A little more than two years ago, I told my friends I was heading to Princeton to study in the States. One of them gave me This Side Of Paradise as a going-away present, and I remembered him telling me: “Meet Francis Scott Fitzgerald, he’ll be your new mentor out there”. I laughed because I was going abroad to meet living mentors, but of course he was right, and the year I spent there taught me (among many other things) how to find wisdom and inspiration in Fitzgerald’s books and life. 

As I was wondering what should a young person decide to care about, and not to care about, I found this letter that Fitzgerald wrote to his daughter Scottie in 1933 (she was 11 at that time).

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about: 

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about: 

What am I really aiming at? 
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them? 
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it? 

With dearest love,

Daddy

(Source: F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters)

Lack of sleep makes it easier for me to express my feelings in bar charts than in words.

My philosophy on life:

My life schedule these days:

In June ‘11, my friend Andrea Fassina & I got a message from the content producer of a documentary series called “XXVI People to Save The World”, made by the famous Argentinian reporter Jorge Lanata:

I’m writing to you because we are dedicating one of the episodes to Jimmy Wales, and the important role wikipedia has worldwide. Into this context, Mr Lanata would like to discuss about the democratization of the information access and the possibility of getting knowledge through Internet. We consider that Freeculture it´s an organization that represents the subject we want to talk about. 

A couple of months later, Andrea & I met with Jorge Lanata in London for a very long interview, and I am very happy to see that the episode dedicated to Jimmy Wales is now online. I’m very grateful that Jorge Lanata gave us the opportunity to express our views on the future of the Internet. I has been an honor to be interviewed by such an amazing, curious, generous Journalist! 

So guys, if you want to see a great documentary, just follow the link.

That’s it for today, bonne journée !

- Camille.

Added comment on post: I have received a couple messages from people in US & in Argentina encouraging us to continue what we started with SFC. That’s why I love the Internet… Thanks so much for the messages. To join the SFC movement, please give a look at our website.

Hi everyone, today I’m glad to share with you an article I wrote with my mother about the “filter bubble” theory. It just got published on l’Express’ website. Unfortunately, it’s in French… 

Original version here: 

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/infolab/2011/04/11/entre-mere-et-fille-de-la-theorie-de-lagenda-a-celle-de-lalgorithme/

De la théorie de l’agenda à celle de l’algorithme, par Natalie Rastoin et sa fille Camille François

LE 11 AVRIL 2011 11H15 | PAR INFOLAB

Chaque mois, « Infolab » traitera d’une grande thématique autour des enjeux de l’information. Nous continuons le projet en nous focalisant ce mois-ci sur les aspects générationnels(l’étude a démontré que la notion de « génération Y » était a minima très contestable) et les nouvelles responsabilités en cours pour les médias vis-à-vis du traitement de l’information.

Première contribution de ce thème, et elle est écrite à 4 mains, entre mère et fille : Natalie Rastoin, figure majeure de la communication et de la publicité, qui est Directeur Général dugroupe Ogilvy, et Président d’OgilvyOne, avec sa fille Camille François, étudiante à Sciences Po et Columbia, présidente de Students for Free Culture France.

En tant que mère et fille, nous partageons de nombreux intérêts : un peu futiles parfois, comme les chaussures ou les macarons – mais aussi plus sérieux, comme la conviction qu’Internet peut faire évoluer la démocratie et le débat public. Nos deux générations ont un rapport très différent à cette révolution, mais nous avons toutes les deux toujours pensé qu’Internet représentait un endroit fabuleux où tout peut se dire et s’échanger sans barrière et où peut se renforcer l’intelligence collective. Aujourd’hui, nous nous demandons si cette conviction n’est pas un peu naïve, à l’heure de Google et de Facebook…

En effet, nous avons été très touchées par la mise en garde récente d’Eli Pariser, activiste démocrate américain et fondateur du site militant MoveOn.org, lors de la convention « Personal Democracy » à laquelle Camille assistait. Depuis le début de l’année, Eli Pariser nous invite à considérer l’importance des algorithmes de personnalisation et leurs effets pervers sur l’information que nous consommons. En effet, les sites comme Google et Facebook prennent une importance de plus en plus importante dans la façon dont les français s’informent au quotidien. Importance encore accrue avec l’usage des smartphones qui nous conduisent à passer encore plus par Facebook. Or l’information que nous fournissent ces sites est toute particulière : elle est personnalisée pour correspondre exactement à ce que nous avons envie de lire en nous levant le matin.

Pourquoi nous ne pouvons pas vraiment personnaliser notre info’

Derrière notre newsfeed Facebook ou derrière les premiers résultats que Google nous présente, il y a une mécanique subtile orchestrée par un algorithme invisible qui prend en compte des critères comme les dernières recherches que nous avons tapées, les sites que nous visitons le plus, notre langage d’utilisation, notre lieu de résidence, etc. Eli Pariser dénombre pas moins de 57 critères utilisés par Google pour classer nos résultats de recherche afin d’arriver à nous présenter en premier les résultats qui correspondent le mieux à ce que nous avons envie de voir !

Depuis Décembre 2009, il n’existe plus de « Google Standard » : la personnalisation des résultats de recherche n’est pas une option, c’est la donne pour tout le monde! Cela se vérifie sur nos deux ordinateurs : bien qu’ayant des intérêts convergents et bien que nous effectuons nos recherches depuis des lieux proches, Google nous présente des résultats différents, correspondant à ce qu’il estime être ce que nous avons envie de voir. Par exemple, des recherches connotées « business » vous renverront ultérieurement à des résultats « business », des recherches connotées « politiques » à des résultats « politiques ». La composante géographique peut changer radicalement les résultats présentés : pensez à ce qu’il se passe lorsqu’une recherche est effectuée de part et d’autre de l’Atlantique sur un sujet polémique…
Cela est dangereux, car ces algorithmes nous dictent désormais le menu de l’information que nous consommons mais sans que nous puissions savoir quels critères ils utilisent – critères qui doivent pourtant être bien éloignés de ceux que l’on imagine être ceux de l’Express lors de la conférence de rédaction, quand elle pense à ses lecteurs !

L’enjeu est le suivant : ce que j’ai envie d’entendre en tant que consommateur est-il toujours ce qu’il est nécessaire que j’entende en tant que citoyen ? Faut-il toujours flatter cette vieille théorie du « mort-kilomètre », qui dit qu’un mort à un kilomètre de mon domicile en vaut mille à mille kilomètres ? Mark Zuckerberg met bien les pieds dans le plat quand, pour expliquer le fonctionnement dunewsfeed Facebook, il déclare qu’un écureuil mourant sur le palier de votre maison est sûrement plus susceptible de vous intéresser que les enfants qui meurent en Afrique (l’anecdote est rapportée par David Kirkpatrick dans son livre The Facebook Effect)

Des informations organisées selon un agenda qui nous échappe

Certes, personne ne croit qu’il est possible d’évoluer dans l’immensité d’Internet sans ces filtres algorithmiques : il faut bien que les résultats soient organisés quand on tape une recherche ! Là dessus, c’est Eric Schmidt, le CEO de Google, qui a donné le chiffre qui tue en début d’année : d’après lui, nous créons désormais tous les deux jours autant de données qu’on en a créé entre le début de la civilisation et 2003… Il ne s’agit donc pas de se tenir éloigné des moteurs de recherches et des applications qui organisent l’information qui circule sur Internet. Il s’agit plutôt d’en comprendre les rouages, et, quand il le devient nécessaire, d’apprendre à les contourner pour qu’Internet reste un outil propice à créer des citoyens éclairés sans devenir simplement un fournisseur quotidien de lolcats et autres vidéos divertissantes mais franchement stupides partagés par vos petites cousines sur Facebook.

Les citoyens du 20ème siècle ont appris la théorie de l’agenda : ils savent que l’information diffusée par la presse reflète une sélection des enjeux choisis par les rédactions plutôt qu’un reflet de ce qu’il se passe dans le monde (voir les travaux de Maxwell McCombs et Donald Shaw en 1972, bien que le succès de cette théorie se mesure en constatant qu’elle a échappé à ses auteurs pour entrer dans l’intuition collective !).

A nous, citoyens du 21ème siècle, de nous emparer de la théorie de l’algorithme : ce qui se passe dans nos ordinateurs n’est pas non plus un reflet de ce qu’il se passe dans le monde, mais bien une sélection personnalisée faite par des algorithmes et basés sur des critères que nous n’avons pas choisis.

Ainsi, plus les français se nourrissent d’information sur Internet, plus une mission claire et importante s’affirme pour les médias traditionnels : il leur incombe de faire le travail de la visibilité des points de vue, pour que le citoyen soit confronté dans la presse à ce que sonnewsfeed lui cache. A cet égard nous remercions toutes deux Courrier International dont la sélection d’information est toujours dérangeante, comme quelqu’un qui ignore notre confort parfois facile et paresseux.

L’algorithme n’a pas de visage, il n’y a personne à vilipender pour les choix qu’il fait. C’est ce qui est d’autant plus dangereux : ce n’est pas parcequ’il n’est pas humain qu’il est neutre– il reste forgé, conçu par des hommes dont nous devons comprendre les choix et les objectifs afin de les mettre en balance avec les nôtres. Les ingénieurs de Facebook veulent nous divertir et cela est bien normal. Mais notre démocratie nous appelle également à davantage de responsabilité, ce qui implique aujourd’hui de repenser notre rapport à l’information sur Internet, et qui rend un rôle clé au journalisme du XXIe siècle.

I arrived superjetlagged but superenthusiastic at SFCNYC, and I had two days to meet the community and to ask all the questions I wanted to. Indeed, before I left we (the French chapter) established a list of questions we wanted to ask the other chapters, and on top of that list was: Is there a simple, clear, operational definition of what free culture is and that we could give to people who keep bothering us with that question?

I was given the chance to attend this conference, and I am now given the opportunity to give you my thoughts about it, so let me tell you briefly what I’ve learned at SFCNYC. When I came back home everyone asked me how it was, and I was so tired that I could barely articulate, so it came down to two words: Amazing Community. Now that I’m more awake I can of course elaborate more on all the rest, but I think it remains the main point. We can work together to elaborate a short definition of what free culture is (and thanks to Aditi for re-sending us the Wheeler declaration, it helps a lot to answer people’s questions about our goals!) but what’s magical about our movement is the community it creates. Maybe it’s OK that there is no concrete and definitive one-line goal written in gold letters on our website, because it might be what makes us more creative everyday.

In reality we share a lot more than a one-line definition: we share common values and a broad vision of the society we want to work towards together. This opens a billion ways to participate in our movement: I was amazed by the diversity of the initiatives that were presented at SFCNYC, diversity of subjects (education, music, fashion, ect.), of people (so many different talents and skills!) and of means (technical, legal, etc.). We still ignore how far our movement can go, both geographically and conceptually, how exciting!

The unconference (as I’m typing this my autocorrect tries to get it back to just “conference” but no – we made the unconference happen!) was exceptional. Seeing everyone brainstorming together to organize small meetings on the topics we wanted to discuss, and then to run around to listen to everyone’s ideas and to collaborate to the various projects was like a one-day illustration of how SFC works!

So when I came back and I was asked: “And what should we do now?”, and I want to answer that by saying: “We should share more!”. Let’s share more ideas about how we apply our freeculturian values to the things that interest us, let’s share our opinions and our passions, let’s share our ideas about “how to make free culture sexy”, about what to do in our colleges/cities/countries, let’s share our articles, our funny videos, our posters and our campaign materials!

• Reposted from the SFCNYC blog : http://conf11.freeculture.org/2011/03/05/reflections-from-camille-francois/#more-439

On November 23th, General Petraeus came to my French school, SciencesPo, to give a lecture on “The International Mission in Afghanistan: A Campaign Update and Look Ahead”. Truth is, what he said about Afghanistan was hardly surprising but he managed to give us a fun advice about thesis writing. He started his speech by telling us about how much he learned during his graduate studies at Princeton, and then decided to tell us a little story… 

 Here how his story goes: there’s a rabbit who’s writing in a notebook on a campus, and fox comes and asks “What are you doing?” so the rabbit answers “I’m writing my thesis”. The fox asks “What is it about?” and the rabbit answers “It’s about how rabbits are the strongest animals on earth and can kill any other animal”. So the fox asks: “That sounds odd - do you have proofs, and empirical data?” and the rabbits says: “Sure, come in the cave I’ll show you”. A couple of hours later, the rabbit comes out of the cave with a hat made of fox, and resumes writing in his notebook.

A wolf comes by and asks: “What are you doing?” - they have the same conversation and a couple hours later the rabbit comes out of the cave with a scarf made of wolf tail.

Then a grizzly bear comes to see the rabbit and asks him what he is doing - and a couple hours later the rabbit goes out of the cave with a sweater made of grizzly.

So the animals of campus organize a meeting to talk about the rabbit issue, and they ask the owl: “You can fly and go anywhere, so go into that cave and please tell us what’s going on there”.

So the owl flies into the cave and comes back saying she saw the rabbit peacefully asleep in the arms of a giant tiger. “I’ve learned a very important lesson”, says the owl, “It doesn’t matter how stupid your thesis is as long as you have the right advisor”.

- Voilà the Petraeus story!

I’m spending the summer in Seattle to do a research (I mean, a more serious one than this one), and I was really excited about that. Seattle sounds like a great city, I visited it earlier this year with a friend and I only have great memories of amazing places, lakes, mountains, parks, great movie theaters and art galleries, charming cafés… 

Then I realized: I don’t know anyone in Seattle.

“Well, it’s a good opportunity to focus on yourself and learn solitudeblablablah…” said a good friend on mine. No way. Seriously people, this is 21st century: the destiny of our generation is to move around the planet, spend a few months in a country and a few weeks in an other… Do you really want to give up on having a social life because of globalization ? 

I am going to tell you what this is a good opportunity for : learning how to make friends in a city you just arrived in ! I am going to update this post as I’m learning how to do that, and I’ll be happy to hear about your own ideas. Here are mine, so far:

• The traditional way: 

Background info: I’m French, and I’ve been living in Paris all my life. So when I’m thinking “places to socialize”, I’m thinking “a café”. So my first idea consists in finding a nice café in the city you’re in, sitting there with a book, and wait.

Preparation:

Pick the place carefully. I want to meet people my age (I’m 20), so I decided to go in the University District. You want a café in which people are actually going to spend a little time, to hang out. No the place where people are just grabbing an expresso and running away. How to recognize those places? They have nice chairs, people are reading books or magazines, or are working on their computer, eventually they have nice music on. See? Doesn’t seem that rare, uh?

What you need:

1. A book. Since you’re not going to sit on your chair and smile to random people walking by your table, that would just be weird. You need a little time (make that one hour on the first try?) and a book to kill the time (I know, it doesn’t sound logical, but when you think about it, it’s great just to sit in a café and read a book, so it’s not a giant waste of time). My conclusions so far about the choice of the book is that your best bet is the guide of the city you’re visiting. People might ask you if you’re new in town, if you’re visiting, where you’re from: it’s a good conversation-starter. But you can also use: a good old classic that people have read but not you (in my case, the picture of Dorian Gray), the newspapers, a book with a very self-explanatory title (“Are people in Seattle nice? And How to Meet Them.”), etc.

2. A smily face. Seriously, you’re going to have to smile to people you don’t know, that’s the deal. Afraid to look like a crazy person? Not a chance, unless you really start acting crazy. Here’s my mental technique to check if you’re not insane. So there’s this girl in the café (also works with a guy, fyi), and she looks nice and from the city you just arrived in, and you want to establish a contact. Imagine her being chocked by what you did and telling what happened to one of her friends. “OMG - I was sitting in this café reading the NYTimes and this girl across the room just starred at me and smiled, how weird is that?.” Neh, now you sound just fine and she sounds like someone who need to go out a little more. But if she can say: “OMG - I was sitting in this café reading the NYTimes and this girl across the room asked me four times if I was sure I didn’t want to sit at her table, how weird is that?”. Now it sounds pretty obvious that you crossed the line, right?

3. A vague idea of what you can say if you end up engaging a conversation with someone. Be honest and straightforward! You can say that you just arrived, that you don’t really know where are the cool places in the city (tailor that according to your interests, you can ask for the cool cinemas, the cool theaters, the cool parks, the cool contemporary art museums, cool jazz spots… you get the idea). If you’re worried that the person you’re talking to might think you have a romantic / sexual interest, focus on collective places (ask about museums rather than nice places to have dinner) and say you’re interested in meeting nice groups of people. If the person you just met was really nice… don’t leave the café without taking their contact info! And remember that you’re the newbie, the effort is yours to make, so text, email, whatever but manage to send a message saying that it was nice meeting. 

Live coverage: So I tried that yesterday, I found a really nice café in a bookstore, and I met one young guy who was working there and one older woman who was speaking French. Makes me add two remarks to that section: a. Talk to the people who work there! I mean, they’re here all day and have nothing to do. It’s almost their job to talk to you and to make you feel confortable. And it’s quite probable that they know several of their customers so you might end up meeting several people quite easily. b. If you’re a foreign country, find a place that’s related to your home country: a French café, a Chinese museum, an Australian movie theater, etc. That’s very effective! 

• The 2.0. Way

What’s the “2.0. Way of meeting new people in a city where you don’t know anyone”? Well, it’s all about using social media in an efficient way. 

I just wrote “Social Media”, you just read “Facebook” - no? I’m not sure Facebook is the best way to go. What are you going to do? Type in “Seattle” in the searchbar and look at the billion people that appear, trying to select the ones who look nice and then shoot them random emails saying “Hey! You look kinda nice. I’m in your city.”? 

I mean, there’s certainly something you can do with your Facebook socialnetwork: update your status to ask your friends if they know anyone in the city you just arrived in. If they do, that’s a great way to meet people. You contact your friend’s friend and you go grab a drink with them, and meet their friends. 

Live coverage: Yeah, that’s quite effective. Met someone really nice like that. 

But that’s pretty much everything Facebook can do for you, so let’s switch to another social media platform that will be more effective in this situation: Meetup.

Meetup focuses on making people meet IRL ( = In Real Life. Three letters very “2.0.”) rather than just putting them in contact so that they can exchange emails or poke each others. How does it work? Well, people create groups of specific interest that meet in specific locations. You go on the website, enter your zip code or the name of the city you’re in, enter something you’re interested in and you join the group. Then you wait till the group organizes an event, you show up and you meet people who are in the same city and who have the same interests - wait! wasn’t that exactly what we were trying to do?

Some ideas of topic you can search: groups that relate to a cultural interest (I’m in the “The Seattle Theater Lovers Meetup” and the “Seattle Cinema Club”), language groups (“The Seattle French Conversation Meetup”), international groups (“Global Seattle”), groups aiming at integrating people in the city you just arrived in (“The Seattle New In Town Meetup Group”), political groups (“Seattle Visionaries for a New Democracy”), etc. You can also just put your zipcode and look at the groups around the area. You can end up finding funny groups such as “The Pink Stilettos in Seattle” (1st line of the description: “We are a vibrant group of classy women who enjoy their girlfriends”), very specific groups like “Seattle LinuxChix” (1st line: “Learn about and the how-to with Linux and other Open Source alternatives - this is a group for women of all skill levels to learn about new alternatives in computing. A softer introduction to geeking, linuxchix is a different sort of community.”). 

Live Coverage: Have Joined all the groups mentioned above. Quite cool: I could attend one Meetup meeting everyday! Haven’t done it yet though, but will do soon and promise I’ll let you know how it goes. Some groups are “private”, you have to send a message to the admin so that they let you in. Did that twice and it wasn’t a problem, seems that the Meetup community is pretty open. 

Other website worth of interest: http://www.couchsurfing.org/

Some of you might know that it’s a website where you go when you want to crash on someone’s couch, but it’s also a really nice community and you can contact people living in your new city and just meet them over a coffee. Remember that if people have a profile on CouchSurfing.org, it’s because they want to meet new people from all around the planet. In a word, they’re just waiting for you around a cup of coffee somewhere.

Live coverage: Two thumbs up for the couchsurfing community. It’s super-easy to find people and to contact them, they answer very quickly, meet up with you and show you their city. Amazing. They also organize collective events: tomorrow, I might go to the weekly couchsurfing happy hour. 

Will keep you posted about how it goes and update this post if necessary.

- Camille.

Take-home weblist:

http://www.couchsurfing.org/

http://www.meetup.com/

Bonus Tracks:

Here’s an interview with Scott Heiferman, one of the three guys who founded Meetup:tadam!