Category Archives: Course blogs

Museums Today – Blog #4

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As someone heading towards work in the museums/tourism field, keeping up to date with the latest news and events from some of the world’s leading museums is a must.  Doing this sets me up well for a future job (thanks co-op for teaching me networking) and gives me some good talking points for when I run into industry people at various events around town.  Knowing what is happening around the world also helps me compare my local museum to the best in the business.

I get all this information by following Museum Today’s Twitter feed (@MuseumToday).  MT is a news and link aggregate that seems to be based out of Washington, DC (some recent non-museum posts are about weather in the area).  Tweets about museum news or museums in the news come once or twice every hour (and the timing is precise, probably scheduled) and simply provide a title and a link to a website or blog.

Other tweets come from media outlets.

Most tweets don’t link to other twitter accounts, but the sites are good windows into the industry and most have embedded Twitter feeds that you can also follow.

I came across MT through other Twitter feeds I follow.  Some are people/organizations that I’ve actually interacted with (BC Museums Association, British Museum) and it has also pushed me towards specific people in the field who could become valuable networking contacts.  One person I’ve interacted quite a bit with since following MT is Meghan Spilker (@TheGogglette), a museum graphic designer and social media manager in Kansas City.

If you’re interested in museums on Twitter, check out the #MuseumWeek tag going on right now.

Blog 4 – Inspiring Cosplayer

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I discovered miss Fahr Sindram, a mid 30 year old from Germany on DeviantArt in 2012. Since then she has been a constant inspiration to me.  Her real profession is a children`s book writer/illustrator, and manga artist, but ever since her cosplay of the Marvel character Loki went viral, she is now more popular for being that– a world famous cosplayer.

 Lord Skeffington Scatters COMIC by FahrSindram SHERLOCK battlefields by FahrSindram  

She doesn`t always make her own costumes, but she always credits the makers, which is always a good sign of a good cosplayer. She also always thanks her audiences for support, especially when entering contests, which she of course has won. She has many different websites dedicated to her cosplay, as well as her work as an illustrator. One of the reasons why I love to follow her is because she truly seems to be a down to earth kind person, who always thanks her fans, makes how-to videos, shares photos of what she actually looks like (openly admitting the use of photoshop and makeup in her photos), defends people from online bullying, is a sort of humanitarian, and encourages that everyone be comfortable with themselves/their bodies no matter what. Her updates will include any number of things, current events, memes, celebrity gossip, cosutme ideas, photoshoots… she always keeps things interesting. I always love it when she tries to raise awareness on delicate issues like equality and cyberbullying. She doesn`t seem like a fake person, which is why I follow her on her many platforms.

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I would really love to meet her in person! She herself was lucky enough to meet her own idols, actors Tom Hiddleston, Chris Hemsworth, as well as the Thor movie producers etc… The funniest thing is, that the first thing she ever said to Hiddleston, was tell him to kneel to her while in her Loki costume at the German premier of the movie. And he did it!

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Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Losing Neverland, etc…

Edit: I forgot to mention that I also admire her for her bravery. A bravery of being herself and fulfilling her passions regardless of what people think or say about her. Not to mention that it`s all in the public eye! It takes a special kind of person to do that 🙂

Tavi Gevinson’s Rookie

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Tavi Gevinson is, among many, many other things, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Rookie. Gevinson got her start as a fashion blogger, launching Rookie in 2011 as a way of moving beyond fashion to include her other interests. Rookie itself is an online publication that caters to teenage girls, but offers plenty of content that engage a broader audience as well. Gevinson is obviously not responsible for creating all the content, but a collaborative approach is part of what makes the website such an effective platform for her to express her worldview, allowing topics outside her expertise but within her sphere of interest to be covered.

That’s all well and good, but what makes Rookie so personally relevant to me, and, more to the point, what does a teen girl magazine have to do with technology and society? Well, part of the reason I chose to profile Tavi Gevinson/Rookie in the first place is precisely because teenage girls seem like unlikely tech experts. The fact is, girls are avid consumers and producers of technology, and as such have a thing or two to say about it. Unfortunately, they are typically shut out of conversations surrounding technology, despite being at the centre of so much adult anxiety concerning tech trends like selfies, sexting, and online bullying. Rookie gives girls an opportunity to combat this issue; its “Saturday Links” are often especially rich with tech tidbits from around the web.

As for personal relevance, while I may not be a teenage girl, I am a young person, and seeing other young people discuss things that affect us as young people is immensely gratifying. Instead of having to listen to a bunch of 30-and-40-something dudes wax poetic on whatever new digital plague is supposedly destroying young minds, I get a perspective close to my own, but different enough to expand my own worldview.

Writing Legend?

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Just brilliant. Perhaps the only reason why I watch a BBC program is because of a particularly, tall, reckless, and moronic man named- Jeremy Clarkson. For those who don’t know much about cars or have little interest in all things four wheels you might as well skip this article- actually keep reading.

He has been called a, racist, homophobe, even a baboon, but for some reason the BBC wont let him go, and neither will I. The main host of the most watched show in the world, Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson’s provocateur attitude is most likely the only feature that appeals to his audience. However, this provocateur is a Journalist by heart.

Sadly I have most likely read all of Jeremy Clarkson’s car articles. But why? Unlike the majority of automotive journalist, Jeremy Clarkson gets it. When people read an article they don’t want to sit down and read some dry article where the reviewer explains how wide the door opens or how many empty boxes you can fit in the trunk. And that’s where Clarkson differentiates himself. You may not be a car buff but his car articles will still pull you in. For example, Clarkson’s article might be on the brand new Toyota Corolla, but the entire article will go on talking about a new toaster oven, and how it bakes bread, and then briefly compare the two at the end.

His style of writing is creative to say the least, his reviews are perhaps the only newspaper articles I prefer to follow online. However, he is not so much a mentor, rather an exemplar of new and creative journalism.Collection of Jeremy Clarkson Articles.

Crowd Sourcing

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Though I’ve followed tech through the internet my entire life, I have always avoided becoming attached to a single writer. Crowd sourced tech news has always been my source of reading, and I feel that it provides a significantly more broad, less opinionated point of view. Starting out on less technical sites such as Gizmodo and Engadget (news submitted mostly by users, and ripped from other sources), I have progressed over the years as I have learned more about the field.

My next destination on the web was Reddit, a fully crowd sourced website which when utilized properly can provide an experience worth more than obnoxious memes one after the next. After tiring of the playful Reddit atmosphere leaking into its more serious subreddits, I have finally moved along to my current source for technology, YCombinator’s Hacker News.

Hacker News is based on Reddit’s open source web framework, and thus functions identically to Reddit (as far as post ratings and comments are concerned) as a crowd sourced news portal. Hosted by the Silicon Valley accelerator, YCombinator, Hacker News provides the nitty gritty tech details on not only the newest smartphones and laptops, but releases in the software world as well (new Javascript libraries, web frameworks, run-time algorithms, etc). This programmer centric mentality allows users to look deeper into the technical side of news stories in a way which cannot be found elsewhere on the internet.

While it’s taken some time stumbling across the web, I have finally found a news source which seems to suite my needs. Not only do I tremendously enjoy reading the content on Hacker News, I seldom feel like I’m wasting time browsing through posts like I previously would have on Reddit or Gizmodo/Engadget. Though everyone has their own methods for absorbing information, I will take crowd sourcing over an individual opinion any day of the week.