resources

Geek Catalog Update for 8/9

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People And Profile

And the Geek Catalog project continues – and I keep finding more fascinating resources and initiatives.  I’ve written some scripts to help me out, and yes, eventually this is going to get anchored or just put into a database.

What amazes me is that I just keep finding stuff.  Things I heard of, things I didn’t hear of.  We geeks have a lot of ways to change the world.

So what’s added this week?

Computing

  • Charity
    • Little Geeks – A Canadian charity that refurbishes donated computers, and gets them to children in need.
  • Female Geeks
    • The Ada Initiative – An organization that supports women in technology, with a heavy emphasis on codes of conduct, training, and an embrace of open source.

Fans-Harry Potter

  • Charity
    • The Harry Potter Alliance – A chapter-based alliance of HP fans engaged in charitable works, with a heavy emphasis on social justice and leveraging fandom for the greater good.

General

  • Community
    • Hackerspaces.org – A site dedicated to hackerspaces, from the latest news, to tools to make one, to lists of one you can join. Great to find people of a like mind so you can work together.
  • Education
    • MIT Open Courseware – Classes available online for free – from MIT. Sadly the major way to get involved is to donate, but it’s a good cause.

Space

STEM

  • Wildlife
    • Project Noah – A software platform that brings citizen scientist together in various projects to record and preserve biodiversity and understand nature.

Writing

  • Literacy
    • Kids Need To Read – A charity promoting a culture of reading, providing books to various institutions, especially those that support disadvantaged children.

 

There you go – get active!

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Weekly Challenge: Your Hidden Army

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We all have people we can call on – friends, family, co-workers, fans, and more.  It's easy to forget it – especially when we're having a bad day – but there's a good chance you have people that you can call on when it's needed.

The problem is that we forget this – ad we don't know when to reach out and bring people together.  This week's exercise is about both of these factors.

Here are the two parts of the challenge:

  1. List all of the people – and organizations/fandoms/communities – you can call on when needed.  This may not be due to a crisis – this could be to achieve something – and of course different groups and people may have different abilities that can help.
  2. Ask how you'd bring these people together when needed.  Are you a leader already, a moral center, a manager of ideas, etc.  How do you bring people together.

Now knowing these things:

  1. Does anything surprise you?
  2. Do you see any gaps in your life you need to fix.

You probably have an entire army to call on in life.  You just may not realize it – or realize how you can do so.

– Steven Savage