I’m about to be on my way to Banff and Calgary to attend the World Wide Web conference and to transmit birthday wishes to the duck. On the Atomique blog you can read why i am quite happy to be able to attend this conference.
At first, there are your immediate contemporaries in the contexts where you’re living and working. In our case, this constitutes the friendly iLab and Ente’s flatmates. This way you usually also have a crowd of potential people accompanying you to a place/event.
Local press/media
Then you can consult local news papers covering cultural events. Here in Calgary the most authoritative ones are FFW (standing for fast forward, be aware bad website) and BeatRoute. Furthermore there are those poster walls in special areas (e.g. Kensington and 17th Avenue) advertising concerts, theater plays, movie screenings and much more.
The interwebs
And of course you can also consult the Internet near you. There are several Web sites covering regular meetings (Meetup) and all sorts of events (Upcoming, Eventful). All these sites offer an RSS feed and an iCal link to subscribe future events either using a feed reader or a calendar application. Of course, the ideal way would be a decentralized* approach. Here comes the microformat hCalendar into play, which can than be accessed by a search engine (of your choice some day).
Got any other options, dear reader? Please add them as a comment.
* Did i mention that decentralization really rocks? Well, i think i did.
Last week i returned to Magdeburg from Santiago de Chile where i have spent six months to do an internship at the Web Research Center of the Universidad de Chile and also to improve my Spanish. While almost everybody told me that Chile wouldn’t necessarily be considered the best place to learn proper Spanish i was delighted by the patience i was granted with my poor pronounciation – still don’t get the r’s right – as well as my limited comprehension. I have made quite a few very good friends among them: Carolina, mosaic artist and cyclist comrade, José Ricardo, intellectual and tandem friend, Carla and Daniel, actor couple and flatmates, Claudio, computer graphics pro and temporary office peer, Javier, information architect and supervisor. Furthermore i had the chance to travel in Chile up north with the Ente and to the south with my brother and his girlfriend. Thanks to anybody who has helped making it a very cool half-year – including my family and girlfriend who have always supported me in that endeavor.
While the Ente was visiting me here in Chile we have travelled up north to see La Serena and Valley Elqui, the Atacama desert and El Tatio, and inbetween Valparaiso. I must say that i really like Valpo – especially now that i found the nightshoot option on my camera – thanks to the Ente. We have had a wonderful time during the last 3 weeks.
I have been in Santiago now for two days and i must say that you can see many stray dogs in the streets, a whole lot of stencils on the walls, and all the people i asked for help were very friendly and unterstanding for my small Spanish.
Santiago itself is not necessarily beautiful, yet i have found quite a few nice corners. I would like to live in a shared flat with other chilenos, but right now i am not sure how to do it, since i have several must-haves: internet access, bikability to city center, and as i mentioned some Spanish-speaking roommates. Tomorrow i will meet my ’supervisor’ from the internship i am doing, he will probably help me with that.
Tomorrow the Spanish course will start which will take a month, so i can start speaking Spanish – instead of stuttering it all the time. I have taken a small test yesterday to see which level fits me. I hope i can get into the intermediate course.
For the time being i will publish new pictures to my flickr account to experiment with it and see how it works and stuff. The advantage for you is, a tremendous increase in subscribability, quality, resolution, and interactivity – can you ask for more? I have already started two sets: Santiago de Chile and Streetart in Santiago.
So sah mein Wohnheimzimmer vor ein paar Tagen noch aus – nun ist es für den Nachmieter geräumt. Die Überraschungsparty war wirklich toll und gestern Abend haben wir noch Carcassone bei meinen Eltern gezockt – die Ente hat mal wieder gezeigt, wo es lang geht. Gleich gehts los zum Bahnhof, wo ich mich mit einigen Umsteigereien in Frankfurt mich noch mit meinem Bruder treffe und heute Abend in das Flugzeug steige, das mich mit Zwischenlandung in Madrid nach Santiago de Chile bringt, wo ich für ein halbes Jahr ein Praktikum mache und meine rudimentären Spanischkenntnisse aus dem Keller holen werde. Jetzt ist alles gepackt und stelle fest, dass ich fast zu vorsichtig war. Der Rucksack kommt nicht mal an das Limit von 20kg heran. Ich werde ‘hier’ im Blog ein wenig dokumentieren, wie es mir dort ergeht und womöglich auch mal den ein oder anderen spanischen Eintrag schreiben.
In less than two weeks i will be heading to Santiago de Chile first to attend a Spanish course and later and for longer to do an internship. While i will be writing more about that later, i must say that i really learnt to appreciate Google Earth. Last night i spent quite some time with it checking out Santiago and its surroundings, discovering public pools on hills, sights in the city, and the Andes. The cool thing is, that you can see geo-coded information snippets from a dedicated community.
Two of my compañeros de la universidad – getting myself prepared here to go to a Spanish speaking country soon – just arrived in Pakistan. They are doing a photography trip there. As i have learned it will be less a vacation, but rather a journalistic venture, as they will also do interviews collecting insights from the local people. I look forward to reading their blog notes through the wonders of publish-and-subscribe:
I have been in Santiago now for two days and i must say that you can see many stray dogs in the streets, a whole lot of stencils on the walls, and all the people i asked for help were very friendly and unterstanding for my small Spanish.
