Suggested topics for nerdcurious salons

Criteria for topics

• They should be practical!
• Learning how to do one or two things you can do, and also where to learn how to do more.
• Topics should be hands on
• Things that give people new skillz

Topics

• Wikis - See JustWikiIt
  • wiki-editing in general, using pbwiki, in particular to edit the nerdcurious.pbwiki.com wiki
  • Wikipedia, how you change wikipedia
• hypertext literacy - how to write on websites etc.
• blogging - how to start a blog? comparing services. philosophical aspects of blogging. getting personal or not.
• accessibility of acronyms - what do they mean, what do they refer to (e.g. CSS), and why would I care. API. CSS. AJAX.
• communication shorthands - bring some geek text shorthand.
  • WTF, NP. PWN, brb, bbiab. OTOH. BTW. IANAL. AFAIK. FTR. FTW. IMO. IMHO. FWIW. OOO. OOTO. OTP. OMW. use scrabble or crossword puzzle as a learning mechanism.
  • useful shorthands for texting. r - are, u - you, w - with, wo - without, b - be.
  • acronymization / shorthandization.
• google search hacking, what not to search for
• Dodgeball
• Upcoming
• Flickr
• creative commons (how it applies to Flickr, blogging etc.)
• information overload - discussion point
• What is the singularity?
• podcasting
• textual steganography - hiding messages in plain view
• what is open source (or free software)
• learning how to learn
  • tips/tricks/techniques/hacks to use to figure things out on your own that you might take for granted - especially those that can be easily taught, especially to the curious and motivated. e.g.
  • observation. actively looking/hearing for details.
  • curiousity. wondering, and asking questions.
  • searching. how to find answers to questions.
  • modeling. coming up with "working answers" to those questions, and explanations built on conceptual models, maybe using things you found by searching.
  • predicting. using those models to attempt to predict the things you are observing.
  • immitating. e.g. on the Web, view source, copy paste.
  • experimentation. trying things and new combinations of things to see what they do, especially to see if predictions hold. revise predictions and repeat as necessary.