Aerial maps? (check) Balloons? (check) Beer? (check) The only thing left on our checklist is you. Come meet Jeff Warren and hear about how his work makes it possible for Louisiana citizen mappers to capture powerful images of the Gulf Coast oil spill. WARNING: you may want to make your own satellite and/or join the 108+ backers who’ve given Grassroots Mapping the green light on kickstarter.com. 6:30p – 8:30p – Design Annex – Union Sq, Somerville, MA 8:30p – The discussion & beverages will move next door to Cantina La Mexicana (247 Washington Street, Somerville, MA)

AF-NYC’s Catherine White with AF-London’s Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh and James Carrigan Last week, AF-NYC micro-trustee Catherine White met with AF-London’s Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh and James Carrigan over a beer in Shoreditch to discuss transatlantic Awesomeness.  Tonight Tomorrow (June 9, 2010) AF-London will be awarding their first grant with a party starting at 6.30 pm in The Griffin (93 Leonard Street).  We’re really excited to hear who they pick.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the Pond, Awesome NYC are planning their 4th award party – details soon.

The Ottawa chapter of The Awesome Foundation is proud to announce that today we will be awarding our first grant of $1000 to Alicia Dobson of Project Y. Project Y is a group of young and passionate change-makers who aspire to make positive change and change the face of their community. There are all different types of individuals: students, social entrepreneurs, musicians, artists, scientists, and others. Many are Millennium Laureates, some are TD Scholars, and others are individuals with an unbelievable commitment and determination to make positive change. For their kick-off event, Alicia and her team are organizing an Art Flash Mob to show people the beauty that exists here in our city. In Alicia’s own words, “The music, art, and culture in this city is astonishing – we want people to see it.” This exciting first event will take place in downtown Ottawa on the afternoon of May 12th. Look for them and join in the fun! See their video proposal here: Project Y: Art Flash Mob The Awesome Foundation for the Arts and Sciences was founded in Boston in June 2009 and has now spread to six cities. The Ottawa Chapter (Awesome Ottawa), founded in April 2010, awards… read more →

What you’re seeing to your left is VillageTelco’s Mesh Potato, the prototype for a lightweight, low-cost, and low-power unit that is a building block for rolling your very own decentralized P2P phone network. We’re thrilled to announce that this month’s Awesome Fellowship from Boston goes to Paul Gardner-Stephen, post-doctoral fellow at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Paul’s perhaps most known worldwide for his creation of the much-touted innovation of the shoe phone, and for this project, he’s turning his formidable skills to a new project. Specifically, the plan is to get the mesh potato to work with mobile telephones so that so that mobile telecoms can be deployed rapidly, cheaply and robustly into disasters, developing and remote areas, and plain old remote places where the huge cost of mobile telephone towers makes it too expensive to provide coverage. A neat hack that Paul’s building into the plan is that these P2P phone networks will work with your regular old phone number, without requiring access to the internet (seriously). The entire thing will be prototyped over Android, and step-by-step instructions will be made available so you can start up a mobile telcom right in the comfort of your own home (some… read more →

Congrats Ken Murphy; your project is Awesome! The Board of the San Francisco Awesome Foundation is proud to announce our first grant goes to Ken Murphy’s “A History of the Sky”. It’s local, it’s awesome, and Ken’s proposal was clear, enthusiastic, and specific about what an Awesome Foundation Grant would be used for (equipment for installations). “A History of the Sky” is a time-lapsed visualization of the San Francisco sky over the course of a year. Ken mounted camera equipment to the roof of the Exploratorium and it an image every 10 seconds for a year. As Ken wrote, “The results are assembled into a large mosaic of time-lapse movies, where each tile represents a single day, and all of the days are in sync.” Future goals include obtaining  equipment to display the project at different venues and eventually a permanent space for the exhibit. Ken’s work can also be supported through his Kickstarter campaign. (Great video of his proposal can be found on Kickstarter) “History of the Sky” in progress will be shown at the Maker Faire in San Mateo May 22-23. The SF Board of Awesome would like to acknowledge that there were many compelling submissions for our… read more →