nyc

For some reason, doing a Google image search for “inflatable cockroach” doesn’t return many good results. How are our children supposed to learn if they can’t see gigantic artificial versions of repulsive vermin? So, even though this cell-phone photo is a year old, here’s me doing my part in addressing the problem:

This Wednesday, June 6, I’m going to be taking part in a panel discussion on media preservation presented by Independent Media Arts Preservation and Electronic Arts Intermix. My part on the panel will be to talk about new media arts preservation, in particular the work I did on Shu Lea Cheang’s work Brandon when I was at Rhizome. The other panelists are Ann Butler, Jeff Martin, and Glenn Wharton.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007
6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
535 West 22 Street
5th floor
New York, NY

For more info, check out the full announcement over on Rhizome.

So, the first GoRuCo came and went more than a month ago, and not a peep out of me here. What can I say? I was tired.

I’ve been going to Ruby conferences for four years, and at each conference there’s always a point where I find myself wondering what happens in the next 12 months as a consequence. What new collaborations take shape? What new opinions get formed? What changes? What stays the same?

A month later, there are a few developments that GoRuCo might have played a part in:

• After we announced that GoRuCo would be offsetting its carbon emissions, NYC Rubyist John Murch started green-tech blog Hippy Green. Certainly we’re not the only Ruby or Rails conference that’s charitably-minded: RailsConf, for one, raised $33k for charitable causes this year. We chose to donate as an organization, forcing attention on an issue: RailsConf’s decision to let attendees make a choice focuses more on the act of giving itself. All around a good bandwagon to have.

• I feel like almost every time the organizers met, we ended up talking about gender in the Ruby community, possibly at my prodding. So I was happy to see organizer Gregory Brown later bring up the subject on the O’Reilly Ruby blog, which spawned lots of healthy discussion. Tim Bray brought this up again at RailsConf and blogged about it, too. I’m with both of them. The gender disparity is a big problem, and it needs to be fixed. And, by the way, IRC comments like “if we wanted women we would have become nurses” don’t help.

• Without giving away too much, I will say that one prominent Rubyist seemed to be having a great time with us at the afterparty and out on the town after we closed the bar. Later he moved back to New York. Coincidence?

While all the talks were buzz-worthy, the one that seemed to most buzz-worthy in the “I could start building something with that next week” sense was Jay Phillips’ VoIP framework Adhearsion. I wonder if anybody in NYC has built any Adhearsion apps yet? Let me know if you have.

Less than 24 hours from now, we’ll kick off the first ever Gotham Ruby Conference, at Google’s Chelsea offices. I’m pretty excited about the talks and about all the people coming together for this event, even though there are still a hundred things to worry about between now and when we open the doors at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

The conference has been sold out for a while, but if you’re in the area and want to stop through, you might want to know that the afterparty is open to the public. It’s at The Musical Box, on Avenue B between 13th and 14th Streets. As a non-attendee, you don’t get any drink tickets, but there will be lots around. You’ll probably be able to mooch a few.

Image by Takeshi Murata

Rhizome is having a benefit concert on Monday, April 16th. I left Rhizome just about a year ago, but I’m still involved with the organization, and I’m happy to see them put together such a cool evening.

It’s going to be a great event—beyond supporting a great organization, you get to hang out at the Hiro Ballroom and check out Gang Gang Dance, Professor Murder, YACHT, and M.C. Cory Arcangel. I have seen YACHT live, and can vouch for his spazzy awesomeness. Cory is also terribly charming. You should not bring any significant others who get easily crushed out on lopey artist boys. Consider yourself warned.

Tickets start at $35 and can be bought online at http://rhizome.org/events/benefit/.

Thanks to Shari Halter for interviewing me over on DevChix. I won’t claim to be much of a chik myself but I like what they’re trying to do on their site.

One of the things discussed in the interview, of course, is GoRuCo, which is sold out. Out of 120 seats, I believe we have 7 women—actually a better ratio than many other Ruby and Rails conferences, but that’s not much of an accomplishment.

I don’t feel as if I have any special insight as to why the gender gap in our field is so persistent, and I probably wouldn’t say that it’s anybody’s fault in particular. But it’s a serious problem—any field that’s so stupidly lopsided is bound to miss important perspectives—and it’s not going to go away in one broad stroke. The imbalance will be with us for a long time, but that’s no reason to ignore it.

How to fix it? Hard to say. GoRuCo doesn’t do anything overt in our treatment of the issue, and if anything I think that most of the work to be done, at least locally, is at the NYC.rb level and not the GoRuCo level. It’s probably not about a few grand steps taken at once, but about a lot of little steps taken over months or years. Maybe that’s vague, but my thoughts on this are still coalescing and I’m always loathe to talk about things I might do in the future. But check in with NYC.rb in a year and see how we’re doing …

I already posted this on ruby-talk a few days ago, but it bears re-posting: We’re hosting a regional Ruby conference in New York City on April 21st.

The Gotham Ruby Conference is a one-day Ruby conference that will take place in New York City on Saturday, April 21st.

The lineup of speakers has yet to be determined, and will be determined with an open call for proposals. There will be six speakers, and an open lightning round for short talks. Speakers will receive free admission to the conference, an honorarium, and travel stipends are available as well.

Registration attendance is limited to 120 people. Tickets are $100 each. Registration will be open within the next few weeks.

The conference will be held at Google’s office in Manhattan. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

To keep up with conference updates, subscribe to our RSS feed.

GoRuCo is a joint effort by volunteers from NYC.rb and the New Haven Ruby Brigade.

Local Rubyists should check out the Call For Proposals: At least 3 out of the 6 speaker slots for residents of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. The deadline is March 1st.

Most of my friends have heard me rave about my brother Albert’s cool Wiremap project before, but it’s a difficult thing to fully grok without actually seeing it. Wiremap uses a single projector to project fully 3-dimensional images; instead of projecting on to a flat screen, it projects on to a series of wires strung vertically at varying depths to fill out a rectangular volume. By knowing which wire is at which depth, the single projector can project volumes 3-dimensionally; for example, one of the Wiremap demos involves a globe that floats towards and away from the projector itself.

Much of the impact is lost if you can’t see Wiremap in person. But if you live in New York City, next Wednesday you can do just that at Dorkbot NYC.

Dorkbot NYC
Wednesday, November 1, 7 p.m.
Location One
26 Greene Street (betw. Canal and Grand)

For a new media artist working solo, Wiremap represents a daunting technical achievement. The computer driving the projector has to have intimate knowledge of each wire and what depth it’s at; and just physically calibrating the volume to the projector is an exacting task.

If you want more info, Albert has a pretty extensive wiki page up, and a long, explanatory video on YouTube. But trust me, the online representations of this work pale in comparison to seeing the real thing.