Avoiding Your Friends Today? Use ‘Hell is Other People’ [#geekgirl]

Hell is Other People: Walk One from Scott Garner on Vimeo.

“This is a short trailer of sorts for a walk that I did based on my Hell is Other People app, which calculates locations to help you avoid your friends. It didn’t go exactly as planned, but the results are fairly funny.”

“Instagram is reviving adventure, face to face community and real relationships.” [#geekgirl]

Instagram Is from technopaul productions on Vimeo.

In a culture immersed in technology, Instagram is reviving adventure, face to face community and real relationships. How can something so digital get people out from behind their devices and into the analog world?

In association with technopaul productions
Directed by Paul Tellefsen
Featuring Kyle Steed, Brenton Little, & Allison Anderson
Cinematography by Paul Tellefsen
Original Score written and performed by Tyler Linahan
Intro Score written and performed by Chase Burnett
Created with the help of the Instagram community.

www.instagramis.com

This Is Water [#geekgirl]

[Whenever I hear/read/am-exposed-to the genius of David Foster Wallace, I always feel that awful gut-twist of sadness when realising, again, that he took himself away from the world. RIP DFW.]

“In 2005, author David Foster Wallace was asked to give the commencement address to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. However, the resulting speech didn’t become widely known until 3 years later, after his tragic death. It is, without a doubt, some of the best life advice we’ve ever come across, and perhaps the most simple and elegant explanation of the real value of education.”

Zydnei: Exploring Colonisation via Urban #Codes and Language [#geekgirl]

“Join this street game that explores colonisation as an ongoing process via urban codes and language. Choose one of three warring factions in a battle to revert, renew or remake the city. Presented by dLux MediaArts and ISEA2013.”

The Perils of #Doublethink [#geekgirl]

“How are you to imagine anything if the images are always provided for you?

Who here read ’1984′ last year?…[Doublethink is] …to deliberately believe in lies while knowing they’re false. Examples of this in everyday life: “Oh I need to be pretty to be happy. I need surgery to be pretty. I need to be thin, famous, fashionable.

Our young men today are being told that women are whores, bitches, things to be screwed, beaten, shit on and shamed.

This is a marketing holocaust. 24-hours a day, for the rest of our lives, the powers that be are hard at work dumbing us to death. So, to defend ourselves and fight against assimilating this dullness into our though processes we must learn to read: to stimulate our own imaginations, to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief-systems. We all need these skills – to defend, to preserve, our own minds.”

“Phones face down stacked at the table…” [#geekgirl]

[Via Hellacoolstuff.com]

Halla Tomasdottir: Embracing the #Beauty of Balance [#geekgirl]

Via TEDWomen, Halla Tomasdottir shares her thoughts regarding her approach to surviving Iceland’s financial crisis:

“…we felt a bit overwhelmed with testosterone. And I’m not here to say that men are to blame for the crisis and what happened in my country. But I can surely tell you that in my country – like on Wall St and the city of London and elsewhere – men were at the helm of the game of the financial sector, and that kind of lack of diversity and sameness leads to disastrous problems…Doing emotional due diligence is just as important as doing financial due diligence. It is actually people that make money and lose money, not Excel spreadsheets…I am fed up with this tyranny of either/or choices in life – either it’s men, or it’s women. We need to start embracing the beauty of balance. So let’s move away from thinking about business here and philanthropy there, and lets start thinking about doing good business. That’s how we change the world. That’s the only sustainable future.”

[Watch Halla's entire talk below or go here.]

#femalepressure: An Urgent Call for #Female Representation [#geekgirl]

“Let’s be frank – enough is enough. femalepressure believes there is no justification for more male-dominated music events. We need – and paying audiences deserve – invigorating and entertaining diversity!

Festival curators, sponsors, label owners, journalists: Give more opportunities to women!
Female festival curators, sponsors, label owners, journalists: Don’t try to be the better men by only taking ‘risks’ on established, male artists! Give more women a chance!

We look forward to your response and positive developments in this cultural sector in the future. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions regarding this issue.

Here’s to a brighter future for the arts.”

#Actipedia [#geekgirl]

Actipedia is an open-access, user-generated database of creative activism. It’s a place to read about, comment upon, and share experiences and examples of how activists and artists are using creative tactics and strategies to challenge power and offer visions of a better society.

The Perfect #SXSW Troll [#geekgirl]

Like any major hybrid cultural event that jumps the shark and decides to evolve into what’s essentially a hipsterised parody of itself, #SXSW has been inverting from its original incarnation for years and sequentially de-evolving into a muddled coolhunting mess. So when AllThingsD reported on this glorious play containing yams and oily-networking-sycophants, it just had to be applauded:

In the weeks leading up to SXSW, a series of mysterious packages started being sent out to companies of import and some journalists. The contents included a set of instructions and one single, neatly wrapped object: A yam.

Those who received the yams in the mail — from “Yamtrader.com” were pitched on a new startup that, basically, sold itself as “an online marketplace for yam enthusiasts and traders.” It was absurd.

Yet attendees were encouraged to bring their yams to South By, where they could be traded in for a $50 AmEx gift card.

What they found when they reached South By on Sunday morning wasn’t a booth full of potato lovers. It was Tri-Net.

What is Tri-Net? It’s a 25-year-old cloud services company that deals with HR, payroll and IT backend issues for smaller startups, who may have a good idea for a company, but have little backend business acumen. It’s pretty big, too; it’s home to more than 1,500 employees, and works with upwards of 7,000 clients.I get it… IT and payroll services are about as exciting as attending an enterprise conference after taking a Xanax. So you have to resort to guerilla, somewhat unconventional marketing tactics to get noticed on occasion.

But Tri-Net did them one better. Theirs is a sort of meta-commentary on startup marketing on the whole, a tongue-in-cheek gesture on the stupidity of some single-serving companies that are appearing out of Silicon Valley these days — much less with millions of dollars in venture capital funding. By contrast, something difficult to market may prove more useful; it’s why the hottest topic in the Valley these days is indeed the enterprise (even if it is boring as hell).

A number of folks were taken in by it, with mixed reactions. “We have gotten feedback in both directions,” Breitweiser said. “Some thought it was really funny, while some were upset that we were fooling them.”