Nonformality

I am currently in Belgrade to facilitate the «New Media Summer School» together with Ivana Davidovska. The New Media Summer School is organised by the European Students’ Forum – AEGEE, the Young European Federalists – JEF, Youth for Exchange and Understanding – YEU and the European Youth Press – EYP.

It precedes the European Dialogue on Internet Governance 2011 Conference, where various stakeholders from governments, civil society and the private sector will try to answer questions such as

• What should tomorrow’s internet look, feel and be like?
• Who will decide which content you’ll be able to find online?
• How can the web strengthen democracy and human rights?

The European Dialogue on Internet Governance was created in 2008 and understands itself as

“an open platform for informal and inclusive discussion and exchange on public policy issues related to internet governance between stakeholders from all over Europe.” (Source)

The New Media Summer School orchestrates the youth input to the European Dialogue and wants to:

• take stock of the status quo of policies and identify the needs for young people in terms of future policy action in the fields of youth participation, human rights and education related to new media developments
• explore various ways of youth participation in the online world and how to use them effectively for the benefit of society as a whole
• identify the specific needs and channels for education through online media for young people
• bring together young people from various intercultural and social backgrounds to exchange experience, perspectives, roles and needs of participation, human rights and education related to new media
• weave a multicultural European network of young people with an understanding of human rights, education and participation perspectives on new media empowering young people to actively contribute to new media policies and debates

We will be covering the event extensively on newmediasummerschool.eu and here on nonformality.org, on Twitter with the hashtags #nmss11 and #eurodig.

The evolution of European Union legislation

So Europe’s future lies in the hands of young people? Young people don’t even feature in this onanistic animation of EU legislation over time. Go watch it, it’s cool to see the bubbles grow – and an entry in the open data challenge to boot.

I should have known better…
Photo by patries71

Much of my work at the junction of online and offline learning draws on the absolutely stellar WordPress community. At the beginning of this month, Matt Mullenweg—founding developer of the open source WordPress software—wrote a piece that instantly resonated with me, “1.0 is the loneliest number.”

Referring to first versions—of software, hardware or anything—Matt argued that

“if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.”

Oh how well do I know this! The number of iterations articles on Nonformality go through is embarrassing, but at least I am not embarrassed by most of them. The downside? Tardiness; I just wish I could write more and publish sooner.

Whenever I produce something—a report, a book, a website, a concept—I spent soooo much time making sure that the ‘one more thing’ is also perfect. The less likely a product is to be regularly updated, the more time I spent to perfect it. And when I *finally* surrender to mounting time pressure, I usually have plenty of reason to still be embarrassed about this or that or the other…

There is only one manuscript for a report that I can think of from the past five years or so that I did not think of as embarrassing. It was very embarrassing to ship it, however, because it was almost a year late; occasionally, I spend so much time endulging in perfectionism that the resulting delay becomes the most embarrassing part…

Which is why I will press the shiny blue «Publish» button now. Because:

“Real artists ship.” – Steve Jobs, 1983

What do you predict will be our biggest advancement in the year 4,000?

Our biggest advancements in 4000 years?

Tina Roth Eisenberg, a swiss designer working from New York, asked this as an icebreaker question during a creative morning, a monthly breakfast lecture series.

Some answers—see them all here on Flickr—are predictable, others not. What’s yours?

It will happen again…
Loft opens its e-doors.

TALE is one of the long-term training courses in the European youth arena, organised by the Youth Partnership. The course supports European trainers in their professional development to competently design, implement and evaluate training activities.

One of the core features of TALE is its online learning platform LOFT, which was introduced to the world during an open loft day on December 1, 2009. This September, the talers are going full throttle with an entire «OPEN LOFT WEEK». Curious? Read on!

Don’t read any further.
Don’t think of a pink elephant.