"Research never looked so good!"
Ben Shneiderman
"Every future scientist should watch this!"
Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
"A fascinating and thoroughly original portrayal of the mindset of a scientist"
Steven Pinker
2016 Webby Award Nominee (Finalist)
In My Shoes is a self-recorded video series created by César Hidalgo, head of the Collective Learning group at the MIT Media Lab. In My Shoes follows Hidalgo's personal and professional life between March and June of 2016, a period when Hidalgo released DataUSA, and also, travelled to DC, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Portland, Monterrey, and Paris.
“In My Shoes” is a charming, personal story of the life of a high-flying, world-traveling rock-star professor whose wife and daughter are vital parts of his life. Hidalgo captures the fun, fame, fatigue, and frustration of doing research while traveling to give talks in a global community. A cheerful blend of reality TV, video selfies, and eye-catching visuals. Research never looked so good!
--- Ben Shneiderman, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland
"A fascinating and thoroughly original portrayal of the mindset of a scientist, working at one of the frontiers of 21st-century science.”
---Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of How the Mind Works and The Language Instinct
"This is something that you never seen before-- Science Journalism 2.0-- a real time peek behind the scenes of how science is done and practiced. It is not the tired mythical image of a lonely scientist quietly working for years in the basement of some university. It unveils instead the highly collaborative social context within which science is done today, from the perspective of a young star! I think every future scientist should watch this!"
---Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science, Northeastern University, and author of Linked
MARCH 23-26, 2016
It all starts in Washington DC, where Cesar participates of an academic event at the Library of Congress, films a demo video for a new data visualization website, and visits the World Bank and the IMF before departing for Saudi Arabia.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Español (Subtitulos),
Would you like to help translate In My Shoes to other languages? Contact us at: shoes@media.mit.edu
Credits:
Written and Directed by: César A. Hidalgo
Camera: César A. Hidalgo and Luisina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Edited by: Lusina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Sound Mixing: Daniel Magnani
MARCH 27-30, 2016
Cesar travels to Riyadh, where he meets with a group of scholars to work on research.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Español (Subtitulos),
Would you like to help translate In My Shoes to other languages? Contact us at: shoes@media.mit.edu
Credits:
Written and Directed by: César A. Hidalgo
Camera: César A. Hidalgo
Edited by: Lusina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Sound Mixing: Daniel Magnani
MARCH 31-APRIL 8, 2016
Upon his return from Riyadh, Cesar reunites with his family and gets ready to launch DataUSA, a project he created in collaboration with his research group at MIT, Deloitte, and Datawheel.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Español (Subtitulos),
Would you like to help translate In My Shoes to other languages? Contact us at: shoes@media.mit.edu
Credits:
Written and Directed by: César A. Hidalgo
Camera: César A. Hidalgo
Edited by: Lusina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Sound Mixing: Daniel Magnani
APRIL 9-13, 2016
Cesar describes his experience working at The MIT Media Lab during the bi-annual members event.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Español (Subtitulos),
Would you like to help translate In My Shoes to other languages? Contact us at: shoes@media.mit.edu
Credits:
Written and Directed by: César A. Hidalgo
Camera: César A. Hidalgo & Luisina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Edited by: Lusina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Sound Mixing: Daniel Magnani
APRIL 14-16
The night the Media Lab members event is over, Cesar boards a plane to Switzerland, where he arrives to keynote an event for Schindler--Europe's largest elevator company. He then learns about the future of the elevator industry and flies to Portland over the weekend, where he meets his best friend.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Español (Subtitulos),
Would you like to help translate In My Shoes to other languages? Contact us at: shoes@media.mit.edu
Credits:
Written and Directed by: César A. Hidalgo
Camera: César A. Hidalgo
Edited by: Lusina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Sound Mixing: Daniel Magnani
APRIL 18-23. 2016
Cesar presents his work at the Force 11 conference in Portland Oregon, together with Steven Pinker.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Español (Subtitulos),
Would you like to help translate In My Shoes to other languages? Contact us at: shoes@media.mit.edu
Credits:
Written and Directed by: César A. Hidalgo
Camera: César A. Hidalgo & Luisina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Edited by: Lusina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Sound Mixing: Daniel Magnani
APRIL 25-27
Cesar visits the University of Monterrey, where he delivers a keynote during the annual event for the University's Board.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Español (Subtitulos),
Would you like to help translate In My Shoes to other languages? contact us at: shoes@media.mit.edu
Credits:
Written and Directed by: César A. Hidalgo
Camera: César A. Hidalgo
Edited by: Lusina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Sound Mixing: Daniel Magnani
MAY 28-JUNE 2, 2016
Cesar travel to Paris together with Anna to participate of an event at the OECD.
OTHER LANGUAGES: Español (Subtitulos),
Would you like to help translate In My Shoes to other languages? contact us at: shoes@media.mit.edu
Credits:
Written and Directed by: César A. Hidalgo
Camera: César A. Hidalgo
Edited by: Lusina Pozzo-Ardizzi
Sound Mixing: Daniel Magnani
It all began with a missed flight.
In 2014 I was scheduled to give a talk at the Santa Fe Institute, in New Mexico. My plan was to fly to Albuquerque on Thursday night, drive to Santa Fe, give my talk ,and return to Boston the next day. The connecting flight from Boston to New York, however, was delayed so I could not make it Albuquerque. On my way back from the airport I notified the people in Santa Fe that I was missing the event and told them I was going to send a video instead. That night, I sent a text message to Manuel Aristarán, a graduate student who had recently joined my group. Manuel had mentioned that his wife was a filmmaker, so I asked him if I could hire her to help me make a video the next day. The next morning we filmed, edited, and submitted a video. A few months later, I offered Luisina a desk and a paycheck in my lab.
No.
To make a project that was visually attractive, I focused on filming mostly trips and events. The film does not include the time I spend writing, teaching, or working with students. Also, trips have an inherent narrative to them which facilitate the construction of a visual story: they start with a departure, develop by introducing new characters and executing the purpose of the journey, and wind down on a return to normal. More importantly, I am sure my life is very different from that of many scholars. Scholars are a diverse group that includes people from every corner of the world who vary on their living conditions, personal narratives, and perspectives on life. In My Shoes tries to show--in a real but entertaining manner--some aspects of the life of one academic.
Figuring it out.
When we began filming we were unclear about the format and narrative of the project. For more than a year, we experimented with a sitcom format, and with a film format. After two false starts, I decided to give it one more shot before cutting our loses. So looking forward into my schedule, I saw a spurts of trips coming up and decided to film these trips and we edit them linearly. That got the project going. Then, putting all together was a struggle, that forced us to figure out voice overs sequences to complete the episodes, since the narrative from the trips was not enough.
Almost everything, but not everything. Sequences that I did not film include the the Lincoln Memorial and the subway sequence in Washington DC, my talk in Portland (which was recorded by one of the conference organizers siting next to me), and my talk at the OECD, which was filmed by Anna.
Most of it. All of the material that supports the basic narrative of the series was filmed between March and June of 2016. Important parts of the B-roll footage, however, come from video we recorded before that, when we were figuring out what to do. For example, in the Paris episode, the sequence that talks about the development of places and the development of people uses footage I recorded in Hong Kong and London in 2015. In the Portland episode, we use footage from a trip to Chile I did in January of 2016. In the Media Lab episode, we use archive footage from home videos, and also, from videos we recorded in a previous Media Lab member.
In the last three years, I've been to all of these places:
They got used to it. The fact that the series was self-recorded, made the process very non-invasive. At the end of the day, there was no sound guy with a big boom microphone, or camera man. It was just dad with a camera, so it all felt very natural.
I filmed the entire series with a Canon T5i and two lenses, a 10-18mm f 4.5-5.6 (which I used mostly as a 10mm) and an f 1.4 50mm. I also had a camera mounted audio-technica microphone.
As a scholar, I often hear other scholars complaining about the banality of television culture, and about the inaccuracy with which television portrays academic life . Yet, most scholars who complain about television culture do not contribute content to it. Instead of just criticizing, I am trying to contribute by filming a series showing the life of a scientist as told by a scientist. Of course, my proposal is full of limitations. It is a mega-indie series, which was self-recorded while traveling. It has clearly, a limited production and entertainment value. Nevertheless, I think it can help us imagine what would be like to create a factually accurate show centered on the life of someone who is not a Hollywood celebrity or a New York City comedian, but a scholar.
But In My Shoes also has layers. One of the layers that mattered the most to me is the layer showing the blurring of boundaries that happens in the life of an overworked and over-traveled person. The blurring of cultural differences you experience when you visit two or three continents in a few weeks, and when your nationality becomes being foreign. I find that blurring liberating. For locals in the U.S., I am a hispanic immigrant who works as a scholar. But even though I understand that is the identity that U.S. locals classify me into, I do not feel that as my identity. Why? Because I am constantly in and out of the U.S., and in and out of my academic field. I am constantly being foreign, experiencing other identities, and even choosing the identity with which I can be foreign with. So the blurring of boundaries that comes with excess travel has two effects on me. One, is shaping my identity, since it provides me with an un-identity that is fluid and not narrowly defined. I can be a Chilean in Riyadh, a Physicist in an environment of Economists, an Economist among physicists, and a foreign in my own country. The other effect, is that when you move that much, and you live cultural differences--instead of just learning about them through media--you realize that those differences do not matter. You realize that if Anna, Jian, Almaha, Sanjay, Bogang, Carlos, Alex, Kevin, or Nuria are being weird, or nice, or think you are an a**hole, has nothing to do with where they come from. It is more about the matching of personalities that we grow up experiencing within our own language groups. So the second goal of In My Shoes is to illustrate the liberation that we experience when we blur boundaries. I understand that the liberating effects of blurred boundaries are difficult to understand, but in my experience, they are the default behavior of humans once we cross the irreversible point when you are always foreign.
César Hidalgo is an Associate Professor at MIT and the director of the Collective Learning Group at the MIT Media Lab. Cesar is a chilean physicist, who has focused on understanding how economies and societies learn, and on how that learning is shaped by technology and institutions. His work also involves the development of tools that facilitate collective learning in teams, organizations, and nations. These tools include The Observatory of Economic Complexity, Immersion, DataUSA, and DIVE, among others. Cesar is the author of Why Information Grows, and a co-author of the Atlas of Economic Complexity.
IN MY SHOES is a project created, written, and directed by César A. Hidalgo. Luisina Pozzo-Ardizzi edited the episodes and Daniel Magnani did the audio mixing. The work of Luisina and Daniel were supported through a combination of discretionary funding from Cesar's research group at MIT and César's own personal funds.
