blog de notas de juan freire

How do you take the enormous amount of critical information gathered every day by city agencies and make it actually useful to citizens? On the City of New York’s DataMine web site, just looking through the list of datasets generated by the Department of Transportation alone is enough to give you a headache. Enter the annual NYC Big Apps competition – a call to software developers who can mine this data and find ingenious ways to put it at the fingertips, or keyboard clicks, of the average New Yorker. This April, winners received a total of $20,000 in cash, the wide exposure their work deserves, investment meetings with BMW, and a chance to talk to Mayor Bloomberg about their ideas…

Aqui!Here! it’s the result of a fruitful collaboration between Cine Clube de Avanca (one of the oldest amateur filmmaking club of Portugal) and Amigosd’Avenida (en facebook; city civic group from Aveiro, Portugal), and the idea is to produce the argument of ten short films that will be developed in ten cities from the five continents based on the Manifesto for the Public Space’s (pdf) ten principles developed by Aveiro’s city civic movement.

We are lauching now a film synopsis contest and the DEADLINE is June 11th 2011!

Join the official Synopsis Contest for the movie Aqui/Here and picture YOUR STORY in YOUR CITY as a future part of this film project!

Choose one of the 10 Manifesto for the Public Space points and write a synopsis idea for a short-film script with YOUR CITY as the background for your story.

10 Winners in each of the 10 short-films will win a first prize and work with the scriptwriter in the final scripts development!

Sharing ‘Low-Cost & High-Value Ideas for Cities’ / Ideias ‘de baixo custo e alto benefício’ para as nossas cidades

http://ruadasideias.blogs.sapo.pt/

http://globalcity.blogs.sapo.pt/

http://noeconomicrecoverywithoutcities.blogs.sapo.pt/

http://www.facebook.com/CidadespelaRetoma

European public bodies produce thousands upon thousands of datasets every year - about everything from how our tax money is spent to the quality of the air we breathe.

We are challenging designers, developers, journalists, researchers and the general public to come up with something useful, valuable or interesting using open public data.

There are four main strands to the competition:

• Ideas – Anyone can suggest an idea for projects which reuse public information to do something interesting or useful.
• Apps – Teams of developers can submit working applications which reuse public information.
• Visualisations – Designers, artists and others can submit interesting or insightful visual representations of public information.
• Datasets - Public bodies can submit newly opened up datasets, or developers can submit derived datasets which they’ve cleaned up, or linked together …

A hundred designers, 10 urban challenges, very little money, and no sleep. That’s the recipe for 72 Hour Urban Action, a three-day marathon for designers to improve their city. Founder Kerem Halbrecht first debuted the concept at the Bat-Yam Biennale of Landscape Urbanism in Israel in September, where 120 participants working in 10 teams got three days and three nights to solve problems in public spaces. “I wanted to challenge the common perception that creating change in public space is long and difficult, and to see if public space can respond to changing needs in real time,” he told The New York Times last year…

http://designforthefirstworld.com/

Hello (First) World!

We live in a com plex world, one full of inequities and won der ful things. Won der ful things are usu ally well dis trib uted, but inequities not so much. Our fel lows in the First World have been con cerned for a while with us hav ing the major share of the bad ness, so we thought, why don’t we pay back? After all, their life isn’t problem-free either.

And that’s where this com pe ti tion starts.

We’re call ing artists, design ers, tin ker ers, mak ers, and thinkers with an idea to par­tic i pate. Two con di tions only: you were born in and live right now in a Devel op ing Coun try and you are 13 years of age or older.

Devel op ing into what, exactly?

What does it mean to be a devel op ing coun try? Among other things it means that the future of these coun tries is to become devel oped. We are on our way toward devel op ment, and we assume that’s a great thing: we will have bet ter edu ca tion, bet ter health care, a more equi tat i ble soci ety. But let’s stop to con sider for a minute whether devel oped coun tries are some thing we want to turn into. Are peo ple in devel oped coun tries hap pier or health ier? Do they live a bet ter life? Do they have a bet ter under stand ing of nature and live in a bet ter equi lib rium with the envi ron ment? Do they live in peace?

Sadly the answer to most of these ques tions is no, or yes in some cases but not sig nif i cantly so.

We have been focus ing our energy and resources on try ing to solve our Third World prob­lems to become more like the First World. But per haps it is time that we, the so called Third World minds, focused our energy and cre ativ ity on solv ing some of the First World prob­lems. We will have a brighter future to look for ward to, and per haps this can help us rethink and approach our cur rent prob lems from a dif fer ent perspective.

Dead line May 30st, 2010 11:59 p.m. EST

Dx1W has pro claimed 2010 Inter na tional Year of the First World in Need, and has defined four main areas to address: Food Pro duc tion and Eat ing Dis or ders, Aging Pop u la tion and Low Birth rate, Immi gra tion and Inte gra tion to Soci ety, Sus tain abil ity and Over consumption.

Fur ther more, one of the major aims of the Year will be to demon strate the ben e fi cial effects of cul tural diver sity. We want to rec og nize the impor tance of trans fers and exchanges between cul tures through implicit or explicit dia logue that under lines how cul tures and civ i­liza tions are inter linked and con tribute to the progress of humankind.

The strat egy of the Inter na tional Year con sists in main stream ing the above-mentioned prin­ci ples in all policy-making at local, national, regional and inter na tional lev els through the involve ment of the great est num ber of rel e vant stake hold ers. The activ i ties car ried out under the Inter na tional Year focus on:

• Reduc ing obesity.
• Address ing aging pop u la tion and low birth rate.
• Reduc ing con sump tion rate of mass pro duced goods.
• Inte grat ing the immigrant population.

The Dx1W com pe ti tion is addressed to the devel op ing coun tries of the world: All cre ative solu tions depend on hav ing a pow er ful idea. Whether it’s great resources, mil i tary, pol i tics or gov ern ment, power and size are not enough with out hav ing a pow er ful vision. The First World needs our ideas to solve their prob lems. First World prob lems demand Sim ple Third World solutions. From today on The Third World will bring ideas to redesign the future of the First World.

Indi vid ual and team sub mis sions are welcomed.

Steps:

• Select one of the pro posed areas to work.
• Select a pop u la tion with that prob lem to apply your solutions.
• Think of an orig i nal idea that will solve the prob lem you selected.
• Think how to apply that idea to a spe cific com mu nity in the First World.
• Plan how you will make it hap pen. Write, draw, film, design. Ren der ings and exten sive plan ning is encour aged but not necessary.
• Use text, pho tos, and video to explain your project.
• Reg is ter and Login into the site to apply.
• Sub mit your idea on time.

Eli gi bil ity

• Par tic i pants should be 13 years of age or older and a legal res i dent of a Devel op ing coun try.
• The idea should not involve reli gious advo cacy or proselytizing.