The New Nollywood (10/22); The Innovation Intermission (10/29); Promoting Access to Federally Funded Research (10/21)

The New Nollywood

Tuesday, October 22, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.

Nigeria's booming movie industry, known as Nollywood, rivals Hollywood and India's Bollywood as one of the world's largest producer of feature films. In less than two decades Nollywood has grown into an industry estimated at $250 million, employing over a million people and producing over 1000 films each year – a major success story in Nigeria’s economy. Nollywood's movies have an audience of millions in Nigeria, throughout Africa and around the world - from Bombay to Brooklyn.

The phenomenon of Nollywood is internationally recognized for quantity of films - but not for quality. The industry faces big challenge stemming from limited financing opportunities and rampant piracy. Today, in an effort to overcome these challenges, leading filmmakers in Nigeria consider themselves part of a growing movement they call “New Nollywood”. This movement refers to an increasing trend of better quality films, stemming from increased access to new technology and equipment, training, new sources of financing, and alternative distribution.

As Nigeria’s most popular entertainment platform, Nollywood is positioned as an extraordinary vehicle for engaging content. Nollywood filmmakers are confronting their society’s critical and controversial issues – including health and corruption. The widespread viewing of Nollywood films speaks to their ability to culturally connect with hundreds of millions of people. Nollywood’s massive and engaged audience is the envy of filmmakers around the world.

Aimee Corrigan is the Co-Director of Nollywood Workshops, a hub for filmmakers in Lagos, Nigeria that supports and delivers movie production and distribution, training, and research.

Colin M. Maclay is the Managing Director of the Berkman Center, where he is privileged to work in diverse capacities with its faculty, staff, fellows and extended community to realize its ambitious goals. His broad aim is to effectively and appropriately integrate information and communication technologies (ICTs) with social and economic development, focusing on the changes Internet technologies foster in society, policy and institutions. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

The Innovation Intermission

Tuesday, October 29, 12:30pm ET, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor. This event will be webcast live.

The stereotypes of those who are tech-savvy don’t necessarily match the reality. Whites in America currently lag behind all other ethnicities in their use of advanced internet services, smartphones and social media. Women are more likely than men to use mobile social media. Mothers are one of advertisers' most targeted demographic and 93% of American moms use the internet, compared to 60-70% of the U.S. overall population. But current investments in new technology don’t not match the consumers of these technologies. According to the Kaufmann Foundation, only 4% of venture capital of any kind goes to female tech entrepreneurs. This section will explore the trends currently changing the economy and our society.

Does this gap between creators and consumers matter? Are we in an innovation intermission, poised on the threshold of another great wave of technological creativity as access to tools are democratized? Society is being reshaped through increased social connectivity. As each person becomes a technologist, we are actively engaged in creating the future today in which we will live together tomorrow. Come discuss the shape of the future to come and the portending signs that currently surround us

Cheryl Contee, Partner at Fission Strategy, specializes in helping non-profit organizations and foundations use social media to create social good. She is also the co-founder of Jack and Jill Politics writing as “Jill Tubman” on one of the top black blogs online. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

DPLAFest

Thursday-Friday, October 24-25, Boston Public Library.

On October 24-25, 2013 the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will bring together librarians, archivists, and museum professionals, developers and technologists, publishers and authors, teachers and students, and many others to Boston, MA to celebrate the DPLA’s successful April 2013 launch, its recent milestones, and its future at the first annual DPLAfest.

DPLAfest 2013 — a two-day series of events free and open to the public — will include a reception at the Boston Public Library on the evening of Thursday, October 24 (the reception had been originally planned for April 18, 2013, but was postponed in light of the tragic Boston Marathon bombings on April 15). On Friday, October 25, participants will gather at Northeastern University and the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) for a full day of workshops, discussions, and other hands-on activities. Registration is now open. more information on our website>

The Innovation Intermission

Monday, October 21, 12:00pm ET, Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Room 4063. Co-sponsored by the Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, HLS Advocates for Human Rights, Office for Scholarly Communication, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, Right to Research Coalition, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

2013 has seen many milestones towards improving access to biomedical research. In February, President Obama issued a directive requiring most federal research agencies to implement public access policies; official guidance in this respect is expected shortly from the Office of Science and Technology Policy. This spring, the NIH began implementing the enhanced compliance requirements for its Public Access Policy announced in December 2012. State level open access bills have been passed in Illinois and are pending in California and New York. In celebration of Open Access Week 2013, please join us for an overview of these recent developments, featuring comments by Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and author of Open Access. Scott Lapinski, HMS Digital Resources and Services Librarian and Open Access Liaison, will be discussing how these enhanced requirements impact medical researchers and how authors can ensure that their publications are in compliance. RSVP Required. more information on our website>

Zeynep Tufekci on Social Media-Fueled Protest Style From Arab Spring to Gezi Protests in Turkey

What can we learn from the protest wave of the last years? How does social media impact the capacity for collective action? Does social media contribute to blunting movement impacts by facilitating horizontal, non-institutional and "leaderless" movements? How do these movements compare with their predecessors like the civil-rights or anti-colonial movements? In this talk Zeynep Tufekci -- assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, a faculty associate at Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and a fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University -- discusses these questions by drawing from research on a variety of social movements including the "Arab Spring", European indignados movements, Occupy and Turkey's Gezi protests. audio on our website>