The 2009 Entheogenesis Australis Mini Symposium at the University of Melbourne on Sat 14th Nov

The symposium will feature an array of interesting speakers including the notorious Bear (Owsley) Stanley: considered by many as one of the underground legends of the sixties counterculture, Bear Stanley was the best acid chemist of his generation, turning on heads from the Haight Ashbury, to the Beatles and beyond. Bear was a minor participant in the Acid Tests of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. He was the first underground cook to produce high-purity LSD in the 1960s, when it was legal, including the famous White Lightning and Monterey Purple. Nowadays Stanley denies his heroic status, and spends time in Far North Queensland working on sculptures, and writing essays on various subjects. He is renowned for his contribution to sound engineering, particularly working with live gig iconoclasts, the Grateful Dead, and perfecting the idea of on-stage monitors and high quality PAs. A tireless archivist, he kept a ‘diary’ of his front-of-house mixes, including hundreds of Grateful Dead performances, and has seen the release of a number of albums from his “sonic journal” tapes of PA mixes. [www.thebear.org]

Rak Razam authour of a great new book Aya who is presenting ’Planetary Icaro: Using examples from ayahuasca culture, Razam outlines the boom in plant-based entheogenic sacraments that connect to the Divine’.
More info at http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?p=7724544

Melbourne based Polyester will also be running a bookstore of drug related literature and DVD’s and will be offering a 10% discount for all attendees.

Location: The Basement Theatre – the Spot building – The University of Melbourne.
Building number 110 on the corner of Berkeley & Pelham Street. See a map at page two of the below link;
http://www.entheo.net/Parkville.pdf

Date: Saturday 14 November
Time: 10:30am – 6pm
MC: Martin Williams
Tickets: Available at the door, so pleases be on time.
Cost $75
Concession $50

Nancy White in Digital Habits. Stewarding Technology for Communities. Monday 16th Nov, Melbourne

Technology has changed what it means to “be together” for teams, groups and networks. We can now connect and interact across time and space, co-create and share our creations across the globe. This also means we face a dizzying array of tools and platforms which seem to morph and change daily. We all seem to use the tools in different ways, creating gaps and friction in our groups. What’s a person to do? Consider technology stewardship, the practice of scanning for, choosing, implementing and supporting useful practices using technology in a community. Nancy White will share a few frameworks and stories, then we’ll open the conversation.

• What is community technology stewardship?
• What inherent tensions does a steward work with in a community?
• How can we explore a community’s activity orientations as a way of making decisions around technology?

Agenda

6:00-6:30 Networking with other thinking collaborators (over drinks and nibbles).
6:30-7:15 Nancy White: Digital Habitats
7:15-8:00 Informal conversation amongst the group to explore the ideas and concepts.

Venue

RMIT Graduate School of Business, 300 Queen Street. Melbourne
Lecture room 158.1.2B (Ground level – just behind reception).
Ample metered street parking nearby in Queen Street (between La Trobe and Little Lonsdale).

RSVP: by email to melbournekmlf@gmail.com

About Nancy White

Founder of Full Circle Associates, Nancy helps organisations connect through online and offline strategies. Nancy is an online interaction designer, facilitator and coach for distributed communities of practice, online learning, distributed teams and online communities. She has a special interest in the NGO/NPO sector. Nancy blogs as well as teaches, presents and writes on online facilitation and interaction, social architecture and social media. She is co-author with Etienne Wenger and John Smith of Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities.

Nancy confesses to online interaction, learning and chocolate addictions. She lives in Seattle with her husband and two grown sons.

More information about available workshops via KMLF – Melbourne Knowledge Management Leadership Forum go here.

Women in Games, Sydney event

AIE Sydney will be hosting a Women In Games event in November for High School girls in grades 10, 11 and 12 to find out more about the games industry. Female guest speakers from the industry will be invited to the event to talk about what the industry is like for women and why it is important for more girls to get into games. There will be networking opportunities throughout the evening and will be extremely beneficial to girls wanting to  pursue a career in the games industry.

Thursday 19th November 2009
6pm till 8pm
Level 2, Wentworth Park Grandstand
Wattle Street, Ultimo, NSW, 2007

More info: sydney@aie.edu.au

Website: women in games

Academy of Interactive Entertainment

Entheogenesis Australis is just around the bend

6-9 November 2009
Swanpool, Victoria
http://www.entheo.net/

Bear Owsley will be speaking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley

The Entheogenesis Australis 2009 Conference aims to address the issues relating to drug use/misuse from social, cultural and
historical/traditional perspectives. EGA speakers will draw on the backgrounds of physiology, biology, pharmacology, psychology,
neuroscience, anthropology, botany and more to provide a more realistic context to the role drugs and altered states play in the modern world.

If you’ve ever asked yourself “has the ‘War on Drugs’ created more problems than it tried to solve?” or “is MDMA really a more dangerous drug than alcohol?” – then EGA is for you.

Entheogenesis Australis is a collection of thinkers from all walks of life, we come together to share knowledge about sacred plants, chemical alchemy and states of consciousness.

Melbourne afternoon hack for the ladies

Afternoon Hack, the sequel

Bring your laptop, and something you want to create, debug, work on or learn about. Enjoy some communal hacking with women in the same room as you — not just the same IRC channel.

Beginners are welcome – if you want to know how to set your machine up to develop software on it, or how to configure it for some particular project, we will try and help you figure it out.

All women are welcome. Men may attend as the guest of a female attendee.

14th Nov 2009 starts 1pm finishes 5pm

Location: ThoughtWorks, Level 15, 303 Collins St, Melbourne

Note: you won’t be able to get to Level 15 without an escort. So please RSVP via Facebook or Brianna to get a contact mobile phone number, so you can call when you arrive and be let in. Alternatively, arrive on time (on the dot! ).

I really dig Fred Hollows

There was always something cool about the late and great Professor Fred Hollows. So I was delighted to see his 90 second television ad has been named the world’s best not for profit television advertisement at an awards ceremony held in The Netherlands.

The Fred Hollows Foundation’s award winning advertisement has been showing on Australian television since June this year.

It features archival footage of Fred Hollows, combined with stories of people from around the world who have had their sight restored by The Fred Hollows Foundation.

It also includes music by Australian band Jet, who provided their song Shine On as a soundtrack.

To view The Fred Hollows Foundation’s winning advertisement see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2opo45uPzk

Remember 3 out of 4 people who are blind don’t have to be.

For more information go to The Fred Hollows Foundation.

National Computer Science School for Australian students

What is NCSS?

The National Computer Science School (NCSS) is a week long summer school for students going into years 11 and 12. NCSS brings together talented young people from around Australia for an intensive course of computer programming and website development in the School of IT at the University of Sydney.

NCSS 2010 will run from Saturday 2 January to Monday 11 January, 2010 (inclusive).

NCSS has been offered in various formats since 1996, when it was initiated by the University’s Foundation for Information Technology. This makes 2010 the 15th year of the program.

NCSS is organised by academic staff, alumni and students of the School of Information Technologies. The school is completely residential, with all students staying with NCSS staff in full-board accommodation provided by The Women’s College, within the main Camperdown campus of The University of Sydney.

It’s definitely worth supporting this initiative especially if you have the skills to be a tutor. Applications for http://www.ncss.edu.au/ are now open.  They put some effort into attracting applications from girls and from students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Cunningham Dax Collection presents Out of the Dark the Emotional Legacy of the Holocaust

Out of the Dark: the Emotional Legacy of the Holocaust
The Cunningham Dax Collection
Presented in association with the Jewish Holocaust Centre
Opening 22 October 2009

Out of the Dark brings together a selection of artworks made by child survivors and children of survivors of the Holocaust. The exhibition explores the continuing psychological effects that the Holocaust has had throughout these generations. Out of the Dark considers the trans-generational emotional legacy of the Holocaust, viewed through the creative lens of its survivors and subsequent generations.

VISIT > Gallery hours: Wed – Fri 10am to 4pm, Saturday 1 to 5pm, Admission FREE
MAP > http://tiny.cc/FSKdV

The Cunningham Dax Collection
35 Poplar Road
Parkville, Melbourne 3052
Victoria
T 61 3 9342 2394
F 61 3 9381 2008
www.daxcollection.org.au

Grit Media. Shamelessly Disabled is on the lookout for Media Mentors

GRIT MEDIA is looking for volunteers to mentor or train people with disabilities in media, design, video or radio.

Deadline: ongoing

Check out www.gritmedia.org.au and contact director@gritmedia.org.au for more information.

For those interested in the participating in the Media mentorships…

Grit Media currently offers the disabled community the opportunity to reach beyond the parameters of its own imagination. For the next six months we are offering Mentored Placements in all types of creative media environments and for varying lengths of times. These placements can range from anywhere between four hours to up to a week depending on the individuals needs and the companies idiosyncrasies.

Organizations renowned for their cutting edge supremacy will now open their own doors of perception to allow anyone from the “allability” community to sample their cerebral smorgasbord of creatively inventive delights.

If you have ever desired to examine the realms of film, television, stills photography, print media, event management, video installation and beyond, or have ever wanted to see a director, producer or sound engineer (to name a few) at work, then please download an information/application form here.

The only stipulations for eligibility are that you are over eighteen, become a member of Grit Media (its free and without strings) and dare to dream big.

Grit Media Mentoring… be a part of it and be a part of history.

A Victorian, not-for-profit organisation with the purpose of producing media with, for and by people with disabilities.

Robogals, engaging girls in robotics.

Robogals Inc. is a not-for-profit organization, which aims to increase the number of girls undertaking science, engineering and technology courses at university. Robogals does this by engaging girls in robotics from a young age in a way that is fun and educational. The volunteer university students are trained in LEGO robotics and then visit schools to teach LEGO robotics to the students.

Robogals was founded in July 2008, and within three weeks, had enlisted the help of 80 university students. Within the next 2.5 months, Robogals taught over 120 girls from 7 schools in the state of Victoria, Australia. Since the founder moved to London, she has set it up in the United Kingdom, while the organisation has been successfully continued in Victoria, Australia, supported by the University of Melbourne and its students.

This organization has an international reach, operating in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Robogals