Month: May 2021

The City and Science Biennial has its dot

Posted on by Comunicació

Barcelona is again set to become a broad space to bring science and knowledge closer to the general public, from 8 to 13 June. The second edition of the City and Science Biennial revolves around the idea of limits, questioning the current food system with an extensive programme of over 250 activities and 300 speakers.

Many of the activities in the City and Science Biennial are based around the limits of the planet, of society and of science itself, addressing what the consequences of overstepping them are for people, humanity and the environment.

Over 250 activities to bring science closer to the general public

This year’s event features over a hundred activities which have been put together by curators and various organisations, 120 activities as part of the Science Festival and 30 from the +Biennal section, as parallel activities organised by city facilities and entities.

The activities will be held in nearly forty different locations around all the city’s districts, with debates, round tables and talks; six open-air film sessions with debates; exhibitions; Science Night, on 11 June, and the Science Festival, which rounds off the second edition of the City and Science Biennial.

All the activities in the programme will comply with all safety measures. Locations will mainly be open, with limited attendance capacities and practically all events requiring bookings in advance on the website for the City and Science Biennial. Reservations can be made from 25 May.

Personalities and leading science figures

Leading figures from the realm of science and knowledge will be involved during the City and Science Biennial, such as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ernest Kahan; the physicist and disseminator Sonia Fernández-Vidal; experts in biology such as Donna Haraway, Michael Levin and Ron Weiss; the curator Mónica Bello, the geographer Oriol Nel·lo and many others.

Other figures involved in the event include physicists, historians, astronauts, molecular biologists, chefs, mathematicians, philosophers, anthropologists, economists and disseminators.

Geo-specific URL shorteners

Posted on by Comunicació

A uniform resource locator, or URL, refers to a website address or another type of internet resource. The term is used because a URL is the specific address assigned to each of the resources available on the network, enabling them to be located and identified. By resources we understand websites, documents, attachments, files, folders etc.

We can’t begin to imagine how many thousands and millions of resources there are published on the internet, with new ones added every day. It’s an immense volume of information and each resource has its own exclusive URL. It’s perhaps no surprise then that most addresses consist of an endless combination of numbers and letters, which are often unpronounceable. One downside when it comes to sharing these addresses is the number of characters they occupy. That’s a problem if we want to share them in a post, or particularly in a tweet, where characters are limited. Long and seeming illogical addresses can also be a bit of an eyesore.

URL shorteners

Because of this, URL shorteners have been around for a few years now. These free pages enable us to paste in the address we want to share and automatically generate another much shorter and exportable link. This address has exactly the same function as the long version, redirecting the user to the original URL.

Another advantage with shorteners is that URLs can be personalised, meaning that after the shortener’s domain we can write the address we want to, making reference to the content of the site the link will take us to. This helps the person clicking on the link to know where they are being redirected to, and also allows for a freer and more creative use of text.

There are plenty of URL shorteners, most of which have generic domains, seeking internationalisation or a short name which is easy to remember. But if you’re looking for more personalised alternatives, there are some which have geoTLDs.

One example is ja.cat, a URL shortener in Catalan which also allows addresses to be personalised. Similarly, i.gal shortens addresses with the Galician domain, and if you’re looking for a shortener in the Basque language then labur.eus is for you.

Other advantages to URL shorteners

Besides the two main advantages mentioned, of reducing the number of characters and personalising the URL, there are other advantages that are perhaps not so obvious.

Some shorteners allow for the extraction of data on interaction with links, meaning that an analysis can be made of the statistics for our sites and others. This data may show the number of clicks, their geographical origin and the number of shares.

Many shorteners also make things easier by offering the option of directly programming posts on social media. URL shorteners don’t affect SEO either as they simply re-path the original address, meaning all the work to position the resource stays intact.

New programme to digitalise the social and solidarity economy

Posted on by Comunicació

The MatchImpulsa programme has been conceived to promote the digitalisation of the social and solidarity economy (SSE) and the collaborative economy. The goal of the first programme by the Open Chair in Digital Economy, offered in collaboration with the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), is for organisations and businesses in this sphere to fully enter the digital economy at a time of change which has accelerated since the start of the pandemic.

The new programme follows the lines set out in the city’s 2030 SSE strategy, which identifies the challenge of digitalisation and the creation of digital platforms as one of its main goals. Along with these goals the idea is to include the feminist perspective, redress the increase in gender inequalities in digitalisation processes and speed up the adoption of equality measures in digital environments in companies.

The new Open Chair involves a cost of 701,500 euros between now and the end of the year, with the City Council to contribute 55% to fund SSE and collaborative economy projects, provide advice and mentoring, strengthen ties in specific sectors and foster collaboration between projects.

The programme is structured into three strategy areas:

  • Digitalisation of organisations and businesses, the creation and strengthening of digital platforms: three programmes to providing varying degrees of support for companies and organisations, to help develop their digital strategy, adapt their organisational and teleworking strategy and start working with digital platforms or create their own.
  • Boost for key SSE ecosystems in Barcelona: in particular, agro-ecology (in a year when Barcelona is the world sustainable food capital) and digital feminism, which aims to build an ecosystem of practices with feminist values in Barcelona’s digital economy and create a resource for empowering women and promoting alternative masculinities.
  • Groups of experts in technology, equality and university-business ties to offer resources for moving forward with digitalisation under the guidance of those who know most about it.

MatchImpulsa will run from 25 May to 31 December. Those wishing to participate should sign up on the website matchimpulsa.barcelona.