snowy dog

Project Management Workshop

At the High Desert Education Service District, we manage multiple, simultaneous projects. They range from special and early childhood education to technology and building projects. Keeping track of promises, timelines, outcomes, and deliverables is overwhelming.

This half-day workshop, scheduled for March 17, provides an introduction to project management, guidelines for each of the stages in a project lifecycle, templates, and resources.

Great inro for newbies and refesher course for experienced managers. Project materials available here.

Demaris Logging, circa 1910

Crook County, Oregon, was once considered the Ponderosa Pine Capital of the World. Logging, milling, and a growing timber industry helped to build the town of Prineville and sustained it through its first century.

The A.R. Bowman Historical Museum has collected the photos, videos, and stories of the local  industry and its personalities. Many of the artifacts are now available in the digital exhibit, Ponderosa Pine Capital of the World.

I designed and set up this exhibit as the final  project towards my Masters in Library and Information Science from Syracuse University.

What began as a finite project is quickly morphing into a long-term exploration. The Bowman Museum is an amazing resource. I only scratched the surface of their collection with the dozens of photos, videos, and stories on the site as of today and am looking forward to digging deeper as a volunteer in the coming years.

ball of yarn

I gave a five-minute talk on copyright at the inaugural Ignite Bend. The gist of it was that our copyright laws need to evolve. Copyright was originally conceived of to provide protection for authors who were being taken advantage of by unscrupulous publishers (Statute of Anne, 1710). This is a very noble ideal, but many believe we’ve gone too far with recent legislation. We’re also in an era of the remix (Larry Lessig). Lessig’s thoughts on remixing and creative commons have a great analogy in the yarn world.

Artisans create home-spun yarns that, on their own, are amazing artistic creations. But those creations aren’t meant to sit on a shelf. They’re meant to be used, built upon, remixed. The item that results is oftentimes even more beautiful or useful than the raw material (unless it’s one of my failed attempts to knit a sweater).

It seems to me that we could approach copyright with a similar view. I’m all for protecting the rights of content creators and ensuring that they can feed their families. But, some loosening of the derivative works restrictions in current law would benefit both the progress of science and the useful arts (US Constitution).

Watch the Ignite Bend broadcast. See the show notes.

(Thanks to charitygirl for the beautiful ball of yarn. –Creative Commons image via Flickr)