Franklin Institute – TechCommGeekMom

I’m not a normal mom. I’m a geek mom— a techcomm geek mom, to be more exact, but I was a geek mom long before I was into tech comm. While I liked my girly things as a girl, I always had the geeky side too. For example, there’s hardly ever been a Christmas where I didn’t get at least one item that was electronically powered. As I’ve gotten older, I haven’t wanted traditional mom gifts of jewelry or a sweater, but I’d rather have something that I can use with my laptop or iPad. Yeah, I’m like that.

So when I discovered in the past year or so that I could not only possibly obtain the latest technology–be a first user for something–AND encourage entrepreneurship for someone trying to make a small business work, it sounded like a cool plan. Or, similarly, if I saw a worthy cause that supported technology issues, I was going to support it if I could.

In the past twelve months, I’ve contributed to three such fundraisers. The first one was mentioned several months back. It was a fundraising campaign to help buy the original Wardencliffe building in New York that Nikola Tesla owned during his life, and turn it into a Tesla Museum. Having a child who is interested in electricity and loves to watch a Tesla coil, this seemed like a natural one to choose. I’ve only been a “member” of one other museum, and that was the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, so this was a natural fit as well. This one was funded through Indiegogo.com. I thought it was a cool idea to support this endeavor, so I contributed to it what I thought I could afford. It reached its goal and then some, so things are underway to continue to purchase the property and get the project underway. To learn more about this project, go to the Indigogo “Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum” website.

The next project I decided to invest in was a little more “girly”, but not that much. It’s actually something a lot of people could use. The project was to make a small clutch or purse to recharge your phone when you aren’t using it. It’s known as Everpurse: seamlessly charge your phone all day. Everpurse is another one that gained great support and found its full funding. The idea is that rather than put one’s phone in a pocket or purse where it would just lose power while waiting to be used, the phone–either an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy S3–could be recharged inside this particular little clutch without any wires. Supposedly there’s enough charge in the recharger in the clutch to take your iPhone from 0% to 100% twice over! What person couldn’t love that? I don’t normally carry a purse, but a little clutch seemed just right, and one that would recharge my phone would be worth the money. So, I contribute to that fund as well. If you’d like to learn more about this little device, check out the Everpurse-Kickstarter website.

The last project that I decided to invest in, just before I wrote this post, was a CommBadge. Yes, you read that right–a CommBadge. Okay, it’s not quite the same as the one in the Star Trek franchise, but it’s pretty close! It’s a Bluetooth device that can be clipped on your shirt so that you can use your iPhone or Android phone hands-free without having to put on one of those Borg-like ear pieces. I don’t know about you, but I only had one of those earpiece thing because they annoyed me–they didn’t feel comfortable on either of my ears. This seems like a much better solution! It even works with Siri and the Google equivalent of that (whatever it’s called, which I don’t know since I don’t have any Android products personally). Looking at the funding prices on Indiegogo, they seem to be priced equivalently to several regular Bluetooth hands-free devices, so I figured, why not? They are still looking for funding for this project–they have 23 days to meet their goal, and it seems like a really good item to have. To contribute and get one of the first CommBadges ever produced, check out the CommBadge-Indiegogo website.

These are just three examples out of MANY that are found on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Some technology project sound good, and some sound…well, they need work. I encourage you to go to the sites and check out what’s there, and support those projects that you can when you can. I think it’s important to support creativity, imagination, and small business when possible, and there are plenty of projects that offer access to early technological innovations. Helping to fund these projects is similar to a PBS television fundraiser. “At the $X, we’ll send you these gifts to thank you for your contribution”-type of marketing is done on the campaign pages. It works, as there’s usually plenty of things at different price points.

As a geek mom, I feel good not only helping some people realize their dream, but I feel good knowing that I’m encouraging creativity, innovation and technology in some small way, and can be an early reaper of the benefits.

See what other gems in the rough you can find, and contribute when you can!

Today’s entry from the TCGM grad school archives is from April 2010, when I was still a tech comm fledgling. Note the reference to Walter Issacson towards the end of the entry. His name might be more familiar to us now, as he is the official biographer of the late Steve Jobs, and whose book came out just after Jobs’ death last fall. I have always been a history geek, so it was fun to try to make this connection back then (and I still stand by it!)

So what do you think…would ol’Ben here have been an m-learning advocate? Knowing his love of communication and technology, as well as his avid promotion of literacy and education, methinks he would’ve totally supported it!

On a night when I finally felt mentally and physically exhausted enough to take a break, I found my husband channel surfing on TV. (Now that we have an HD-TV, he’s on it a lot more than he used to be.) Among the channels that he does like to watch– and I do too, is the History Channel in HD. Last night, I think the show was Modern Marvels, and they actually had the whole episode dedicated to the works of Benjamin Franklin. Now, I’ve always had a slight soft spot in my heart for Ben Franklin, ever since I was in about third grade, and read my first biography about him, and knowing that he had strong ties to Philadelphia, which is the city I most associated with when I was growing up (even though I lived halfway between New York and Philly, Philly has family and that was the “culture” I was oriented around.) This was recently revived with a trip to the Franklin Institute with my son.

Anyway, I didn’t catch the whole show, and of course, my husband would be channel surfing during commercials, but from what I was catching of the program, which was towards the end of the episode, they were talking about Franklin being ahead of time on many levels–which he was–and how he was a big player when it came to eighteenth century communication and science. We know that Franklin was the one who was a newspaper printer, a philosopher, a statesman, a politician, and a scientist. But the thing that ties all those other elements of this post-Renaissance man is that he was a writer. He was a prolific writer, in fact, writing everything from the contents of the Pennsylvania Gazette, to books about philosophy, and writing letters and documents that helped to form the United States and its diplomatic ties. He also opened up the first public library in the United States, specifically the Library Company of Philadelphia, whereby patrons could join for a small fee and share the books in the library, for the purpose of learning and being able to exchange ideas.

The author Walter Issacson, who wrote a biography about Ben Franklin, was one of the commentators, and he was saying that if Ben Franklin lived in this day and age, he’d be loving it! With this being the digital age of email, computer communications, cell phones, Twitter, etc., Franklin would’ve been totally in his element, as he was all about the latest in science and communication, and for a guy in his time, he was on the cutting edge of such things. Part of a segment I saw talked about how Franklin was the first one to help devise the concept of watermarks and other security devices to protect the manufacturing of money, some of which are still used today. It was also mentioned that if Franklin had a new way of doing something or a new invention, he always shared his ideas and how he did them, with the exception of this currency security printing method, understandably. So, that makes me think that perhaps with all the cool inventions and discoveries he made, and considering that he was both a scientist AND a writer, that sharing that information made him the first American technical communicator.

What do you think? It’s a pretty good theory, anyway. 😉