Archive for the 'Workshops' Category

Webcamp: Social Network Portability

Published on March 1, 2008 in Community, Conferences, Singularity and Workshops. 8 Comments

Social Network Portability

I'm in Cork, Ireland to attend a day of workshops tomorrow at the WebCamp on Social Network Portability organized by Uldis Bojars and Anders Conbere.

Social Network Portability is a topic that I am hugely interested in for Singularity.

One of the key reasons for attending a web conference is to meet and hang out with other cool people and you are going to be able to do this at Singularity, albeit in a slightly different form. We are all members of different social networks and have groups of people that we've identified as friends on sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. How cool would it be if, after you sign up for Singularity, it finds all your friends from Twitter and other social networks who are also attending so you can add them to your buddies list automatically?

And, how cool would it be if you could take away the new friends you make to your existing social networks when the conference is over?

Très cool, I'd say.

I'm looking forward to an immersive and engaging day of workshops tomorrow and I will be leading the closing panel discussion titled Social Network Portability and Data Portability: Current State, Challenges and Future Directions.

At the end of the day, I'm going to attend the blogger's dinner being organized by Tom Raftery.

The WebCamp in Cork is being organized in conjunction with BlogTalk 2008, which, sadly, I won't be able to stay for due to previous engagements.

Teaching with passion in Singapore

Published on January 27, 2007 in Community, Training and Workshops. 5 Comments

3dsense Media School

I'm currently in Singapore, preparing to teach a one-day workshop tomorrow called PixelReloaded that was arranged for me by the 3dsense Media School.

From the moment I arrived, Hu Shunjie, the head of the Interactive Media devision, and Arul Kumaran (who lives in Singapore) made me feel completely at home. Yesterday, I met the directors of the school, Justin Chua and Sen Lai, the two young entrepreneurs who founded the school and are entirely passionate about creating a truly modern and pragmatic learning space for students. They took me on a tour of their facilities and I was impressed to say the least. Their school is the opposite of everything I despise in certain traditional higher education institutions that hold relevance only within their own insular academic bubbles:

The 3dsense Media School is staffed by industry professionals, some of whom teach part time, alongside their real-world work. They fly in guest lecturers from Pixar and other companies to teach there. This is such a key point: Actual animators, designers and developers teach classes. Furthermore, although there is a huge emphasis on practical work and portfolio-building, they place equal (if not more) emphasis on theory and building strong foundations. All students take fundamental art classes in drawing and illustration for example, in a classical studio setting, during their eleven month degree. In the last three months, they choose a specialization (modeling, animation, etc.) I saw some of the portfolios produced by their latest batch of students and was floored.

During the tour, I kept thinking of how much they have in common with the dynamic, passionate faculty of Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen Departement PIH; my friends who organize the excellent MultiMania conference in Belgium. (You guys definitely have to get together and have a talk -- expect an email from me!) :)

It's so refreshing to see such passion in the educational field. Keep an eye on these guys -- they're doing great things!

Macworld course materials mailed out

Published on January 27, 2007 in ActionScript, Conferences, Flash, Training and Workshops. 8 Comments

Everyone who emailed me from my FlashForward workshop at Macworld should have received an email with the workshop course materials (and a little bonus!)

If you haven't, please email me! :)

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