Thursday / Sept 18

A Personal Journey Towards Datameaningfulness

Everything you could possibly want is out there, and soon it will all be digitized. The problem isn't whether it exists, it's how you find it. This is the challenge that has plagued the speaker and motivated her to pursue an ambiguous occupation called "Content Strategy." Her idealized vision of the future of the Internet is the Semantic Web, with its promise of smarter sites that actually understand what content means. In an attempt to answer the question "How did you become interested in datameaningfulness?" Rachel will take a very personal look at the formation of that dream, exposing the cultural, environmental, and historic factors that put her on this path.

Rachel Lovinger, Avenue A | Razorfish

Rachel Lovinger works at Avenue A | Razorfish as a Senior Content Strategist, developing ways for global clients to help connect users to the quality content they want and need. She's particularly interested in relevance, findability, signification, and inherently funny words.

When, where?

    * When: Thursday, September 18 2008, 7:30 PM
    * Where: Metalab, Rathausstrasse 6, 1010 Vienna

Time Travel On 8 Bits A Day

Computer History, once a somewhat strange idea, has now taken the world by storm; a magazine or newsletter merely has to dip their ladle into the piles of nostalgia and older images of computing technology to guarantee readership, commentary and links. But what is it like to live in this just-past world of unusual keyboards, cartridge slots and 256 colors?
Jason Scott describes the process by which he became a collect of online artifacts, the strange twists and turns his journey has taken (both legal and financial) and the lessons he has learned towards the goal of "saving everything".

Jason Scott, textfiles.com

Jason Scott is a digital historian and documentary filmmaker based out of the Northeastern US, focusing on bulletin board system culture of the 1970s and 1980s. He often finds himself well outside of that realm and has collected many archives of general computer and software history, which he makes available on various parts of his online archive, TEXTFILES.COM.

"Time Travel On 8 Bits A Day" is a cooperation of Dorkbot Vienna and 'Paraflows 2008'.

When, where?

    * When: Thursday, September 18 2008, 8:30 PM
    * Where: Metalab, Rathausstrasse 6, 1010 Vienn