November Newsletter

What's inside:

• This Thursday: C4FCM featured at MIT Communications Forum
• LostInBoston.org unveiled
• Rick's Startup Whiteboard, Ep. 3
• In the News: Sourcemap
• Welcoming new fellow: Jeff Warren

Want C4FCM news as it happens? Follow us on Twitter (@c4fcm) and provide feedback on our projects at civic.mit.edu.

This Thursday: C4FCM Featured at MIT Communications Forum

MIT Center for Future Civic Media Director Chris Csikszentmihalyi presents the Center's most recent projects. Our researchers will demonstrate their projects in a lightning-round format, with time for discussion and questions following each presentation--from community mapping to news tracking, from collective action to rural empowerment, from cultural mixing to carbon consciousness.

LostInBoston.org unveiled (video)

Rick Borovoy, Visiting Scientist at the MIT Media Lab and the Center for Future Civic Media, proudly unveiled the first Lost in Boston sign last week.

It's about helping Bostonians work together to make their neighborhoods more visitor-friendly. Community groups are partnering with local businesses and institutions to design signs that call out the key spots in their area. Signs are placed on private land.

LostInBoston.org is a collaboration between the Urban Arts Institute at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT. To get involved, contact info[at]lostinboston.org.

Rick's Startup Whiteboard Ep. 3

Rick Borovoy has also been busy with a series of how-to videos on launching a civic media product:

Rick's Startup Whiteboard #3: Designing a Validation Trajectory for your Startup:

Everyone knows that creating a startup involves a carefully-ordered sequence of steps -- eg, don't start selling your product until you have a product (actually, that's surprisingly easy to screw up). However, there's a guiding principle about designing the right sequence that doesn't get talked about enough. You need to think about designing your "Validation Trajectory".

Earlier episodes:
Rick's Startup Whiteboard #1: Pony-Diving
Rick's Startup Whiteboard #2: You Need Partners, Not Employees

In the News: Sourcemap

Sourcemap is "a collective tool for transparency and sustainability": it maps the sources of all the stuff that ends up in consumer goods and helps calculate those goods' total carbon footprints. And it's potential has people talking. The BBC reports that businesses in Scotland are piloting the program:

Several businesses have already volunteered to get involved.

They include Connage Farm Dairy in Ardersier, Cairngorm Brewery, The Lovat Hotel in Fort Augustus, the Spa Soap Company in Strathpeffer, Plexus Media in Cromarty along with Forres-based Tuminds, Macbeaths Butchers and Open Brolly.

The Lovat said it already offered price reductions to guests who travel to the hotel by public transport, walking or cycling.

Sourcemap developer Leo Bonnani told the BBC that Scotland was an ideal testing ground, because local really means local. "Local sourcing in the US might mean 1,000 miles while here in the Highlands people are hesitant to get something from out with Scotland."

Welcoming new fellow: Jeff Warren

We'd also like to welcome new fellow Jeff Warren from the Media Lab's Design Ecology group.

Jeff is developing an exciting set of mobile mapping tools called Cartagen. Cartagen, using Geographic Style Sheets, can help people map dynamic data--in turn helping augment everything from air polution data to disaster response.

You can see Cartagen in action at Newsflow, a dynamic, real-time map of news reporting that Warren developed along with David Small.

Happy November!

Andrew Whitacre
Communications Manager
Comparative Media Studies & Center for Future Civic Media
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(617) 324-0490
awhit@mit.edu