We Heart WiFi

Today at SXSW, we are launching a Wi-Fi network + advocacy campaign called We Heart WiFi.  Fred and Albert both have posts up about it this morning. Over the coming weekend, folks at SXSW will be able to hop on to one of our free “Super Wi-Fi” hotspots.  The “super” part is that each of… Continue reading

Hurricane Sandy

It’s really hard for me to comprehend what happened in NYC last night. Everyone I know is safe and sound, and the overall death toll is amazingly low given the severity of what happened.  But man, what a hit the city took.  The aftermath is going to be long and painful. I was also blown… Continue reading

Feasting on Good

I had the pleasure of spending the day yesterday at The Feast. I love their manifesto: Mankind is now more connected with the tools to engage millions and more potential than ever to build a brighter future. Our role is to inspire the next generation of doers. To empower more folks to ask why the… Continue reading

Advocacy in the Age of Peak Guilt

Yesterday, I spent the day at the Awesome Summit — the first wholesale gathering of folks involved with the Awesome Foundation. In case you don’t know, the Awesome Foundation is a “micro foundation”, where each month, a group of 10 “micro trustees” donates $1000 (total; $100 per trustee) towards a project that is awesome.  No… Continue reading

Hacking Society

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of being part of an event called Hacking Society — I helped organize the event w/ the folks at Union Square Ventures, and it was a real honor to spend a day surrounded by many of my internet heroes. It’s taken us a little while, but we’ve… Continue reading

Big Data

Next week, I’m heading to Santa Clara for a few days of “big data” at the O’Reilly Strata Conference.  I’m really looking forward to it, and expect to have my mind blown several times over.  I’m on the program committee for the conference, though I joined late and missed the chance to review proposals, so… Continue reading

Getting My Transparency On

­ This past weekend, Phil Ashlock and I headed down to DC to participate in TransparencyCamp, a BarCamp event put on by the Sunlight Foundation.  We spent two days with ~200 open government and transparency advocates from all sectors — government, non-profit, tech, etc.  All in all, it was a pretty amazing event — great… Continue reading

Make Music New York 2008

In addition to being the first day of summer, yesterday was the second annual Make Music New York festival. It’s really an incredible event — musicians of all abilities and genres take to the streets to play free mini-concerts. The event came to NYC for the first time last year, and we had a great… Continue reading

The new power broker?

Jonathan Maus, the prolific editor over at Bike Portland, did a very nice write-up of our session yesterday at the Towards Carfree Cities conference. The comments coming in over there so far have been amazingly positive, which is really encouraging. Btw, the photo, above, of Aaron Naparstek is weirdly reminiscent of this one, no? Photo… Continue reading

T-shirt roundup

Everyone is strutting their best transpo Ts here at the Towards Carfree Cities conference. Here are a few highlights… Official Carfree conference t-shirt. We’re trying to get our hands on a couple of these babies. Lots more after the jump. Updated many times so check back for new ones… Continue reading

Real Estate Tours by Bike

Live blogging from the Towards Carfree Cities conference in Portland, OR… Next to our table, we found a real estate broker from Portland who gives bike tours of houses for sale.  What a great way to see neighborhoods and get a taste of what it might be like to live in a place! Continue reading

LSN at the Carfree Cities Conference

This week, a handful of us from the Livable Streets team at TOPP are out in Portland, OR visiting the 8th International Towards Carfree Cities conference. Tomorrow morning, we’ll be giving a presentation entitled “Street Fight!  Lessons from the NYC Livable Streets Movement.”  So far, we’ve had a great time here in Portland — we picked… Continue reading

MX Conference

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the MX Conference in San Francisco. MX stands for Managing Experience, and is targeted at people like me: managers of creative teams attempting to produce great user experiences. The conference is put on by the folks at Adaptive Path, who have a fair amount of experience managing… Continue reading

The Professional Basketball Players at Make Music NY

The Professional Basketball Players were happy to be part of Make Music New York yesterday, the first incarnation of this international music festival here in NYC. We had a great time playing at the Liz Christy Community Garden on the Lower East Side — thanks to everyone there for having us, and to everyone who… Continue reading