"movers and shakers" entries

Radar Profile: Saul Griffith, Maker Extraordinaire

When I first met Saul Griffith in 2003, through a series of fortunate coincidences that brought him to our first Foo Camp, he said, "Our worlds don't really overlap." I represented the world of open source software and the web, the immaterial world of cyberspace; Saul, as he said in a 2004 interview for the Australian Broadcast Company, is…

Unitus Looking for Bay Area Fundraising Director

Diana Reid, who I first met when she was running developer relations from BEA, is now the VP of Donor & Investor Relations for a Redmond and Bangalore-based nonprofit called Unitus, which, according to their web site, "fights global poverty by using a venture capital model to increase access to microfinance. We provide high-impact funding and consulting to the highest…

John Backus Dies at 82

Roger Magoulas wrote in email, pointting to this NYT article: " John Backus, who led the project that developed Fortran, died of old-age at 82. Not only was he one of the first software people – before it was called software – he was one of the creators of the hacker ethos of small informal teams who work fast and…

Dear Speaker: Carl Malamud at It Again

Carl Malamud just posted his open letter to Nancy Pelosi on the subject of public archives of all congressional hearings: I write to you today with the results of two years of research on the subject of the creation of broadcast-quality video of congressional proceedings for download on the Internet. My conclusion can be summarized as follows: By the end…

Journalism Through Computer Programming

As I've noted previously, Adrian Holovaty, the creator of Django and the Chicagocrime.org mashup, gives a great talk entitled Journalism Through Computer Programming. I refer to it often in my own talks on the future of publishing. Adrian's point is that the various jobs of journalism — gathering news, exercising editorial judgment, and presenting the story — can all be…