NEWS

Food Font is a Member of the Green Plus Durham Food System Consortium and Receives a Burt’s Bees Scholarship

Food Font is a Member of the Green Plus Durham Food System Consortium and Receives a Burt’s Bees Scholarship

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Food Font is happy to have a home in Durham!  We are excited to be selected as a member of the Green Plus Durham Food System Consortium (DFSC), which has been created by the North Carolina Triangle-based Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD) and the  Burt’s Bees Greater Good Foundation. The DFSC is comprised of local, food-centric businesses and nonprofits who share best practices and collaborate to strengthen the area’s food system and help protect the environment.

Food Font is one of the 20 organizations that have been selected to be part of the consortium.  As a member of Green Plus, we will be working with the ISD to improve the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) of Food Font.  We will be working with a mentor in order to better understand how our actions can protect our local environment.

Some things I am looking forward to developing and getting support with are developing a sustainability plan with key objectives, selecting and presenting some environmentally friendly products to use for the project, and committing to engaging the Food Font community as it grows with issue of environment and social/community impact.

As part of the DFSC, we will participate in periodic group conversations and meet other Durham based small businesses and non-profits that grow, distribute, prepare food or raise awareness of food system issues.  Some of the other members are Cocao and Cinnamon, a local coffee shop, and Sweet Beet City Farm, a urban farm in Durham.

Thanks to the Institute for Sustainable Development, Green Plus and The Burt’s Bees Greater Good Foundation for giving us an opportunity to be part of this new consortium!

 

Image Source:
gogreenplus.org/

 

Links:

Green Plus – Burt’s Bees + Green Plus Food System Consortium in Durham

gogreenplus.org/

www.burtsbees.com/c/root-values-burt-s-bees.html

 

Food Font – Element Adjust Feature Added to Design

Food Font – Element Adjust Feature Added to Design

Posted on by Kbaumlier

So Food Font had settled in here in Durham, NC, and the work of moving and transition has slowed down a bit, which means that the development of the Food Font interactive tool has picked up.  I am working hard to write out the detailed documents that describe and visualize the tool that are needed to give the programmer who will build the tool.

This Sunday, I am going to check out Splat Space, also called Durham’s Hackerspace.  I am attending the Software Project Night, and bringing my draft, images of the design in progress, and some questions to the event.  Splat Space is a work, play, and hobby space where people with common interests, primarily in technology, can meet to socialize and collaborate.

I am excited to take a break from development, and get some input on the design and design documents.  Some of the questions I am getting input on include some feasibility of functions, standards, and other techie information.

One new feature that has been added to the Food Font Interactive Tool design is an element adjust feature which will allow you to select a text object and adjust its opacity, add shadows, and also stack objects using send to front/back  settings.

If you want to read more about Splat Space, you can check it out their website at  splatspace.org 
Links:

www.foodfont.com

splatspace.org

 

Food Through the Ages: A Unique Timeline of Food

Food Through the Ages: A Unique Timeline of Food

Posted on by Kbaumlier

I recently navigated to the Ending Hunger website, an information and advocacy website that is part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  The site has lots of information about hunger in the world, and provides lots of information, links to petitions, and opportunities to get involved.

The Mapping Hunger area of the site has as various visual images about hunger, food security, and other food issues, and I found a recently post with an amazing interactive timeline of food.

Created by the Food for 9 Billion Project, the Food Through  the Ages timeline allows you to navigate through the history of  food and see some of “the human struggle to put food on the table, from the birth of agriculture to the birth of the 9 billionth human.”

The timeline is broken up visually into separate 5 timelines:  Agriculture, Demographics, Health and Nutrition, Hunger, and Politics, so you are able to get an overview of a time period from various perspectives.

I found it interesting that in 1933, the year the Twinkie was first created, there was a famine in the Soviet Union, and the population on the whole was becoming wealthier and more secure, creating a stable population.

I navigated to today, and saw that the last hunger statistic was 925 million people were hungry, and life expectancy overall is 67 years.

You can play with the timeline on the Ending Hunger website, and also see other visualizations about food and hunger.

Food for 9 Billion, is a collaborative project of Homelands Productions, the Center for Investigative Reporting, American Public Media’s Marketplace, and PBS Newshour.

Image Source:
www.endinghunger.org

Links:

www.endinghunger.org/en/mappinghunger/hunger_timeline.html

cironline.org/projects/food-9-billion

 

 

 

 

Did You Miss the Games for Change Festival? View the Keynotes Online

Did You Miss the Games for Change Festival? View the Keynotes Online

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Games for Change (G4C) facilitates the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts that aim to leverage entertainment and engagement for social good.  (akaGames for social good and change.)

Last year I had a great time attending talks and keynotes, playing the games that were nominated for awards, and meeting people from the digital games industry, gaming enthusiasts, educators, policymakers, activists, foundations and others.

I was not able to attend this year due to my recent move to North Carolina, but I recently took some time to check out some videos of some of the keynotes which included sessions  and keynotes that you can watch online.   Currently the videos are not tagged or labeled that clearly, but if you scan through you can view most of the talks from the first day.

I took some time today to watch a couple of the keynotes including:

Opening Keynote by Michael T. Jones from Google
(talking about local search, google maps, and other tools by Google’s Tech Advocate. He talked about redefining what a game is, and how games can affect the behavior of people on a global scale.

http://new.livestream.com/g4c/events/2136076/videos/21772941
(starts at 11 minutes in to the video)


Half the Sky Movement: The Game – Design and Impact

(A panel of experts from Frima Studio talk about the development of Half The Sky, a project made by Facebook, Zynga.com, and Games for Change that raises awareness and funds to empower women and girls across the world.  The talk (which is 2 hours!) talks aobut the process and challenges of making a game that can raise  money for girls and women.)  The talk talked about how the majority of design focuses on products and services for the richest 10% of the population.

http://new.livestream.com/g4c/events/2136076/videos/21840199
(starts around 46 minutes into the video)

Another major component of the festival is the Games For Change festival is awards for the games with the best gameplay, most innovative, and most significant impact.  I haven’t had time to check out the winner, but I will do so next week and post what I find.

Image Source:
http://www.gamesforchange.org/festival2013/

Links:

http://new.livestream.com//g4c

http://www.gamesforchange.org/festival2013/

http://www.gamesforchange.org/festival2013/games/

 

 

 

The Tactile Dome: A Navigation Experience With Touch

The Tactile Dome: A Navigation Experience With Touch

Posted on by Kbaumlier

The Exploratorim, located in San Francicsco, CA is a hands-on museum of science, art, and human perception.  Today most cities have a science museum where you can interact and touch things, but the Exploratorium is unique because they have artists and scientists working side by side to create the exhibits.  Play and fun are part of the mission, making it a dynamic and changing place since it opened in 1969.

The museum recently moved to a new space, three times larger than their last one, so some new and refurbished older exhibits have been introduced.  One exhibit that on display again is the Tactile Dome, which is an interactive journey through total darkness where you can navigate the space using only your sense of touch and perception.

The Dome was created in 1971, and is a geodesic dome where visitors can enter into a totally dark path full of chambers.  To navigate, visitors bump, slide and crawl through and past hundreds of materials and shapes.  Only a few people are allowed in the exhibit at a time, and it has not been on display for a number of years.

The original press release, written in 1971 describes the exhibit experience:

“The purpose is to disorient the sensory world so that the only sense the visitor can rely on is touch. The sensation is so outside ordinary experience that a few people panic. An attendant in a control panel can reach every part of the ant-hill like maze almost instantly.  Pre-opening visitors have compared the experience to being born again, turning yourself inside out head first, being swallowed by a whale, and inevitably, being enfolded in a giant womb.

Seemingly the tactile equivalent of a light show, the tour is actually a carefully planned and structured succession of shapes, temperatures and textures which require the full range of the touch sense to perceive.”

The Tactile dome was the first commissioned artist-in residence projects, and was created by Dr. August F. Coppola and Carl Day.  The exhibit was designed by Coppola, (Yes, related to the Coppolas who work in film) who became interested in perceptual prejudice while directing interdisciplinary studies as head of California State College’s Honors Program. He believed that philosophy, physics and even psychology have always relied overwhelmingly on visual evidence to interpret the world.

He created the Tactile dome as a way to make others aware of what a complex and under used our sense of touch is. Coppola believed that people are actually prejudiced against the touch sense. “It’s development gets off to a bad start,” he was quoted in the original press release, “for as soon as we’ve stopped chewing our toes, the first commandment in life is given: “Don’t touch”.

You can read more on the Exploraorium’s website, or read an account of visiting the tactile dome last time it was on exhibit.


Image Source:
www.exploratorium.edu/visit/west-gallery/tactile-dome
itotd.com – Article Describing a First Hand Experinece In the Tactile Dome
Links:

www.exploratorium.edu/visit/west-gallery/tactile-dome

itotd.com – Article Describing a First Hand Experinece In the Tactile Dome