pariSoma innovation loft. coworking and tech events.

We asked Shamal Ranasighe to make a playlist tonight for Musi2k using Playlist.com, and here is what he chose.

See you tonight!

Thanks to John Geraci and the DIYcity NYC crew, the first DIYcity app has launched. It’s called DIYtraffic and it’s designed to allow any city to easily run its own traffic alert system for people there, using Twitter to disperse live traffic alerts.

DIYtraffic San Francisco is already up and running and you can subscribe to the tweets if you commute here in SF.

Our coworker Jacqueline Tieu of Mezuki put together this awesome video from the Creative Commons Salon on February 11th, featuring music by Matthew Shipp Nu Bopp, remixed by DJ Spooky.

Get the best continental breakfast at Hayes Valley Inn! A convenient 15 minute walk from Parisoma (Hayes & Gough), this hotel offers great service at an affordable price.
Just mention at the front desk that you’re coming from pariSoma you’ll get 15% off.

For more information, visit Hayes Valley Inn online.

Another one of my personal favorite old-school SF tech events is coming to pariSoma this month. Dorkbot SF will go down Wednesday 2/25. It will include our second talk in a month on museum design. Weird. Tasty.

Free, bring your own beverages. Sign up here.

Speakers:

– Sasha Harris-Cronin will discuss what happens behind the scenes at the phenomenal new California Academy of Sciences.

– Jonathan Foote will discuss his robotic inventions and art pieces, including a robot that serves drinks.

– Mitch Altman, inventor of the sanity-preserving TV-B-Gone, will discuss his magical invention that enables people to turn off TVs in public places.

Please mail Karen Marcelo (dorkbotSF [at] dorkbot [dot] org) if you want to open dork (give a 10-15 min mini-presentation).

More event details here. – Sean

Joi Ito, Larry Lessig, Eric Steuer, Catharina Maracke and the entire Creative Commons staff gathered with fans and friends February 11 for the first CC Salon ever held at pariSoma.

At pariSoma we’re all independent creative knowledge workers, so we regard CC as a band of heroes and we were thrilled to host them. CC is a nonprofit committed to making it easier for people to share their work and build upon the work of others in the digital age. They’re probably most famous for their free and easy-to-understand content licenses.

Because CC runs offices all over the world, it’s extremely rare for so many CC leaders to gather in one place to speak about what they’ve been up to internationally and in the realms of science, culture, and education. We were proud to have it take place in pariSoma. Stay tuned for more about this event, including a video.

I never drink Kool-Aid and I very rarely fawn over anything. But I’ll attest that Creative Commons is one of the most worthy nonprofits on the planet. The work they do directly and powerfully influences the ability of future generations to innovate in all realms of creative work, and right now their work is more important than ever. Please donate to the cause. And check back here in a couple of months for the next CC Salon in SF. – Sean

More photos here.

The format we try to keep with the SF Drupal users group is to have members of the local community come to the meetings and show how they use Drupal.

This week we had great presentations by:

• Shaun Haber from Warner Brothers records.
• Ken Suzuki from Crushnet
• Andre Angelantoni on Capaccino API and Drupal.

A podcast of the event is located here. It was a great evening with many new people.   The next Drupal users group is on March 16th 2009.

This month we are happy to host Shamal Ranasinghe. Shamal will be talking about Topspin Media, which he co-founded, as well as another of his ventures, Giveback, Inc.

Topspin is a media technology company dedicated to developing leading-edge marketing software and services that help artists and their partners build businesses and brands. They help artists manage their catalogs, connect with fans, and generate demand for music.

Giveback is a platform designed to promote social action by contextually linking these causes to news and sites around the web. Their thesis is that people are most inclined to give when they are inspired by reading about related news or blogs on social topics. The first phase of Giveback’s engine matches social actions and causes to submitted news articles. The second phase of development will deploy these social actions across the web through an embeddable widget that can contextually surface the most relevant and appropriate actions on any news site or blog.

Shamal’s Bio:

Shamal Ranasinghe, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Topspin, has been at the forefront of digital music product strategy and development for the past decade, and he has been responsible for defining software and service best practices for leading companies in the digital music space.

Ranasinghe embarked on his career in music application product management with RealNetworks in 1999, working with the product team that introduced one of the first digital jukebox software applications, RealJukebox. In 2002, he connected with mentor and future partner Peter Gotcher and started incubating the Topspin concept. Ranasinghe later joined Musicmatch where he headed up the product team and was in charge of their web-services product development, which included the On Demand, Radio, and Music Store web-services.

Following the acquisition of Musicmatch by Yahoo! in 2004, Ranasinghe created and led a product team focused on building data mining applications for the Media division of Yahoo!, and in 2007 he reunited with Gotcher to start Topspin.

Ranasinghe also co-founded Sol System and Giveback, both music projects with a purpose.

RSVP here on Upcoming.

In addition to all the exciting events that we have coming up (the Creative Commons salon on the 11th, SF Dupal Users Group meetup on the 9th), we have two new coworkers.

Ellen Oh is the Executive Director of Kearny Street Workshop, an organization that works to produce and present art that enriches and empowers Asian Pacific American communities.

Jacqueline Tieu is the cofounder of Mezuki, a company that specializes in collaborating with clients to produce advertising campaigns that entice, engage and entertain for multicultural and niche communities.

Stop by and say hello and welcome them to pariSoma!