Toluu : Ariel Waldman

Ariel Waldman

digital anthropologist

Spacehack launched to the public today! I’m really excited to produce a resource that myself and others felt was lacking in the online space community.

Spacehack is a directory of ways to participate in space exploration, interact + connect with the space community and encourage citizen science.

A huge thank you goes out to all my former coworkers at NASA who continue to support me in my outer space endeavors - these ideas come to fruition from a community more so than any individual.

I hope to see Spacehack continue to grow and be a valuable source of information for anyone who wants to get involved in space exploration but doesn’t know where to start.

CupcakeCamp2 and CupcakeCamp East!November 6

When I started CupcakeCamp back in May of this year, I had no idea it would be as popular as it was (we had about 300 people and 500+ cupcakes attend!). It was such a rewarding experience to see people from all different industries smiling and sharing cupcakes and meeting new people (what easier way for people to meet than to start a conversation about cupcakes!?).

At nearly every event I went to, people asked me to bring it back, so I’m very happy to oblige and be throwing CupcakeCamp2 this December. RSVP yourself here and register to bring cupcakes here.

Equally exciting, I received an email from Open Source Cupcakes who will be throwing the first ever CupcakeCamp East! I’m ecstatic that in less than 6 months of the first CupcakeCamp that it has already spread across the nation.

Can’t wait! As always, if you have questions about CupcakeCamp or need help organizing your own, feel free to ping me.

UpdateNovember 3

Lately, I’ve been dreadful at updating my blogs with what’s new in my life. What I said in July seems to still hold true a few months later:

“My frequency of blogging has gone down lately. Is it because of the pervasiveness of microblogging? For the most part, no. The answer is that I’m consuming a LOT more information than outputting, which leaves little time to share all the great things I’m learning about at the end of the day.”

The most recent update in my world is that I decided to resign my contract with my employer today (when you work with NASA as a contractor, you’re hired by a separate company that then contracts the work to NASA). Being the first “outside” blogger/social media consultant I know of being brought into NASA, I ran up against policies from my employer that made it impossible for me to do the job NASA hired me to do. My employer’s policies for digital interaction are outdated, exemplified by the apparent prohibition of instant messaging and social networks during work hours. The policies and mindsets are written in such a way that it makes the use of Twitter akin to playing Solitaire at work. As well as being effective communication protocols that actually increase productivity an

Space madness… in social mediaSeptember 23

image via twm1340

Exploring the unknown territory of the space community’s involvement in social networks, I’ve compiled a list of space-related Twitter accounts that are on my radar. From telescopes to planetary explorers, astrobiology to robots, these accounts aim to add some education to your everyday.

At last count, I have 112 space-related Twitter accounts on the list I’ve compiled. I may expand my radar to include social networks beyond Twitter sometime soon. In the meantime, follow a few that interest you!

Twitter: Dating and DeathSeptember 17

(photo by fabiolo)

(I’ve been horrible at keeping up with a blogging routine lately, but that’s a subject for a later post.) I was recently asked over email what I thought could be a potential “Twitter killer” as well as an interesting way Twitter is being used. Thought I’d share my off-the-top-of-my-head response:

Potential Twitter killer:

Lack of community
Twitter as a company has stated in the past that they view themselves as a “communications utility” and not a community. This is an unfortunate and potentially poisonous viewpoint to try and maintain. My guess is that Twitter wanted to view themselves as a utility to further propagate the idea that they want to scale to a huge size. Again, this is unfortunate as Flickr is a prime example of a massive web service that is known for scaling not only their web framework but their community as well. Flickr has proven over time that it can maintain a sense of community at a large scale (remember, they serve about 35,000 photos a *second*) by truly thinking about every user experience despite it sometimes making their heads hurt. Basic psychology shows that people connect more positively and interact