a variety of roles. The report “Fighting Poverty: Utilizing Community Media in a Digital Age” includes the World Congress on Communication for Development recommendation that development institutions should provide assistance to build the capacity of community media through training, strengthening of networks and sector associations, technical assistance and investment in order to result in community media’s contribution to long term social change.

The capacity-building needs of media organizations echo the needs identified by the CNCS’s own stakeholder dialogues on capacity building in nonprofits: “The most critical capacity building issues facing small and midsize nonprofits right now are sustainability (cash flow and consistent funding, particularly for infrastructure), leadership, ability to nurture partnerships and relationships, capacity to manage and retain volunteers, weak understanding of the role of governance, short-term thinking and stagnation, capacity to use technology, and capacity to manage and cultivate human capital, both paid and volunteer.”

The Transmission Project, with the support of CNCS, has long recognized the need for capacity building within organizations that use media and technology and the positive impact those organizations and their initiatives can have upon individuals and communities in poverty. The information needs of communities, and the role public media and technology has in meeting those needs, are ever more relevant and necessary today as they were 10 years ago.

There are a few turns of phrase that make me cringe—not to mention reliance on the comma—but overall I am very proud of this writing. It was a quick, 2-day turnaround project that relied heavily upon recent reports and studies we had previously quoted on the Transmission Project’s blog. We never received a formal response, so I assume it was effective.