In 2014 I took a job as Director of Product Management at America Achieves, working primarily on their Raise The Bar program. America Achieves is a nonprofit startup accelerator, and Raise The Bar was its program dedicated to aiding parents in supporting their children’s education. It was exciting to get back into advocacy (1993-1999 I […]
Category: Advocacy
In Support of LGBTQ+ Neighbors and Friends
In the wake of the over 380 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in the US this year alone, including many recent bills explicitly targeting members of the transgender community, Concrete Computing unambiguously stands with the LGBTQ+ community and against fear, misinformation, and hate of all kinds. LGBTQ+ people are our friends and family. They are our neighbors […]
Copyright and privacy in generative AI
ChatGPT knows a lot about us, but it won’t say what it knows about us. If you want, jump to the conversation below to see where I tried to get it to tell me about me. Or read on for some commentary first. Concretecomputing.com–at least, the parts that pre-date 2021–must be in ChatGPT’s training data. […]
Grant funding breaks everything
Grant funding, which asserts that big infusions of cash can bring some operation to a new level, sometimes handcuffs nonprofits. Think about this: when we attend a museum exhibition with an interactive technology element, we’re not at all surprised to see a lot of it not working right. There’s one very common reason for this. […]
Let’s start measuring impact at art museums
In the last few months several major institutions have publicly scaled back on digital operations, often as part of larger cost-cutting plans. Others have reorganized, or lost experienced tech staff in response to diminishing executive expectations. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, is scaling back on digital in order to cut costs. Staff of […]
ABC News/Good Morning America piece about Be A Learning Hero.
I was just testing this to make sure ABC’s weird embed code worked, but then I left it up accidentally, and then I decided to leave it up because it’s a pretty nice piece about an org I work for. Enjoy!
DuckDuckGo–the Search Engine You Should Be Using
The original version of this post is available at ARLIS/NA Multimedia and Technology Reviews. I am very grateful to Emilee Mathews, whose editorial work contributed immeasurably to the readability of this article. DuckDuckGo is a Web search site that competes with Google, Bing, and other major players. DuckDuckGo’s premise, and its major competitive advantage, […]
What are you watching?
[Edit: this turned out to pretty much be a red herring.] Let’s say a lot of people follow this blog. A lot of them probably wouldn’t remember when cable TV was rolling out in the 70’s and one of the BIG DEALS in their marketing rhetoric was how they don’t know what we’re watching and […]
Poor local broadband; no choices
Sent 17 May, 2014. —– Dear State Senator Espaillat, I’m writing to ask you to make the improvement in access to good-quality broadband Internet services a priority in your work and in your campaign for Congress. I live at 804 West 180th St. in Washington Heights. I have very few choices as far as broadband […]