Nima Moinpour

My name is Nima Moinpour. My goal is to help you become better equipped for your rightful survival and ethical battles as we navigate alignment with the world. I am hopeful that I can help orient you about the below topics in the coming few years: > Technology Studies > Media Studies > Philosophy of Mind > Metaphysics > Sociology > Psychology > Urban Studies > Psycho-Geo-Phsyics > Investing > Marketing > Branding I received my B.A. in Analytical Philosophy, focusing on the philosophy of language, mind, communication, and phenomenology from UCLA (2009). During my undergraduate studies in Los Angeles, I was active in student leadership, ethics club and also wrote for the university newspaper covering Entertainment Media & Technologies with the Daily Bruin. Through these experiences, I made interconnections that lead me to become interested in studying semiotics and then became interested in going to New York to work in the advertising sphere to understand this concept through the most prevalent medium of all. After some reflection, I indeed became interested in social and philosophical insights that were underpinning these mediated productions; thus, for my graduate studies, I enrolled at the New School to study Media Studies in 2011. We were part of the School of Public Engagement, so besides completing my required research methods courses, I concentrated on research regarding media and urban environments, and where the two meets at the intersection of place learning, local oral history. In order to satisfy my track, I dedicated my courses to the study of theory behind the sense of place and then applied it to where I was in Silicon Valley. I had read my mentor's book Places of Learning: Media, Architecture, Pedagogy (Elizabeth Ellsworth, 2014), and I had developed a heightened awareness of my temporal/spatial orientation. I dedicated several courses gathering qualitative and quantitative data about resident's place identity and memories about its past. Ethnography is something I have done since the very early days of my immigration from Tehran to the United States. Where I was so comfortable and assimilated in Tehran, coming to a location bare and boring, but yet all so technical such as Silicon Valley enabled me to become aware there are differences of attunement in any different place. Everyone knows about the gold rush of California. In 1948 gold miners flocked to northern California to gather their stock of wealth by working the hills to mine for gold and also mercury. My thinking and curiosities really began while I was working tech marketing contracts at Google Maps as their Contract Global Marketing Coordinator when I observed the inner atmosphere of a tech mine and began becoming curious about mining cultures and communities previously settled and operated in San Jos/San Francisco. I also took a short contract at Facebook working on the Facebook Mentions project, and this experience confirmed my other transcendent ideas about tech tribes and progressive enthusiasm that resided within this locale. While working contracts, I took a transfer graduate Collaborative Urban Planning course at San Jose State University, where I learned Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology with my other mentor Rick Koss. Together with the team of graduate students, we devised workshops and focus group discussions amongst the residents of a downtown neighborhood, hosting Latino and African American communities, many mid-houses, all service level occupations, and many street entrepreneurs. We gathered the data from their participation and put together a report which was then given to the San Jose Mayor's Office for consideration. Later that year, we found out that we won first place at the American Planning Association's California Chapter for the university project of the year. This project had a profound impact on me as I had until then been much in the books. I had read about the impact of gentrification and income disparities in Silicon Valley, but to hear the voice of this community first hand, and then see the possible impact bottom-up communication could have for planning truly confirmed my path in public engagement research and local studies. The collection of my studies transformed into what became my first book SILICON VALLEY SIGNALS: TECHNOLOGICAL ENTHUSIASM AND THE TIMES, which was gathered using the Media Archeology methodologies. The book explores the interconnections of geographical positioning, history/types of labor, and the interplay of technical enthusiasm and faith within the Silicon Valley locale. Habits are hard to break, even for places. Through designing several simple independent research projects throughout my courses, I got to locate found specimen above-and sometimes under- its landscape, to approximate a possible pulse about that locale to explain its technological tendencies. I want to continue my studies to merge my academic and professional experiences at the intersections of media, migration, and urban environment so that I can hopefully produce and contribute industry or policy applicable work. I like to continue to be proactive and dedicate my work to the migrant community, and their sense of identity and attachment with their landing destinations. I want to understand newcomer acclamation to a destination from a mediated perspective to propose new solutions for location-based mediations about a locale through widening the media and technology sphere in an effort for optimization of content, context, and commerce for better democratization of media and more equal/represented a share of voice (SOV) from local communities, for the incoming "other" communities to a new locale. ------------------------------- Book a Local Tour or Workshop Over the phone or online @ www.OrientationSJ.com If you're looking for a Virtual Orientation Workshop for your team or group please email me: nmoinpour@gmail.com ​----------------------------------- I'll show you how to embrace it. Orientation & Knowledge GEOGRAPHIC ORIENTATION HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE WORKSHOP PRESENTATIONS DESTINATION ADVICE ​