Food+Tech: that's the name of a
meetup group I joined recently. Upon signup, they require you to introduce yourself. I didn't fawn over it and kept it succinct:
'electrical engineer turned nutrition educator. i blog about health.'I didn't really know what the group was about so I attended their latest meetup about a week ago to find out. They call it 'Five On Food', where basically, five presenters have the opportunity to share what projects they're working on, theoretically in the realm of its name, food+tech.
Highlights of the event included these three speakers from..:
1)
WindowFarms, which are
vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials.Goal 1: Empower urban dwellers to grow some of their own food inside year-round.
Goal 2: Create a web platform that allows citizens to collaboratively innovate globally toward more sustainable cities using locally available materials to suit locally specific conditions, a process we call R&D-I-Y.
R&D-I-Y: Mass Collaboration to Solve Environmental Problems:
The ultimate aim of the Windowfarms project is not primarily to create a perfected physical object or product. Rather, the targeted result is for participants to have a rewarding experience with crowdsourced innovation. The team is interested to learn from participants' experience as they design for their own microenvironments, share ideas, rediscover the power of their own capacity to innovate, and witness themselves playing an active role in the green revolution.
The windowfarms project approaches environmental innovation through web 2.0 crowdsourcing and a method called R&D-I-Y (research and develop it yourself). Big Science’s R&D industry is not always free to take the most expedient environmental approach. It must assume that consumers will not make big changes. Its organizational structure tends toward infrastructure-heavy mass solutions. A distributed network of individuals sharing information can implement a wide variety of designs that accommodate specific local needs and implement them locally. Ordinary people can bring about innovative green ideas and popularize them quickly. Web theorists like Clay Shirky claim that this capacity to “organize without hierarchical organization” will be a fundamental shift in our society brought about by the web over the coming decades.
2)
Fresh, which is
a grassroots efforts for a grassroots movement.. [It's] more than a movie, it’s a gateway to action. Our aim is to help grow FRESH food, ideas, and become active participants in an exciting, vibrant, and fast-growing movement.Fresh uses social networking, such as Facebook and Twitter, to help spread the word.
3)
NOAH [Networked Organisms And Habitats], which is
a tool that nature lovers can use to explore and document local wildlife and a common technology platform that research groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. An example of one of their current missions is called Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners, where users can share info with fellow gardeners to learn what can grow best in their garden.
Today, I went to another meetup event for another group- totally unrelated- on media and publishing. Co-founder of Foursquare and expert in mobile apps, Naveen Selvadurai, discussed
key ingredients that go into creating a fun digital experience.
In case you don't know what
Foursquare is, it's a mobile app that's focused on fostering social meetups/gatherings/community and learning/exploration/discovery of cities, particularly one's own, using game-based theory. The gaming aspect basically acts as an incentive for users— users 'check-in' to locations and when they meet certain criteria, they can win various badges [action->reward].
One such badge is called the Gym Rat, which you can earn if you check in to venue tagged 'gym' 10 times in 30 days. At one point in his presentation, Selvadurai shares a user's comment, which said his desire for this badge got him to go to the gym and is healthier because of it. Yoga studios, parks, farmers' markets, health food stores, restaurants with healthy fare, are other examples of how this app can and has been influential within communities, by themselves no less.
While these four ventures are very different from each other in content, they do all have an underlying common principle: that is, social media as a means to influence peoples' [each others'] behaviors. And isn't that what public health/education is all about?
[Rhetorical question.] Yes! Public health and education is about communication and influence. Social media is a [or, currently,
the?] major portal & tool for both. We can't deny, overlook, or be ignorant of it anymore. It's time to get with the program, folks, there's a difference [many, actually] to be made.
Happy Healthy Juicy Wake UP! Social Technology [4BetterHealth], umm, rah!
