UPDATE: Audio of the panel has been included. Feel free to download, remix, share, or ignore.

For my takeaway portion of the panel I prepared the following comments relating to the importance of Brand Communities. I was only able to orate a portion of it and don’t feel that I hit the right notes in the closing portion of the panel. Full text is below:

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My takeaways involve a series of couplets. The first in Communities, the second in physics, and the third in grammar. I’m mis-using couplets. Whatever.

Communities of Interest vs. Communities of Practice
Communities of Interest are groups of people who share similar affinities, careers, and interests. These people may get together and share these ideas together in groups, they may talk about their careers, and they may share stories and build camaraderie and relationships. These groups form when personal motivations and personal interests for community and social situations align. These Communities of Interest usually take the form of networking groups, happy hours, attendance-based events, or any opportunity for socialization or group quality time. Communities of Interest share space and time.

Communities of Practice are made of the same groups of people who share similar affinities, interests, careers, but they also align on values and beliefs. These communities also get together and share their ideas together, talk about their careers and share camaraderie but the difference is that the Community of Practice takes an active interest in the shared success of the group, community, and individuals within and without. Communities of Practice are self-policing, develop and evolve standards of excellence, there are educational opportunities for all of its members from novice to experts; they apply their talents and their passions to do good for their own community as well as their surrounding community. Communities of Practice do things in an active fashion: they create opportunities for their members, they collaborate for their personal and career education, they dedicate time and resources towards mutually agreed upon values and goals. Communities of Practice share space, time, also successes and growth.

Physics
Our second couplet exists in physics. The first part is potential energy; the latent energy stored in an individual, body or group. The second is kinetic energy; the energy an individual, body or group exerts as a result of its motion.

Potential energy is the capacity to do work. Kinetic energy is the application of that energy towards work.

Grammar
Our third couplet involves passivity vs. activity. In grammar, passive voice is acceptable but not favored. The form shifts responsibility away from the agent of the sentence and towards the patient, indicating that the activity is not controlled or initiated by the subject of the sentence. The active voice is far stronger a form, assertive and correctly assigning responsibility to the agent of the sentence.

“Mistakes were made. The window was broken.” Passivity is convenient and easy; it escapes responsibility and action.

“I was wrong. Someone broke the window.” The active form assigns responsibility, is direct and action-oriented.

Returning to Communities of Interest and Communities of Practice
Communities of Interest passively hold incredible amounts of potential energy based in interest and shared value. Communities of Practice actively exercise kinetic energy, applying latent motivation, inspiration, passion, and shared values and shared goals. They are characterized by action and engagement.

If you are looking to build a Brand Community you need to have a Community of Practice. It’s not enough to win an awareness war. Communities of Practice in a community setting carry with them regular and actionable reward systems, standards of practice, maintenance of standards, and self-education at all levels. In a Brand sense Communities of Practice carry with them engagement, discussion, evangelism, action relating to a brand and its use.

It’s convenient and easy to align extrinsic motivations of drinks and food with intrinsic interests for company and conversation. Communities of Interest form and dissolve every day, anytime you get together with coworkers or your Star Wars interest group you’re committing an act of a Community of Interest. Communities of Practice rarely form in absentia of a community of interest except where shared latent interests overcome the interest in staying not-aligned. The recent sale of Rice University’s radio station KTRU is a clear demonstration of a community of interest who overnight sprung into a community of action at the slightest provocation. The pieces were always there but people simply weren’t motivated enough to take that extra step.

Communities of Practice form with a catalyst. This catalyst can be a catastrophic event but it doesn’t have to be. It can be just one person, or a small group of several.

In closing, successful Brand Communities, like Communities of Practice, are value based, not interest based. They are characterized by action, not words. The responsibility is owned and directed by the agents, not the patients. There is consistent motion and the kinetic application of intrinsic motivations towards the shared values of the individuals, groups and communities as a whole.

To help people make that choice, I’m going to outline what I’ll be talking about in my workshop, entitled “Must-Have Plugins.” By giving this post and outline a brief scan, attendees should be able to determine whether this workshop will be useful or not.

Saturday’s Workshop, entitled “Must-Have Plug-ins” will review some important plugins to consider using, their functionality, getting the most out of them, as well as address some industry specific plugins for musicians, filmmakers and photographers. The session, held from 2:10pm til 3:00pm in the Blogger Track will be hands-on so please bring your laptop. It would help if you already have a WordPress site set up and know the ftp log/pass.

This session is recommended if you are a novice user or if you would simply like to increase your knowledge base about plug-ins. If you are a casual user of WordPress and proficient with essential plug-ins and how to maximize their functionality, you might want to swing by for a hot minute and pick up a handout. If you feel like bouncing to a more important session, I won’t mind. If you are an expert user of WordPress or are up to date on which plugins you feel you should use, this session will more than likely not provide you with any new knowledge.

My goal for the workshop is to maximize the impact for the attendees based on their existing knowledge base and level of interest in specific plugins and categories. If we need to begin with a discussion of what plug-ins are and how to install and activate them, that’s fine, if we don’t, that’s also fine. I will push towards providing an overview of some of the following Must-Have plugins with examples of sites that use them and how to get the most out of each plugin.

Below is a list of three types of plugins and specific examples we’ll be covering. This is by no means an exhaustive or complete list and any suggestions are welcome and encouraged:

• Type I: Plugins that increase your control over a WordPress powered site (Type I.rar)
  • Askimet
  • WP Super Cache
  • Google XML Sitemaps
  • Headspace 2
  • WP-DBManager
• Type II: Plugins that increase the interactivity of a WordPress powered site (Type II.rar)
  • cFormsII
  • WordPress Related Posts
  • ShareThis
  • WP-Cumulus
  • Lightbox
  • PodPress
  • UPDATE: PicApp
• Type III: Plugins that create multiple directions of communication on a WordPress powered site (Type III.rar)
  • Sociable
  • Intense Debate
  • Disqus
• Industry Specific Plugins
  • Music (Music.rar): PodPress, SoundCloud, GigPress, Audio Player, Last.fm
  • Video (Video.rar): TubePress, Vipers Video, YouTuber, Apture, iBox
  • Photo (Photo.rar): ZenphotoPress, PloggerPress, FlickrPress, Lightbox Gallery, iBox

Thanks to the lovely people who have crafted WordCamp Houston and are sure to be planning another in the near future: the Primer Grey Team, Colab and Katie Laird.

Announcing a 12 Course Mental Dinner: TEDxHouston

TED Organizers have recently recognized the wealth of innovation and groundbreaking work occurring everywhere on the planet. As a platform for local communities to highlight this innovation, TED has created local conferences, labeled TEDx conferences.The ‘x’denotes an independently organized TED event.

TEDx events have been held in many places around the nation and world but we haven’t had one in Houston yet. Houstonians rejoice! because the great, community-minded, educational-focused people at Culture Pilot are organizing this year’s TEDxHouston event, scheduled for June 12th, 2010. Culture Pilot has a great day planned and they’ve also assembled a crack team of organizers to help plan the day. It cannot be overstated how much I respect the members of Culture Pilot for their forward thinking and work as well as the honor of working alongside such a prodigiously experienced and talented organizing team. We’re all doing our best to make the event about Houston people and as community minded as possible while still providing a professional conference atmosphere full of opportunities to discuss and digest. It’s sure to be a full meal of innovative information, all happening in Houston on a daily basis.

Your Dinner Invitation: TEDxHouston has limited seating and the event is designed to have a diverse attendance. Therefore, the Organizers have released an application form to attend TEDxHouston. This application process is live now, visit the TEDxHouston site and fill out an application to attend.

Your Appetizer: Golan Levin

Tomorrow, April 8th, Houstonian’s have an incredible opportunity to whet their mental appetites in preparation for TEDxHouston. Artist, Engineer, TED Speaker, Golan Levin will be speaking at Rice University as part of the James Baker Hughes Lecture: Engineering and Humanities in the Arts.

Golan Levin’s work employs computers to create improvised soundscapes with dazzling corresponding visuals. He merges the borders between performance art and engineering, employing software engineering with an artist’s touch.

Your Call To Action: Seriously. Go to this talk:

Golan Levin (event link)
April 8th, 4-5pm
Keck Hall 100 (map)

Prep yourself by watching Dr. Levin’s 2009 TED Talk:

The reason that McLuhan’s work has lasted was his blanket approach to addressing technology’s impact on society. Instead of discussing the sales of a particular product as a result of a popular advertisement, instead he examined how that ad touched upon our desires, wants and cultural norms. He separated each example from time and space, looking it as an archaeologist would, giving each medium the designation of cultural artifact. That approach remains viable to this day and would allow you to measure current technological advances such as the success of a viral video as a function of what emotions or societal effects it addressed.

McLuhan’s most useful device is the tetrad, a pedagogical tool designed to understand the transformative effects of a particular cultural artifact by  looking at how it increased or decreased specific cultural patterns or brought back things that were lost in our society as a result of new technology.

Specifically, McLuhan’s tetrad asks:

1. What does the medium enhance or amplify in our culture?
2. What does the medium obsolesce?
3. What does the medium retrieve from earlier civilization or society that was previously lost?
4. What does the medium reverse or flip into when pushed to extremes? (this answer almost always carries a negative connotation)

In class we wrote out the tetrad for the cases of radio, television, the internet. For example, radio retrieved the use of our sense of hearing for information delivery, something that characterized pre-literate times. Another example: the internet enhances our abilities to redefine our geographical boundaries based on interests and identies in the same way that nationality arose with the coming of print culture.

This brings us to the application of the tetrad to another disruptive technology: Twitter. No one can argue that Twitter has completely shifted the way that we use the internet but also what makes up the internet. It seems that very few people have applied McLuhan’s theories though in an effort to explain the ways in which we as a society are now different as a result of Twitter. There are a couple examples of people who have applied the tetrad to Twitter (here, and here) and while I agree with some of their observations I mostly disagree with the specific application of the tetrad without considering the broad applications of the technology for society as a whole.

To truly examine Twitter’s effect on our lives we have to take a step back and view it as its own cultural artifact. It’s not enough to say that Twitter enhances our ability to connect with people all the time. Saying that Twitter makes CNN’s Breaking News Alerts obselete also understates the importance of Twitter. Instead we have to pull from what makes society the way it is, take our origins and our predictions for where we’re going. Questions like “what does this say about our society as a whole” or “what  comment does Twitter make on societyas a people?” are more salient questions than the specifics of how Twitter is being used. As one of Neil Postman’s laws of technological change (#4 to be exact), technology does not make a additive difference, it makes an ecological one. So applying the tetrad to television does not yield answers based on how people use television but how society is different because of television. This is what McLuhan meant when he said his most famous quote “the mediums is the message,” that it is not important what people are watching or how they are watching but the mere fact that they are watching television that changes the society.

To stave off further verbose explanation, here’s the Twitter Tetrad. Again, it is important to note that while there are many answers to these questions, the answers are not “Twitter helps everyone connect with everyone immediately” or “Twitter helps you learn what your friends are doing” . This tetrad is designed to help us understand how Twitter actually has changed society.

1. What does Twitter enhance or amplify in our culture?

Twitter enhances our ability to cement the boundaries that we’ve begun to redraw on the internet. It does this by allowing us to live in communities of our own borders, different than nationality (which arose because of print technology), surrounded by like minds and interests. We come closer to “living” in this new community by understanding how those with shared interests and beliefs really live rather than just joining each other on websites and forums to discuss our similarities.

2. What does Twitter obsolesce?

Twitter obsolesces editorial content completely by painting a picture of what is actually happening right now. Twitter also removes traditional media as the authority and source of facts and up to date information.

Twitter retrieves the ability to be an authority based on “power of voice” rather than traditional pedigree, something that was present in oral tradition. Twitter also retrieves our ability to memorize short passages to repeat orally as a transmission method for information and then knowledge.

4. What does Twitter reverse or flip into when pushed to extremes?

Twitter’s all-information, all-the-time, from everywhere on the globe, helps us stay connected everywhere but reverses into a collective hive mind of our buzzing thoughts. Disconnectedness and isolation is the product of the oversaturation of the channel: high fidelity but information dilution brought to you by sheer numbers of faceless thoughts passing through the medium.

Please let me know what you think about Twitter’s effect on society as a whole.

Oral tradition placed value in the process of knowledge retention and carried with it demands for trust and authenticity in society’s information and its delivery. Griots and bards and intellectuals were tasked with record and knowledge transfer, an arduous task requiring training and memorization. Some early texts existed not to be storehouses for our information but to serve as mnemonic devices to aid individuals in the memorization of the information for eventual dissemination to communities and discussion among equals.

The emergence of the mass produced book increased the ease in which information traveled but reduced the importance on the trust, authority and authenticity of the information. Trust and authenticity are not core characteristics of printed word as a technology, unlike oral tradition. The book additionally signaled a rupture in the respect for the process by which the information was obtained and stored. The mere presence of the inanimate form of information overtook the need for a live being to deliver it. This dissociated people from the process of creation and shifted the focus from one of cultural heritage preservation to that of enlightenment through increased information collection.

The further dissociation from the process and reduction in weight placed in trust and authenticity of source has continued with successive technologies such as television, radio and now the internet. “If it’s on TV it must be true” never applied in oral tradition as the people delivering the information carried with it authority and responsibility to deliver histories stories and parables to keep society cohesive and strong.

The recent wide spread emergence of value placed in trust and authenticity is one that we should all embrace. It is a way of filtering the gross amounts of information freely available at our grasp but more than that it is a return to some of the positive traditions that formed the basis of oral tradition, mainly virtue, truth and the need for authenticity in our information and our interactions. Increasing the value of authenticity in our society could eventually result in a return to the importance placed on process. If we begin to look at things like credentials and methodology of research when determining what, as a science writer, should be covered, we can begin to set metrics for value that are based not on sensationalism but on true fact and necessary information dissemination. Approaches in similar industries which consider process and synthesis of past knowledge as metrics of quality are what create real thought leaders, those that can tell us what we know, how we know it and where to go from here.

Take the course for a test drive:

As mentioned, Society in the Information Age examines the role of technology in our current society. The course will explore shifts in the realms of politics, religion, commerce, and personal relationships. We will also discuss our changing perceptions of property, privacy, authority, journalism, knowledge and identity.

In any honest examination of technology, positive and negative effects become apparent. It is rare that any new technology is met with ambivalence and this is because the introduction of any new technology results in winners and losers. This has always been the case even as far back  as the story in the semester begins, at the end of oral history and the beginning of the book. By starting at the beginning, we’ll focus on what was an incredibly disruptive technology to society and use that to enumerate the absolutes of any technological change. Moving forward, we’ll focus the same lens on the components of the personal computing era, the popular explosion of the internet and use these two movements to highlight the true meaning of Marshall McLuhan’s seminal statement “The Medium is the Message.”

At that point we’ll have brought ourselves up to the present, one in which our society is inextricably linked to technology. One in which technology shapes our actions and our thoughts. In the second section of the course we’ll explore these changing perspectives. In one class we’ll discuss the idea of property and ownership, the free licensing of works of music, prose or even science. Ownership will be addressed in the context of the music industry, with examples given in piracy and sampling, still prevalent even twenty years after the 2LiveCrew sampling lawsuit. Next we’ll address a relevant issue in a university setting: plagiarism. With hordes of information so freely at hand everywhere nowadays, and some of it our own personal data we’ll then explore privacy. Important questions will address the value of privacy, social networking, government information gathering, and the permanence of information on the internet. A loss of privacy must have an equal and opposite reaction and we’ll explore that reaction in the form of an increased value placed on authenticity. This authenticity will be discussed through one disingenuous (lonelygirl15) example and one honest movement (Cluetrain Manifesto) that’s tranforming how we do business and interact online. Oddly enough, in a later section we’ll see how this authenticity has resulted in the emergence of businesses with a “happiness” model built into their core missions.

The second half of the course will address ways in which our lives are now different as a result of technology. The first topic will be social networks, online and offline. We’ll discuss what your identity online means as a member of a community and how individuals are forming their own communities of practice formed around their own interests, guerilla knitting groups and hardware hackers and people who meet for things called barcamps that have nothing to do with drinking. We’ll talk about the music business and why there will probably never again be anyone as big as Michael Jackson but that’s ok because we’re all rock stars now. From pop stars we’ll move on to political stars, with Howard Dean as the first candidate to use the internet in his campaign and next the varied internet strategies employed by John McCain and Barack Obama. We’ll outline how Obama effectively used Long Tail for fundraising and organizing. Next we’ll look at how religion has fared in all of this, the varied views of technology from the world religions and new methods of worship.

If the previous sections seemed to shed a positive light on technology, the next section will address some of society’s concerns for technology’s negative connotations. Some critics are heralding our society as one that is being dumbed down, hopelessly dependent without understanding the basics of our technological slaves. By returning to the discussion of the wealth of freely available information we’ll examine how we learn and how we value information vs. hearsay. We’ll also briefly discuss AJ Keen’s book “Cult of the Amateur” where he decries the internet generation for it’s lack of respect for experts and open acceptance of faulty information. More concerns will be raised as we explore the life on the screen, including those who spend too much time separated from society using technology, violence in video games, cyberstalking and the media habits of the technologically addicted.

The final month of class will be spent addressing what’s coming next, in technology and our bodies interfacing with it. First we’ll have a discussion of the future of manufacturing and how you’ll be able to print anything you want just like on Star Trek. More Science Fiction topics will be addressed with discussion of cyborgs and artificial intelligence. We’ll play with some current examples of virtual and augmented reality and ask ourselves how this might further shift our perspectives and bend our lives. After talking about cyborgs, robots and artificial intelligence it’s only fitting that we close the semester discussing the resistance, what it looks like, and how you can join.

Society in the Information Age meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:00pm to 2:20pm in Duncan Hall 1064 on Rice University’s campus. Any non-Rice community members wishing to sit in on the class may contact me.

What’s this course all about? Well, it’s a multi-disciplinary course addressing art conservation and engineering. That means that the students will be asked to critically examine art techniques as well as apply the decision based engineering design process. Taken from the course description:

The objective of this course is to apply the engineering design process to pressing problems in art conservation. One half of this course will focus on the history and practices of art conservation at modern museums.  The other half of this course will utilize the engineering design process by applying the art conservation knowledge to develop innovative storage solutions for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

Each week, students will be briefed on a specific issue relating to the art conservation world, starting with the history of conservation leading up through modern times. Students will be given a unique and private insight to the inner workings of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, including behind-the-scenes access to their storage and conservation facilities. Museum officials will discuss the hidden portions of the museum and the day-to-day of the modern museum. Art storage experts will address the handling and storage of our cultural heritage. Students will learn the properties of materials used in art and the properties of materials used in its storage and preservation. Local conservators will guest lecture, providing unique perspectives on conservation principles in practice. A living artist will provide a perspective of their background, creative process and conservation concerns for their art. Finally, students will learn preventive conservation in long-term art ownership and cultural heritage disaster and damage preparation.

Each week’s art conservation topic corresponds with a step in the Engineering Design Process, a decision based system for developing new products or solutions. One case study will be presented per week that highlights the relationships between the art world and the engineering world. The art conservation lectures and the case study will provide the framework for a semester-long project where student teams will address their own unique conservation issue. Each team will select a piece from the MFAH’s private collection and then develop an innovative storage solution for that piece, culminating in a product design presented at the end of the semester. Through the engineering design process student teams will gain an understanding the problem in context, learn the current solutions, develop design criteria, brainstorm solutions and develop a product. In class activities that foster increased creativity and non-traditional thinking will help to arrive at unique solutions for the semester project.

Students will apply a digital workflow over the course of the semester, resting upon web 2.0 tools to transparently document and research the topic of conservation. Students will have their own blog where they will post recaps of the week’s information, progress reports for their semester long project and relevant information pertaining to art conservation.

Engineering for Art Conservation (ENGI/HUMA 240) meets Tuesdays and Thursdays on Rice University’s campus in room 119 of the Humanities building. If you would like to audit this course as a community member, information can be found on Rice University’s cashier’s website. To sit in on individual classes (syllabus will be posted shortly), please email me at mwettergreen@rice.edu.

Student activities will include class instruction, design work and preparation for an upcoming course. Students will collaborate with the instructor and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston to develop custom archival solutions for priceless works from the museum’s permanent collection. Over the course of the internship a salon-style discussion series will run addressing unique facets of this design problem and multi-disciplinary approaches to civic issues, presented by members of the community. Students will additionally assist the instructor in the development of a course addressing civic engagement from a multi-disciplinary standpoint. Students will be taught engineering design approach, rapid prototyping, use of online collaboration and documentation methods. Student will have the opportunity to attend a summer course on entrepreneurship and will present the results of their summer internship in a professional forum.

Undergraduate students in any discipline or department are eligible and invited to apply. This is a full-time, 8 week summer program commencing in June providing a $4,000 stipend and put on by Rice’s School of Engineering in conjunction with Rice’s Center for Civic Engagement. Four positions are available.

For more information please contact the Instructor, Dr. Matthew Wettergreen (mwettergreen @ gmail.com). To apply for this internship, please email a resume, a brief personal statement and why this internship is of interest.

This weekend is Biocamp, an informal community participatory unconference addressing biotechnology in Houston. Leading up to Biocamp over the course of the week several events bring together the members of the biotechnology, medical device, and chemical therapeutic communities. Warm up over the week by meeting some of these people in a relaxing atmosphere and end your week with the main event.

Biocamp is focused on Houston’s biotech sphere and all the shapes and sizes that make up that community. This is a monumental event for Houston to be holding one of the first Biocamps in the nation and we are looking forward to such a transformative event. Biocamp is a different conference than any other science conference because the primary goals are transparency, communication, openness and sharing between the community. Instead of being focused on delivering the current research progress in a specfic thrust, this conference is a state of the union sort, being a better forum for a review presentation on the state of research in a particular vein or an overview of the climate of biotechnology in light of the recent economic situation. To help maximize your Biocamp experience, here are some tips for attending the conference.

How to speak at Biocamp

This is the easiest part. no abstract submissions, no review panel. Simply arrive at the conference in the morning. Check out the presentation board which will have a grid with rooms and times. Put your name and presentation title into any open slot. Note, if you do not arrive early you may not have the opportunity to speak on a given topic. Remember that your topic should be accessible to the general public which in itself should exercise your communication skills.

What to expect at Biocamp

The attendees of the conference should be people in the biotech industry, academics, students, venture capitalists, angel investors, and science enthusiasts. While the talks at regular science conferences are usually hyper-specific, these talks will probably be bigger picture and survey the state of a field rather than dissect a current study. Expect the equivalent of a review paper in presentation form for the conference. Look for investors to give talks about what they’re promoting right now and what they’re looking for in the future.

What this conference could do for your career

If a standard career parth is starting to make you nervous, this conference is a good step towards an alternate path. Community members who usually attend unconferences of this sort are usually more open to change, welcome especially in a firm discipline such as science. Meeting people in your community who think alike could be the first step to launch a company, start a science non-profit, explore your educator interests, or meet people who are doing things that you might think are cool and innovative.

The Goals of Biocamp

Unconferences of this sort are a great way to discuss the arc or direction that a particular community is moving towards. With respect to the Houston biotech community, a meeting of the minds and sharing session will help everyone to discover the state of the community and unique challenges that we face in Houston and elsewhere.

Meetings of this sort can share knowledge that would otherwise be locked up in specific institutions, laboratories or with individuals. Those with a trend of openness and sharing will come away with great returns and those with an open mind will come away with a great deal learned about the community in general and the people who make up the community itself.

The full list of Bioweekend activities:

• Houston Startup Happy Hour and BioWeekend Kick-off Party the BioWeekend festivities kickoff at Saute Bistro with the help of Startup Houston and the Houston Technology Center. April 2, 2009 from 6pm to 9pm at Saute Bistro, 2303 Richmond Ave.
• 6th Annual BioHouston Chili Cook-Off The BioHouston Chili Cook-Off is more than just chili – it brings the life science community together. BioHouston invites you to join us on April 3rd for the 6th annual day of fun in the sun, full of prizes and everyone’s favorite–CHILI! April 3, 2009 from 12pm to 5pmat BioHouston, 2555 Holly Hall St., Ste. 100
• BioCamp The main event. BioCamp Houston ’09 is an informal, participatory, unconference BarCamp event to bring college/graduate students, postgraduate trainees, junior academic faculty, entrepreneurs, would be entrepreneurs and inventors as well as, technology champions from the Greater Houston area together to learn and network. April 4, 2009 from 9am to 4pm at Keck Hall on Rice Campus, 6100 Main Street
• BioWeekend Closing Reception Immediately following BioCamp Houston ’09, the after party is at Vallhala right next door to the conference. Join us for a few drinks and a final adieu. April 4, 2009 from 4pm til 9pm at Vahalla in Keck Hall on Rice Campus

Individual
Bioengineering is at its essence a multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving for biological issues. Those basic tenets have been applied as an individual in both my professional and creative life attempting at a well-rounded academic and cultural education. While at Rice University studying bioengineering for bone defect repair, aspects of architecture, clinical plastic surgery and industrial design were combined with more standard bioengineering aspects of mechanical engineering, materials research and imaging modalities. The incorporation of these fields resulted in novel designs and solutions supported by engaging and dynamic presentations and graphic design telling a story easy to understand for the lay person. Continued discussion with the architecture school resulted in students and professors incorporating the ideals of bioengineering into their architecture projects, including concepts of scaffold ingrowth, duality/singularity between host and body and symbiotic relationships between construct and program interaction. As an instructor, classes were run with equal parts teaching and learning, instructing the students on CAD methods and then employing the students to teach others to accomplish the tasks. Outside of graduate school, I applied this multidisciplinary approach to producing live events incorporating art, music, and film accessible to lovers of any art medium.

Caroline Collective
This multi-disciplinary education and approach to problem solving has been applied at Caroline Collective, founded in June 2008 with Ned Dodington. Taking the belief that being well rounded as an individual can be a platform for discussion and interaction with other similar like-minded people, Caroline Collective’s goal is to positively impact the cultural landscape of Houston. Our programming develops community-based education models and creates opportunities for individuals and groups to be more successful incorporating seemingly disparate disciplines of technology, music, film, arts and non-profits. We’ve demonstrated that each community has unique challenges but those challenges can be met with similar methods: listening to the needs of the members, incorporating equal parts teaching/learning and arriving at a solution incorporating all of the facets of the problem. Since October we have been running a monthly series called Bandcamp that is a community-focused teaching program to educate musicians on the path to success in their career. A similar community focused meeting, Artcamp, was held last month. In developing sustainable methods to address the art community’s challenges we collectively arrived at the decision to create a Houston Arts Wiki and to hold a day long Houston-wide art fair to introduce all of the resources and arts groups in Houston. We have recently launched a bi-weekly series of business classes with a partner startup, Werkadoo, that teaches independents in any discipline the skills they need to manage a successful independent career. Several companies are forming underneath the umbrella of Caroline Collective pooled from the complementary talents of the members and community groups that inhabit the space.

Community
This transparent and multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving on a community level is akin to the Long Tail effect online. People with niche interests meet to discuss commonalities and find that challenges and interests are parallel rather than perpendicular. Coworking is the physical manifestation of that and Caroline Collective one of many staging points for that interaction in Houston. In Houston you can witness technology focused individuals attending arts events and arts focused individuals attending technology focused events. Communities are experiencing greater engagement, richer relationships and more accessible resources, all due to the framework of a multi-disciplinary approach to solving collective problems. Opera in the Heights is exploring incorporating technology into its performances and digital archiving. Two new coworking spaces have opened based on Caroline Collective’s model, one in the Village focusing on green companies and one in Katy opened by the Houston Technology Center; another is slated to open in the Woodlands. The passive belief that all groups can contribute to and provide solutions to individuals’ problems and the active incorporation of those ideals has resulted in greater collaboration among community groups and greater insight to addressing community and societal challenges.