Digital Arts Service Corps - chicago

Spring is Here!

Karl Otto — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:51:12 +0000

Is everyone enjoying the spring weather? I know I am since I biked to work today.

It's been a good while since I wrote my last field report and so I wanted to keep you guys updated. NTEN was awesome. It was wonderful to meet all of the different people working in nonprofit tech and find out about the hot topics going on now. It was also great meeting up with the VISTA contingent and seeing how everyone's doing. Many thanks to Ben Sheldon for letting me stay on his extra bed when my hotel arrangements fell through.

Workwise, I haven't been up to anything too mind-blowing. I have still been doing client intake along with a bit of Drupal fidgeting and am looking to start a little help/advice blog to assist clients in getting the most out of the services we offer (and giving them an idea of what exactly we are offering). Aside from that, I was doing a bit of graphic design for a fundraiser that has picqued my interest in Adobe Photoshop. I'm a total newbie when it comes to Photoshop, so if guys know of any good guides to learn from then let me know. Also, if you know of any good ways to learn JavaScript, then let me know.

Fingers crossed, I'm planning on extending my VISTA term into the summer with part of my focus learning those two areas a little more in depth. I'm also excited to draw up a summer plan so that I can have more focus on a finished, capacity-building project as well as help the new VISTAs out with their projects. So yeah, things are looking good.

Chicago: You're Stuck Here

Karl Otto — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:55:52 +0000

The big story of the week is that I was supposed to speak at a conference in Ocean City, MD about free and low-cost tools for nonprofits. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I live in

Chicago and weather conditions made it impossible to fly out in time to give the talk. Nuts! Then again, who wants to go to Ocean City in February? My next trip is scheduled later next month--which starts tomorrow--for the NTEN Conference in New Orleans. If anybody is getting there on Wednesday, I suggest you go to the NTEN Science Fair if for nothing else than to see the exhibits and take place in the raffle. I got an email from them and it looks like they're giving out a million iPods, but don't quote me on that figure.

Speaking of New Orleans, does anybody need a room(mate)? My organization, Grassroots.org, has put me up at the Sheraton (where the conference is being held), but I'm staying in a double and would like to save some money for them if I can. If anybody's interested in splitting the room, email me at karl@grassroots.org.

Aside from that, does anybody know about good resources for website accessibility? I'm supposed to be researching it in preparation for making our site more accessible, but I'm finding guides that might be more trouble than they're worth. Any suggestions?

Finally, I had a good experience the other day with regards to my position. My roommate was wondering who Grassroots.org gave its services to. I told her that we typically give our services to nonprofits (especially 501c3s). She then told me that her family had just applied for nonprofit status for an organization that centers around her cousin and the rare medical condition that he has. They were looking to make a website for the organization. "Sure," I said, "We can get you that." Yeah, I'm cool. I work at a nonprofit.

"Working from Home"

Karl Otto — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:28:56 +0000

Hi Everyone,

So I'm going to continue being good and write a second update report.

When do you finally settle in to an organization? This question is more rhetorical than anything else. I think I'll still be settling until my last day there. Either that or it will remain unsettled. Who knows?

In the wake of my supervisor leaving, it has left everything more helter-skelter than usual. (By the way, I hate helter-skelter things with a burning passion.) This has resulted in me being the bug-fixer for the new website which has given me victories such as modifying my first PHP doc to quandaries such as being expected to modify an RSS feed in that same doc.

I had a good talk with my boss last Monday about being 5 months into the program and what I expected out of the next 7 months. I told her all of the tasks that I had been assigned (some of which she was unaware of) and how I could only put in 40 hours a week since I don't have an internet connection at my apartment yet. (I know that we are only supposed to work 40 hours a week and I'm behind that all of the way, but it's good to have some flexibility in that as well as the option to work extra if you want to.)

One of my big contentions with the talk was that I wanted to make sure that I was making finished products and adding to my technical skillset. The latter makes almost obvious sense professionally as well as personally. The former element has those as well, but there is also a morale element at work, as well. It takes away from your will to work if you don't have something that you can proudly say you did. I'm guessing this is a big issue in the nonprofit world, but I don't want that to prevent me from having the best possible experience with my organization that I can have.

When you're assigned to work with an organization, you can't expect them to take you by the hand, set you at a desk, and guide you along the way to work for a better tomorrow (or whatever). You have to pull yourself along and take a more active role in it than you might have thought originally. There is not only the work. There is also the value of it and the negotiations of managing where you work, how you work, who you work with, what you work on, what you get out of your work, etc. etc. (Let's not even mention the stuff that you have to deal with outside of your work.) That's some serious multitasking and also one of the biggest challenges I've faced being a VISTA.

So here I am, typing in my report at the Chicago Public Library by my house and thinking about what I need to do now and what I want to do later. It can get a little daunting, but I'm doing things little by little so it doesn't get overwhelming. I'm getting stuff done, tomorrow is another day, and all that jazz.

Youth Entrepreneurs Shine in Chicago

Shaneka Smith — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:05:04 +0000

Illinois Institute for Entrepreneurship Education hosted the 2007 Youth Entrepreneurship Conference from May 3 -5, 2007 at the Lincolnshire Marriot Resort. Youth throughout the Midwest attended this grand event to showcase their businesses and to compete for monies to promote and expand their companies. Opportunities were also granted for youth to sell products or services in the Expo. The innovation of young minds was evident with businesses ranging from custom auto parts to Caribbean Cuisine. IIEE provided youth the chance to show everyone what they got in accordance with the event’s theme.

Westside Youth Tech Entrepreneur Center (WYTEC) located in the West Garfield Park community on Madison and Keeler took four youth developed businesses: Delectable Desserts (Meoshii Young, 17, ACT and Alex Watt, 16, Prosser Career Academy), Christie’s Photo Service (Letitia Jackson, 14, Thorp Scholastic Academy), Chi-Town Finest Stylez (Starnisha Ewing,16, ACT and Shatoya Haper, 16, Al Raby School for Comm/Enviro), and Baskets by Brittany (Brittany Richmond, 16, ACT) to participate in the Expo, Start-up Business Competition, and Jumpstart Grant competition.

WYTEC is proud to announce that Chi-Town Finest Stylez, a youth based corporation offering custom-made T-shirts and accessories, and Delectable Desserts, a partnership creating desserts for everyone including those concerned about the waistline bulge, competed and won a $150 Jumpstart Grant to invest into their businesses. The hard work and determination of all the attendees paid off as others were in astonishment at the creative ideas they displayed.

These individuals are shining in a community written off as one of the worst for teenagers. Youth are aware that they can develop successful businesses using their talent, drive, and determination. They are trendsetters of youth entrepreneurship in the West Garfield Park community. WYTEC has shown itself to truly be an incubator for inventive minds.

Ending April with Showers in Chicago

danielle martin — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:45:28 +0000

I'm just recovering from April 2007, which will forever be known in my mind as "the month of excessive conferences." It started with WAM!, then NTEN in DC.

But then a couple weeks ago I stole Ben from Project HQ and we headed over to the newly renovated Yawkey Boys & Girls Club in Roxbury for the 7th annual Boys & Girls Club of Boston Cyber Summit. We did some digital storytelling and Google Mapping with 5 youth from Roxbury and Dorchester. The youth did great, taking lots of great photos outside the Club around Dudley but we struggled a bit with technical aspects of embedding videos in the new Google My Maps functionality.

You can check out the map but it keeps erasing the embed code so most of the videos won't play! We made DVDs and also put the videos on Blip.tv.

I also recruited former CTC VISTA Saul Baizman to do some web design, tag teaming with my pal Hope Roth who now works at Tufts University.

I enjoyed supporting my old co-workers and this great Club event. The projects the youth create in two short days (including one night of sleep-over that doesn't involve much sleep) always impresses me.

I had about 12 hours to do laundry, errand, and pack before I was flying off to Chicago, my first time in Chi-town. I jumped at a chance to attend at annual Intel Computer Clubhouse International Conference, to talk up CTC VISTA and help some Computer Clubhouses get VISTAs and present on using digital storytelling for community activism and outreach. After five years of running a Computer Clubhouse myself, I have a vested interest in how the Clubhouse theory is progressing and how these programs all over the world empower youth by giving them multimedia and independence skills.

This was my 7th Clubhouse conference, so I got to see many old skool folks like Mitch Resnik from the MIT Media Lab, Joyce & John from AZ, Gavin from Dublin, and my new friend Kane from New Zealand (who gave me kick-butt hat from his homeland and is still doing digital storytelling after I trained him last year at the conference).

I also got to see some VISTAs - my girl Shaneka from WYTEC presented and hosted with grace and I snuck Laura Mieczkowski in for free lunch so I could hear about her new outreach project with CTCNet Chicago. The crew of managers from the Boston Clubhouses were all still exhausted from Cyber Summit too, but it good to see all the old and new faces gathered to contemplate the next steps of the Clubhouse network.

Chicago was also an amazing trip because I got to chill with former CTC VISTA Nathan Biggs, who's now a fundraiser for The Association House and a damn fine tour guide.

I documented my tourist wanderings and impressions on Flickr. Overall, it was a good ending to an exhausting month of networking.

May looks lighter, both in work and weather, with facilitating just one adult digital storytelling train-the-trainer at the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center and helping out with a series of Saturday trainings with youth at the South End Technology Center. Oh and working hard on user testing for the new online community site (StoriesForChange.net) I'm project managing for MassIMPACT for community digital storytellers (due to soft launch at the end of May). Oh and recruiting and matching up some new VISTAs for the June round and planning the next PSO, that's at the Grassroots Use of Technology Conference in Lowell, MA.

Wait...that's not adding up to "lighter"...is it?