Culture

As is usual from my blog posts, this may or may not grow as I remember things&hellip;<ul><li>The visual discrepancy between rich and poor in San Francisco is extremely stark<ul><li>Add to that, the gap between white/Asian and black/Latino is even more noticeable.</li></ul></li><li>A lot of the Not-For-Profit sector seems obsessed with money and how to make it.</li><li>The tipping culture is weird&hellip; In that people don&#39;t tip because they want to, but because they feel obliged to. Which makes tipping and the divvying up of bills an awkward and bizarrely scientific process to watch.</li><li>Americans table manners, especially the way they treat servers, are peculiar&hellip; Perhaps related to above.</li><li>Sales people very open and friendly, I assume because they want to sell you something. On the other hand, Customer service, especially civil service, quite unforgiving and unhelpful.</li><li>A lot of things in Australia aren&#39;t as expensive as people think. Especially food and fuel.</li><li>Conferences in Australia are a lot more multi-cultural, with more people from overseas and we&#39;re more interested in those from overseas.</li></ul>

<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">As part of RMIT&rsquo;s sessions in Open Access week I toddled down to &ldquo;Publishing the Open Access Way: The Change in Business Thinking Towards Open Access&rdquo; and a slightly small crowd&hellip; I&rsquo;m a little behind with blog posts, so this will again, be a little bit of a collection of items with some opinions and thoughts.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The speakers and talks were<p class="p1"><b style="line-height: 1.538em;">Dr Adrian Danks - Senses of cinema</b><br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">A quarterly academic journal around cinema culture and commentary. To me it&rsquo;s approach seemed fairly conventional. Their open nature means not Peer reviewed. Their 4th largest&nbsp; audience is Australia, which seems to be a constant, many Australian creative organisations have to be successful overseas to make it at home. Dependent on funding bodies, how does this affect the open nature? Is it any better than an advertiser really?<p class="p1"><b style="line-height: 1.538em;">Philip Dearman - Communication, Politics &amp; Culture</b><br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">An open access journal, I think the title pretty much tells you what the content is. Seems like some publications just become free because they have no other options or are forced to. Again, the journal is backed by Academia anyway, so it doesn&rsquo;t have quite the same restraints others may have.&nbsp;<p class="p1"><b style="line-height: 1.538em;">Debbie Dickinson - The conversation</b><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">&nbsp;<br /><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">The Conversation is fairly well known, again with some academic backing, but seemingly looking into wider sustainable sources of funding and life. Some of the Conversations interesting features and approaches are republishing their content,&nbsp; sharing is positively encouraged leading to strong worldwide access.<p class="p1"><a href="https://www.rmit.edu.au/library/oaw" target="_blank">www.rmit.edu.au/library/oaw</a>

It's been quite a week (month, year) for celebrity death and I'm certainly not going to be the first or last to talk about the subject this week. I am going to mostly talk about Bowie, because I was a bigger fan of his work than say, Alan Rickman, but also for other reasons I will come to. Whilst we're here I should also briefly mention the death of John Bradbury, drummer with The Specials. He actually died on December 28th of 2015 and wasn't part of the new 69 club, but was 62\.

I don't have an particular themes from the week I can remember in enough detail to discuss this week, so thought it time I dragged out one of my long term 'topics to discuss'.

\#UNIT runs regular meetups in Berlin aimed at those working in tech who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LBGTI), but with an overarching message of providing a space for speakers who you might not always see at more mainstream events. I personally don’t identify as any of these, but I always enjoy the diverse messages and fun atmosphere I hear at the meetups, and this was my second time attending the yearly conference.