Sky’s Blog @ The Dalai Lama Foundation — Spreading the word in a networked world

We launched a new activity a couple of weeks ago and we hope it will build up over time. Called Faces of Happiness, it’s an interactive process by which the Project Happiness community can create an online photo mosaic based on four key questions and on “your” reactions to them thru photography.

You play using email and your digital photos. We suggest that you play from a mobile phone, but you can use regular email if your phone doesn’t do photos.

Visit Faces of Happiness to play.

Or just go take a look at the photo mosaic.

See also the Project Happiness blog.

A couple of weeks ago I prepared an exhaustive retrospective of my Pervasive Interactive Technologies, which I then presented to a group of professionals down in Monterey.Our digital media approach in Project Happiness was included as a current example of how many of the pervasive techniques are playing out in yet another a real-life project.

Next Monday, November 19th, 4pm to 5pm at MediaX (Wallenberg Hall, Stanford University campus, Palo Alto CA), we’ll be conducting a presentation and deconstruction of the ideas behind the media approach in Project Happiness. To attend, please locate Wallenberg Hall in the Stanford map, and join us by 4pm. We will start on time, as our use of the media-rich room is strictly limited. If you’d like to join us, please let us know and we’ll reserve a place for you. Read more and see the video… (more…)

MediaSnackers.com

As we were just getting Project Happiness moving, a guy named “DK” pinged us - interested in our project because he creates podcasts dealing with media for and by youth.

This guy is moving and shaking and getting a lot of activities going. And his media approach is quite interesting.

“DK” of MediaSnackers.com

Here’s what DK says about his work - “I launched MediaSnackers in June 2006 with an educational background in communications and media, plus a professional background in local government (I was the UK’s first and only Corporate Youth Officer… oooh!)—I’ve done lots of things and had many roles, but my passion for working with young people (and youth professionals) has been my main focus for the past 8 years. … MediaSnackers is my ‘bat and ball’—do you fancy a game?

(The DK comes from the initials of my old name. One of the first young people I started working with called me DK and it just stuck—I never liked my old name so I adopted it fully.)”

As of this date MediaSnackers has completed 8 videocasts and 94 podcast interviews.

This is the only opportunity that you’ll get (on this blog, at least) to hear me interviewed by somebody else…if that’s of interest to you at all.

Dave Goulding shooting video at Upper-TCV in India

Dave Goulding is a cinematographer who has traveled with John Sorenson and Brian Buckley to record the story of Project Happiness.

This summer we interviewed filmmaker George Lucas at his office (ranch) in Marin County, California. Well, actually the students of Project Happiness conducted the interview, and I watched as Dave and John (Sorensen) recorded everything on video tape for the documentary we’re making. Well, actually, I have nothing to do with making the documentary - I just make the online stuff happen.

What makes this so much fun? To quote Dave, “I think it’s the people you get to meet- the people you meet are just amazing!”

I talked with Dave over lunch, following the morning interview of George Lucas. We covered a mix of topics that ranged all over the globe - from Nigeria to India to the US.