Base Camp 2015

This weekend, 15 students from the Graduate School of Journalism joined 15 graduate students from Stanford’s School of Engineering for a unique workshop, our second “Base Camp.” We began the weekend with a simple assigment — think about stories you’ve come across, or technologies you’ve experienced, that have changed the way you see yourself or your city, or have made you rethink your relationship to the world around you. Both journalism and engineering create images for us, images of who we are as communities, as a nation, as a planet. True, they work in very different ways, but ultimately the two practices help us understand the world, perhaps also making a case for how it should change. Base Camp is about making new stories or thechnologies that will forever alter the way we see the world.

Alright, that sounds like a pretty tall order, but, in the end, 8 groups of students coalesced around a fantastic set of ideas. Some were stories that aren’t being told because of some technological block, while others were platforms that structured or published information in new ways. Some were designed to aid people in moments of crisis, and still others imagined new forms of stewardship over endangered or fragile corners of our planet. It was a special weekend and we thank our participants for coming to the event with open minds, in a spirit of forging authentic collaborations. We also thank our most excellent facilitator, Ivan Sigal, for his thoughtful leadership over the weekend.

The next Base Camp will take place in January at Stanford and applications will be due December 4.