[Chicago] Fwd: TP brainstorming/design/hacker jam

[sheila miguez]

Talking Points is a project a group at umich in Ann Arbor is working
on. They're prototyping and studying devices to provide POI (points of
interest) information for blind users. Their earlier prototype was a
java app, and used bluetooth discovery to get MACs to lookup some data
from a webservice.

I saw an article about them in ACM TechNews, and after following links
I saw that they were open to volunteers. and that they were making the
code (at least the prototype?) visible to the world.

http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6737
http://talking-points.org/

Their blog is stale, but it will likely start up again soon now that
they have an influx of students for independent study research.

They are going with pyS60 on the nokia platform. yay. hence I thought
some of you (perhaps Feihong) might be interested in going, and at
least mentoring for a day.

(I tend to collect speculatively related bookmarks or refs at
http://delicious.com/shekay/talkingpoints )


rambling...

I'm interested in accessibility and technology (actually, with more of
a bent towards assisting with cognitive problems, but this was
interesting in that I had been thinking of wayfinding and memory aids
for POI for people with memory and/or concentration/attentional
problems (age related or otherwise)). but, being as I have no grad
experience in this field, I am doubtful that I'd ever find gainful
employment as a research programmer*, so open source it is. (though do
any of you remember pycon 2007 lightning talk by the guys in Coloroda
who were designing apps, like an email app, for users with cognitive
disabilities? that ws a commercial thing, iirc, not research, but
whatever)

* but if anyone is hiring in anything like this let me know. I have
two BS degrees, in CS, and in Psychology. I tended towards
biopsychology and cognitive stuff, avoided clinical and fluffy stuff,
and hung out and assisted in a memory & cognition lab at school doing
experiments on people. (didn't see anything like this last time I was
thinking of finding a new job, and I don't feel like bothering to find
a new job unless it's a complete paradigm shift from what I'm doing
right now, barring other factors.)

** I tend to collect completely speculative bookmarks on this
http://delicious.com/shekay/cognitive+to.speculate

or thereabouts. I tend to save cognitive+prostheses &c.

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Chris McAvoy <chris.mcavoy at gmail.com> wrote:
> What is it?  What is this "talking points?"
>
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:31 AM, sheila miguez <shekay at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Carl and I are driving to Ann Arbor for this. Would anyone like to
>> carpool with us?
>>
>> See below for the 'maybe we can get some external "speakers"? (e.g.
>> there could be
>> somebody giving an intro of PyS60)' bullet point, and if anyone has
>> already done some python on Android I'm sure they'd be excited to hear
>> about it.
>>
>> (why I'm going: I've been chatting with them to volunteer programming
>> assistance)
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Jakob Hilden <jhild at umich.edu>
>> Date: Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:37 AM
>> Subject: TP brainstorming/design/hacker jam
>> To: talkingpoints at ctools.umich.edu
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> according to Rayoung's scheduling efforts a good time for this event
>> would be next week Wednesday, January 28 between 1 and 6pm. If you have
>> any objections, speak up now!
>>
>> By then I hope we will hopefully:
>> * have done our first steps with Python for Symbian
>> * have conducted the first interviews
>> * looked at a bunch of other systems
>> * an EECS 498 Android team
>> * developed a lot of questions for each other
>>
>>
>> What we will do is still in flux, but this is some stuff I had in mind:
>> * clarify questions to the other groups
>> * streamline organizational things
>> * brainstorm ideas
>> * share knowledge & ideas
>> * get to know EVERYBODY involved with Talking-Points
>> * maybe we can get some external "speakers"? (e.g. there could be
>> somebody giving an intro of PyS60)
>> * as I said people will be free to come and go whenever they want/need
>> * invite the blind community
>> * invite other interested fellow students
>> * be creative
>> * have fun
>>
>>
>> So please start spreading the word, details will follow. And please let
>> me know your ideas about what you would like to do, eat, drink, ...
>>
>> --Jakob
>>
>>
>> PS: the TP Google calendar seems to have been deleted by accident. I
>> have recreated it and shared it with you again. If you can't see it or
>> have any problems, let me know. Please add any TP relevant event
>> including meetings and interviews to that calendar, so team members know
>> what's going on.
>> ________________________________
>> This automatic notification message was sent by CTools
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>>
>>
>> --
>> sheila
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-- 
sheila