Passion flower & Sword-billed hummingbird adaptation: Edd Wilder-James "Plain language views on technology, life, and other interesting thoughts as they occur" email and very first newsletter (from a Googler!) * * * 1) WUaS has been in Google for Education since 2015 - planning for speakers of all 7,117 known living languages, and to code for all 7.5 billion people on the planet, as potential wiki teachers and learners, 2) letter to MIT President Rafael Reif, 3) another Google-centric project - a WUaS realistic virtual earth for everything, 4) creating a realistic virtual Harbin Hot Springs (where actual Harbin is quite close to Santa Rosa) for actual-virtual ethnographic comparison, and both for actual virtual, physical digital, matter computery multimedia innovations and even with a film-to-3D application, 5) how best build our new WUaS web site out of Google Sites for matriculating registering students, eventually in all ~200 countries' official language - and with a good course platform (like MITx / edX)?

May 2nd, 2020. A letter from the future. While history is being endured, I thought I might in actual fact write the first edition of my newsletter. To those of you who wonderfully and kindly signed up to hear from me three years ago, I hope that, if this is a surprise, it is a welcome one. I appreciate the gesture of faith! When you put up a sign-up form for a newsletter with no other direction, you have to assume that you are free to write about whatever you wish. So, that's what I'll do. What I'm doing these days Around the time I started the newsletter, I was about to move to a new job, and for the best part of three years, that's what I've been doing. For the first time in my life I am working at a Very Big Company, and so far, so good. I feel very lucky to have landed an unusual and challenging job at Google, working in the open source programs office. My work is to help the company's key open source projects succeed. Corporate sponsored open source is quite a different beast to the individually-motivated version we've had for the previous 15 or so years. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that the contributors are paid to contribute, rather than being driven by individual curiosity or altruism. So, we find that all the non-engineering parts need attention: how do you architect collaboration, how do you match up the project to your business goals, and so on. It's a fun challenge, and I can't deny I still get a kick out of working for Google, a company that has defined most of our experience of the web for a long time. Inevitably, this means my public persona has declined -- where I used to write, speak and tweet a lot, much of my attention is now focused inside the company. Being an individual public voice and working for a large company are more or less irreconcilable, and I've come to be OK with that. What about the virus? Every video call seems to start with "how are you?", and in recent days my answer is "about what you'd expect". That means we're lucky out here in Northern California. The outbreak is under control and mostly folks are responsible and doing the right things. With mortal peril at bay, the enemies are ennui, loneliness, and periodic bouts of horror. So, about what you'd expect. If your experience through this is worse, you have my sympathy. One of the most immediately stark consequences close to home has been the impossibility of industry conferences. Since 2001 I have been involved in organizing events, and most recently teamed up with O'Reilly Media to launch the first TensorFlow World in fall 2019. The virus quickly took in-person events off the table, and most tragically O'Reilly Media made the decision to get out of the conferences business, after 20+ years. Many friends lost their jobs, including those to whom I owe a great deal for my career being what it is. I know these folks are all smart and resilient, and in some ways I'm grateful it happened to them early, rather than a slow asphyxiation. It wasn't the way it should have ended, without us being able to celebrate and pay our respects to a great run. But it was at least an unambiguous signal. The first of many things that won't ever be the same again. And for the next act... Assuming, indulgently, it won't take me three years to write again, what should we discuss? Why on earth did you want to hear from me, kind reader? We could take this anywhere, from matters technical and computery, to the rambunctious ginger cats that share our lives, the amazing wines that are grown near our home in the Russian River valley (and stocked liberally in our closets), or my growing obsession with fountain pens. And let me know what is happening for you? Perhaps we can all share and learn and laugh! Cordially from Santa Rosa, Calif., Edd Wilder-James' Newsletter by Edd Wilder-James  226 Alderbrook Drive Santa Rosa, CA 95405 USA Sent to  sgkmacleod@worlduniversityandschool.org —  Unsubscribe  Delivered by