Digital Communication, Social Media Training and Education Consultancy

Digital Identity ‘Grants for the arts’ application

By gopaldass on May 9, 2012

Are you an arts organisation or NPO based in Yorkshire?
Want to host a free Digital Identity seminar for your network?
Notes by a participant at the Digital Identity seminar in Dundee

Hello,

My name is Abhay Adhikari and I manage the Digital Identities in Interesting Spaces project. One of the aims of this project is to enable arts practitioners and organisations to re-imagine how they engage with digital media and social networks to make new art and engage new audiences online.

In just over nine months I have received support, commissions and worked with some great organisations such as British Council (Mumbai), The Guardian and Channel 4 to deliver seminars on themes such as Digital Leadership, Digital Campaigning and Digital Identity.

I am very keen to run these sessions for independent arts practitioners and small arts organisations across Yorkshire, however there are two barriers – cost and access to networks. So I spoke to the Arts Council and have been advised to apply for the Grants for The Arts Scheme to deliver these sessions for free in partnership with arts organisations and NPOs from Yorkshire.

As with every other aspect of the Digital Identity in Interesting Spaces project, I hope to find collaborators via social media.

I am looking for 15 organisations from the region to work with local and hyperlocal communities of multidisciplinary arts practitioners. Please contact me if you would like to host a free Digital Identity seminar for your network between August – November.

Requirements to host a Digital Identity seminar:

- Do you have SPACE to host a full or half day seminar for up to 20 participants?
- Do you have a projector, wifi-access is optional.
- Do you have access to a NETWORK of creative arts practitioners?

Updates and Information:

- Please see the comment below this post for the latest list of organisations that have expressed an interest in hosting a seminar.

- Click here to download information about the workshops I intend to run as a PDF document. This document opens in a new window.

Interested? Leave a comment, email me or send a tweet to @gopaldass

Sincerely,
Abhay

Posted in | Tagged , , , , | 1 Response

Four Elements of an effective Digital Identity

By gopaldass on May 9, 2012

A few months ago I had a interesting conversation with the folks at @Suklaa about Digital Identities in education. Since then, the conversation has become a collaborative project to develop and deliver a series of workshops for teachers hosted by the Wroxham Transformative Teaching Alliance.

At one of our planning meetings we had a look at Doug Belshaw’s TEDx talk on The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. Inspired by this talk, I have attempted to identify the elements of an effective Digital Identity. By no means is this list complete. Furthermore, it is based on anecdotal evidence so please feel free to suggest your own elements or comment on the ones listed below.

Throughout this post I refer to Digital Identity by one particular aspect of the six defined by Bonnie Stewart – The Performative, Public Self. Bonnie defines this networked self as being ‘linked in multiple, complex, individual node-to-node relationships with others’ which ‘constitutes itself within the public through its practices and gestures’.

I assume these practices and gestures encompass a wide range of actions we are accustomed to carrying out offline, which along with our offline relationships can be transliterated into equivalent digital gestures. I have tried to identify the elements of a Digital Identity that support this process.

1. Engaging others through ideas

Steve Johnson states that ideas come from a collision of partial hunches which combine and mingle with others to develop into the big vision over a period of time. And he goes on to suggest that the world wide web offers the opportunity for an individual to enter into an open exchange of partial hunches on an unprecedented scale. Therefore, the very foundation of an effective Digital Identity is the ability to articulate and express ideas, whereby words become a vital currency to reach out and engage with others.

2. Creative decision making

Johnson also suggests that an idea (or a partial hunch) can be a piece of more than one puzzle. Consequently, another element of an effective Digital Identity is the ability to make the right choice. This is where we arrive at a paradox. In this article on information overload, Sharon Begley explains how the Internet is counterproductive to effective decision making – “trying to drink from a firehose of information has harmful cognitive effects. And nowhere are those effects clearer, and more worrying, than in our ability to make… decisions.” However, she goes on to support Johnson’s view of ‘giving it time’ as it allows the brain “to integrate new information with existing knowledge and thereby make novel connections and see hidden patterns.” One approach conducive to this process would be to manage and distribute the consumption of information in discrete chunks over a period of time.

3. Risk assessment

The fear of unexpected and undesirable consequences holds people hostage and prevents them from going online and developing meaningful Digital Identities. Impact can be defined as a force exerted by a new idea, concept, technology, or ideology . Impact can be positive and constructive and contains an implicit reference to control. On the other hand consequence is the effect, result or outcome of something occurring earlier. And whilst there are consequences of our actions online, they can be avoided by a process of risk assessment.

4. Selecting the right tools

It is important to remember that the tools themselves aren’t the outcome, but instruments at our disposal to articulate ideas, make connections and manage information. Or as this blog post, by Scott W. Ambler (Chief Methodologist for Agile and Learn with IBM Rational) summarizes rather elegantly - the choice of tools should help you meet the needs of the situation. This statement applies to anyone making a selection from a bouquet of online tools regardless of his or her digital prowess.

And finally, I would suggest these four elements are bound in a cyclical process that is facilitates interaction and engagement in the first place. At the same time it also supports the evolution of conversation online.

I look forward to your thoughts on this post. Please feel free to leave a comment or get in touch with me via twitter, where I exist as @gopaldass.

Posted in , | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Responses

An open letter to @sciencemuseum
to request a conversation

By gopaldass on May 8, 2012

Dear curators and educators,

My name is Abhay Adhikari and I manage the Digital Identities in Interesting Spaces project. I am writing to you because I, too, firmly believe that science and technology has a tremendous impact within wider cultural contexts. And furthermore, the digital landscape offers an unprecedented opportunity to facilitate the development of individuals by supporting and encouraging critical reflection – as demonstrated by The Listening Post installation on your premises.

For the past nine months, I have been working towards trying to arrange a conversation with you to explore the possibility of organizing a Digital Identity event in one of the dedicated spaces in the museum. I have exchanged messages with some of your colleagues. Whilst many of them have expressed interest in the Digital Identity project and have even generously offered to forward my emails, I have been unable to arrange a meeting.

In the meanwhile I have been quietly implementing different strands of the project in partnership with various other organizations. So far I have held events in India and across several cities in the UK. Collaborators so far include British Council, The Guardian and quite recently I have received a commission from Channel 4. You can also read some of my articles for The Guardian here and watch a brief TEDx talk on the subject here.

I am very keen to meet you as you work and engage with an audience that I want to reach out to. This includes young people, parents and teachers. In a wider sense, it also includes anyone who has an existing Digital Identity or wants to create one but isn’t sure where to begin. A purely operational and mechanistic understanding of digital tools is no longer sufficient, we need to encourage constructive engagement with the medium that is fast becoming ubiquitous.

I do not come to you with fixed ideas or demands. I hope to work with you to create a unique and exciting approach to constructing Digital Identities. In addition to my experience of working as a multimedia strategist with various global organisations, I also hope to contribute through my research background.

That is it for now. I sincerely hope you respond to my request for a conversation,

Kind regards,
Abhay Adhikari (PhD)

contact [at] digitalfootprints [dot] info
twitter: @gopaldass

Note: If you have come to this page via Twitter and support the idea, may I request you to leave a comment on the theme of creativity and collaboration. It would be terrific to build a positive narrative on this page.

Posted in | Tagged , , , | 1 Response

On Digital Identities

By gopaldass on May 8, 2012

Constructing Digital Identities
The case for a considered approach

These past few days I’ve come across several commentaries on Digital Identities. This includes the ‘The Digital Human‘ series on BBC Radio 4 by Aleks Krotoski and the 6 Digital Identities post by Bonnie Stewart.

These excellent commentaries examine the self from various perspectives and highlight the innate potential of the digital to enable us to exist as layered, textured identities either on a single network or across multiple social networks. Consider Bonnie’s definition of the Performative, Public Self which is linked in multiple, complex, individual node-to-node relationships with others…‘

The digital landscape is conducive to critical reflection

Our relationships and interactions with others online are mapped as bytes of information and they can expose the different strands that define the fabric of our thoughts. This suggests that the digital is also a platform for critical reflection.

This idea is at odds with the constant temptation to comprehend our digital identities from a purely quantitative perspective, which plays into our need for instant gratification. Take Klout scores for example, they are based on a dubious algorithm that lacks transparency and perhaps serves no other purpose than to ensure the commercial success of the organisation.

The Internet is fertile ground for fads and gimmicks and Klout occupies that space. Now consider the case of someone who is unable to discern between authentic information and pseudoscience. In such instances, services such as Klout reinforce redundant, mechanistic or even detrimental behaviour. And with the digital becoming increasingly ubiquitous, when we rarely disconnect from the online, the digital identity can limit the scope of our interpersonal interactions in the physical.

Everybody is talking to each other online

‘Everybody is talking to each other but we don’t really know each other…‘ says Aiden Moffat in The Digital Human. He then goes on to say that his online narrative and commentary is quite personal and there is an awareness of boundaries defined by the fact that he is an artist amongst other things. This is a great example of how the digital can become an extension of a particular facet of the self.

The fact that the Internet allows us to transcend geographical barriers (Dave White/TDH) and engage in conversations with different communities suggests that we can use the digital to experiment with identities. To use them as instruments to let different interests evolve or co-exist without fear of judgement. In other words, our online lives contribute to creating a layered, textured identity offline by offering positive reinforcement. Ultimately, the online and offline identities co-exist in a symbiotic relationship.

This brings me to the point that perhaps creating a digital identity in the first instance should be a deliberate and considered process. And this process should be defined by intent and aspiration that are articulated through a process of critical reflection, not by digital tools. As Sherry Turkle (TDH) suggests, the role of these digital tools is ti allows us to assemble, explore and ultimately own pieces of ourselves.

The Digital Identity project

For the past couple of years I have been exploring how we define, construct and make use of our digital identities. These experiences have culminated in the Digital Identity in Interesting Spaces project. Although I have a research background in education/ICT (York) the project exists in the chaos of pure application at the moment.

To find more you can have a look at this project report – From Mumbai to Manchester which summarizes the activities so far, or get in touch with me via Twitter where I exist as @gopaldass.

And finally, I look forward to your thoughts and comments on the idea of Digital Identity, aspiration, intent and so on. Please feel free to contribute your opinion as a comment below.

Posted in , | Tagged , , , | 6 Responses

Next »