I first volunteered with Asha when I studied at Cornell in the mid 1990s and have stayed involved since. Their efforts are among the most sincere and most successful in basic education in India, with an all-volunteer staff and hundreds of active projects. One of my memorable Asha experiences was surveying tsunami relief efforts in 2005 with my wife, in Chennai and nearby, coastal villages. Asha does not usually provide disaster relief, but when needed, they had the resilience to organize and provide everything from food to boats to backpacks for school, for thousands of children and families.

More recently in 2008-2009, the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire captured hearts around the world. Of the millions who saw it, many wondered what they could do to help children from India’s slums.

Asha for Education volunteers have funded and organized dozens of projects in slums across India, including the slums shown in Slumdog Millionaire. Below is an excerpt of an article I wrote in early 2009 for the main Asha for Education web site, to help spread the word about Asha’s good work. In the article, I included several photos I had snapped in India of related Asha projects.

I’m updating this later in 2009 to add: the article and photos have been viewed by millions of people around the world via Asha’s site, my flickr stream, and web sites who have republished the photos and badges. The photos have also been used in unrelated fund raising campaigns for Asha. I couldn’t be happier to help tell the stories and rally support for these kids, to help give them the opportunities all children deserve.

Helping Children From India’s Slums

The Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire has captured hearts around the world. Of the millions who have seen it, many wonder what they can do to help children from India’s slums.

Asha for Education volunteers have funded and organized dozens of projects in slums across India, including the slums shown in Slumdog Millionaire. Asha has been working to help these children for more than 10 years, with 93 education projects focusing on children from the slums.

One of the best things you can do to help is to make a donation to Asha for Education — please use the Google Checkout form on the right side of this page. Asha has been given the highest possible rating by Charity Navigator and has been a top-rated nonprofit on many Charity Navigator lists, including “10 Slam Dunk Charities.”

In the sunny metropolis of Chennai, a 115-year-old school called Olcott Memorial is dedicated to educating the poorest children. The Chapter Coordinator of Asha Chennai, Lakshmi Suryanarayanan, is also Headmistress at Olcott Memorial. Lakshmi oversees the many education projects focused on helping children from slums in Chennai, funded and informed by Asha volunteers around the world.

A hard-working student at Olcott Memorial, funded in part by Asha for Education. Click for a larger version.

Lakshmi greets some of her eager students. Project funded in part by Asha for Education. Click for a larger version.

Lakshmi anchors the dedicated staff at Olcott Memorial, here including kitchen staff who provide for students' nutritional needs. Project funded in part by Asha for Education. Click for a larger version.

Project Bridge is Olcott Memorial’s attempt to bridge the digital divide. There is a growing divide between children from poor families, whose access to computers is almost nonexistent, and the growing computer use by children from wealthy families. Future plans for Asha funding at Olcott Memorial include purchasing increased Internet connectivity for their computer lab, teacher training, and improving science labs.

Any amount you donate can mean the world to a child, and because Asha is run by volunteers, 100% of your contribution will reach the children. If a general donation is not specific or personal enough, consider giving with Asha’s Support A Child program.

Something else you can do to help: spread the word. Using one of the linked images below or in any way you prefer, share a link to Asha for Education on your website, blog, profile, or in email. If you know someone who may want to support basic education in India, send them here!

Please link images to http://www.ashanet.org/

Joey Mornin, @joemornin on Twitter and a research assistant at the Berkman Center, had tweeted “I have seen the future, and it is a Carl Sagan/Stephen Hawking remix …” (11:24 AM Oct 2nd from TweetDeck). That I had to see, and when I saw it I had to tweet: “This Carl Sagan Stephen Hawking remix … should play on a wall @PacSci :) via @joeymornin” (11:35 AM Oct 2nd from Google Wave (Tweety)).


Pacific Science Center, @PacSci on Twitter, understands social media. As every person, business, or organization using social media ought to be, in a word they are: social. When I mention @PacSci, they watch for it and in this case their response was: “RT @brianglanz: This Carl Sagan Stephen Hawking remix … should play on a wall @PacSci :) via @joeymornin <GLORIOUS!>” (11:43 AM Oct 2nd from Seesmic). They responded quickly, giving credit to Joey Mornin and me, and added their own comment, <GLORIOUS!> — all in 140 characters. <yoda>Impressive!</yoda>


Will the “A Glorious Dawn” remix actually appear at the Pacific Science Center? Whether on a wall, at a kiosk, or on screen before IMAX films I do think this sort of “citizen media” should be displayed alongside “citizen science” in our educational and cultural institutions. This video accentuates and amplifies important parts of the messages Sagan, Hawking, and science at large have to share. In an incomplete circle, science has made possible the technology, has made possible the culture, has made possible great grassroots work like this media; science needs to close the circle and better connect with the community.


Quintin Doroquez, @quintind on Twitter chimed in, too by tweeting “@brianglanz That was brilliant!” (11:57 AM Oct 2nd from Tweetie) and I could not agree more. Thanks and congratulations to the creator of “A Glorious Dawn,” John Boswell, melodysheep on YouTube, whose video has a perfect 5 out of 5 stars after thousands of ratings and more than 600,000 views in its first two weeks.

Google, of course had a cute form inviting the public to apply to join the couple thousand Google employees who had been testing Wave. With all the talk of Wave replacing email, instant messaging, some social networking and some collaboration apps, I couldn’t resist.

As shown here, the invitation-application form invited ASCII art. Since this is Google and they’ll probably see it all in 10 pt Arial, I pulled out a few, small classics I knew would be well enough interpreted, including:

\__ … Star Trek TOS communicator
=====__—^— … Star Trek TOS starfleet ship, large
-_– … Star Trek TOS starfleet ship, small
=/\= … Starfleet logo
\V/ … Live Long and Prosper

Did I cute my way into testing Google Wave? I did indeed!

The partially open nature of Wave enables such feats as tweeting from within Wave, which I did while providing the instructions for same to new Wave testers in October. As I also tweeted that day, I recommend ‘11 Google Wave robots that add value in the enterprise‘ by @MarkFidelman.

Post updated in October, 2009. Here are a few videos I’d shared in the original, May 2009 version of this post:

Find Net Tuesday in your city via its parent organization, Net Squared.

Seattle Net Tuesday recently organized an Online Makeover — Nonprofit Edition. Tech savvy members volunteered to solve technical challenges and improve organizations’ web sites and social media strategies.

While at Seattle Net Tuesday and following up after the event, I advised Vote Clean Seattle on

(1) other recent, small, social media based fundraising efforts as a model, including for technology to track and show progress
(2) local organizations who may be interested in partnering with VCS, and
(3) running a WordPress based web site to simplify inclusion of other online presence in their site.

More than a dozen volunteers offered them lots of practical, mostly technical advice. It was a fulfilling and informative experience for everyone.

Seattle Net Tuesday has featured many organizations, speakers, and formats, always staying fresh, productive, and fun, too. I have updated this post a dozen or so times to highlight upcoming or recent Tuesdays, and in a few cases I have written additional posts or articles, here or elsewhere online to do the same. On Tuesday, August 25 for example, we enjoyed “two dynamite speakers” discussing their organizations’ volunteer outreach online.

On Twitter, you may find dozens of organizers, attendees, and me! tweeting about Seattle Net Tuesday. I’ve recently helped get them going with a Twitter account for the event itself @SeaNet2. That’s not getting a lot of use as of yet though, so connect with

• * Sarah Schacht @sarahschacht
• * Jessica Dally @JessicaDally
• * Sameer Siruguri @siruguri
• * or with me @brianglanz

My Seattle Net Tuesday archives include these articles:

• * The Haas Foundation
• * Knowledge As Power — Everyday Democracy
• * Online Video Service, Inc. :: Seattle Net Tuesday Notes
• * Noonhat — Toss Your Social Salad
• * Itchmo :: Seattle Net Tuesday Notes

This Net Squared presentation discusses Community Voice Mail’s use of Second Life for networking:




六四是事實。还原真相：1989年6月4日的新聞，無辦法修改了吧：想要结束历史悲剧惟有真实、彻底地记住历史–真实的民主运动。

Twenty years ago on June 4, 1989, thousands of pro-democracy protesters — most of them students — were killed by the Chinese government where they gathered peacefully, in Tiananmen Square.

I could not agree more with their Editorial Statement:

Environmentalism has taken a global turn. What was once a movement that revolved around local activism and outdoor enthusiasm now tops the agendas of leading research universities, corporations, and policy makers. As the science grows more mature and the money more serious, Conservation has emerged as a new kind of environmental magazine poised to capture the transformation.

Without being heavy handed, without preaching, pleading, or bias, we take on key environmental issues, explore them from novel angles and bring cutting-edge science to the table. Our editorial mission is to raise the bar on environmental thinking and writing. Our recipe is a mix of world-class journalism and provocative ideas spiced with offbeat illustrations that add a touch of irreverence—and delight.

They publish Conservation and its constituent Journal Watch Online as two integrated WordPress sites. We are currently working on broader plans to redesign their combined online presence. I have designed, developed, and implemented dozens of features for Conservation in our half year of working together and describe here just one such project for demonstration purposes. Many of our projects have focused on improving their behind-the-scenes editing and publishing tools as well as improving their presence online but beyond their site, in social media.

In most cases, a new feature such as adding a widgetized column to Journal Watch Online served both specific and general purposes. Specifically, the new column allows them to elevate more content and more features to the top of the page. That the new column is “widgetized” means that editors are able to use WordPress to manage content such as categorized links and a display of recent comments. What could be described as one feature — a new column — is actually any number of features, including whatever WordPress has available as a widget.

Generally, the Conservation and Journal Watch Online sites had similar designs but two significantly different widths. As a result of their difference in width, visitors navigating from one to the other would see features like the site header and footer “jumping around.” It was a visually more confusing, jarring experience. Matching the widths of the two integrated sites did not resolve all design differences but was a part of a larger effort for more conscious design and improved user experience.

The original developers of the site made these types of changes, and this type of control over a defined area of the site, much more difficult and expensive for Conservation. Two of our longer term goals in working together have been to give them greater control over their site, and to reduce their cost accordingly for making changes.

Adding a new column to Journal Watch Online was a classic win-win-win type of project, and from idea to design to completion it required just two hours’ work.

REALscience is a science media company based in Seattle. We are launching the new site today, March 30th 2009 and will continue rolling out improvements in the following weeks.

There are so many new features we are calling it “REALscience 2.0.” The features include:

• * Cross-browser compatibility, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Flock
• * Social bookmarking features so articles can be quickly submitted to relevant sites
• * Featured articles section to keep popular articles sticky near the top of the site
• * Widgetized sidebars so that any widget in WordPress can be easily added and managed
• * Gravatar readiness
• * Designed for threaded comments
• * Custom thumbnail images and optional automatic thumbnail image scaling throughout the site
• * Valid XHTML and CSS for a design without the use of tables
• * WordPress compatibility through versions 2.8.x

Visit REALscience! This is a small image of their new site:

This is a small image of their old site:

One of my inspirations in CompassionRise and in life has been Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States of America. Jefferson had a habit of writing every day. He rarely published, more often writing letters or writing for himself, such as annotating his designs and experiments. “Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight,” he wrote. Jefferson was as much a reader, writing in a letter once, “I cannot live without books.” When I studied at Cornell, I read thousands of pages of his writings (extracurricular :) in my favorite library (here and here). For a short stack, check out Peterson’s collection Thomas Jefferson, Writings or as a recent, readable shortcut for getting to know him, read Ellis’ biography American Sphinx.

As in this post’s graphic, the topics in CompassionRise have been far reaching. I have written on practical concerns like “Innovations, Expectations, and Change” with inspiration from Bill Gates and on “Experimentation” with inspiration from Carl Sagan. I wrote on the ethical implications of incredible but near future innovations like “Achieving Immortality” — through scientific and technological, not spiritual means — and discussed the “Sustainability of the Self” in a related article. I sought answers to questions both personal, as in “Compassion and Revenge” and social, as in “Developing the Human Family” while seeking scientific ethics to bridge divisions in global civil society.

My impetus to begin CompassionRise was a gift from my sister Melissa, brother in law Q! and nephew Michael: “Insight from the Dalai Lama” a 2009 daily calendar. Most of the quotations are short and all are inspirational; they are not religious. In CompassionRise, each essay has one, two, or three inspirational quotes. Based on those quotes and other research, I offer my own insight on compassion.

Roughly half of the essays are inspired by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Other wise people whom I point to: Dr. Hu Shih (胡適 or 胡适), Dr. Carl Sagan, Seattle, Chief of the Suquamish, Duwamish, and Allied Native American Tribes, Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi (મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી), Bill Gates, Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States of America, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Eddie Vedder, Sister Helen Prejean, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (نصرت فتح على خاں), and Pat Whatley Showell, President and CEO of Families First.

While writing the 31st, I found myself circling back to many earlier points. I was thinking more about what I had written than what I was writing, so CompassionRise came to a pause.

Below are the CompassionRise essays, last to first. Click an image to find associated essays in CompassionRise.

Experimentation
Feelings and Forgiveness
Eagle and Thicket
The Great Responsibility
Common Ground
Achieving Immortality
Good Intentions
Developing the Human Family
Compassion and Revenge
Innovations, Expectations, and Change
Pushing Our Human Boundaries
Everybody Can Be Great
A New Independence
A New Spirituality
Community and Inner Strength
Our Sense of Well-Being
Science and Humility
Respect and Responsibility
Our Face of Love
Face of Love
The Purpose of Meditation
Freedom and Creativity
Ignorance and Real Peace
Look On the Bright Side
The Seeds of Compassion
Nature v. Nurture
Resolving to Help Others
Sustainability of the Self
We Are the Makers
Old and New

The short answer on its technical details: I started with WordPress and phT for YAPB and customized each. I would not release the work I did for MPG as a stand-alone set of code, but I could do similar work for any photographer or artist and so could you, with the tools I referenced.

If you’re considering WordPress then ready-made themes I might work with include http://bueltge.de/photos/ from http://bueltge.de/photoblog-theme-fuer-wordpress/465/ from Germany, or the flexible and simple http://photoblog.xyloid.org/.

Design side, MPG and I surfed roughly 75 to 100 good photography portfolios, first. Design memes emerged which made laying it out and color choices simple, per the goal of looking professional or industry standard.

A portfolio site and especially in photography should stay nearly out of view, moving you through scenes like a stage crew. This is not the time for gimmicky user interfaces in Flash which take two minutes to load and invent whole new ways to use a mouse — portfolios for which relatively few potential clients will have patience.

MPG needed graphics to represent her portfolio on other sites, and to incorporate it within those sites, such as her own MangoPowerGirl.com. On the left is one such graphic, which is shown in a sidebar of her site like a “tower” ad, linking to her portfolio.

MPG’s portfolio feature requirements included:

• — to be able to update it herself,
• — to have it easy to page through, with large-enough photos one at a time, and
• — to have categories with “thumbnail” views per each including an “all photos” category.

MPG’s photography portfolio is broadly compatible across browsers, operating systems, and even hardware and display settings, e.g. scaling well for lower screen resolutions while maintaining image quality.

Above all MPG’s photos are a joy to see. View select work at Mango Power Girl Photography, hundreds more photos centering on food, nature, markets, and related stories at Mango Power Girl, and thousands more of her photographs, one uploaded almost daily in MPG’s flickr stream.

p.s. for a super fast portfolio, you can also tag photos or group them in a set on flickr. For a tag, try the word ‘portfolio’ or any word, then to present the portfolio, share only a link to the slideshow flickr automagically generates per tag or set.

Here’s an example from my own flickr stream, showing photos I have tagged with “wallpaper” meaning they could be used as a computer desktop, wallpaper, or background image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianglanz/tags/wallpaper/show/

I made this montage from my photos of the works of Seattle’s Ken Judd. The video was also a gift for his 50th birthday. We had lost KJ to San Diego in 08, but he’s back in Seattle in 09.

I may remaster the video — publish a higher resolution, remove the birthday reference, add a new opening and closing, etc. Generally, this is a test of displaying video on BrianGlanz.net while it is hosted here by MySpace.