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Snowing, cold, snow, cold…
Day 2 of the MIT-EDP program has been crazy. Breakfast at 7:00am, classes from 9:00am until 7:00pm, with a lunch break that was actually a lecture too, and two 15 minute breaks in which we were suppose to sign up for company visits, pick up material, etc…
But it was worth it: William Aulet, and Fiona Murray are excellent lecturers with obviously a lot of experience.
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Today is my first day as a student of “the most important university in the world” (according to this article): MIT.
I am here to take the MIT Sloan Executive Education EDP (Entrepreneurship Development Program).
Getting up at 4 am and braving the flu outbreak in Boston and the cold weather including a frozen Charles River (not like it is less cold in NY anyway), I arrived from NY this morning in an early flight, and after checking in at the Marriot, I went to a luncheon at the Towne Stove and Spirits restaurant sponsored by Ken Morse.
I`m still stuck in Baltimore, but it seems I will be able to return to NY late tonight, arriving tomorrow morning afternoon, the day after Halloween (which reaches amazing levels, like Barbie special edition dolls).
So, instead of going to the Village Halloween parade (which has been cancelled for the first time in 39 years), or any of the Halloween parties I was invited to (the New Museum and Cara`s parties have also been cancelled), and wear the cool and simple MineCraft Creeper costume Cory Doctorow twitted (from Comic Con NY):
On Friday I went to NY Comic Con, like everyone else, I guess, with the idea of having fun, of experiencing first hand one of the “major events” that a true nerdy geek can attend. I also wanted to meet Cory Doctorow (although we actually ended up not meeting). It has been years since I last met him, and it was the perfect “excuse” to attend the conference.
When I arrived, I was really surprised to see the size of it.
Hugo sends me this amazing song/video made in Minecraft. Of course, that leads to 10 more, 14 more… there are so many!
When you make the tools available to the people, and allow them to create (in this case under the safe harbor of “parody”) wonderful things happen. Its NOT all about the money, profit, control... Its about imagination, art, creativity, culture. Thats how it happens: copying, re-using, mixing, adjusting, modifying.
July 13th-15th Alvaro and I attended Hope9 (Hackers On Planet Earth number 9) conference in New York`s Hotel Pennsylvania.
It was a lot of fun, as usual. Besides the many and informative talks (we gave one on “Digital Security in Health Care Institutions”, the first day), there was music, booths (FSF, EFF with a girl that wanted to come to Spain to help the #indignados, Free Manning, No Starch Press Books and more), arduino and lock-picking classes, a pro-ponies and against-zombies USA Presidential Candidate wearing a boot on his head, MakerBot 3D printers, the IMMI, Hackers For Charity, AlphaOne HackerSpace (will be visiting it next Thursday with Audrey), StartUpHire, SparkleLabs (awesome presents for kids and n00bies!
After playing with it for a while, beyond it limitations (light, format, movement…) here are the two biggest pitfalls with the Lytro camera:
It is still for Mac OSX only. They NEED to come out with Open Source / Free Software (both their software AND platform support for GNU/Linux).
Picture library size and location. BIG unresolved issue.
