events

Information activist, disruptive journalist, citizen technologist, blogger, and internaut extraordinaire Asher Wolf has written an open letter to the Hacker Community that is a must read. I follow Asher on Twitter (via my emergent list) and was also following the recent Chaos Computer Club Congress which happened over the holidays.

Unfortunately it is not uncommon for hacker-related events to have melodrama as a consequence of the pervasive libertarian ethos the culture embraces.

Metaviews settled into its new home at the Academy of the Impossible on January 1. Since then, the space has been the setting for regular events in the Hacking Reality series, along with headquarters for our regular Wednesday teleseminars and other professional activities.

“The Future of Health” has been at the top of the agenda in 2012, as we have moved into detailed discussion about existing and future devices designed for medical professionals to diagnose patients, along with apps being produced with the hopes of letting each individual take preventative and therapeutic measures into their own hands.

Some of the other topics we have touched on so far this year include:

Metaviews.ca is currently setting up a new project: The Academy of the Impossible, located at 231 Wallace Ave. in the Junction Triangle neighbourhood of Toronto’s downtown west end. It will partly serve as a location for our salons and seminars along with all facets of our daily operations.

The setup for the Academy is a relatively novel one. As an open source social enterprise, it will integrate both for-profit and non-profit enterprises, along with providing a physical touchpoint for our clients and broader community. This will include bringing to life many online ideas that often end up remaining hypothetical — we want to make them feel possible.

Fall 2011 has been a fun time developing of Metaviews. While keeping tabs on the disruption of fields from advertising to academia, we have continued to develop our own projects, which has included extending our presence beyond Toronto.

A pair of salon events in Ottawa have focused on the challenges involved in the transformation to Open Government, which drew interest from all areas of the bureaucracy, as developing a more citizen-friendly approach has been pledged by the federal government.

Similar challenges are being faced by the non-profit sector as it attempts to retool its messaging for the social media age. The conversational research style of Metaviews.ca will increasingly be applied in this direction, too.