Archive for February, 2008

Pandora.com Founder Tim Westergren coming to speak at BU!

Saturday, February 23rd, 2008

Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora.com, which provides custom radio stations based on user preferences is coming to speak on 2/27 at Morse Auditorium! Here’s the info from the facebook invite:

pandora.jpg

Name:
Pandora.com Founder Tim Westergren Talks about Digital Music
Tagline:
Radio, Access, Industry, Internet and Music!
Host:
BU Free Culture
Type:
Date:
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Time:
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location:
Morse Auditorium
Street:
Commonwealth Ave
City/Town:
Boston, MA
Email:

Description

Pandora.com provides a custom radio station to listeners based on their personal tastes in music.

The site’s founder, Tim Westergren, is coming to talk about the service and the future of digital music and the record industry.

This is his bio from the site:
Tim Westergren
Chief Strategy Officer & Founder
Tim Westergren founded Pandora in January 2000 and now serves as its Chief Strategy Officer. Tim is an award-winning composer, an accomplished musician and a record producer with 20 years of experience in the music industry. He has recorded with independent labels, managed artists, owned a commercial digital recording studio, scored feature films, produced albums, and performed extensively. His main instrument is the piano, but over the years he has played the bassoon, drums and clarinet and his musical background spans such genres as rock, blues, jazz and classical music.

Tim received his B.A. from Stanford University, where he studied computer acoustics and recording technology. A musician’s musician, he is obsessed with helping talented emerging artists connect with the music fans most likely to appreciate their music. In addition to guiding Pandora’s overall strategy and vision, Tim now spends most of his time as Pandora’s chief evangelist - traveling the country to meet with listeners to collect feedback, research local music, and spread the word of the Music Genome Project.

The event is cohosted by the BU ACLU and BU Free Culture and is open to all!

http://bu.facebook.com/event.php?eid=10954144253
Come one, come all!

College Net. Filtering Bill Clears House, Freep Coverage

Monday, February 11th, 2008

Little bit of Free Culture coverage in the Daily Free Press again!

Other students are more concerned about the violation of privacy that might occur with network monitoring.

“This would be a violation of privacy and a waste of funds that could be used for education,” said Rich Jones, founder of BU’s Free Culture Club and a College of Arts and Sciences sophomore. “[The entertainment lobby] is diverting funds from education to defend their broken business model.”

Justin Kaufman, a member of the Student Union technology committee, said he thinks that such monitoring could engender negative feelings among campus network users.

“It changes . . . mentality when you’re being watched actively and monitored,” Kaufman, a CAS junior, said.

http://media.www.dailyfreepress.com/media/storage/paper87/news/2008/02/01/News/New-Technology.Bill.Could.Force.Bu.Admin.To.Monitor.Transfers-3183281.shtml

I don’t know what the Student Union technology committee does but I think we should be talking to them about issues. I had classes with Justin and he’s a friendly guy so maybe we will have some more allies at the school!

We may be having a speaker at the end of the month, so keep your eyes posted for that!

Rich


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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported