Everything Internet and Web Marketing

Well the Digital Media and Marketing study group has come to an end. We just about covered everything digital media and marketing. We concluded that the Internet is a fascinating space, it is evolving rapidly and the next technologies are promising and exciting. Incidentally, the last session to be held on March 26 2016 was merged in with the fifth session as we had a centre scheduling issue. I'd like to thank UBC Humanities 101 Community Programme and Wil in particular for helping us have this learning and social experience. I certainly look forward to the next time we study the World Wide Web and all its digital technologies.

Digital Media and Marketing Study Group

**** A New Community Study Group ****
Just About Everything Digital Media and Marketing

And All the SEO Facts, Fiction, Ethics and Opportunities We Can come Up With

When: every second Saturday starting Jan. 16, 2016 from 1 – 3:00 PM

Where: ARA Mental Health Drop-In Centre, 163 W Pender

Whether you are new to the Internet and want to participate or have extensive experience to share, this think tank / help forum is for you.

All interested are welcome to participate!
(refreshments and small snacks– available during break for participants)

The initial pilot study group will cover these six modules:
Jan. 16, 2016 - Search Engines, Job/Family/Friends Search and SEO
Jan. 30, 2016 - Emailing, Communication and General Internet Security
Feb. 13, 2016 - Social Media – Privacy Issues, Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Business Promotion
Feb. 27, 2016 - Exploring Cyberculture: Influence, Impact and Relevance to Contemporary Society
Mar. 12, 2016 - Blogging for Sharing Art, Open Journaling, Activism, Politics, Recovery, Industry and Technical Writing …
Mar. 26, 2016 - Online Internet Marketing, Ebay, Craigslist, Kijiji …

A Joint Project Sponsored, Supported and Facilitated by UBC Humanities 101 Community Programme, Recovery by Design and ARA Mental Health Advocacy

Examinations of Facts, Fiction, Ethics and Opportunities in Everything Digital Media

When: Every Second Saturday from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Next session February 13, 2016
Where: ARA Mental Health Drop-In Centre, 163 W Pender
Facilitators: Fred Joly Recovery by Design and Hum Program Assistant Wil Steele
Resource Room and Venue: ARA Mental Health Action, Research and Advocacy

All skill levels from experts to the curious join in discussion of a variety of relevant digital media subjects. All perspectives could be explored but the focus of each session is to highlight the advantages individuals can have by introducing digital media in their lives. Opportunities to learn new forms of communication with friends, family and other support networks is always encouraged. Fears and misunderstandings are cleared in order to assist others in escaping isolation and offering them a vessel for either public or private creative expression. In these capacities, both aspiring artists and those seeking additional recovery related tools could be greatly benefited. Help will be on hand to get newcomers started with email, social media, blogging and other networking accounts. Skill sharing is expected.

Digital Media and Marketing Study Group

Digital Culture and its Effects of Contemporary Society

February 27^th 2016 from 1:00 to 3:00 PM we were thoroughly captured by Wil Steele’s presentation on cyber-culture and the effects on society. From what I gathered of his tech blog, cyber-culture is one of his favourite topics of discussion and he masterfully shared tons of interesting information stored in his brain.

We started with cyber-psychology and how people have changed as a result of cyber-culture. We went as far back as the Internet goes when it was originally created to be complete open sourced and free to use as one wished. The object was to allow unfettered access and use completely free of charge; essentially everyone’s computer could act as a server. Governments and corporations didn’t want anything to do with all this free stuff and have created interference for users in one form or another since.

Wil differentiated between the Internet and the world wide web (WWW). The WWW is everything that is available to be view in an Internet browser while the Internet itself constitutes much more include including everything digital such as Usenet, FTP, the dark web …

We sped through the differences between copyright, copyleft and creative commons. These are the various limitations author can use whenever anyone wants to duplicate their original content.

He went through some of the options the government has when dealing with offensive web sites. It’s difficult to shut down a server but fairly common to shut down domain names. Corporations and governments have been squabbling forever about what one or the other can or cannot do. Wil talked about how corporations worry of net neutrality. This is a competition for bandwidth between streamers and service providers. Service providers have started throttling streamers who upload to a degree where uploads are often ten times slower than downloads.

A question regarding how importance could one person’s opinion be in the vast sea of opinion sharing Internaut’s was answered with the saying that it only takes one person to start a movement.

A bit of media control was discussed. It was understood that any digital communication passing through foreign servers can be intercepted and used as grounds for criminal charges. We concluded that an email sent by a .ca email address to another .ca email address would probably be exempted in spite of the message going through foreign servers.

We considered how texting is beginning to render cursive handwriting obsolete to the point that many of today’s children do not write in cursive.

We also determined that the English language is by far the leading business language of the Internet and in itself is constructed to assimilate and suppress other languages.

People are getting physically lazier by the day as a result of mobile privatization; experiencing the world at the comfort of your own couch.

Aside from all that, we covered a bit about DNS (domain name servers), the HTML language and stuff revolving around IP addresses.

We had our regular meal ticket draws and thanked Wil for his amazing presentation.