Launch of Alphachimp Coaching!

Coaching is a relationship that focuses on you. Who are you? Where are you in your life? Where do you want to be? What are the barriers? What actions do you need to take to get there? You are the heart of this relationship. During this co-active coaching process with Diane Durand, you will discover more about yourself which will lead to more fulfillment and balance in your relationships, career, health and family. LEARN MORE

Map of Creativity

This month's Map of Creativity newsletter features an interesting and inspiring interview with one of the co-directors of the European project WebLabs. Find out how six European countries got kids talking about high level maths and science.

Illustrated Manuals for Development Projects In many rural development programmes field-level training is the most appropriate means of communicating new ideas and practice. Unfortunately, staff responsible for conducting the training often have few resources to help them with this task and work in villages scattered over large areas.

Virtual Hikers are computer-created virtual hiking routes that can be followed by hikers in the real world. While currently experimental research in the area of “locative media in the wild,” the long-term value of virtual hikers is apparent.

Food Force leverages the popularity of video games to educate youngsters about hunger and the work of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).

The Black Swans of Nassim Nicholas Taleb

From IT Conversations:

The hardest part of predicting the future is that it's, well, the future. That may sound flippant, but it's essentially true; the greatest problem in forecasting isn't understanding the current situation or the problem itself, it's accounting for unforeseen factors the cannot be predicted. In a session from Pop!Tech 2005, essayist and former financial trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses these "black swans" and their effect on the task of forecasting.

The complexity of the world increases each day, and our inability to forecast events increases as well. "Black swans", unforeseen and unforeseeable events, are impossible to predict but can drastically change results.

These essentially random factors cannot be accounted for, so how can we successfully forecast; how can we account for the unaccountable? Should we just stop forecasting altogether? Not according to Nassim Taleb; he details the pitfalls we encounter while trying to predict the future and a partial solution to the problem.

Peter Durand created this large scale illustration during, Taleb's talk at the What Do We Know session at Pop!Tech. The other speaker in this session was Robert Trivers. The question and answer period can be heard at the end of Robert Trivers' talk.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an essayist principally concerned with the problems of uncertainty and knowledge. Nassim's interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, mathematics, finance, literature and cognitive science, but he has stayed extremely close to the ground, thanks to an uninterrupted two-decade career as a mathematical trader. He held senior trading positions in New York and London, before founding Empirica LLC, a trading firm and risk research laboratory.

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He is the author of Dynamic Hedging and Fooled by Randomness, which has been published in 14 languages. Nassim's ideas on skeptical empiricism have been covered by hundreds of articles around the world.

Nassim holds an MBA from the Wharton School and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris and is Dean's Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Zero Boy News

Check out the "oh so timely" and "as strange as reality" news podcasts from Zero Boy News.

Zero Boy is part of an online festival called The Huffington Post Contagious Festival. Enjoy a few minutes to check out his piece What Bush is Really Saying.

We met Zero Boy at Pop!Tech 2004, where, in the words of Renee Blodgett:

He's a combination performance artist, stand-up comic & "vocal acrobat." Zero Boy performed for us between sessions; quite a creative and funky twist in the midst of Emerging World Views and Global Creativity. He recounts his zany adventures in Zeroland through a unique blend of sound and mime, the results being something akin to a performed comic book. He combines movement with live, vocally-produced sound effects, and enacts a parade of hilarious, fantastical characters.

Performance artist, stand-up comic & "vocal acrobat" Zero Boy recounts his zany adventures in Zeroland through a unique blend of sound and mime, the results being something akin to a performed comic book.

Combining movement with live, vocally-produced sound effects, Zero Boy enacts a parade of hilarious, fantastical characters that find themselves in the most unlikely situations.
"Reminds one of the best days of Saturday Night Live" - Time Out Amsterdam

From his New York base Zero Boy has written, directed & performed numerous productions on both coasts and Europe, working in traditional theater, stand up comedy, television, street performance festivals, radio, film, comic books, a national magazine, and on the cutting edge of digital media/art.

Woolgathering

Elizabeth Perry is an artist, writer and media specialists working with teachers and students to integrate art, language, science and storytelling through electronic media.

She recently led a workshop at the Mattress Factory, a premier contemporary installation sculpture museum and performance space. (Check out what kids are doing there in the Matress 14 Project!)

Perry's own book-to-blog works of watercolor sketches are wonderful meditations on the simple beauty of the everyday.

From Elizabeth's blog:

I work on a variety of projects, on and off the web.

writing

One of my degrees is in writing. I have published nonfiction and short stories. A children's book, Think Cool Thoughts, was published in 2005 by Clarion Books.

web + video + digital

memory - a movable collage constructed in Flash
Uluburun shipwreck - an interactive archaeological site
Pittsburgh Signs Project - a collaborative online museum
5 x 4 - an experiment in multi-dimensional poetry and Flash
textile - a Flash toy hinting at some ideas I'm always working with
stop motion animation made by kids
more stop motion from a summer camp
my house as a snow globe - animation
Homewood Cemetery and The Ellis School - 360-degree panoramas in QuicktimeVR

knitting

I make up my own patterns, but I rarely get around to typing them up. One of these days...

grass roots community development and activism

My inner-city neighborhood in Pittsburgh has several community organizations. I've served on the board of one of them.