connecting*the*dots

And to think that I knew Jay when he was a non-drinking, two-car driving, mall-shopping, 25 year-old happy go lucky curmudgeon.

Now he’s a supa-star.

Matt and Jay built Futureme just after we all split from Billsville in 2000. In 2005, Forbes built their Email Time Capsule and pimped their “original” idea to the world, receiving a bunch of of great press. That corporate spotlight was corrected on sites like BoingBoing when me and a bunch of other folk gave props to the originators.

Now Futureme, the book, is about to be released and after Jay got dissed by NPR last year, it looks like he’s on point for an upcoming LA Times Sunday magazine interview. Niche celebrity status is on.

Bust out those shades, dog.

A few weeks ago, Molly asked me if I would be interested in speaking with a group of students at Weaver Academy, a local high school here in Greensboro. Her friend, Meredith Newlin, is a teacher of rhetoric and writing at the school and Molly felt that our two worlds — full of words — were meant to collide.

I’m a teacher wanna-be, so I pretty much agreed to do it on the spot.

So after a bit of back and forth, Meredith and I were able to schedule yesterday as the day for the meeting. I made my way over to the school just after 1pm and was graciously received by her entire class.

Can I just say how cool it is to vibe with young minds?

I mean, we started in the typical lecture/audience model, where “Mr. Coon” began as the guest speaker for the day as the deliverer of wisdom. But after only 15 minutes of my back-story, the kids and I found ourselves immersed neck deep in a conversation about what it means to have a voice in the midst of the information revolution.

Yeah, 11th graders.

Meredith was great, as she guided the conversation from the back of the room, making smart bridges of relevance to her curricula — how rhetoric and solid writing skills can lead to both personal growth and new opportunities in the age in which we live, but it was the kids that led the direction of the conversation.

As we bounced from idea to idea, we spent a decent amount of time talking about social networking (every kid is on MySpace) and blogging (only a few kids actually blogged) and the power both hold nowadays, which quickly segued into a conversation about The People, Yes.

A Little Ditty About…

Over the past month or so, I’ve been hitting the library every Monday night at 6pm to catch the Food not Bombs homeless dinner, with laptop in tow to both present to the group when possible or pull people off to the side to introduce the ideas behind generating a voice, blogging and building community.

After giving the kids a bit of such context, I ventured into sharing some ideas and direction that I’ve yet to share with the majority of my board — such as opening up The People, Yes to all Greensboro residents, while diving deeper into more areas on the other side of the digital divide, like the city/county jail system (a Ndesanjo idea, I must confess).

I also mentioned that at some point in the near future, we’ll be looking to sign up volunteer blogging mentors, acquire digital cameras via donations and open up the project for either individual or local business sponsorships of bloggers.

Within minutes of sharing the nuts and bolts of the project, kids began asking about how blogging actually worked and one even volunteered to work on the project itself (what up, Cory!). Quite honestly, the amount of interest in the project was amazing and proved consistent with the feeling I have that once I can focus on TPY with all my attention, it’s going to be an extremely rewarding experience.

Until then, I’m relying on the folk who have stepped up to date, and that list is growing each day.

Back to yesterday: To give a bit more context surrounding the afternoon, here’s a few links to illustrate some of the ideas that we rapped about:

• Bruce Sterling’s closing speech and reading from Carl Sandburg’s, The People, Yes! at SXSW last year (my influence to start TPY)
• Introducing the notion of tagging meta-data to information these days through poetry
• How we can watch our rhetoric and writing grow and evolve through simple constructs like tag clouds

Just as we began to dig in and discuss different options for starting a blog, the hour and a half came to an end and the kids left for their next classes. Meredith asked me to speak a bit to her next class of ninth graders, which I was all too happy to oblige — we even have a Where’s Waldo-type photo to prove it:

Meredith and I are going to arrange another time for me and her kids to get down and dirty with blogging software, which will hopefully empower her class with a collaborative blog and/or individual ones for any of the kids who want to start publishing their Peter Bradyesque voices.

With the passion and curiosity of these kids, Roch won’t know what’s hitting him. ;)

Just a reminder how sick and twisted one human being can become if they try hard enough.

(originally uploaded by Akcelik)

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UPDATE: Okay, I’m getting a ton of search hits looking for the lyrics to this… song? So here it is. Don’t say I don’t love you:

Allo
Hello
Allo
You people all have hands
They are all normal hands
Five fingers
Und some hair
But mine are very bare
Do you know why?
Do you know why?
I’ll tell you why
I’ll tell you why

My hands are bananas
Your hands are bananas
My hands are bananas
Your hands are bananas

(Girls)
Frau Spots
Un Frau Stripes
Frau Spots
Un Frau Stripes
Frau Spots
Un Frau Stripes
Frau Spots
Un Frau Stripes and also Frau Spots

Ooooohhh
Ooooohhh
Ooooohhh

John has never had chili
No, no, never had chili
John has never had chili
Ever in his life

He doesn’t like chili

Doppelgänger
Doppelgänger
Doppel, doppel, doppelgänger

Keep the monkeys away from my hands
Keep the monkeys away from my hands
Keep the monkeys away from my hands
Keep the monkeys away from my hands
Keep the monkeys away from my hands
Keep the monkeys away from my hands

We are ze monkeys
We are ze monkeys
We are ze monkeys
We are ze monkeys

Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht

Now clap like this!
(clapping)
No, clap like this!
(clapping)

Beware ze Milky Pirate
Beware ze Milky Pirate
Beware ze Milky Pirate
Beware ze Milky Pirate
Beware ze Milky Pirate (buffalo)
Beware ze Milky Pirate (buffalo)

Circley square
Squarely circle
Circley square
Squarely circle

Do you want the banana?
(Girl) Uh-huh
Do you want the banana?
(Girl) Uh-huh

Okay