Engage Pittsburgh 2006: The Idea Round-Up

Alphachimp Studio Inc. will be herding cats and roping ideers as lead facilitators of the Idea Round-Up.

Roll up your sleeves and be a part of community change at a day-long collaborative design event on September 9th.

Saturday, September 9, 2006
CAPA High School, Downtown (link)
9 AM - 4 PM
$10 (includes lunch!)
Space limited to 400 persons
Register Here

At this one-day event, The Sprout Fund will engage creative young thinkers and regional leaders in a conversation that promotes new thinking about the topics that matter most to our community.

Learn what's going on nationally in other cities, engage in panel discussions with regional leaders, and work in small design groups to generate as many brain-busting ideas as possible. All ideas will be welcome-the wacky, the way out, the logical, the needed, the necessary, the fun, and the futuristic.

Rather than a typical civic meeting, The Idea Round Up promises to be a highly visual and highly interactive day with 20 local artists on hand to illustrate all the ideas generated.

Sprout will announce plans to release $100,000 in funding to support projects that grow directly out of the ideas developed during this exciting collaborative design event.

Engage Pittsburgh 2006

The Idea Round Up is the launch event for The Sprout Fund's Engage Pittsburgh 2006 initiative.

Engage Pittsburgh 2006 will produce a community blueprint and involve citizens in developing ideas and implementing projects that will achieve positive regional change and broad-based community goals.

By combining dialogue with dedicated funding projects, Engage Pittsburgh 2006 promises to be like no other civic initiative to date.

Lead support for Engage Pittsburgh 2006 is provided by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

Paintings on display at Beleza

On view through August....
Paintings by Peter Durand (Works from 1995-2005)

Beleza Community Coffee House
1501 Buena Vista St., North Side
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA

photos of exhibit>

This wonderful coffee shop was started by 7 graduates from Hope College in Michigan, who decided to "change the world" through establishing this new venture.

Boom and buzz: Can a coffeehouse save the neighborhood?
by Diana Nelson Jones
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

East vs. East: China's Anti-Japan Posters

EastSouthNorthWest has been documenting the Chinese graphic design focused on reminding the populace of Japanese humiliations during World War II and encouraging citizens to "castrate Japanese" through boycotting their goods and services.

Translation of poster at right:

Everyone loves the country
Don't forget the national shame
Boycott Japanese goods
Beginning with myself

See more posters.

Ann Marie Healy of Z Plus Partners interviews Jonathan Spence, one of the foremost scholars of Chinese civilization from the 16th century to the present and Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, about the historical context behind these most recent eruptions of anti-Japanese fervor.

Read interview.

Mucha Lucha Libre

You would think that the genre of crime-fighting masked men wouldn't be so odd. There's Batman and Robin and Daredevil... and the Blue Demon.

Wait.

The Blue Demon? Why that is not a member of the Hall of Justice! No. he is a member of the pantheon of Mexican wrestling (Lucha Libre) and suave personality.

A.S. Hamrah of the Boston Globe sums it up with gusto in his June 11 article, Fight Club.

If the new Jack Black comedy ``Nacho Libre," from ``Napoleon Dynamite" director Jared Hess, does nothing else, it will serve to remind moviegoers that bulky heroes once walked the earth, at least south of the border.

These noble men fought evil, which appeared to them in the form of vampires, mummies, and mad scientists. They fought this evil wearing masks. And tights. And sometimes capes. They spoke Spanish, except when their voices were dubbed into English.

Whichever language they spoke, their real language was the Esperanto of flying kicks and choke holds. In Mexico it's called ``lucha libre." Lucha: fight, struggle, strife -- wrestling. Libre: loose, brash -- free.

I wasn't fully initiated until I spotted a gem of a DVD while in the checkout line of a Wal-Mart in New Braunsfeld, Texas. This thriller titled, El Castillo de las Momias de Guanajuato, has it all: wrestling, midgets, zombies, a red VW van, science, the occult, babes in bondage and wrestling. Did I mention wrestling?

The plot is very complex. From the review on Amazon:

Dr. Tanner, who was expelled from the medical association long ago, is planning revenge. However, he needs a heart transplant first, and commands his midget servants to kidnap Dr. Simmons, his old enemy. Chaos ensues! Who will win? Good or evil???

Mentos Bellagio Fountains

The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments:

What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It's amazing and completely insane.

The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get. Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes.

It's a hysterical and spectacular mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas, brought to you by the mad scientists at EepyBird.com.

Pittsburgh Business Times: Getting Down to Graphics

Tracy Carbasho of the Pittsburgh Business Times did a great job of turning our excited ramblings into a cohesive story about what we do (see article).

"It's not your old corporate meetings where employees listen to the same person drone on,'' said Tim Zak, CEO of the South Side-based Social Innovation Accelerator, a private foundation that supports innovative nonprofit organizations in southwestern Pennsylvania. "Time goes by faster because the events are more engaging with auditory, visual, mental and physical stimulation through team-building exercises, so participants get more involved, more ideas are developed and this results in more productivity.''

We paid him to say that! The photo op in our garden was especially fun--even though the paper chose not to print my awesome karate kicks captured by photographer Joe Wojcik.

(Diane took this during the photo shoot, but it doesn't match the perfect
Bruce-Lee-meets-Nacho-Libre image captured by Joe!)

Super Seventies Stereophonics

From Leah Silverman:

This is a fun article from CreativePro.com that brings me back to 1975 when I bought my very first own turntable and stereo with all my summer earnings. I can't remember if it had a cassette deck in it -- I know I still had an eight track player back then because there was one in my '62 Cadillac!

Launch of Social Innovation Conversations

As series producer for Globeshakers, with host Tim Zak, I am excited to introduce you to the Conversations Network's new podcast channel: Social Innovation Conversations.

Our goal is to create a popular channel on the Web, a place that provides an engaging and provocative dialogue about the most effective ways we can improve society and the environment. We'll do this by recording conferences, speeches, and interviews from around the world, to bring you the voices of those at the forefront of creating social change.

The Conversations Network has grown out of the explosive response to Doug Kaye's IT Conversations, which now continues as a channel on the Network.

Social Innovation Conversations is made possible by the concerted efforts of the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School of Business, and the Pittsburgh Social Innovation Accelerator... three organizations dedicated to improving society and the environment. To become a member is free and it's easy to register.

As part of the launch, we've chosen to re-broadcast two conversations with Tim Zak host of Globeshakers...

Ethan Zuckerman, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Ethan Zuckerman addresses the direct question: "Why should we care about Africa?" As a technologist, Ethan has spent much time on the ground working with the new generation of African entrepreneurs, programmers, organizers, and young people who are hooking up the continent to the web. These new netizens are changing the way that villagers and urban dwellers learn, organize, network, and face the challenges of poverty, AIDS, political strife and making a living.

David Bornstein - How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.
An accomplished journalists, David is a leading expert in the global rise of "social entrepreneurism." In this program, host Tim Zak asks how we would even know a social entrepreneur if we saw one on the street. More important, why should we even care? Who invests in social enterprise and what is at stake for our world if we don't?

Alex Lindsay - The Next Generation of Digital Craftsman
As "Chief Architect" of PixelCorps, Alex Lindsay merges the very old idea of a guild system made up of independent craftsman with the demands of mastering new and emerging media. PixelCorps serves as "a guild for the next generation of craftsmen--digital craftsmen." They are currently transfering skills in digital imaging and animation to regions in the developing world, so that those citizens can capitalize on the coming media revolution.

Zach Warren - Laughter in a Time of War
In the Fall of 2005, Zach set the World's Record for running the Philadelphia marathon--while juggling! In 2006, he is gunning to set another world's record for the fastest100miles on a unicycle--a record that has stood for almost 20 years. In the summer of 2005, Zack Warren, a native of West Virginia, traveled to Afghanistan to work with children as part of the Afghan Mobile Mini Circus for Children. All this while a student at Harvard Divinity School.

Bill Strickland - Manchester Craftsmans Guild
As one of the world's great social innovators, Bill Strickland is head of both the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild and the Bidwell Training Center, located on Pittsburgh's gritty north side just down the street from where he grew up. Strickland has created a youth development and adult training center like no other, in approach and results. Over nearly 40 years, he has melded an environment surrounded by stunning art, the sounds of jazz, beautiful orchids, and brilliant architecture with programs that get kids into college and adults a job with a future.

Please share this news with anyone in your network who may find value in these conversations.

Piggly Wiggly Goes Biometrically

Should you find yourself shopping for bacon at the Piggly Wiggly on Hilton Head Island (South Carolina) and to your dismay, you should also find yourself sans wallet (but slathered in sunscreen), do not, Gentle Reader, be afraid.

Many things have evolved at this grocery chain which stands tall as the quintessential store synonymous for both its cheerful porcine mascot (Mr. Pig loves kids!) and democratic selection of Southern food (ribs, anyone?).

Namely, the chain now offers the option to purchase your pork rinds using only your index finger and a smile. Biometrics have broken the bargain shopper barrier.

Since June 2005, Piggly Wiggly shoppers across Georgia and South Carolina have been able to pay for groceries with the touch of a finger.

When I ran across the contraption whilst vacationing, I conducted an impromptu interview with the store owner and his longest-employed cashier. Neither one could quite remember when they started using the technology. However, the cashier summed up the ROI for the IT biometric device: "The old people really seem to like it. And there are a lot of them down here. You know, retired people and stuff."

According to Biometrics.com, the Piggly Wiggly chain has been using the Pay By Touch system in Georgia and South Carolina since June of 2005.

"We tested Pay By Touch at four stores in South Carolina and found that our guests loved paying for their groceries with a quick finger-scan because of the convenience of not having to fumble with wallets at check-out," said Rich Farrell, vice president of information services at Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co. "We also found that frequent Pay By Touch users saw Piggly Wiggly as more dedicated to providing better customer service -- and that is very important to us."

"Pay By Touch is making great strides in changing the way we pay for things today and in the future," said John Rogers, founder, chairman, and CEO of Pay By Touch. "This is an exciting time for stores like Piggly Wiggly, whose customers have already seen the value in using Pay By Touch. We're helping to provide customers with a highly secure way to pay while also making shopping easier and faster."

The one-time Pay By Touch enrollment is simple and takes just a couple of minutes. Shoppers can enroll at Piggly Wiggly stores at the guest services counter, or by visiting http://www.paybytouch.com/. Shoppers select the accounts they want to enroll in a finger-accessed electronic Pay By Touch wallet. These accounts include Express Checking, which is a direct electronic withdrawal from an existing checking account, and/or any existing major credit cards, plus their PFC PFC/GREENBAX rewards card.

Once you complete your speedy and biometrically-facilitated purchase of sundry items, you may exit the store, turn left, traverse the parking lot's broiling tarmac, hop the split-rail fence, and enter into the peaceful shade of Live Oaks and Spanish Moss, where a peaceful cemetery of handcarved slate headstones reminds you of a simpler time. [see slideshow]

Artnatomy (or How to Make Funny Faces)

My parents used to politely request that I refrain from making funny faces at the dinner table. I never was able to, and even now I can't keep a straight face in front of any camera, mirror, store window or mud puddle.

After all, faces are incredible.

To see the insane tapestry of muscles lacing the bones of our skull, check out Artnatomy, a collaboration between two professors from Spain. This Flash animation shows the mechanics of every twitch, tick, wink and knowing look that our faces can muster.

[Thanks to Nellie Durand]

From the creators:

The primary goal is to provide the student and those interested, a convenient refernce tool, facilitating familiarity and experiemntation with the underlying anatomical structures using correct biomechanical representation of the different facial expressions.

Victoria Contreras Flores studied Fine Arts in Spain at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and is a teacher of figure drawing, illustration and digital tools. She is also founding partner of DES.AR.ME (Artistics Development of Media).

Carlos Plasencia Climent is the author of many texts describing the muscles of the face and facial expression. He is a professor of morphologic anatomy in the Fine Arts Faculty at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.