Luke Walker.org

TIGed, in partnership with ABEL and TEACH Magazine, are finally launching the Orange Revolution game and a free virtual classroom focused on human rights, democracy and good governance. And we need some feedback from you!

More about the resource:

The game
The game leads players through the 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine, which saw the pro-West and pro-Russia factions in the country pitted against each other in a bitter battle including corruption, scandals, and a poisoning. Players make decisions for both main candidates, with the goal of achieving democratic reform while avoiding violence. Play the game here. (note: the game is still a bit of a work in progress)

The virtual classroom
The classroom/lesson plans focus on democracy, human rights and governance, and are designed with high school students in mind. There is focus on the relationship between Canada and Ukraine, and on Canadian involvement (government and NGOs) in the Orange Revolution, but this can easily be adapted for use in other countries. Check out the homepage for the project to set up a classroom or the TIGed Activity Database for lesson plans.

How can you help?
We need teachers to evaluate the lesson plans and game! Set up a virtual classroom (here), play the game or implement any portion of the lesson plans, and respond to this short survey by June 12. We will randomly select 3 teachers who set up the virtual classroom by June 12 to receive a special TIG prize pack.

Seriously, this video is like roflcon in a box… errr… short, accessible video. More memes than you can count on two hands (I think… didn’t try counting).

In other slightly behind-the-times news, check the latest episode of CBC Radio One’s Spark for Kate’s doc on memes! Pretty awesome stuff.

An Internet exclusive! Kate and I went to great lengths to procure this video (we had to audition to be Leslie Hall’s backup dancers on g4tv.com), and it’s serious biznass, guys! Below, only on lukewalker.org and k4t3.org, an interview with Leslie Hall‘s mom!

A few quick facts:

1. She did in fact ruin the first ever gem sweater Leslie brought home
2. Leslie was her high school’s prom queen!
3. Her parents knew she had it coming
4. The internet is the first thing Leslie’s mom has ever been the godmother of

So parents, be supportive of your kids’ dreams. You never know, your son/daughter could become an internet-famous. gem-sweater-wearing superhero to groups of kids everywhere!

I’m sure Kate & I will come up with and cross-post some kind of meaningful commentary on this once the weekend ends.

Sadly, I missed the LOL-related panel (lolcats, lolsecrets, lolcode, lolbible), but I did get to the panel about pwning for the betterment of mankind. It was… a bit too serious. And in fairness, they were trying to deal with some serious stuff… net neutrality, the CIA, etc etc etc. But I didn’t think some of the panelists (iJustine…) really contributed much. ACLU guy made some really passionate points, particularly about how memes/microcelebrities need to work together to push causes, and how involvement from an org like the ACLU can only serve to make any efforts seem cornier/less authentic (echoing David Weinberger’s excellent point from yesterday that perfection is the enemy of credibility in the era of user-generated content).

I was really interested in the Bubble Project, which I hadn’t heard of before yesterday. Basically the ad exec spent a few grand of his on money and put big empty speech bubbles on ads around New York so that people could fill in their own captions… Kate took a bunch, I can only assume she’ll be putting them up around Toronto.

Leslie Hall was pretty quiet throughout (though check my flickr/youtube for some excellent bored/shocked poses), until someone started asking about the impact she thinks she having on the lives of girls with self-esteem/confidence issues.


As much as I love her just because she’s hilarious, she’s also probably really empowering for a whole lot of people. Oh, and watch for some pics/video of Leslie in concert, too!!

Cool backchannel thing: http://roflcon.backchan.nl — Ask a question, people vote it up or down, and it ends up on the big screen… then they actually answer them!

Oh, and check out Kate’s first guest blog on Spark!

The first day of ROFLcon is done. My highlight: meeting Leslie Hall, 100%, for sure. Doesn’t get much hotter than that! But seriously, she’s great, and Kate got to have an amazing chat with her (I missed out because I was visiting my friend Diana, but tomorrow, we’re hoping to interview Leslie’s mom!!)

The interesting thing about ROFLcon is that no one can really put there finger on what it is just yet. It’s a joke that’s gone too far, but at the same time, there’s some really, really deep stuff coming out, and ultimately, memes/internet celebrities are becoming a really important force in our culture, so figuring ‘it’ out is actually really important. David Weinberger (video to come, I promise–the Internet in this hotel is crap), made some really interesting points in his keynote about the future of fame… Wow, my brain is starting to die a bit (time to go to the lol concert!)… The title quote, “revenge against 100 years of broadcast” was his reflection on the insanity that’s happening today, and in an interview later in the day (this is where the video-to-come comes in… watch for an update), he made some great points about the very different nature of an accessible, grassroots fame vs. the old-school constructed form of Hollywood fame.

The moral of the story is that we can all be microcelebrities. Or really, that we will all be microcelebrities, and that everyone with a blog or a flickr account or who shares video on youtube is famous to someone, whether or not we know it, and that long tail of fame is pretty much what we’re celebrating here at roflcon.

Update: In case there was any doubt, Web 2.0 is over. Thanks for making it official, Valley Wag.