Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

On Thursday and Friday of last week I attended my second Webstock web conference. Basically it involves someone new bombarding you with ideas and examples and insights every forty minutes. Despite having had a weekend to recover and reflect, I’m still trying to sift though it all. The next step is to figure out how to actually use some of the ideas and inspiration on Te Ara.

It’s obviously impossible to encompass the whole thing in a short blog post, but I’ll share some of my impressions and highlights, and hope you’ll do the same by leaving a comment.

One thing I liked about Webstock 2010 was that several speakers made time for questions. Last time, despite a lot of discussion about the importance of interaction on the web, there was very little interaction with the speakers. I also liked speakers who had something to say (most of them), and didn’t like the ones (fortunately few) who didn’t have anything to say or who didn’t really manage to say it.

The main theme of the second day seemed to be internet startups (new entreprenuerial companies). While I don’t see starting a startup in my future, there were still lessons we could learn from the experiences of the entrepreneurs who have been there, such as Eric Ries, Mike Davidson and Kevin Rose – like the advantages of taking an iterative approach and the importance of looking at how your users use your site. It did seem a pity though that all those speakers (and in fact a vast majority of the speakers overall) were from the US, which surely is a very different environment for startups than here. My co-attendees and I agreed it would have been nice to have had a New Zealand perspective.

My three favourite speakers were on day one, and I’ve realised that there is some commonality about them, even though they all work in different areas: they passionately believe in what they’re doing and they’ve made it personal.

The first was designer Scott Thomas, who kicked off the conference. He talked about being the web designer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He showed how they used design to change the way people perceived this junior senator – so the public could start to imagine him as president. Clearly they were very successful.

I had been lucky enough to see Shelley Bernstein speak last year about her social media work for the Brooklyn Museum. She’s passionate about audience engagement, and had lots of great examples of how the Brooklyn Museum has been using technology to connect with people. After her session I got all excited about the idea of running a Te Ara video competition (based on this one), where our users could contribute short films they’ve made about something somehow relevant. In the sober light of day, I’m still considering the merits of this.

Despite being a poet myself, I have to confess that I was a bit dubious about Rives, the final speaker of day one, who was described as a poet and pop-up-book designer. I needn’t have worried – he was awesome. He did perform some poetry, but mainly showed us digital stuff he’d made – videos, photos and other kinds of multimedia. While Shelley Bernstein made me want to make you make videos, Rives made me want to go out and make more videos of my own – especially ones with poetry.

I can’t remember who said this first, but someone earlier in the day said ‘People love things made with love’, and things made with love were certainly the things that got me excited.

Police physical culture class, 1906

A few weeks ago the resource team were very excited to go on a field trip to the New Zealand Police Museum. The Police Museum is part of the Royal New Zealand Police College campus in Porirua, and was first opened to the public in 1996. The museum was re-launched in September 2009, after a complete re-think and re-fit. However, collecting objects began in 1908, when police commissioner Walter Dinnie decided to bring together weapons and other implements used in crimes as teaching resources for the police college. The museum still collects object evidence from criminal cases, as well as social history objects around policing.

We were visiting to find out more about the museum since its re-launch. We were also there to discover whether the Police Museum would be able to help us with resources – images, objects, videos and other media – for our upcoming themes: Social Connections, and Government and Nation. These themes will have entries about such things as youth offending, victims of crime and the police service.

We found potential resources galore – the new galleries are full of fascinating objects and stories. Objects such as illegal gambling paraphernalia taken as evidence, stab-proof vests issued to police officers, and Rhys, the stuffed police dog.

The museum tells the stories of day-to-day community policing, as well as the work of forensic photographers and scientists. It also covers many of New Zealand’s worst crimes: Aramoana shooter David Gray’s weapons are on display, as well as a death mask of one of the Burgess Gang. The museum also looks at events like the Erebus disaster, when New Zealand police were sent to Antarctica to help locate and identify victims.

One highlight was the 1981 Springbok tour protest footage taken by the police. Now on display, it has never been shown to the public before, and it is quite an experience to watch the protests from the other side of the line.

The museum is definitely worth a visit, and you can expect to see some of their wealth of material on Te Ara in the future.

Maybe it’s a sign that summer has finally arrived — a couple of short comments we’ve recently received from Te Ara users have been about insects.

Giant dragonfly

Giant dragonfly shopper

Blair McLauchlan sent in the above picture and says:

Today, 4 February 2010, a colleague bought a set of shelves from a store in Tory St, downtown Wellington. As he tried to leave, a frighteningly big dragonfly scared him by ‘buzzing’ him and then insisting on landing on him, and then his purchase.

He took a quick photo with his cellphone camera.

Black pine beetle infestation

Robin Roche’s insect problem is more ongoing, and more annoying:

We live in Whakamaru and this year we have had an infestation of black pine beetles. They come into the house just on dusk, through any opening and carry on for a couple of hours. We have never had this before and are wondering why.

If you know anything about black pine beetles, and can give Robin some advice, please leave a comment below.

Brian Mason

Expatriate scientist Brian Mason died in Washington DC in December 2009, aged 92.

Appointed Curator of Meteorites at the Smithsonian Institution in 1965, he examined and described more than 7,000 meteorites in the last 40 years – probably more than anyone else has ever looked at. Although he officially retired in 1984, he continued to work at the Smithsonian until a few months before his death.

With a long-term love of travel, Dr Mason led an adventurous life, starting with climbing in the Southern Alps during his student days in the late 1930s. Awarded a postgraduate scholarship to study overseas in 1939, he rejected the conventional path to Oxford or Cambridge, and elected to study the new science of geochemistry under Professor Victor Goldschmidt in Oslo. He was only there for a few months in early 1940 before the German invasion, and he was lucky to escape to Sweden, where he completed his PhD.

Appointed Curator of Mineralogy at the American Museum of Natural History in 1953, he was in charge of one of the world’s most spectacular mineral collections. His introduction to meteorites came when he found the large collection of meteorites in boxes filling the corridors, waiting for him to sort them out. Later, his book Meteorites became a standard text.

Brian Mason returned to New Zealand many times and wrote a number of papers on geological topics. Indeed, many local scientists knew him through his New Zealand research, and were unaware of his overseas work in geochemistry and meteorite science. He was always disappointed that so few meteorites had been found in New Zealand.

An admirer of the American tradition of philanthropy, Dr Mason established a number of trust funds at Canterbury Museum and the University of Canterbury, as well as setting up the Brian Mason Scientific & Technical Trust.

Recently published obituaries reflect different sides of his career. Not surprisingly, the one published in the Washington Post emphasises his work on meteorites at the Smithsonian, while that on the Royal Society of New Zealand website has information on the New Zealand side of his career. The University of Canterbury notes his long-term connection with the Department of Geological Sciences, while a memorial by the Canterbury Mountaineering Club notes his long term membership and generous financial support in rebuilding the Park Morpeth hut (where he sheltered after a climbing accident in 1934).

Brian Mason’s life is described in an autobiographical memoir, From Mountains to Meteorites, published by the Geological Society of New Zealand in 2001.