Every cop with a gun should also be outfitted with a video camera

By Mark | January 10, 2014

bodycamera2

Earlier this week, after an inquest jury essentially vindicated London police officers in the 2011 killing of 29 year old Mark Duggan, authorities announced that, henceforth, some number of London’s 2,300 firearms-carrying officers would begin wearing vest-mounted video cameras. And, as much as I consider myself a privacy advocate, and despise our ever expanding surveillance culture, I think it’s a great idea that we need to pursue more aggressively in the United States. Those individuals among us who have it within their power to dispense lethal force, should, in my opinion, be aggressively monitored. And, in instances where complete audio or video documentation of arrests does not exist, prosecutions should be tossed out. It’s the only way, I think, for us to counter the increasing militarization of our local police forces and the growing tendency to employ excessive force in instances where it’s not warranted.

Here, with more about the London announcement, is a clip from ABC News:

…Speaking late Wednesday, Metropolitan (London) Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe said the camera experiment was an attempt to improve transparency and restore public trust in the force. It would allow jurors and judges literally to see events from an officer’s perspective.

“We want to see if this is an effective way to record evidence and ensure public confidence,” he said in a statement.

A police spokesman said Thursday that armed officers will begin wearing recording devices April 1. The number of officers set to wear the cameras has yet to be decided.

Police forces across the world have been experimenting with portable cameras as tools for crime-fighting and police accountability. Cameras mounted on glasses, helmets, or vests are being trialed or distributed across the U.S. Several police forces across the U.K. are also trying out the devices…

According to recently published studies, vest-mounted cameras actually work. They not only improve accountability, and increase public confidence, but their use results in decreased violence. Minneapolis City Councilman Gary Schiff, when recently announcing a test in his city, noted the following. “We see, in cities like Rialto, California, an 88% drop in complaints against officers who are wearing cameras, and a 60% drop in use of force,” he said. “That means less opportunity that something could go wrong.” (In Minneapolis, they’ll be spending $400,000 to outfit two thirds of their police force with body cameras in 2014.)

Here, with more on the results in Rialto, California, where body cameras have been extensively tested, is an excerpt from an article published by the Police Foundation.

Police Foundation Executive Fellow, Chief Tony Farrar, recently completed an extensive yearlong study to evaluate the effect of body-worn video cameras on police use-of-force. This randomized controlled trail represents the first experimental evaluation of body-worn video cameras used in police patrol practices. Cameras were deployed to all patrol officers in the Rialto (CA) Police Department. Every police patrol shift during the 12-month period was assigned to experimental or control conditions.

Wearing cameras was associated with dramatic reductions in use-of-force and complaints against officers. The authors conclude: “The findings suggest more than a 50% reduction in the total number of incidents of use-of-force compared to control-conditions, and nearly ten times more citizens’ complaints in the 12-months prior to the experiment.”

We applaud Chief Farrar for his commitment to conducting rigorous scientific research on a technology initiative that has broad implications for the field of policing…

The full report, which was coauthored by Cambridge University’s Barak Ariel, can be found here.

NOTE: For those of you who don’t think there’s a need here in Ypsilanti, I’d remind you of the case of David Ware.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Underground Press art show “In Print” opens Friday at U-M’s Work Detroit gallery

By Mark | January 9, 2014

InPrintGraphic

This Friday night, January 10, U-M’s Work Detroit gallery (3663 Woodward Avenue) will be unveiling a new, two month-long exhibition on the artwork of the underground press. The exhibition, called In Print, was curated by Andy Gabrysiak. Following is our conversation.

MARK: I’ve read the Metro Times piece and listened to the interview on WDET. Is there anything left to cover about In Print, the zine show opening this Friday at U-M’s Work gallery in Detroit, or has everything worth saying already been said?

ANDY: I’m not sure what’s been said on WDET, as I refuse to listen to the sound of my own voice. As you mentioned zines, though, I would like to mention that, in curating this exhibit, I wasn’t really interested in defining what a zine is. I didn’t want my role to be that of an arbiter, deciding what’s a zine, and what’s not a zine. I think it‘s too easy to get hooked on that label. I realize you have to call it something, but a better description of the work in this show would probably be self-published… I should add that I don’t take offense at the use of the word “zine” in the Metro Time piece. (Seen below right.) Like I said, you have to call them something.

imageMARK: What’s your background relative to DIY culture? How’d you get interested?

ANDY: One of the first zines I ever bought, although I wouldn’t have known that word at the time, was the issue of Crimewave USA where you interviewed Bob Zmuda and the anonymous relative of Don Knotts. I remember thinking, “Oh, that’s weird… How did they know I wanted a magazine about Don Knotts and Bob Zmuda? I didn’t even know I wanted this.” Some other influences pushing me in the direction of DIY culture… seeing Eugene Mirman live at the Blind Pig, and listening to the Moldy Peaches album where you can hear the phone ringing during the one song. Seeing things like that in high school, like Eugene Mirman making jokes about shapes that nobody asked for, or wanted, or knew that they wanted, really encouraged me to do whatever I felt like creatively without thinking it was dumb or not worthwhile. Or, in my case, knowing that it was dumb and doing it anyway, because that’s my sense of humor. So that’s sort of where my interest in self-publishing and alternative comics comes from.

MARK: I liked how, when discussing the John Maggie flip book on WDET, you couldn’t say that the Wizard spends the entirety of the book pooping. [John’s work can be seen at the top of the page.]

ANDY: I was trying to be polite, as well as describe the trilogy of John’s Wizard flip books as a whole. The one where the wizard uses his powers to take a dump and twirl around is “Amazing Wizard,” but there are two others in the series – “Friendly Wizard,” where he magically removes his clothing, and “Remarkable Wizard,” where he gives himself a magical erection.

CombNo1_IanHuebertMARK: Aren’t all erections kind of magical?

ANDY: I’ve never had one.

MARK: I figured as much when I heard you on WDET.

ANDY: :’(

MARK: I heard that you met John at the Shadow Art Fair. That’s cool… If we accomplished nothing else during our nearly decade-long run, I’d be content with the knowledge that, in some little way, we helped get the pooping wizard into an exhibit at a respected academic gallery.

ANDY: I thought about that flip book for about two years after that Shadow Art Fair (summer 2012), waiting for an opportunity for us to collaborate. I remember he had color transparency prints framed in front of a mirror, a cheap way to get a very unusual holographic effect that made a big impression on me. We’re working on a collaborative zine right now called “Gout Meat” that we’re debuting in a show curated by Haute to Death at Superchief Gallery in New York, February 17… I forget which, but one of the wizard flipbooks is part of the MoMA library collection. They’re all also sold through Printed Matter… Also, I also found Mario Andrés Martínez Bujold’s work indirectly through the Shadow Art Fair that year. I think he was working with Warpaint Studio at the time, and I discovered his zines through their website, after meeting them at the Shadow… He’s in Minnesota now.

WarmUpNo1_JonChao_DetailshotMARK: I know we’re talking about the show that’s opening on Friday, but I’m intrigued… What can you tell me about Gout Meat?

ANDY: John and I are drawing and writing collaboratively using variations of surrealist exquisite corpse exercises as well as doing “cover versions” of each others drawings. I’d describe the content thus far as grotesque portraits and body horror imagery.

MARK: So, what can you tell me about the show? How’d the whole thing come about?

ANDY: I’m the Gallery Assistant at Work Detroit and saw an opportunity for my job to be “read comics for a month and half.”

MARK: Would I be correct if I were to say that this isn’t, strictly speaking, about the underground press, or self-publishing in a general sense, but more about the subset of people in that world who are pushing the boundaries relative to visual impact? This, in other words, is a show about people who have taken zines, or whatever you‘d like to call them, and presented them as works of art…

ANDY: I think people may assume self-publishing is sort of a way to get a pretty good fake of the mass produced real thing, but there are a lot of instances in this show, and at the festivals I’ve been going to recently, where the artist has gone the opposite direction and has made a point of only producing a very limited number of books.

WarmthMagazineVol2_StephenOstrowskiMARK: And what are folks likely to see when they drop by? Would I be right to assume that there will be tons and tons of self-published material there for people to hang out and look at, read, explore, etc?

ANDY: Yes, over a hundred books by 60+ artists as well as original artwork from four local (except Mario, but he used to be) artists whose practice includes regularly producing or contributing to small press publications. Hopefully not an overwhelming amount of work, but I’d encourage two visits. Each book will certainly get its own space and be displayed with cover in full view.

MARK: I know that you’ve got Steve Hughes, who I just interviewed here a few days ago, reading at the opening. What else is going on Friday night?

ANDY: Ryan Standfest of Rotland Press will be reading from Got it Kind of Bad, a new collection of photographs and images produced specifically for this exhibit. He’ll be accompanied by Millee Tibbs on Omnichord. And Finn Schudlich, who’s nine years old, will be presenting and reading from his book of drawings called Butthead. Readings will start around 8:00 and close out the night.

InPrint_GalleryViewMARK: How did you select the participants?

ANDY: Showing a wide variety of formats, printing methods and binding techniques was one of my main goals. The content of the work is focused on visual art…particularly my own interests in humor, graphic design and illustrative work. I put out an open call through UM as well as various print/design/comics blogs whose readers I thought would be producing interesting work… I’d estimate about half the work came from the open call and half from artists I invited. I invited quite a few cartoonists who I know a lot of times are only shown in events focused specifically on comics. But a lot of my favorite cartoonists are self-publishing, or started out self-publishing, and are interested in experimenting with print production as much as they are producing the comics themselves.

MARK: What else should people know?

ANDY: We are hosting a two day zine making workshop at the end of January in collaboration with Signal-Return Press, which involves the printing of an exhibition catalog and a brand new work created specifically as supplemental material for the catalog. Then, on January 24, I’ll be printing the catalog in the gallery on two Risograph printers with Paul Goodrich and Javier Guerrero. I believe the workshop is nearly filled but the public is invited to watch us print, learn more about the Risograph process and check out the exhibit.

update: Michael Jackman, the author of the Metro Times piece noted above was just on The Craig Fahle Show talking about zines as well. You can hear it here.

Posted in Art and Culture, Crimewave USA, Detroit, Shadow Art Fair | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Time Banking comes to Ypsilanti with the hOur Exchange

By Mark | January 8, 2014

timebankimageYou might already know this, but I just discovered that Ypsilanti now has a functioning time bank. (For those of you not familiar with the concept, that’s a system of reciprocal service exchange in which units of time serve as currency.) It’s called hOur Exchange Ypsilanti (hEY), and there’s a 1:30 orientation session Thursday, January 9, at Beezy’s. In hopes of finding out more, I reached out this evening to Heather Wysor and Lisa Bashert, two of the women responsible for for the system.

MARK: For the past half dozen years or so, if not more, Lisa, you’ve been pushing the idea forward that Ypsilanti needs a time bank, a kind of alternate currency through which people in the area can exchange goods and services without resorting to cash. I wasn’t aware, however, that, after years of trying to identify the right model, you’d actually launched something… What’s the status?

LISA: Actually, I’ve only been a minor player in the launch of hOur Exchange Ypsilanti. It’s true that I advocated for a local currency when I served on the Ypsi 2020 Task Force, but the people who got this time bank off the ground are Jeff Yoder, Julianne Bonta, Heather Wysor, Monica King, and Jen Whaley, among others.

MARK: So, what’s your role been?

LISA: I’ve been actively making time bank trades through the system since the fall, and I help out by doing orientations on the hEY software, like the one at 1:30 on Thursday at Beezy’s.

MARK: What will you be covering during the session?

LISA: In the Thursday orientation, we’ll give concrete examples, share an include an introductory slide show, and explain how the online software works. Then, hopefully, we’ll sign people up… If people want to read up beforehand, they can check out the website.

MARK: So, it’s software based? There isn’t a tangible currency?

LISA: We use a software from hOurworld, an established time bank in Maine. On the software, we list OFFERS (services we’re willing to do) and REQUESTS (things we’d like someone else to do for us). And, yes, there is no tangible currency.

HEATHER: It’s like a FIAT currency, in which money is created from nothing and the belief in it is the value. The currency itself is hours. Everyone’s hour is worth the same and traded over the software. You can trade the currency of hours with anyone who is activated in the system.

MARK: And what are the units called?

LISA: The units are called Time Bank Hours.

MARK: Not very catchy… Would you be open to changing it, if there were an awesome suggestion?

LISA: Yes, I’m sure the group would consider it.

MARK: OK, let’s say I sign up, and pay my annual $25 (real cash) membership fee, what happens next? Do I start out with a certain number of Time Bank Hours, or do I first have to find someone willing to purchase my goods/services through the system?

LISA: Members join the time bank, providing two references and paying the $25 annual fee. (Transactions and contact information are confidential.) Once you’re a member, you list your Offers, the services you’re willing to provide. In exchange for hours doing something you like, you can later get services for yourself. For example, say you have a big pile of laundry to fold but would rather be reading. Request that a member come and fold while you enjoy your book. Perhaps you love shoveling snow. You can offer that service to other members. Just by joining you receive two Time Bank Hours to “spend,” and you accumulate more hours each time you perform a service for others… You can also waive the $25 annual fee by offering four hours of service to the administration of the time bank… this could be copying and folding brochures, fliering, offering orientations, holding a potluck, etc.

HEATHER: There are a few things that we need in order to activate a new person in the system… First, we need everyone to fill out the online application. Second, we need two personal references that will be checked by phone or e-mail. (This is part of the online application.) Third, as you mentioned, there’s an annual donation of $25. (This requirement can also be satisfied by working on administrative tasks for four hours, as Lisa mentions.) And, fourth, you need to participate in an orientation session, like the one on Thursday, which will give you an opportunity to learn more about the logistics and ask any questions you might have… Once these requirements are met, you can be activated into the hOur World software and start trading.

MARK: Is it literally “hours,” as in you earn as many Time Bank Hours as it takes you real hours to you to perform a given task… For instance, if I rake leaves three hours, I’d earn three Time Bank Hours? Or do people agree to an amount beforehand, like “I’ll rake your leaves for two Time Bank Hours?”

LISA: You can do it either way. I was repairing someone’s leggings and the first pass didn’t turn out looking so good. So I re-did the repair and only charged a half-hour because it was my mistake.

MARK: So, is this primarily for services, or would goods work as well? For instance, what if I bake awesome pies?

LISA: I do bake awesome pies and I’d be willing to trade them for hours. I also offer salves, vinegars, vinegar mother, sourdough culture or bread, infused honey, charcuterie (smoked, salted, cured grassfed meats), tinctures, sweetgrass braids, smudges & other handmade items. Usually, I negotiate the “cost” ahead of time, like I usually accept one Time Bank Hour for a jar of infused honey, for example, or a ½ hour for an incense smudge. If the person doesn’t want to pay that, that’s OK, but the trade most likely won’t happen.

MARK: Tell me about the time bank trades you’ve been making… What have you been using the system for?

LISA: I do sewing and darning. I trade artisan foods for hours. I’ve mended backpacks and adjusted dog coats. And I’ve been doing skills workshops through Abundant Michigan Permaculture Ypsi (AMPY). On the other end, I’ve received laundry services, had someone rake my yard, got my pocket door fixed, had my washing machine diagnosed, had my front door lock repaired, etc. And, I’m regularly paying my house cleaner with hours through hEY. You can post pictures along with your Offers and I do that so that people have a visual for what I’m offering.

MARK: When did the system get off the ground, and how many users are there as of right now?

LISA: It began in April 2013, and was fully was up and running by September…

HEATHER: And, as of right now, we now have 50 active members.

MARK: What kinds of goods and services are presently available through the system?

LISA: Kinds of goods and services range from household help, cooking, repairs, laundry, Spanish lessons, photography, dog training, interpretation, gardening, even mah-jongg!

MARK: Are any local businesses involved yet? If not, are there plans to incorporate them?

HEATHER: No local business yet, but we plan to incorporate them soon.

LISA: Also, I know AMPY workshops earn time bank hours. And I believe there’s an effort afoot to have neighborhood association tasks also earn time bank hours. For example, if someone were organizing the ice cream social for the Normal Park Neighborhood Association, they could earn hours.

MARK: Is there a geographic boundary that people should be made aware of? Would people in Ann Arbor, for instance, be able to participate?

HEATHER: We’re trying to keep the boundaries as local as possible. We are an Ypsilanti-based organization. However, when we saw all the talented and motivated people from other cities that wanted to be involved, we knew we had to open it up. Some communication between the people who are trading services is needed. For example travel time and gas might have to be included. So, to answer your question, yes, we have been accepting applications from surrounding cities.

MARK: Why, in your opinion, is something like this important?

HEATHER: We love this kind of thing because it promotes helping the community. We all volunteer our time to our favorite organizations and community groups. The hOur Exchange could serve as an incentive to donate your time to the community. You could also earn hours for the time spent, that you can spend on things you need. Everyone has gained from the interaction. We are open to ideas on how and who to include in this model.

LISA: It’s important to DO WHAT YOU LOVE, right? But we can’t always get paid to do that – this way, we can. hEY stresses offering services that you love to do – so not only does it serve a purpose for others, but you get personal fulfillment, too. I also think it’s very important to fall in love with your place on the earth – your town – your river. This is hard to express, but, when you care about your place, you treat the place, and those who live there, more respectfully.

MARK: How do you see this evolving in the future? Do you have a long-term vision as to what this might lead to…

LISA: Greater investment in our community, more neighborliness, more caring. We are getting to know one another and rely on one another. It’s improving the resilience of our community – and it’s really great for low-income people. I could not afford to have household cleaning on my salary but with hEY, I can. When my washing machine broke, someone helped me do laundry until I figure out what to do. I love that the software tells you how far away the person who offers a service is. That means I can choose someone within walking or biking distance over someone I’d have to drive to.

HERE, FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO STILL MIGHT NOT BE CLEAR ON THE CONCEPT, IS A CLIP ON TIME BANKING FROM PBS’S “FIXING THE FUTURE”:

Posted in Ideas, Local Business, Locally Owned Business, Uncategorized, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

U-M undergrads to launch Makeathon with A2Awesome grant

By Mark | January 8, 2014

MakeathonTeam2

A few days ago, the Ann Arbor Awesome Foundation awarded $1,000 in cash to University of Michigan Mechanical Engineering undergraduate Beverly Chou (seen below accepting the award from A2 Awesome founder Lisa Dengiz) to help fund the launch of an event that she and fellow students are calling Makeathon. After our meeting, I took the opportunity to ask Beverly, and fellow event organizer Sydney Bigelow, a few questions about their plans.

MARK: Congratulations on winning your Ann Arbor Awesome Foundation grant… What can you tell us about your project?

SYDNEY: It’s an event called Makeathon. It’s an interdisciplinary product design competition that gives college students 36 hours to build a functional prototype of a self-designed product. Students will work in teams to blueprint their ideas, create their products using materials and prototyping technology (like 3-D printers), and pitch their ideas. The winning product will get the chance to be manufactured and sold.

MARK: To whom will the teams be pitching their ideas, and by what criteria will they be judged? Are you, for instance, looking for the item with the greatest potential for sales and profitability, or for the one that has the most potential to address an unmet need and accomplish good?

BEVERLY: We haven’t completely worked out all of the logistics, but we’re planning on having the teams pitch to a live public audience on Sunday, February 23rd. Later, we would like to post the top products online for everyone to browse. As for criteria, we are going to judge based on the execution of technical components, craftsmanship and manufacturability of the design, and whether the product meets a need. The more impactful the product is, the more likely it will be successful.

MARK: And the winning team gets assistance of some kind, financial or otherwise, should they want to pursue mass production, sales, etc?

BEVERLY: We will definitely direct students to the Center for Entrepreneurship here at the University of Michigan as well as other entrepreneurship accelerators and programs so they can continue developing their ideas if they so choose. We also hope to provide some prizes that will encourage students to form startups, or become a part of the Maker Movement.

MARK: When and where will Makeathon be held?

SYDNEY: It will begin on February 21st, and run through the 23rd.

BEVERLY: We’re currently planning on holding the event at TechShop, in Detroit.

MARK: What kinds of people would you like to have attend, and how should people who are interested go about signing up?

SYDNEY: Any college students who have an idea that they would like to create can participate. Although Makeathon has been targeting Engineering and Art & Design students, the competition is interdisciplinary. We want students from all majors and all disciplines to attend. One of our primary goals in hosting this competition is to promote collaboration between students from all backgrounds, majors, and interests; each person will add a unique perspective to the team, which will in turn lead to some of the most amazing projects!

BEVERLY: We think that product design naturally requires an interdisciplinary team. Art & Design and Engineering students will know how to build and visualize a product, while Business and Liberal Arts students will know how to showcase the value of the product. People who are interested in signing up can contact us at mpowered-make@umich.edu or see our website for more information.

MARK: By “students,” would I be right to assume that you mean undergraduates? And, if I’m not mistaken, we’re not just talking about U-M students, right?

BEVERLY: The event is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. We plan on opening the event to any of the nearby colleges in the Detroit and Ann Arbor area, and we are currently talking with people at the College of Creative Studies in Detroit.

beverly2MARK: And participation is capped at 200?

BEVERLY: Yes, we plan on having 40-50 teams. Each team will have 4-5 students.

MARK: Walk me through the 36 hours of the event… What do people do when they first walk in? I assume there’s training on the various 3D printers and other equipment, right? And then what? Do people have an opportunity to mingle, share their ideas, and find other like-minded individuals to team up with?

BEVERLY: We are still in the process of organizing everything, but, as of right now, the plan is to start the event on Friday night (February 21) with a brainstorming, idea-sharing, CAD designing session at the University of Michigan. Teams will get a chance to mix with other teams and come up with an idea they would like to pursue. If they’re pretty far along, they can even start making a CAD model of their design. Then students will go home, get a good night’s sleep, and wake up early to head to TechShop on Saturday. Once students get to Tech Shop, some students can take training so they can access specific workshops, while other students can continue to design and then build their ideas. Teams will continue to build into Sunday morning. And then we’ll clean up and move to another venue so students can pitch their products. We will announce the top teams and products at the end of the event, and then move everyone will return home.

MARK: So students from Detroit would come out to Ann Arbor for the first phase? …And are you encouraging people to attend as fully formed teams, right from the outset, or would it be OK if people showed up on their own, hoping to find team members on the 21st, which, I would think, would increase the chances of teams being cross-disciplinary?

SYDNEY: Students can attend in teams, or by themselves. If students arrive by themselves, we will place them on a team at the onset of the competition. Students who form teams beforehand will have the advantage of being acquainted with their teammates, while students who attend solo will have the advantage of meeting new people and making new connections.

MARK: Is there a participation fee?

BEVERLY: We want to make the event easy for participants to say “yes” to. We are aiming to make this free for students, but it’s possible we might have a small charge to help cover food.

MARK: Is there a specific challenge that all of the groups will be addressing, and, if so, will people be told what it is in advance?

SYDNEY: Yes, there will be a specific “theme” for Makeathon, that participants will be told in advance. This theme will be very broad; it’s not meant to limit the ideas that are generated, but merely to guide them. We figured that if students were given free reign and told to just, “build something!” it would be a little overwhelming.

MARK: When will the theme be made public?

BEVERLY: We’re planning on starting our marketing for the event sometime in the next few weeks, so look out for more details on the MPowered Makeathon Facebook page and Twitter!

MARK: And you’re both U-M undergrads? What are you studying?

BEVERLY:: I’m an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering major and an Art & Design minor.

SYDNEY: I’m a student in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, planning on majoring in Biology.

MARK: How did you come up with the idea to do this? Had you seen it attempted elsewhere?

BEVERLY:: I was inspired by hackathons where many of my computer science friends had gotten chances to meet other awesome coders from around the country, show off their skills outside of the classroom, and get hired by companies like Google and Facebook. Being someone who lacks coding skills, I was jealous that there was nothing similar for the rest of us that don’t have a big passion for hacking. Thus the idea for Makeathon came about as a competition for students from Engineering, Art & Design, Liberal Arts, and Business to collaborate and use their knowledge outside of the classroom to design physical products. We’re hoping that students will want to put projects from Makeathon in their portfolios to show their capabilities outside of an academic environment.

SYDNEY: Likewise, there are so many talented undergraduate students with amazing ideas – ideas that could be the basis of the next big start-ups in Michigan. We want to give those students the tools and the means necessary to take the first step in creating that next big product, or that next big business. Often, we see students with amazing ideas who are unsure of how to take the first step in turning those ideas into something tangible.

MARK: I may be completely wrong about this, but hackathons, it seems to me, are largely successful because they attract a great deal of financial support from industry. Tech companies, like Google and Facebook, contribute significant sums of money because they want to attend these events and have direct access to promising young coders. I’m curious if the same will hold true on the maker side of the equation… What kind of response are you getting from industry? Are they stepping up to help make this happen?

BEVERLY: Hackathons have gotten a lot of support because hackathons have been proven to be successful and an amazing source for talented coders. Since few college makeathons have occurred, we haven’t been able to point to any past events and tell big companies that the first ever MPowered Makeathon is going to be as successful and large-scale as a hackathon. However, makeathons are definitely an up and coming trend, and we think that they will be at the same scale and popularity of hackathons in the next few years. Based on my experience, we’ve found that smaller companies are much more excited to support us, especially those who are passionate about supporting the Maker Movement.

MARK: Have you found evidence of makeathons taking place elsewhere? And, if so, what have you learned from their experiences?

BEVERLY: Yes, there have been companies that have hosted their own internal makeathons. For instance, we’ve been inspired by a few of IDEO’s makeathons at their offices in Chicago, London, and Munich. Also, our friends at MIT are hosting an makeathon called Hardware Hacks in February as well.

MARK: How many people are on the team putting all of this together, and what are their backgrounds?

SYDNEY: There are five members on our team; two “core” directors, and three other “talent” members. I am freshman – a “talent” member who joined MPowered this year. The other two “talent” members are Phillip Yang, a freshman in the College of Engineering, and Liz Waldvogel, a sophomore also in the College of Engineering.

BEVERLY: As the core directors, Soona and I did most of the visioning to decide the mission, goals, and scale of the event. We also act as project managers and oversee the team’s activities. We’re pretty much responsible for making sure Makeathon happens!

MARK: And you all came to know one another through the student entrepreneurship group MPowered?

BEVERLY: Yes, our umbrella organization, MPowered Entrepreneurship, recruits for talent members at the beginning of every semester. Soona and I met Sydney, Liz, and Phillip during this time and chose them to be a part of the team.

MARK: How will you be handling transportation to and from Ann Arbor?

BEVERLY: We are planning busing students between Ann Arbor and Detroit.

MARK: How exactly will the $1,000 you received today from the Ann Arbor Awesome Foundation be put to use?

SYDNEY: The money will go towards paying for materials, such as wood, plastics, metals, and various tools. Likewise, part of the money will be spent on food for the participants. We want to make sure that all necessities are taken care of so that participants can focus on building the most amazing products!

MARK: I’m curious as to how you heard about the Awesome Foundation…

SYDNEY: I found it while searching the internet, actually. When we first started planning Makeathon I was looking online for grants in the Ann Arbor Area. The Awesome Foundation came up, and the more I read about it, the more I was like, “This foundation is just…awesome.” So I applied, and here we are now.

MARK: So, what still needs to happen in order for this to become a reality?

BEVERLY: We still need to fundraise and gain more support so we can provide materials and food for our all of our participants. We also need to start getting the word out to students in the Ann Arbor and Detroit areas, so we can bring 200 awesome students to the Makeathon!

MARK: What’s the most awesome thing possible that could come out of this?

BEVERLY: Our dream is to have students form amazing physical product or hardware startups that sell beautiful and wildly popular products. We want to be an inspiration to students and show them that entrepreneurship is not exclusive to programmers, and we hope to see more Makeathons, maker spaces, and maker enthusiasts pop up in the next few years!

Posted in Ann Arbor, Awesome Foundation, entrepreneurism, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

“What I have to Offer”… by Charlie Kaufman

By Mark | January 8, 2014

I was on the brink of posting something just now that I wasn’t all that happy with. I felt as though I had to post something, and it, I thought, was good enough. I knew, though, as my finger was floating above the button that would have excreted it onto the internet, that it wasn’t right. The voice wasn’t mine. It was funny enough, maybe even hilariously so, but there was a tinge of mean-spiriteness that just didn’t feel right. My hand was literally just above the button, ready to push it, when it occurred to me that I should give it a little more thought. I decided to check my email. And it was there that I found a link to the following video inspired by a speech given a few years ago by the brilliant screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. It couldn’t have come to me at a better time… My hope is that it reaches some of you at just the right time as well.

What I have to Offer from Eliot Rausch on Vimeo.

Kaufman’s entire speech, which was delivered as part of BAFTA’s 2011 Screenwriters’ Lecture Series, can be found here.

For those of you who didn’t watch the video, here’s a clip from the transcript.

…So you are here, and I am here, spending our time as we must, it must be spent. I am trying not to spend this time, as I spend most of my time, trying to get you to like me; trying to control your thoughts, to use my voodoo at the speed of light, the speed of sound, the speed of thought, trying to convince you that your two hours with me are not going to be resented afterwards.

It is an ancient pattern of time usage for me, and I’m trying to move deeper, hoping to be helpful. This pattern of time usage paints over an ancient wound, and paints it with bright colours. It’s a sleight of hand, a distraction, so to attempt to change the pattern let me expose the wound. I now step into this area blindly, I do not know what the wound is, I do know that it is old. I do know that it is a hole in my being. I do know it is tender. I do believe that it is unknowable, or at least unable to be articulable.

I do believe you have a wound too. I do believe it is both specific to you and common to everyone. I do believe it is the thing about you that must be hidden and protected, it is the thing that must be tap danced over five shows a day, it is the thing that won’t be interesting to other people if revealed. It is the thing that makes you weak and pathetic. It is the thing that truly, truly, truly makes loving you impossible. It is your secret, even from yourself. But it is the thing that wants to live.

It is the thing from which your art, your painting, your dance, your composition, your philosophical treatise, your screenplay is born. If you don’t acknowledge this you will come up here when it is your time and you will give your speech and you will talk about the business of screenwriting. You will say that as a screenwriter you are a cog in a business machine, you will say it is not an art form. You will say, ‘Here, this is what a screenplay looks like.’ You will discuss character arcs, how to make likeable characters. You will talk about box office. This is what you will do, this is who you will be and after you are done I will feel lonely and empty and hopeless. And I will ask you for my two hours back. I will do this to indicate my lack of love for you.

I will do this to communicate that you are a waste of time as a human being. It will be an ugly thing for me to say. It will be intended to hurt you. It will be wrong for me to say. It will lack compassion. And it will hurt you. And you will either dismiss it or take it in, but in either case you will hear it and it will affect you. And you will think about what you can do next time so you can be more lovable, and with that your wound will be buried further. Or you will think about how hateful people are and how your armour needs to be thicker so that you can proceed as planned with your ideas. With that, your wound will be buried further.

As I’m sure you know, there is a fungus – Ophiocordyceps unilateralis – that infects the brains of carpenter ants and it turns them into zombie slaves, more or less. What happens is that the ants climb to the underside of leaves near the forest floor, secure themselves to the leaves and then die, becoming a food source for the fungus.

Eventually the positioning of the ant corpse serves to allow the spores to burst out of the ant’s head and rain down on other ants. This is true. And it’s very successful. There is fossil record of this occurring up to 48 million years ago. The thing that’s fascinating about this to me is that the ant is acting mindlessly against its own interests and the interests of its fellow ants by becoming a tool of the fungus. I think a similar system has evolved in our culture.

When I first started to work in series television I didn’t need to take a course in how to write a half hour comedy. I knew what to do because I had been raised as a consumer of TV series. I understood the rhythms, I understood the types of jokes that were acceptable, I understood the stock characters. And of course all of this was in service of the perpetuation of the same consumer culture that trained me and made me desire to be part of it. I was a zombie.

It’s a massive issue because the business I’m in is the same business that politicians and corporations are in. It’s a business of selling something that’s important to them by disguising it as something that’s important to you. And it’s ubiquitous. And I don’t think it’s symbiotic. As far as I can tell the carpenter ants don’t get a damn thing out of it, so my thinking as a carpenter ant is that I want to do what I can to understand my carpenter ant self and not mindlessly disseminate the fungal spores of my masters. I like that line too.

I think the best way to begin to combat the systemic indoctrination is to look at intention. The aphorism, ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions,’ doesn’t ring true to me. I think intention is at the bottom of everything. My intentions are shifting and complex and often at odds with each other. And if I know what they are, and watch them closely as they slip and slide all over the place, I have a better chance of putting something honest into the world and this is my goal. My own Hippocratic Oath – I do not want to harm.

I am painfully conscious of the harm that occurs when participating in the media with unclear intentions. I do not want to be a salesman, I do not want to scream, ‘Buy me!’ or, ‘Watch me!’ And I don’t want to do that tonight. What I’m trying to express – what I’d like to express – is the notion that, by being honest, thoughtful and aware of the existence of other living beings, a change can begin to happen in how we think of ourselves and the world, and ourselves in the world. We are not the passive audience for this big, messed up power play.

We don’t have to be. We can say who we are, we can assert our right to existence, we can say to the bullies and conmen, the people who try to shame us, embarrass us, flatter us, to the people who have no compunction about lying to us to get our money and our allegiance that we are thinking – really thinking – about who we are, and we’ll express ourselves and other people won’t feel so alone…

Posted in Observations, Other, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

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