connecting*the*dots

Lovely map, eh?

The darker colors indicate a higher degree of happiness in one’s life, while the lighter colors indicate that life for certain folk isn’t what they had expected or want moving forward.

You and I would probably take these indicators as interesting fodder while we head off to purchase another video game.

What would EthanZ do?

Ethan breaks down the (un)happiness of the world (on the shoulders of the original researcher, Adrian White from the University of Leicester) by analyzing the clustering of the actual data points. From that analysis, he comes up with a few interesting deductions of his own.

Brilliant read.

Ethan, please remain a geek with a bunch of free time on your hands.

Ethan Zuckerman — my former colleague at Tripod, co-founder of Global Voices and current Board member of The People, Yes — is a brilliant guy… and apparently has what it takes to drive Samantha Bee of The Daily Show mad:

Too funny.

(photo by ethanz)

Be sure to read the story behind the image.

Jordan is distributing paperwork for signatures today, so The People, Yes should be well on it’s way to NC non-profit status. The federal process comes next, and believe me, that’s where Jordan will earn his pro-bono dinners and drinks. ;-)

Many thanks to the inital Board members who are joining me to try to shape this idea into a reality:

            

Once we’re more involved with the community and actually begin fundraising, I’ll most likely add a few more people to the mix… definitely one active participant from the homeless community itself.

Until then, I’m looking forward to working with this fine group of technologists, bloggers and community activists to get this puppy singing.

Stay tuned.

It’s been a while since my last update on the progress of The People, Yes!, so here’s my May report (yes, that’s me trying to become more organized):

Legal
Yesterday, Jordan Nance sent me the paperwork to apply for non-profit status in North Carolina. There’s one last thing I need to do before I file; put together a small staff of officers and directors.

Identity
Anthony Piraino is knee deep in round three of designing the identity for The People, Yes! Here are a few versions from round two:

I’m digging the gritty contrast, but we’re going to play with the typography a bit more. I think it’s coming along nicely. I’m going to head out into town this weekend and take some photographs that might work with the identity in the header. Down the road, all imagery on the site will be people-generated.

Platform
Sue Polinsky (of TechTriad) is now hosting the domain, while Jonathan Daniel and Nate Aune have expressed interest in helping me develop the actual platform. Phase One will concentrate on simply implementing a collaborative WP blog with an overly simplified publishing interface. Phase Two is classified information, unless I decide to leak it to the blogosphere. ;)

Grassroots
Cara Michele and I haven’t had a meeting in a few weeks, but she has already introduced the concept to a handful of her friends in the homeless community and apparently there is solid interest to participate in the project. Once we get the platform running, both Ed Cone and Jay Ovittore have offered their services to run a blogging 101 workshop in order to help acclimate the people to the technology and the pro’s and con’s of transparent blogging.

We’re still a ways away from operating on all cylinders, but we’re getting there a bit more each day. I can’t fully express how overwhelmed I’ve been by the outpouring of support within this community and across the country, friends both new and old.

The People, Yes! is about the people. Yes, it truly is.

Conferences often resemble a living, breathing, talking gallery exhibit… with bad food; an expensive, explicit exhibit, which usually fails to inspire me (not as an artist’s juxtaposed take on light and mass might).

That being said, I’d pretty much do anything to make it to the TED conference; the annual gathering of the world’s top philosophers, technologists and intellectuals created by the father of information architecture, Richard Saul Wurman and now run by Chris Anderson.

Well, thanks to Ethan, we can now all sit in on the experience via his live-blogging of this year’s event.

You know, he’s bound to get more than a three minute spot in the future.