In February of 2014 Code for America set foot in San Antonio, Texas as an initiative to promote the use of “big data” to encourage the development of technological solutions towards civic engagement and activism.  Throughout the month the CM Collective was able to meetup with Code for America at various events.  The first was at Geek Girl Dinner, the second was when they visited a Convergent Media class at UIW and the third was at their event, Code Across America where they began the initiative to create a civic aware tech Brigade.  It was a great experience learning about their past projects to develop various app, texting applications and websites that use “big data” to provide services to under served communities.

To get involved please visit:

Here are some photos from our various visits with the Code for America Team.

The convergent media collective was happy to cover the PechaKucha 13 event at the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum on Feb 25th.  We were made aware of the event by Mary Cantu of spare parts and then found out Doris Palmeros, designer and professor from the CART department at UIW would also be presenting.  It was great hearing their talks and getting to see them share their enthusiasm with a great audience.  We look forward to attending more of these events in the future.

The convergent media collective was able to catch up with spare parts and 10bitworks on a collaboration they were throwing called “Take it apart, make art.”  It was an event that merged hacking and art in one swoop.  Attendees took old electronics apart and then used the materials to make art.  The event was conceived by Mary Cantu of spare parts and hosted by Jeremy at 10bitworks hacker space.  The convergent media collective was able to participate as well as document the event through taking photos and videos.  A good time was had by all.  We look forward to future events by both spare parts and 10bitworks.  Please visit their sites and FB pages for updates:

spare parts:

http://sparepartstudio.org/

https://www.facebook.com/sparepartstudio

10bitworks:

https://www.10bitworks.com/

https://www.facebook.com/10BitWorks.HackerSpace