Junto: Creating an Age-friendly Environment

Please join us Thursday, June 10th at 6:00 P.M. for The Aging Junto.

This month we will be discussing issues we face as a society as a significant portion of our population enters their golden years. As a community, the better and more accessible we can make our environment for seniors, the better it will be for people of all ages. Out of the 10 largest cities in the USA, Philadelphia has the largest proportion of people age 60+, most of whom want to remain in their homes and communities for as long as possible. In order for this to happen, the physical and social environment must support seniors who want to live independently and it must complement the existing programs and services offered by the agencies that serve them.

Background on GENPHILLY
This Junto is being curated by Generation Appreciation Philadelphia (GenPhilly). GenPhilly is committed to promoting an age-friendly city by inspiring emerging leaders to make connections with older adults in their professional and personal lives. Its members come from a variety of backgrounds such as the arts, social work, technology, public policy, law, community development and more. The group has regular events aimed to encourage collaboration between different disciplines around aging issues, and has bi-monthly meetings to provide a support network for emerging leaders who jobs touch on aging.

We have an excellent panel lined up to lead this discussion.

Katherine Gajewski, Director of Sustainability for the City of Philadelphia

Allen Glicksman, PhD, Philadelphia Corporation for Aging

Christine Knapp, Coordinator, Next Great City & Director of Outreach, Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture).

Our panel discussion will be moderated by Kate Clark, MPA, Generation Appreciation Philadelphia (GenPhilly).

Refreshments will be served at 6:00 P.M. and the panel discussion will begin at 7:00 P.M. As always, we provide the cold Newcastle Brown and Philadelphia’s best tomato pie. You bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.

When:

Thursday, June 10, 2010

The discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm

Where:

P’unk Avenue
1168 E. Passyunk Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147

The Persepolis Junto
Thursday February 4, 2010

The discussion will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.

Please join us this Thursday, February 4th at 6pm for the Junto. This month we will be discussing the book The Complete Persepolis to coordinate with One Book, One Philadelphia. We will start the evening off by watching a clip from the film version of Persepolis. We will follow that up with a discussion led by Siobhan Reardon, President & Director of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

As always, we provide the cold Newcastle Brown and Philadelphia’s best tomato pie. You bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.

Hope to see you there!

When:
Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 6pm

The discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.

Where:
P’unk Avenue
1168 E. Passyunk Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147

Thursday April 23, 2009

The discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.

Please join us next Thursday, April 23rd at 6pm for the Junto. This month we will be discussing the past, present, and future of art criticism in Philadelphia. We are pleased to host an all-star panel representing the many sides of the art world.

Sid Sachs: Director of Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, UArts faculty, author, curator, with a long history in the Philadelphia art world.

Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof: the ever-present writers/critics responsible for the Philadelphia Art Blog. Roberta and Libby founded the Zero .1% for Art Commission to bridge the gap between ordinary people and art. Artblog, established in 2003, is an outgrowth of that mission.

Katie Murken: Philadelphia artist and educator. Since receiving her MFA in Printmaking & Book Arts from the University of the Arts Katie has been an instructor at the Tyler School of Art and practicing artist. In 2007, she worked with P’unk Avenue on the multimedia installation Debtor’s Inheritance at the Schuylkill Center. In 2008, she received an Independence Foundation Fellowship for the Public Author Project, a long-term interactive project that will use text messaging to explore the phenomenon of books and libraries in today’s digital climate. Katie is currently collaborating with three Philadelphia artists as part of the Little Berlin gallery’s upcoming exhibition Offerings.

Andrew Suggs: (from the Vox Populi website) “Recent exhibition venues include The Galleries at Moore (Philadelphia, PA), Fleisher-Ollman Gallery (Philadelphia, PA), ThreeWalls (Chicago, IL), Publico Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Cambridge, MA), and Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA). Andrew currently lives and works in Philadephia, where he is the Executive Director of Vox Populi. He earned an AB cum laude from Harvard University.”

As always, we provide the cold Newcastle Brown and Philadelphia’s best tomato pie. You bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.

Hope to see you there!

When:

Thursday April 23, 2009 at 6pm

The discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.

Where:

P’unk Avenue
1168 E. Passyunk Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147

In the last class, we laid out the spirit of this course. This week our section overlaps with the Junto, so we’re trying to tie some new themes together here. The assigned readings should have served as an introduction to the topic of the modern library, and we’re looking forward to seeing what comes out of it all in the discussion tonight.

One of the recurring themes throughout the course will be to be how technology is affecting our ability to come together and organize ourselves. This theme was heavy in Geoff’s thoughts on the library. It’s how the Junto got off the ground. It’s a big part of how we approach education and business. We believe that a firm grasp of concepts like emergence is a crucial part of what we referred to last week as “web fluency.”

On to the the focus of this week’s assignments:

Week 2

READ:

• Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody, Chapter 1 (Amazon, Google Books)
• Steven Johnson, Emergence, Chapter 1 (Amazon, Google Books) – Recommended, but not required

WATCH:

• TED Talk: Jennifer 8. Lee: Who was General Tso? and other mysteries of American Chinese food

CREATE:

• Go to a library inside the city (extra credit if it’s not at UArts!) and take photos of the library environment as a study of what uses the space is optimized for.
• Upload your photos to flickr and tag them with appropriate keywords. Make sure they are all at least tagged with “ides322.”
• Find and join and existing flickr group related to libraries and submit your photos to the larger pool.

COMMENT:

• Write your thoughts on the assignments as comments on this post. Try to integrate your thoughts on both the readings and the video. How do the concepts overlap? What does the bigger picture look like?

Please join us on February 5th at 6pm for the Junto. This month we will be discussing the evolving role of the library. We have assembled a great panel to help lead this discussion.

Jim Pecora is the Chief Technology Officer of the Free Library of Philadelphia and Director for the Central Library Restoration and Expansion Project. He performed in a similar role for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News before coming to the Library in 2002. Jim worked in the non-profit, private and public sectors throughout his career which began as a community organizer on the west coast. Jim is also a musician and a published photographer.

Maria Falgoust is a librarian in an independent Brooklyn Heights school working with students in grades four through twelve. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from the Palmer School and is certified as a school media specialist, and in 2000 she received her Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts from the University of Washington in Seattle. Maria is an avid reader, cook, traveler and party-organizer. Born and raised in New Orleans, she is passionate about the rebuilding of her culturally rich and economically challenged hometown. She is a co-founder of the Desk Set.

Sarah Murphy is a school librarian in Manhattan and works with students from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Sarah has a Masters in Library and Information Science from the Palmer School, where she concentrated in Rare Books and Special Collections, and she has previously worked at the New York Society Library and in the Rare Book Room at the New York Academy of Medicine. Sarah also works occasionally in classical theatre, and is a co-founder of the Bakerloo Theatre Project. She and Maria Falgoust founded the Desk Set in 2006.

The Desk Set is a group of New York City area librarians, archivists, bibliophiles and other bookish types who meet informally to explore and enjoy literary resources, connect with like-minded folks, and raise money for institutions who promote literacy.

As always, we provide the cold Newcastle Brown and Philadelphia’s best tomato pie. You bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.

The discussion will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.

Where:
P’unk Avenue
1168 E. Passyunk Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147

_____

UPDATE

Nate Hill will be moderating the panel. He manages the Adult Services at the Bushwick Branch of Brooklyn Public Library and assists with the systemwide strategic planning process. He also works as a blog manager for the Public Library Association, a division of the American Library Association.

Everyone should read his blog post on library outposts as a new service model.

At BarCamp Philly, I attended a thought provoking session on data portability in health care led by Mark Scrimshire. As Mark reported in his post, I had no idea that I had so much to say on health care.

Mark is making the trek up from Maryland on Wednesday December 10th to lead what will hopefully be another stimulating session on this topic.

Also on the panel will be Brendten Eickstaedt of UPenn Health System’s radiology and teleradiology dept. Brendten is an application developer, informatics person and lively professional contributor to health topics on Twitter.

As always, we provide the cold Newcastle Brown and Philadelphia’s best tomato pie. You bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.

Hope to see you there!

When:
Wednesday December 10, 2008 at 6pm

The discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.

Where:
P’unk Avenue
1168 E. Passyunk Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147

This month’s Junto is on Free Beer.

We will be drinking multiple beers that were brewed for the event by Chris Matta and Howard Ross and we will be talking about that process.

However, the free beer movement is about more than beer. It is really about Open Source using free beer as a metaphor or a manifestation of the process. Playing with the “free as in free speech, not as in free beer”.

We have 3 panelists to discuss beer, speech, and open source.

Howard Ross is a web developer and co-founder of Grainstar Brewery, a local homebrewing operation that was started two years ago in South Philly.

Rob Hall is an Adobe Community Expert specializing in the Flash Platform, and is manager of the Philadelphia Flash Platform Adobe User Group.

Tom Boutell is a developer here at P’unk Avenue. His open source projects include the GD Library and the PNG Image Format. He has a background in software development and long experience with the web. Tom created the original WWW FAQ, which continues to be a frequently-consulted “how-to” resource for web developers. At RealNetworks (then Progressive Networks), Tom was instrumental in the creation of RealAudio 1.0, the first streaming audio solution for the web.

Moderators will be Kelani Nichole and Alex Gilbert.

Come drink the beer brewed for the event. We will provide tomato pie.

Please bring something to share, if it is not too much trouble.

When we got back from SXSW this March we felt even more inspired to collaborate with people doing inspiring things in Philadelphia. One of the first things we did was contact Far and Vanja of The Hacktory to brainstorm on this topic. When we got together Vanja mentioned the idea of coordinating an Ignite event.

We all knew immediately that Ignite would be a great way to bring together a diverse group of inspiring people in one fell swoop.

The basic format is that approximately 20 people speak on a topic for 5 minutes. They prepare 20 slides that rotate automatically after 15 seconds. It should keep things lively. And if the talks are not lively enough, it is happening at Johnny Brenda’s where plenty of libations will be available.

Speakers include: The iSepta guys, Kristin Thompson, of the Future of Music Coalition, NO CARRIER, 100K house, Pete Tridish of the Prometheus Radio Project, Alex Hillman of Indy Hall, and several more. The speakers are all doing exciting and inspiring things in Philadelphia.

Everything happens on June 11th. Doors open at 6pm. Speakers start at 7pm.

We hope you can make it.

P.S. We will not hold a Junto in June. Consider this our June Junto on speed.

This May’s Junto will explore the dynamics of Creative Communities. The panelists are John Freeborn, one of the founders of the gallery and art collective Space 1026, Olive Prince, dancer, choreographer and part of the Choreographers Project at Susan Hess Modern Dance, and Sara Selepouchin, Etsy Teams Coordinator.

I will moderate the discussion which will begin at 7pm. Food and drink at 6pm.