connecting*the*dots

Cara Michele Forrest is one of the good people, fighting the good fight. She’s a tireless advocate for the rights of homeless people in Greensboro, NC.

When I say tireless, I’m not using empty rhetoric. Below is a shot of her in front of the NightWatch truck that hits the back streets of Greensboro each and every Friday night, usually getting her — the mother of teenagers — home well after 2am.

She’s a mixture of spunk, sass, righteousness and southern momma to boot. It’s hard to imagine anyone not appreciating her take no prisoners attitude when it comes to serving the needy in our community.

Well, don’t look now, but it’s starting to look like she’s catching some blowback for her no nonsense approach to advocacy.

It’s not coming from her friends on the street.

And it’s not coming from Greensboro residents or businesses who more often than not have adverse relationships with the homeless in town.

The unfortunate element of this story is that the flak she’s beginning to receive is from players within the very same agencies that she works with on a daily basis, in the common goal of eliminating homelessness in Greensboro and Guilford County proper.

Who Is Cara Michele Forrest?

There are a bunch of issues at play here and being that Michele is too good of a soul to air some of the details — she’s too humble to frame the issues in the context of her daily life on the off-chance of making it about her rather than the work she’s doing — I’m going to play advocate for her position.

If you have any issues with this post, it’s my thinking, reasoning and positioning.

Mine and mine alone.

Let me start off by stating that Michele isn’t a career advocate — she doesn’t take a salary to help people; she helps people because it’s a part of her calling.

It’s how she walks that fine and narrow line with Jesus.

So when push comes to shove, Michele not only has zero reasons to back away from doing everything she can to serve her community, but she refuses to bow to situations that might lead her off that narrow path.

Basically, she’s the type of person that gives Christianity a good name.

I bring this up to distinguish Michele’s character and her purpose in life. It’s what makes her such an amazing advocate. She doesn’t serve the numbers of homeless folk in town; she serves her friends in need.

She listens.

So when she tries to advance the notion that there are homeless people that can and should represent their own needs during Task Force conversations — meetings that eventually craft an approach to helping the homeless — and it falls on deaf ears, she feels wounded.

Or the time Michele worked out a program with the Greensboro Public Library to provide library cards to the homeless (usually reserved for people with proof of residency in Greensboro), but the providers in town failed to see the importance of the program and wouldn’t agree to vouch for the people they serve.

To a soul like Michele, it’s just another example of talking loud and doing nothing.

The Bottom Line

Over the last month or so, Michele has become increasingly upset with the bureaucratic machinations of the homeless industry that she finds herself dealing with on a daily basis.

She refuses to give me details regarding most of her problems — being the narrow path, tightrope walker that she is — but I know she feels that there might be improprieties in play with the operations of the Homeless Prevention Coalition of Guilford County.

A few days ago, she openly questioned an element of a certain initiative — something innocuous like the non-announcement of its launch date — but after following up internally and getting an answer she retracted the post.

Maybe she should’ve posted an update to the post with the newly found information, but she killed it instead, so all parties involved should’ve been satisfied.

Not quite.

The HPCGC now wants her blog, Chosen Fast, de-linked from their member page, stating:

“The HPCGC website is not the place to share your personal opinions and thoughts, particularly ones that are contrary to the success of the Coalition. No one’s trying to stop your advocacy, Michele, but you need to use the proper channels.”

If the HPCGC considers a link to a blog “sharing personal opinions and thoughts” they’re sitting a bit too close to their monitors.

What their position says to me is that they’re extremely controlling with their organization, and particularly inept regarding the role of the internet and their objectives in the 21st century.

More precisely stated; they value appearance over substance.

Sounds like some marketing and PR consultants have made a buck or two over there.

Here’s a little insight of my own (for what its worth):

You don’t gain trust and credibility with your clients, customers, constituents or neighbors by coming off overly slick, rounded and without flaws; you gain such respect by delivering for them while allowing yourself to be viewed as a human being.

Try to name one organization on this planet that isn’t made up of the blood, sweat and tears of human beings.

You can’t.

So why represent yourself or your organization otherwise?

I’m sure the people at HPCGC think they’re doing “the right thing,” but this is how bureaucrats stomp the passion out of people trying to make a positive difference in the world — people who are more concerned with the well-being of the people they serve than becoming a sycophant to folks who are primarily concerned with their job security.

It’s not right and it’s not fair, to both Cara Michele and her homeless friends.

And the bottom line is that it’s just not good business.

What’s History Worth?
The Lex Files

“Every time I publish a story related to the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation report and its aftermath, I hear from people either curious or angry about why the N&R, almost a year after the release of the report, continues to cover it.

[…]

But here’s the problem with ignoring the wrongs and the hurt that litter our past — and I am indebted to the old comic books I read as a kid for the imagery: You can cover up the past all you want, but often it won’t do any good. If you clean and bind the wounds of past harm, and acknowledge the loss and grief of those to whom it happened or their survivors, then you can bury it and perhaps it will rest easy.

But if you don’t, then don’t be surprised if, as you walk through the garden, smelling the magnolias and enjoying the evening air, a rotting hand reaches up from the ground and grabs you and won’t let go. Sometimes the dead don’t stay buried.”

I hear you and couldn’t agree more, Lex. And after living here for going on two years now, I think I’m getting the pulse of this city, but it’s a strange one to put a finger on.

For all of the accountability folks wants from city government and the GPD over issues like a fired police chief and potential misappropriations of $30,000 of taxpayers funds, one might think that the disgust over the Greensboro Police Department’s gross irresponsibility to protect and serve in ‘79 would draw a furor until they satisfactorily explained their inaction on that day.

Actually, that’s not true; the GPD was in action on 11/3:

• A police informant was riding with the Klan in the lead car
• The GPD filmed the Klan loading up their cars with numerous weapons prior to hitting the march route
• A call was sent out to clear the march route of all officers

So yes, the GPD was busy on that day, just not protecting the permit approved march route.

But can you blame them?

Nelson Johnson vociferously barked at the cops to stay away the day before, so they just followed his wishes. I mean, cops are notorious for throwing their responsibilities to the wind when a civilian yells loud enough, right?

From yesterday’s Yes! Weekly article, New inside perspectives on 1979 shootings point to police complicity:

[…] “Based on conversations with Dawson, who is no longer alive, Hennis told YES! Weekly in a recent interview that he believes members of the Greensboro Police Department decided to allow the Klan and Nazis to attack demonstrators after march organizer Nelson Johnson warned police to “stay out of our way.”

“The police, I believe, knew right much about it,” Hennis said. “After Nelson smart-mouthed them, they decided to just stay back and referee…. They didn’t have no plan, but they knew about it and couldn’t care less.” […]

Hell, the people that died in ‘79 were communists. It’s not like they were actually people who subscribed to a different take on labor issues and the systemic issues of socio-economic inequalities within America (which have actually grown since 1979). They were followers of a foreign “ism”… and words have consequences, right?

The thought makes me sick.

I’m not so naive to believe that privileged folk down here care to settle that case of obvious police wrongdoing.

Now, if there’s money involved or the potential for “reverse” racism to be framed, well, that’s a whole other case entirely.

Greensboro 101

Here’s the deal as I see it: Greensboro is a civil, southern town — civility will not allow for such retrospective inquiries of negative events that have occurred in the public sphere.

It’s not how things are done down here; dirty laundry is not to be aired — it’s meant to be buried.

Historically, that’s how things have worked.

It’s always been much easier to bury improprieties and crimes, along with the heads in this town, rather than talk about the issues, bring truth to the table, hold folks accountable to their actions and reconcile our grievances.

More so here than anywhere else I’ve lived.

The problem for past and present town planners and gatekeepers, is that we’re now living in the information age — their circle the wagon rhetorical tactics of old cannot quell the voices of residents who want answers, whether it be about 11/3/79 or the Dudley High School revolt or Willow Oaks or re-zoning a city district to force a successful rehabilitation and homeless program to close their doors.

And more and more folks are wanting answers in this day and age.

Burying an infested bone in a wire-frame view of a backyard these days can’t even fool a dog named Helenkeller.

(originally uploaded by pietel)

Gent, Belgium

Chris Anderson and Will Hearst talking shop in May of 2006:

Publisher, Will Hearst, on the evolution of journalism:

[..] In the era of 20 years ago, there was a notion of a professional journalist — I’m not saying let’s race back to that era — what I’m saying is that notion is utterly gone. And what we are seeing as so-called professional journalism is really freelance material, shot in Baghdad, shipped to New York, somebody voice-overs it and that’s supposed to be “live news.”

And we’re covering Israel out of London and we’re covering Nairobi out of Tokyo, you know, we’re kidding ourselves. So in a way, I think the cure is not to go backwards, but to go forwards and to label that stuff and get more of that material and do away with this pseudo-professional news, which it really isn’t.

I mean if we’re gonna have “citizen journalism,” then let’s have it. […]

I completely appreciate the sentiment, but Will Hearst knows better than anybody that isn’t going to occur through the existing mainstream channels.

Mainstream news outlets — television and newspaper alike — are busy attempting to figure out how to keep the best parts of their old revenue model in place while leveraging the independent voices of the information age.

While the conglomerates look for new ways to count the same beans, innovative distribution models with decentralized reporting have already taken hold.

This shouldn’t be the cornerstone of the conversation, though. Even without an organized effort to distribute decentralized reporting, there are already 30 million active blogs in play around the world.

The news is becoming hyper-local and hyper-topical without the steady hand of industry drivers to guide it; traditional journalism is going the way of the stock broker.

Now traditional ethics? Well, that’s another story entirely…

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. ;)

Ndesanjo Macha, the Central Unit Director for the Boys and Girls Club of Greensboro, pinged me about this earlier in the week:

Later today, The Central Unit is having a grand opening of the first recording studio for kids in Greensboro. The event will involve performances by club members, local artists, NC A&T university step team (Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity) and modeling group (Verge), etc.

The studio is for kids to learn news skills in digital technologies (sound engineering, recording, etc.). Their aim is to teach them how to be good producers of information and knowledge (since they are already very good consumers!)

(studio under construction)

Time: 6-8pm, February 23
Location: 840 Neal Street, Greensboro
Ticket: $3 (adults), $2 (kids - non-members of the B&G club).
Contact: 235-5236 (cell) or 274-1509 (o).

More photos of the studio in progress and their blog.

Ana in Honolulu forwarded me this after coming across it in a Google search. Anyone happen to know where the shot was taken?

UPDATE: It appears that Mantis dropped this stencil across the UK.

Full set of protest shots…

Margaret, a reader from Minnesota, sent me this beaut the other day from Northern Minneapolis.

Thanks, Margaret, and keep ‘em coming!

(originally uploaded by - ♡ 14.2.1 ♡ -)

(originally uploaded by mdessem)

Sorry for the bit of drama in my last few posts, but as I stared at the ceiling the other night — not able to sleep because of the sheer amount of stuff going on in my life — I came to the instant realization that I needed to simplify a bit, you know, wrangle my schedule back to being my own.

The crazyness never should have progressed to this point; I know better.

When describing elements of good design to clients, I use the term “reduction,” more often than not to make clear that an additive approach to design — whether it be loading up the interface with features or extreme typographic combinations — is bound to fail, or in the very least, produce a garbled result.

Low and behold, when designer-boy paused to self-reflect the other night — rather, when my brain put me on repeat, caught up in a whirling broken record of commitment-paralysis — I clearly saw that my life was chock full of projects and passions with not many getting the attention they individually deserve.

Especially, my most important passion.

So when I crept out of bed the other night, I attempted to express what I was feeling — that I needed to reduce — without being too wordy. A couple of posts later, my brain felt as though my short-term destiny had been altered by just enough degrees to graciously allow the cycling of rapid thoughts to end and let me drift off to sleep.

Well, based on the comments, email and calls I’ve received from friends, family and distant readers, I figured that I need to provide a bit more insight as to where I am and why blogging has become so much of a drain.

Ridiculous Information Retrieval And Digestion Patterns

I spend an awful lot of time tracking blogs and sites of interest — upwards of 110 to 130 feeds at any given time — covering numerous industries, local and world politics, friends around the globe, etc. Many of my posts over the last six-months have amounted to short quotes from people talking about issues that I find interesting; I used the WP asides feature to drop these quick thoughts (or “pointers”) as an effort to push information out quickly, instead of sitting on it to form a larger essay post down the line. That was a smart solution to upping my output and reducing post paralysis, but I quickly became the idiot who’s addicted to checking Bloglines every 15 minutes for more material.

After pausing from blogging for just a few days, I’ve been able to treat Bloglines like my backup email account — checking once in the morning and once in the evening. I don’t know if it’ll last, but so far so good.

Forgetting Why I Blog

I’ve been writing on the web, one way or another, since 1997. Up until June of 2005, I never even glanced at web analytics — my personal state of mind was always my indicator of happiness or success. Shit, I’ve changed my domain name so many times in the past to reflect personal shifts in mood or focus (digitalportfolio, squareone, apperceptive), I never even paused to consider that my writing/poetry/blogging was being read by anyone with any degree of consistency. Well, in this age of Mint, Feedburner, Technorati, etc., I’ve come to understand that I am being read.

I rather enjoy the benefits of having a readership — hearing from old friends and meeting new ones through conversations found in comment threads, trackback pings, industry conferences or local meetups — but not when content production begins to replace blogging at my pace. Up until last week, I thought I had been publishing at my own pace, even though I knew that I was spending way too much time in the blogging process. After a bit of self-reflection, I’m not so sure that’s the case.

Moving Forward

My life is currently chock full of responsibility and not enough time in the day. I’m working with five different clients on a variety of projects, building my first non-profit and design consultancy, living with the love of my life and trying to keep up with my little bro back up in Jersey. Not one of them has been receiving enough attention from me. Throw in my friends & family and trying to get back in shape, and, well, I think you’re starting to feel me. Blogging is important, but it can’t be my central focus.

So where do I take my blogging from here?

• My Technorati profile reads: connecting*the*dots attempts to frame the convergence of political, technological and cultural memes through pointed essays and captured moments of communication across the web. It’s time to change up the editorial premise and make it much more geared towards my life. I’ll probably remove the name of the blog all together at some point.
• I’m going back to dropping poetry and writing longer essays when the mood strikes — getting away from keeping up with an intra-day, consecutive posting streak.
• John Ford and I are working on developing a collaborative blog project at dotmatrixproject.com. I’ll probably use this spot as the publishing interface for those design/tech posts, as John is working on code to scrape dotmatrixproject tagged posts from a universe of indexed sites and add them to dotmatrixproject as authored posts.
• I’ll continue to post perspective on items that outrage or move me — whether it be in the form of a video, a pointer, or an essay — but I’m going to pick my spots moving forward. Feel free to keep sending me items of interest; the random email pointers I’ve received from readers over the last year has made blogging extremely rewarding

So yeah, that’s the plan more or less; less posts, but with more personal and professional meaning and published on my schedule.

I do hope that you’ll keep your subscription as I attempt this transition. While I won’t be presenting as much info anymore, I’d like to believe that what I do publish will be worth the wait.

We’ll see.

(originally uploaded by Gymkata)

Martin Luther King
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Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King

For the back story, hit up Tuttle SVC.

UPDATE: It seems as though Google has closed the GoogleBomb loophole in their algorithm. What now?

(originally uploaded by Nomine UK)

Last Sunday, Ndesanjo, Andy and I attended an event over at A&T, which we thought was a discussion about the digital divide in the African-American community. Well, it turned out to be a much broader conversation — one steeped in collaborative progression towards building stronger community.

What we stumbled upon was The Dean’s Book Club, and this particular meeting was to discuss the ten covenants found in Tavis Smiley’s book, The Covenant With Black America.

As we attempted to get our bearings straight — not quite understanding the format of the discussion — Will Hall approached us and pointed out that his table (one of eight) was the setting digital divide discussion. Once the room filled out and Sharon Hoard, Dr. Ioney James and Dean Lelia Vickers gave their opening remarks about the book and the importance of Smiley’s covenants to the African-American community, each table turned inwards and began discussing the underlying concepts behind a particular covenant.

Will Hall moderating the digital divide conversation

While the discussion was centered on Smiley’s perspective of how the digital divide affects African-Americans, each person at the table had a unique perspective to share.

Barbara Davis of HandyCapable, spoke about how computers have changed the lives of disabled individuals — specifically by providing them with the opportunity to gain skills be repairing computers themselves. She also told the story of how a local woman — grandmother and matriarch of her family — received a computer with an internet connection and soon became the connectivity and application hub for her entire family.

To the right of me sat a number of students and teachers who provided a perspective about technology in the university setting; how it needed to become more infused in the curriculum across all of the schools at A&T in order to improve computer literacy.

Student participation was the centerpiece of the evening

When I mentioned the concept of blogging and how it’s already empowered so many local voices in Greensboro, especially through our local aggregator, the kids (as well as the adults) stared back with blank expressions on their faces — knowing nothing of either blogging or Greensboro101.com.

Living in a town nicknamed Blogsboro, that reaction was somewhat disappointing, but not completely unexpected. It would be foolish to think that all of Greensboro is tracking the latest personal publishing developments, especially when sitting at a table discussing the digital divide. Our blogging community is nowhere close to being representative of the entire community.

Such an obvious divide in local, amplified voices is the primary reason I began working on The People, Yes in the first place. With this reaction as impetus, I’m beginning to consider avenues for expanding our sub-community focus beyond the homeless — post-launch of course.

But I digress… back to the discussion at hand.

Professor and student reading from The Covenant With Black America

Another perspective regarding technology in the African-American community emerged from the two professors at the table. Both men seemed to focus more on the negative aspects of today’s youth, stressing that the desire for excellence with the youth isn’t consistent with the rest of society, which affects the ability to compete for advancement in society. One professor went as far as to blame mainstream media — violent video games, music, etc. — for the degradation of African American youths.

Man, I wish we had more time to explore that one.

Ndesanjo attempted to deal with the issue, as he touched upon his work at the Boys and Girls Club, expressing the importance of teaching the youth to view the web as an opportunity to participate in an upload culture by creating media — even their own games — for distribution. It was a poignant message, but I don’t think it quite stuck as the conversation quickly moved to hit the major points of Smiley’s covenant before our student representative reported our discussion back to the entire room.

As we moved from the digital divide conversation into the presentations of the various covenant discussions, I began to get a sense of how this particular community of professionals, educators and students approached building strong, supportive, humane community. Tavis Smiley might have set the framework in motion, but the pragmatism, compassion and righteousness of the participants in the room exposed me to yet another dynamic aspect of Greensboro community.

I’m telling you, there’s gold in these yonder hills; nuggets of community I’ve yet to experience living elsewhere.

Tonight @ 7pm in Congdon Hall, Room 138 at High Point University (Directions), John Ford and myself will be rapping about this little activity called blogging.

If you’ve heard about it before, but don’t know how blogging can assist you as a small business owner, an activist, a writer, etc., come on down and get both the back-story and the 411 on how to publish to the internet.

And if you’re already a blogger, well, come on down and live-blog our presentation!

Have they no shame! Heh…

Sage Lewis, if you ever find yourself in Greensboro, NC, feel free to drop me a line. I’d dig having a beer with you, bro’.

Wired News
Gannett to Crowdsource News
By Jeff Howe

[…]

According to internal documents provided to Wired News and interviews with key executives, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions. Starting Friday, Gannett newsrooms were rechristened “information centers,” and instead of being organized into separate metro, state or sports departments, staff will now work within one of seven desks with names like “data,” “digital” and “community conversation.”

The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.

“This is a huge restructuring for us,” said Michael Maness, the VP for strategic planning of news and one of the chief architects of the project. According to an e-mail sent Thursday to Gannett news staff by CEO Craig Dubow, the restructuring has been tested in 11 locations throughout the United States, but will be in place throughout all of Gannett’s newspapers by May. “Implementing the (Information) Center quickly is essential. Our industry is changing in ways that create great opportunity for Gannett.”

[…]

Well, it looks like Jay Rosen’s NewAssignment.net isn’t as much R&D as he and many others have thought.

Sure, Jay will have tons more room to explore the creation of a collaborative news model with value for the reader, the participants and the domain alike, but with this news from Gannett, it’s obvious that the owners of these newspapers are finally getting that change is an eventuality.

My question: Is their approach to CrowdSourcing as pure as Jay’s?

As Jay tells it, NewAssignment will evolve over time (without the pressures of a bottom line, as it’s root is based in academia), discovering and iterating different methods of collaboration with citizens who are willing to put time and effort into a story because it absolutely concerns them from either a personal or community perspective.

No matter how much Gannett, the organization, talks that talk, their institutional and primary shareholders will not allow them to walk that exact walk. This is not an egalitarian shift in operating procedures; this is a shift based purely on industry competition and the potential loss of capital.

The motivations of editors and journalists within these organizations align much more with the drivers behind NewAssignment, but the bottom line for their careers is that they are at the mercy of the business drivers of the Gannetts of the world. So when an organization decides to run in this direction, I can only imagine the types of conversations to be found at the water-cooler.

The Future Of CrowdSourcing

My net takeaway of this announcement from Gannett is positive, but only in as much as their organizational methodology doesn’t attempt to leverage the free output of people as a mechanism for reaching a bottom-line. For if people’s creativity, perspectives and thesis’ are tapped into — beyond the aforementioned proactive participation of watchdogging, whistle-blowing and researching — then we’re heading down a path that isn’t progressive; it’s a reversion to the underpinnings of the industrial revolution and techniques of mass production, only now within the information age.

This isn’t an easy subject to take a position because technology isn’t a static delivery platform. Take the search industry as an example:

When a search engine (corporation) indexes billions of web pages (other people’s work) and returns search results with advertising affixed, that search engine is essentially CrowdSourcing to establish their bottom-line. Now, because the vast majority of people and organizations whose web sites, blogs, services, applications, etc. receive a huge benefit of consistent exposure from such an arrangement, the search industry is considered to be a benefit rather than exploitation.

But a particular news organization does not fall into the same sphere as a search engine.

A search engine indexes everything, from the base domain to the most granular content found within. If/when news organizations venture beyond working the wisdom of the crowd in a participatory fashion, and begin to algorithmically tap into the meta-data of external amateur output — whether it be blog posts, video, photography, podcasts, etc. — the fine line between collaboration and exploitation will be crossed in order to impact a bottom-line.

Other people, afar and local, are thinking about these issues as well:

• Chris Messina is a tireless advocate for community and open-source, so his perspective on CrowdSourcing goes even deeper into the fundamental drivers of our capitalistic society. This interview is an interesting conversation along these lines.
• Local blogger, The Shu, posted his meandering thoughts along the lines of this very same issue early last year — particular to the announcement that the Greensboro News & Record planned on creating a “Town Square” with the participation of local bloggers — and was painted by journalists and many local bloggers in the comment thread as being everything but a conspiracy theorist.

In numerous circles, the term information age is considered synonymous with the term information revolution, but that association is tenuous at best in my mind.

Are we going to let the revolutionary aspects of technology explicitly serve the capital masters of the world, turning our personal expertise, opinions and creativity into the equivalent of a virtual assembly line of mass media production?

I truly hope not.

Dear Forward-Thinking Suits,

Thanks so much for pulling all of the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert clips off of YouTube. You’ve now rendered a good number of my posts useless — posts that were marketing your shows for free. That’s right, you had thousands of fans, like me, pointing to and contextualizing clips from their blogs, generating millions of page views and legions of new viewers and you killed it because they weren’t your page views.

So dumb.

Let me ask you people a simple question: How much money do you pump into your marketing department annually? I mean, what’s your budget for marketing executives, their minions and external network marketing? Can’t you recognize that whatever percentage you had set aside for TDS and TCS brand awareness (not specific show promos, just awareness campaigns) was becoming a waste of money with the YouTube fans doing our thing? We were doing your jobs for free and doing it better than you ever could have done it yourself!

Come to think of it, maybe you did understand that angle before acting…

See, the way that I view this is that from an organizational standpoint, this type of viral marketing is a perfect opportunity to cut back on traditional marketing budgets and let the web do what the web does. But then again, organizations are made up of people and people need to provide value in order to get paid by the organization.

V.P. Johnson can’t keep that corner office if he has legions of fans doing his work for him at a price that puts him out on the street. So build that wall! Keep them out of our stuff! Send them back to Mexico… er… hm.

Congratulations, again, Comedy Central executives. You’ve proven yourself to be no more forward-thinking than this administration that your talent rails on each week. Someday, your network bosses will understand what this move did to your fan-base, but probably not until a competitor network — one that won’t collude with the rest of the big boys — embraces the web and the people that put food on your plates.

Colbert and Stewart are still my boys, but my passion for your product has dropped immeasurably.

And that’s The Word.

UPDATE: Mark Glaser (MediaShift) updated his open letter to Stephen Colbert with a report that lawyers from Comedy Central are cherry-picking the clips they want taken down from YouTube, possibly in a hardball negotiating move to tweak Google and their new acquisition.

So not all clips have come down. That’s good news. How Comedy Central decides to proceed from here, though, is key.

If they want to negotiate the creation of a channel on YouTube for CC distributed shows and all discrete segments of shows, that move will serve the desires of many CC fans, especially bloggers. The amount of ad revenue they’ll make on viral replays at this point in time pales in comparison to advertising revenue from the TV broadcast itself, but tacking on an ad to the end of a video (as Revver has done with zeFrank) works well for all parties involved.

This could work out for everyone if CC doesn’t get greedy and:

• attempt to add commercials within segments and shows, which are essentially already commercials (running across YouTube and the decentralized web) for their regularly scheduled programs on TV
• police people who upload their own segment edits, instead of chalking up the “lost revenue” as a marketing expenditure.

If Comedy Central can avoid those old media trappings, they just might come out of this as new media players.

(originally uploaded by BombDog)

(originally uploaded by Jeremy Dennis)

I want to make it very clear where I stand on the issue of the RMA report hitting the internet this yesterday morning.

The RMA needed to be released into the public domain.

Because this document was originally leaked from within city management, the cat has been out of the bag for a long time now, hiding in the engine chassis of many parked cars around town… cars with media powered megaphones.

Once that happened, there was no way for the city to professionally manage whatever issues existed within the GPD behind closed doors.

With all the conflicting commentary and positions in local papers and blogs following the original leak (such as The N&R, The Rhino, Guarino, Hoggard, The Troublemaker and Ed Cone) over the past God knows how many months, there really was no way for any resident of Greensboro (including me) to follow the numerous threads, form an informed opinion on any discrete level and ultimately, trust both city managers and the police department.

So, was I was receptive to obtain a copy of the report the other day and read for myself the details behind what drove the city to lock David Wray out of his office?

Abso-fucking-lutely.

I was also amped for it’s public consumption in the near future, because I had heard through the grapevine just a few days ago that a local print publisher had planned to print it… on this Thursday (whether that was true or not, who knows for sure).

Now here’s where the big ol’ but! of my perspective contradicts my previous position.

Greensboro101 is not an individually run web site

For Roch to allow the file to be available in the interface for an extended period of time after it was uploaded anonymously to 101 without notifying his editorial board, I do feel it was an irresponsible move in regards to his unpaid advisers.

Again, let me be perfectly clear: I completely support this document being available to all Greensboro citizens, especially after it has been used by a select few in town (media and residents) to construct their message since the original leak… but, to allow it on 101 signifies that everyone associated with 101 backs that decision.

Obviously, Ben, Sue, Jay and Cara Michele did not support that decision.

So while it is Roch’s right to keep the provided file available to the public, he in turn must take full responsibility for his decision.

And as far as I can tell — by speaking with three quarters of the resigning party — they’re fine to leave the actions of this day as an editorial decision, pure and simple, and go their separate ways. From what I gather, Roch feels the same.

Case closed. (UPDATE: Or is it?)

The 101 Of My Relationship To 101

When I first moved to town last year, Roch and I rapped a bit about the potential of Greensboro101 at one of my first Blogsboro Meetups. After having a few beers downtown later that week, Roch asked me if I’d like to serve on an advisory board, touting Ed Cone and Jay Rosen as members.

Interested in the potential of 101 and having met neither Ed or Jay at the time (both of whom I respected very much), I agreed.

Later that week, I provided Roch with a bio to publish and assist him in his conversations with potential investors.

Since that conversation sometime last fall, Roch and I have not spoken once about the future of 101.

Zero.

Nada.

Being that I don’t agree with the way that he proceeded in this manner — even though I do support his decision to keep the file available — I’ve asked Roch to remove me from our imaginary relationship. I’m not quite sure he understands my position, but that’s fine.

I have much more important things to focus on.

UPDATE: In the comments, Ed denies ever being an advisor to 101. I apologize to both Ed and Jay for even mentioning them if that is truly the case.

UPDATE II: Roch sets Ben straight regarding the business advisory board we thought we were a part of by allowing our resumes to be presented to potential investors:

This “business� advisory board that Sean and Ben “resigned� from was never empanelled and never convened.

David has finished reading the “Risk Management Associates” report; I’m pausing to go listen to live music at The Flying Anvil (btw, I didn’t get the report from David).

Tomorrow morning, first and foremost, I plan on completely digesting the entire report. I then plan on reading Jerry Bledsoe’s narrative of events in detail and the numerous reports from The Troublemaker.

And then, as Chief Wray is so eloquently quoted on page 5:

Click to see larger version

I’ll “connect the dots” myself.