In case you haven't been looking closely, in the past few years, Montréal has seen a pretty amazing new scene unfold. Many worthwhile and lively initiatives that all connect in one way or another to what I would call networked culture have sprung up on my radar. Each of them has an exciting, self-organizing vibe to it. These are network-literate, emergent ventures.However, they are not all well-known and connected. Last week I decided to try to play social curator and map them, to try to give a visual picture of what's happening and hopefully increase awareness of and among those valuable projects.
The ideal tool for doing this doesn't yet exist, as far as I know. For the purposes of the exercise, I tried my hand at using two tools: Prezi and Pearltrees. Each has advantages and disadvantages
First, here's the Prezi map. You need to go in fullscreen and use the triangle buttons to have a good navigation experience. Although Prezi allows for more creativity in the visual department, one big downside is that you can't make links.
Montrealive on Prezi
And here's the Pearltrees map. Though it provides less flexibility design-wise, I believe it provides a better experience overall. Hovering your mouse over each 'pearl' shows you a capture of the linked site. I wish it were possible to expand all the branches to show the big picture, but I haven't found a way to do it.
If anybody knows of better ways to do this, please tell me about it. And let me know in the comments or via twitter (@sebpaquet) if I've missed any relevant, lively initiatives!
