mtl3p

This is a great example of entrepreneurship. My friend Rachel started up her own jewelery business recently and she’s doing a great job of not only making wonderful, alternative pieces, but of following through with the work necessary to grow a small enterprise. I have a lots of friends that are creative but who don’t put in the serious, non-creative work necessary to make a living doing what they love.

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Dear Michael,

It has been a couple of months since you received your first Brazen Design piece, and I am just checking in to see that all is well with you and your purchase! If you have any thoughts, questions, concerns, ideas or anything you would like to share with me, I am more than open to hearing them! I also love receiving photos of customers wearing their pieces! If you have one, send it along, and let me know if it’s okay to post on my facebook page.

I have included some very simple and affordable cleaning tips below, seeing as we had a very humid summer that no doubt left your silver jewellery looking a little bit dull. Brazen Design offers free cleaning of your Brazen Design piece. If you live outside of Montreal, the shipping cost is all you’ll have to cover.

I would like to thank you for supporting Brazen Design. Brazen Design is a one-woman business that aims to be sustainable and support local economy. Your purchase has made a difference!

Sincerely,

r.dhawan
Rachel Rachna Dhawan

Brazen Design
Designer and Creator of Handmade Bling

http://www.brazen-design.com
http://brazendesign.myshopify.com

514.575.5238

7114 St Dominique
Montreal, QC, H2S 3B9

Cleaning Tips:

Your Brazen Design piece was handcut or cast in sterling silver, and regular wear plus the humidity of the summer months will take its toll. I want to share with you my simple cleaning method to ensure your piece shines for a very long time!

Tarnishing and scratching are inevitable with sterling silver, and I use the same philosophy that one can apply to one’s wrinkles: they are a sign of a life well lived! Your Brazen Design piece is finished with a soft metal brush, and is not put through an oxidization process, so tarnishing and yellowing are bound to happen eventually.

Polishing your piece when it begins to look dull (every couple of months) will help keep it shiny. I suggest getting yourself a silver/gemstone polishing cloth - they can last forever and cost less than 10$! If you need help finding one, let me know and I will help.

Polishing will only do so much, and if your piece is a pendant and has stuck to your sweaty skin in the most humid conditions, chances are you will need more than just a polish! I recommend using baking soda and/or toothpaste to clean your piece. Use a very soft-bristled old toothbrush to apply the paste. As all Brazen Design pieces are matte-finished, you needn’t worry about changing the surface of the piece, however, a stiff toothbrush will leave larger scratches that will be noticeable. If you are worried about scratches, apply the paste with a cloth.

Once you have scrubbed your piece clean, rinse with warm water and dry immediately with a papertowel or soft cloth. Voila! Good as new!

Please remember that this method applies to your Brazen Design piece and should not necessarily be used on your other jewellery, especially if it has settings and/or gold in it. Also, I strongly advise against chemical jewellery polishing paste/gel/dip/etc.

If you don’t feel comfortable with cleaning your piece yourself, I will gladly clean your piece at no cost. If you live in Montreal, you can drop your piece off. If you live elsewhere, simply ship it and I will return it C.O.D. Please allow me a week turnaround time!

i’ve spent a lot of time over the last 4 years working to improve ties between academics and my fellow practitioners. On Friday I was invited to attend the CRAWDAD workshop at the Mobicom conference. I wrote up ISF’s participation in the research group and sent it both to the ISF and Wifidog mailing lists. The email is here.

Actually, no one follows links - and this is an small but concrete example of some of the behind-the-scenes community work that I do - so I’m copy-pasting:

ISF recently freely donated anonymized data from our network to a central data repository for researchers. CRAWDAD is a project based in Dartmouth University and they collect network data from different kinds of wireless networks so that researchers have a central place to go look for real-world data. Benoit Gregoire and Francois Proulx did the technical coordination as well as helping out with the non-tech logistics.

There is an front-page article on our participation in CRAWDAD on the newsletter they just published. I encourage people to read it (even though it’s a pdf).

http://crawdad.cs.dartmouth.edu/newsletter/sep07.pdf

We worked with them to modify their data-sharing license in order to address our privacy concerns (for our users, not to protect any competitive advantage). They were respectful of our needs and appreciative of our willingness to share our data. There are engineer and social science researchers part of the CRAWDAD network and we’re looking forward to seeing analysis that will give us answers on how to improve the running of our network as well as how to assess and improve the social impact that we are having on Montreal. There’s some more information about the questions we hope to have answered in the newsletter.

CRAWDAD hopes to collect datasets from other groups using Wifidog in order to solicit comparative analysis between cities and between different types of deployments. Partnering with researchers has been an important part of ISF since the beginning and it’s always benefited us in different and often unforeseen ways. We hope that network operators in the Wifidog community will share this practice to benefit us all. It’s surprising how big the returns can be from these altruistic partnerships with the research community.

I’m cc-ing David and Jihwang from CRAWDAD. Contact them or Benoit or I for any questions. (Keeping the conversation on list is always the first choice). We will keep this list up to date about any research we get back. And Ben or I will send the url for the data once the description is finished.

mike lenczner

It’s not that well written (I was trying to post it before I had to leave) but that ongoing work of demystifying academics and researchers to geeks and explaining geeks to academics is a challenge that I heartily enjoy. It takes months and months of preparation and laying the groundwork to get anywhere, but 1 year from now i hope to have enabled some comparative research between different CWN’s using the same metrics.

Right now I’m writing from Tracey’s in ottawa. We were both at the same Unesco WSIS conference today held at the CCA. With the lovely Monique, Robert Guerra and Catherine (and 25 others). I’m lucky because it turned out to be her birthday today, so I get to celebrate it with her and meet a few of her friends.

And while I’m name-dropping - lastly - saturday night was a really fun. My new-ish friend Dmitri from Tactical Tech had a vodka tutorial, complete with herring and onions, borscht, rice pilaf with lamb, caviar, etc. He has the russian friends and the human rights friends, so it was a good time.

I’ve made some great guy-friends in the last few years -especially people like Soli, Dmitri, and of course my erstwhile coloc Hugo who will be returning from India in a week (!).

(this lived in my draft forlder for a couple days for no reason)

–For the GTD folk.
Why be ruthless with your todo list? Here’s good reason by Schuyler (who was just in Montreal).

–Exciting CFP for a mesh network in Boston. - OpenAirBoston

“Specifically the focus is on innovation, according to answers to vendors posted on the group’s website. “Strong preference” will be given to the ability to provide a platform that will allow research, development and testing of new technologies and businesses based on that platform at a new Wireless Innovation Center (WIC).”

- article about the CFP

–Me hanging with favorite guys Anthony and Matt.

Matt’s got the group pic of the CWN con up and he does a little song and dance about hating portal pages. He should get together with Boris and they can make a club. :-)

–I was able to hang out with Tracey for dinner last night (she was in town for a meeting with her scent terrorism associates).

–Anthony’s got a great quote in some newspaper about MuniWireless = MonoRails. Fantastic.

“”They are the monorails of this decade: the wrong technology, totally overpromised and completely undelivered,” said Anthony Townsend, research director at the Institute for the Future, a think tank.”

I’m going to open with that for my next presentation at a muniwireless conference and pause as the vendors simultaneously ___ themselves. hehe.

–I got to spend a day with Gabe a week or two ago. He’s finally got a website. http://www.pwd.ca. - It aggregates events from google calendar and eventful all fancy-like.

–Maddog was on my panel. How crazy is that. The man is a legend. I’ve been reading his articles often recently in LJ (they send me 6 free each month - accounting error after I wrote for them)).

–Lastly - my dad is great - I just saw him today and he looks like a million bucks. And only 5 weeks till amy gets back. Rock on.

so - I’m leaving for maryland thursday evening for the community wireless summit. I wasn’t sure how it was going to shape up, but the I’m really excited by looking at the schedule. There are lots of panels I am interested in. I didn’t participate that much as an organizer because my father has been sick - but Sascha seems to have things well in hand.

I’m really excited by my panel. And I’m glad that we have a real mix of voices.

Citizen Hackers: Their Disappearing Role in the Community Wireless Movement.

With the combination of the growth of the MuniWireless market and the growing emphasis on policy, what is the place of citizen hackers and builders in the Community Wireless Networking movement? Join us for a group debate and discussion on our changing roles.

* Michael Lenczner (Panel Coordinator), Île Sans Fil
* Anthony Townsend, NYCwireless
* Francois Proulx, Île Sans Fil
* Jon Hall, Linux International
* Aaron Kaplan, FunkFeuer.at

It should be a pretty hot discussion centering around the “what the hell are we doing?” and “what the hell do we think we should be doing” kinda thing. Jon Hall is the famous maddog hall and I’m so excited to have Anthony coming back to the CWN scene to tell us what he’s been thinking about the citizen involvement side of all the stuff he’s been looking at. Francois Proulx is a great example of a young hacker finding innovative ways to create success in the CWN framework, and Aaron is one of those mysterious Europeans that manages to put up 1000 node mesh networks when most of us in NA can’t seem to get past 50. ;-)

The other panel I’m on:

Social Networks and Wireless: An Update on the Progress and Development of Social Networking Applications.

Join Rich MacKinnon and Michael Lenczner in a lively discussion on the state of social networking applications within WiFi and whether these applications are fulfilling the promise of building community beyond basic connectivity. Are Meetro, Whisher, Plazes, Less Networks, FON, and Il Sans Fil innovating the building blocks of internet-enabled nomadic communities? Or is it yesterday’s technology dressed up as Web 2.0? Or are these more examples of today’s cool yet unsustainable tech in search of a business model?

* Richard MacKinnon (Panel Coordinator), Austin Wireless/Less Networks)
* Michael Lenczner, Île Sans Fil

I think Francois is also going to be on this panel showing off his iFind project.

I’m looking forward to eating crabs. Mina’s wife, Diane, has told me all about growing up and eating crabcakes in Maryland.

I’m also really happy about the fact that it’s not just Benoit, Alison and I going. Francois Proulx, Alexis Cornellier, and Richard Lussier are coming down. I feel so good that other people are taking the opportunity they have made at ISF to see the international context and to really be a part of the wider CWN movement. Alexis and Richard are important people at ISF and I think that it’s good for ISF and it shoudl be exciting for them to participate. And road tripping for a weekend with new people is always great. Long enough to have fun, but not so long that you can annoy / get annoyed with each other.

Thursday afternoon before we leave I’ll be speaking on a panel at McGill at the CTRL : Technology, Art, Society conference.

DEMOCRACY, ART & MEDIA: PANEL / DEMOCRATIE, ART ET MEDIAS: PANEL
With members of / Avec des membres du the Levier Project, OBORO, Centre Canadien d’Architecture (CCA), Fair Trade Media & Île Sans Fil.
Banquet Room, Thomson House, 3635 McTavish St., McGill
Free / Gratuit and open to the public / ouvert au public.

I’m looking forward to that too. No need to do the ISF dog and pony show. I think I’m actually going to do a presentation on how ISF weakens democracy because of the infrastructural influence thing and how about this “hackers vs corporations” thing around code_is_law is a profoundly undemocratic struggle on both sides. It should get the conversation going. And yes - I’ll make sure that I’m doing it partially for argument’s sake. I could also talk about Network neutrality though. (I’ve been working on a network neutrality education project for CRACIN over the last 2 months). We’ll see.

Any other news?… Oh yeah - last week I attended a small meeting with APC when they were in town. Set up by Alternatives. I had a good chat with Frédéric Dubois who now works for them whom I met at his book launch last year. Most of the Maillons member orgs were there, with the addition of Marita Moll from Telecommunities Canada. Also I got Dmitri (Vitaliev) to join us. He’s moving / moved here, so he’s looking to find out what / who’s going on.

I also had a beer with Evan Light yesterday. He’s starting his phd soon and his focus is community radio. Interesting guy and interesting work considering their (community radio’s) different conception of policy, funding, and infrastructure’s relation to content.

Okay - that’s it. And probably no more blogging for a week unless I manage to steal some time away at the CWN summit.

I’m really looking forward to a road trip, some beer, and crabcakes. I get to see some friends like Matt Westervelt and Sascha, Richard from Austin, etc. This is going to be good. With my father doing better and my sister’s babies putting on weight (and my grandmother doing well after her hip operation), it’s time to relax and have some fun.

I miss my roommate.

Not that I *ever* remember going to a cafe with Hugo. I think our time together usually was accompanied by a different beverage.

great post by danah boyd. Makes her seem really cool (she probably is). I don’t read her blog often, but I’m still blown away by her wonderful take on the real reason for kids use of cyberspace. I’ll try to find the link somewhere, but it’s about how kids are online only because there are no unsupervised spaces for them to hang out offline.

Catherine Roy’s blogging. I hung out with her last night for a project. She’s terrific in as much as I’ve had the opportunity to get to know her. I’m glad she’s (more) online. Just waiting for her to fix her spam problems and turn comments on.

And finally a message from Steph - call for proposals.

Appel à participation - Colloque interdisciplinaire :

« Cultures libres, innovations en réseau
Le (logiciel) libre comme phénomène technique et social »
17 et 18 septembre 2007 - Université du Québec à Montréal

Échéance pour les propositions : 1er juin 2007

Dans le cadre de l’édition 2007 de la Semaine québécoise de l’informatique libre, le Laboratoire de communication médiatisée par ordinateur (LabCMO) et le Laboratoire de recherche en gestion du logiciel (LRGL) de l’UQÀM invitent les chercheurs et les praticiens à soumettre une proposition de communication sur le thème « cultures libres, innovations en réseau ». Cet événement fait suite au colloque «Le logiciel libre en tant que modèle d’innovation sociotechnique » tenu en mai 2006 à Montréal. Ce colloque avait réuni une vingtaine de chercheur(e)s de divers horizons disciplinaires autant que géographiques et avait permis aux participants d’élargir leur vision du phénomène. Nous pensons que les principaux thèmes proposés alors sont encore
d’actualité, mais nous souhaitons cette année mettre l’accent sur l’expérience des praticiens de même que sur la présentation de recherches plus ancrées empiriquement.
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I’m very happy to be visiting coops right now.

She has a lovely house, and is at work 9-5 - which is really what I look for in a host. Someone charming, with a lovely house, a high-speed internet connection, and who will leave me to my own devices for a good deal of the day. The 17” screen powerbook is just a bonus.

;-)

Thank you Amy for putting me up.

neale’s pics of graffiti in that old building in St. Henri

I’m pretty sure that I just fell in love with my oldest friend. Too bad that she’s leaving today for another continent. For 2 years.

Right now I’m wishing that I was someone important enough to have a large staff. I would be with my advisors, looking over the 3-4 contingency plans prepared for exactly this scenario. Instead, I’ll probably be spending a lot of time walking around Montreal listening to my walkman and feeling lovelorn.

I’ll be in Abitibi tomorrow till Sunday with Benoit and a couple of his pals. We’ll be building a hunting blind. I expect to have a few amusing pictures from this. Hopefully none from the ER.