Joining the first D2 Open House
This week marked the first-ever District 2 Open House at Fort Mason. Organized by Jack Hebb, the communications director for Supervisor Stephen Sherrill, who I got to know last year organizing the D2 Map Your Neighborhood event at the Palace of Fine Arts.
SFFD Captain Hashim Anderson, Captain Brandon Tom, me, and Fire Chief Dean Crispen. Assistant Fire Marshall Kathy Arnold can be seen at the table assisting residents.
The Mayor Daniel Lurie, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, and Supervisor Stephen Sherrill spoke about public safety to the crowd that assembled with only a few hours notice. There were tables from multiple city departments, like Police and Parks and Public Works and Emergency Management, ready to answer and assist with permits, grants, and inquiries.
The Fire Dept invited me to table with them to meet my District 2 neighbors in my initiative to revitalize emergency response in this area. The table was rounded out by EMT Alia Dong-Stewart who taught CPR to attendees and Assistant Fire Marshall Kathy Harold who keeps the city up to code. As you can see I wore the vest, the only neon green in the room so easy to find if you wanted to connect with me! Granted, it was also easy to find DA Jenkins. She was wearing head to toe fuchsia and heels.
I alerted my local NERT roster and was able to meet face to face for the first time with numerous response team members who live in Cow Hollow and Marina. We’ve been penpals for the past two years discussing the history of NERT and the present conditions of our team roster: aging out, in need of new members.
Passing The Baton
One 90-year old NERT hung up her helmet for the last time this week. She came to the D2 Open House to hand me back her vest and green helmet. Thirty plus years of service! Brava, Frances, and thank you.
I was edified that I met so many people who are members of neighborhood groups, which is exactly how to scale the Fire Department’s offer of free training: when an organized group takes it on and disseminates the opportunity to their own membership. I look forward to what we can all do together this year.
Thanks to the Mayor for his initiative to stage District Open Houses “to bring the city to the neighborhoods”.
Citywide drill commemorates the Loma Prieta Quake that started the NERT program
Yesterday’s citywide drill for neighborhood emergency response teams in San Francisco noted 35th anniversary of lomaprieta quake, earliest NERT members from Marina … & the Japanese consul general joined (several other countries want to learn from this fire department program!)
Another life, another networked world!
This came in the mail today. It's from the major faculty of my liberal arts college, an event for my professor of Bronze Age Archaeology, Jim Wright. He was a great teacher, as I recall!
Also, it's a reminder of the solidity of liberal arts education. This classically-based education was meant to turn out a person who was "virtuous and ethical, knowledgeable in many fields and highly articulate." It doesn't matter what you do with it, you're equipped as a well-rounded individual.
Today's email and its particular Bronze Age lens on power and place is so far from where I am right this minute, and yet I am back in class in an instant, to when civilizations around the Aegean first established a far-ranging trade network and all together moved out of the Stone Age.
Then I'm back again, to today, back to looking at the future of stories for millennial audiences as a business, tech, and entertainment issue. That's a focus of mine right now and based here in California's own power centers of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Hope all my Bryn Mawr archaeology peers have a fun symposium!
Freedom of the Internet demonstration, TBT
Odd to see this Internet ban memory from my final days as an expat in Istanbul at a time when America is voting to save or kill Net Neutrality tomorrow.
A photo author, journalist & mid-east politics expert Hugh Pope took of me midway in the march from his Istiklal apartment.
What Hugh Pope wrote about that day:
Some pictures of demonstrators on Sunday 15 May 2011 calling for reform of Turkey's new conservative internet laws in Istanbul's Istiklal St today - the biggest, loudest and happiest protest I've seen in more than a decade of living in the city center. Some signs were funny too: "Dawkins is a scientist, not a pornographer, you retard!" "Your Internet is being cut according to Islamic regulations" (carried by the two gentlemen in chador-like garb, punning on signs in religious-minded meat shops) "EnSUCKlopedia" (well, roughly), "Censorship for Security is like Sex for Virginity" and "Hands off my porn".
Unless the government backtracks, a whole new system goes into force on 22 August. Internet providers will be obliged to offer every subscriber four filters of varying severity, and forcing Internet cafes to choose which sites can be accessed in advance. Any attempt to bypass such regulations will be criminal, and all Internet providers will be responsible for enforcement.
The liberal Radikal newspaper, for instance, compares this coming system to that of China, Iran or Cuba. This appears to be a new turn for Turkey, which has so far been ambivalent on Internet freedom - YouTube was banned for what seemed like years, but even the Prime Minister noted that it was easy to use a proxy server to reach it. But from 22 August even proxies will be banned ... and all this in a country negotiating to join the EU!
Not only Turks are concerned. Turkey's expat harem's Queen of Social Media, Anastasia Ashman, peeled off the crowds to visit and tweet from our windows overlooking the crowds of tens of thousands (see picture). At the same time, her Internet guru husband Burc managed to get my wi-fi system working properly for the first time in five years. So a big catch-up for me and I hope the demo will turn into a giant step forward for Turkey.
Leading A Social Brand Workshop For Young Pros In Silicon Valley
Loved speaking on social branding with Tanya Monsef Bunger to the Silicon Valley branch of TurkishWIN (Turkish Women's International Network).
The event took place at Carr & Ferrell LLP. Menlo Park, December, 2015.