Bridge for Out of Eden Walk: 21,000 Miles of Social Media in Translation

Networking 6:30-7:00 PM, and after the talk as time allows.
Webcast: RSVP, then contact us (https://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/message/?recipientId=11534644) to register for remote access.

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/9/c/a/600_339647562.jpeg

Bridge (http://meedan.com/20150331_bridge_one-pager_booklet.pdf)is a web and mobile platform the Meedan Labs (http://meedan.org) team is building to aggregate, curate, and translate a living archeology of a geo-bounded social media landscape that mirrors Paul Salopek’s Out of Eden Walk (http://www.outofedenwalk.com/), a 7 year, 21,000 mile walk around the world, sponsored by National Geographic.

In the next seven years, the percentage of people using the internet who are not speaking ‘top ten’ languages is projected to rise from 18% to 35%, and with many social media sites the potential to access content across languages is limited to poor, dead-end, machine translations of the content. Bridge for OOEW will provide a unique digital artifact - human translated views into the social media landscape sampled at 100 mile waypoints on Paul’s slow ambulatory trace of the path of human migration from Africa, across Asia and through to Tierra del Fuego.

Members of Meedan’s team have been working to create a more cross-lingual internet since 2006, pioneering new approaches to social translation in projects like Speak2Tweet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_To_Tweet) (the Egyptian Revolution translated voice message project) and Bird’s Nest: Ai Weiwei English (http://aiwwenglish.tumblr.com/). Across all of our work we design and build tools to help create a more accessible, inclusive, and connected digital landscape.

Ed Bice (https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=10573443) is the founder of Meedan.org (http://meedan.org), a non-profit working on tools for journalists, and Meedan Labs, a start-up working on crowdsourced social media translation software. Ed has a degree in philosophy from Carleton College and was a residential architect before founding Meedan. Ed holds a US patent for hybrid human plus machine online translation (HDNLT).

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/9/c/a/600_339647562.jpeg

Admission is free for IMUG members and Facebook employees, and $5 for non-members. IMUG membership is only $20 for the first year, $15 for annual renewal, or $100 for lifetime membership. Click here to join, renew, or pay a single non-member event fee via PayPal. Cash and checks also accepted at our events. http://www.imug.org/imug-membership-and-event-fees.htm

Please RSVP via Meetup by 4 PM the Monday before the event to help IMUG and our hosts prepare badges for you in advance. After that time it's still OK to RSVP right up to the last minute, as that will help us ensure enough seats for everyone! http://events.imug.org/

This talk will be webcast and recorded. To join the webcast, RSVP here first and then contact us (https://www.meetup.com/IMUG-Silicon-Valley/message/?recipientId=11534644) to register for remote access. The recording will be posted to the IMUG YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsyHr9IqAXJx00It8K7QHtQ) within a few weeks if all goes well. IMUG videos on YouTube and hosted by Adobe Connect (see the IMUG archives (http://www.imug.org/events/imug-2015-events.htm)) are available free of charge, but if you find these videos useful please consider becoming an IMUG member (http://www.imug.org/imug-membership-and-event-fees.htm).

Many thanks to Iris Orriss and Facebook for hosting this talk!

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/9/c/a/600_339647562.jpeg

The hashtag for IMUG events is #IMUG408, honoring Silicon Valley's main area code. Yes, we'll be in 650 this month, which used to be 415. It's still 408! :-) Follow @i18n_mug: http://twitter.com/i18n_mug

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/9/c/a/600_339647562.jpeg