connecting*the*dots

(originally uploaded by cyu06)

I don’t exactly know what gear I’m moving into, but I’m definitely popping the RPM’s as I write this.

My day-to-day has evolved from a free fall of focus two years ago to a full-time operation running dotmatrix, collaborating with more than a handful of clients with unique and challenging work, assisting with the planning of this year’s ConvergeSouth and attempting to get The People, Yes off the ground.

In between those extremes of exploration and consternation, I found myself using this spot for sharing, pimping, contextualizing, opining, pointing and anything else under the sun I found valuable and interesting.

Well, it’s about time I get focused.

Yeah, I had a similar “state of the blogger” moment a few months back, but this time I’m a bit more motivated to down-shift into documenting my various efforts, especially along the lines of The People, Yes.

I refuse to become myopic or dry — graffiti, lyrics, images, poetry; all have a place — but I am making a turn, hopefully for the better.

Hold on, please.

(originally uploaded by lisa scheer)

Today is day two of the voting for Netsquared’s Technology Innovation Fund. If you haven’t yet stopped by to vote for The People, Yes, please do so. If we place, we’ll receive solid funding and development resources desperately needed to get us off the ground.

If you’re a blogger, talk show host, stewardess with a captive audience, etc., I’d greatly appreciate your help pointing folk in that direction as well.

Thanks so much.

(shot by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid)

So the world has woken up and discovered Twitter.

I’m not gonna front, I’ve only been Twittering for a few months now. I sat on the sidelines for the last year or so and watched Tara and Chris pimp it, but I just couldn’t figure out how it fit into my world.

Well, I think I’ve finally got it… and then some.

While a bunch of people out west have large numbers of close friends that use Twitter incessantly, I don’t. Most of my peeps from the NYC and Greensboro area don’t view communicative technology through quite the same lens as left coasters (we’re all a step or two behind on that front). So my friend list — while filled with people I consider to be friends — aren’t folk that I know extremely well or interact with on a daily basis.

So I’m now getting a chance to familiarize myself with colleagues from both across the country and the other side of the world.

That’s actually quite cool.

Sure, sometimes their Twitters are as dumb as mine, but that just gives me more insight into their varied personalities. Those Twitts about eating PB&J or screaming at a cabbie only confirms that we’re more alike than different. And when they do drop science and briefly enlighten the world as to what they’re working on, well, that’s the gold mine of Twitter.

Chris Messina stuck that nugget of a thought in my head the last time we hung out at Citizen Summit. He implored me to use Twitter and keep him (and anyone else following me) in the know with what I was doing with The People, Yes.

The conversation got even deeper once we all started discussing ways to bridge the digital divide locally, and before I knew it, I was thinking about Twitter implementation within the TPY interface.

So check this out:

That’s a John Ford special for you.

He took Alex King’s Twitter Tools beta plug-in, tweaked the partially functional plug-in code to post Twitters to my Wordpress blog with an appended category and styled the category with a CSS class.

So now every time I SMS to 40404, not only do I add to the stream of consciousness on Twitter, I’m documenting those fleeting thoughts straight to my blog.

The term “live blogging” just evolved big time overnight, as did “citizen journalism” (and if they’re smart, so will the “mainstream media“).

Now imagine how this could impact folk on the other side of the digital divide — people without moment to moment access to laptops or desktop computers, but armed to the teeth with cell phones.

Did I mention that John Ford is the man?

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. ;)

Lisa and I hunted around Greensboro yesterday afternoon for locations and people, as we’re looking to illustrate a number of sections of the eventual The People, Yes interface. I’m not sure how successful we were, but Lisa will be heading out again on her own soon.

Would you like to help?

We’re looking for landscape images (they’ll be used mostly in the header, so think wide and short) of a number of subjects:

• Memorable locations - it could be an abandoned lot or City Center Park, just try to include people, in some fashion, within an interesting composition
• Everyday folk at work - from the local barber to an insurance agent, capture them doing their thing
• Homeless people - stay away from stereotypical images (i.e. beer bottles, strewn clothes, etc.), go for portraits and contextual settings

So if you want to help us out, simply tag your Greensboro-based images on flickr with “thepeopleyes.”

I’ll subscribe to the feed and contact you if we’d like to use your shot (we’re a non-profit, so you’ll have to apply a CC license that allows reuse with attribution). I’ll probably setup a flickr group as well in the near future.

Thanks.

every man has a vocal chord
but not every man has a voice
some choose to live life that way
others simply have no choice
with too much to think about
too much goin’ on
too much tryin’ to survive
too much watchin’ their own get gone
so what’s the worth of words
these mere utterances in time
these rearranged thoughts
in both rhythm and rhyme?
i’ll tell you their value
but you probably won’t hear me
being caught up in the matrix
you’ll just craft reason to fear me..

when i’m struggling to get by
and trying to fly
but instead i get high
and dance that fine line
it’s the words that come save me
like dry turkey in gravy
i flip back to my quest
and push along like scorsese
to craft a moment in time
script the next one to follow
not some hollow ass production
of bling pursuit do i wallow
in the mire i find the depths
the inspiration
the desire..

to live by the pursuit of the grade
A
performance bonus
A
white picket dream
A
life with no compassion
A
way to drown out the screams
the shit just ain’t for me
and i know i’m not alone
so pick up your pen
your pad
your phone
dial me into your realm
put on your friday night best
cause when we hit the streets
it’s all about the people
yes..

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.

I had a great meeting today with CM, where we landed our first blogger for The People, Yes. And now, thanks to the ever-talented Anthony Piraino, we have the identity mark as well.

The initial blog is being designed as we speak and I’m crossing my fingers for a soft-launch sometime over the next week or so. More to come soon…

(listen to Melissa tell her story)

Head First Slide

Goals of this project include:

• exposing the greater community to the faces, voices and personalities of individuals experiencing homelessness and drug addiction–to increase awareness and understanding;
• building a supportive community both from and for the two groups of people who have collaborated on this project;
• providing encouragement for individual, long-term goals created by the participants;
• enabling the greater community to invest in the lives of project participants; and finally
• establishing a more permanent audience for the participants through this website and individual email addresses

Once we get The People, Yes off its training wheels, I’m looking forward to teaming up with people like the good folk at Ink Tank.

What a creative way to both humanize and enable people, simultaneously.

We’re meeting our first prospective writer sometime this week (right, CM?). If we can turn out a platform half as interesting as this project, Greensboro’s underprivileged will no doubt be heard, and hopefully, become accepted contributors to this town’s vibrant conversations — both online and off.

(found via Neatorama)

BarCampRDU came and went this past weekend and I completely missed out. With the stress of moving into the new house, completing my proposal work and working on the number of scattered projects I’m on, I just couldn’t find time to make the trip. But truth be told, as much as I wanted to check out the BarCamp experience, I was much more amped about spending some quality time with the Bonnie and Clyde of Web 2.0 themselves: Chris Messina and Tara Hunt.

We stumbled into connecting last year through one of my posts, followed up by chatting a bit via email and Skype and eventually met in person in a group lunch at SXSW in March. Since I couldn’t make it to Raleigh, I pinged Chris late last week with an offer to crash at my spot if they needed a place to stay. Low and behold, they did.

(shot at Finnegans, before we realized they didn’t serve breakfast and split to Jimmy’s Corner Cafe)

So… what do you do with a couple of uber-progressive, multi-tasking, San Fran geeks in Greensboro, NC with 18 hours on your hands? Keep it simple, stupid; beer, grub and talk shop.

Once they arrived and got settled in, we ended up walking downtown, settling in on MCouls rooftop and chatting about our latest geek ventures over Fish ‘n Chips and pints of Guinness (Tara, you’ve got to get the Guinness tolerance up).

Even though we all share a bunch of the same philosophies regarding business, marketing and technology, it’s still kinda amazing how much overlap our latest ventures have with one another. Both Citizen Agency and dotmatrixproject are efforts to:

• support our passionate desires to consult, design and build technology independent of a full-time gig
• work smarter (not necessarily harder) with great clients and interesting projects
• network with loosely connected, brilliant talent instead of building a salaried bench
• using collaborative blogging to generate credibility, trust and thinktank-like conversations — across our own teams and with the community of folks that participate in the resulting discourse

I’d like to say something grand, like, it’s the sign of how we can all work in the future, but I know that’s not true… at least not yet. Major props to Chris and Tara on that front though, as they believe 1000% in documenting their every success, failure and step along the way with the hope that their efforts can provide building blocks for others on a similar journey.

I completely share that philosophy and enthusiasm, but aside from transparent blogging, I’ve yet to implement it in tangible ways across my everyday (note to self: do that).

We ended the evening with a pretty intense conversation about geo-specific social networking, the digital divide and citizen media, or to be more specific, The People, Yes.

In a nutshell, Chris and I started off with slightly different perspectives of community. The concept of a geo-specific network didn’t seem to register with his quixotic stare, but I think we both nudged a bit closer to each other’s thinking by the end of the conversation. I’m all about working with people who’ve been there and done that, but I’d like for the majority of the grass-roots work and business and technology development to run through the people in this community.

Tara seemed to get my desire to work specifically with the people of Greensboro to build out a Greensboro-specific social network — as the more we work together as a community, the more we’ll come together as a community. Essentially, I want to start local and focus on the needs and strengths of the entire community of Greensboro to flesh the project out.

I mean, who knows what nuggets we’ll find in these fields and streams and underpasses and buildings?

In any event, I’m sure it wasn’t the last conversation we’ll have on the project. Both Tara and Chris are revolutionary thinkers, with their heads constantly spinning about with progressive ways to use technology to help us work, play and function better with one another. I’m only in the embryonic stage with The People, Yes, so I’m looking forward to many more chances to imbibe and share knowledge and perspective.

This weekend came and went way too fast.

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.

photo by Daveybot

Not only do I need to get my home in order (uhm, yeah, it’s now “lived in”), I need to prioritize my project work so I can get a few out the door (making myself and my partners in crime less stressed), get organized on the remaining work and figure out my capacity for taking on new projects. Why am I making this public knowledge? Because it counts as today’s blog post, of course. ;-)

Okay, so here goes nothing:

Today

• Knock out my Grandmother’s book cover design. - She going on 102 years-old, ’nuff said.
• File for LLC status of dot matrix - I have to get out of freelance transition mode.
• Submit the paperwork for non-profit status of The People, Yes - I finally have a small board of directors and officers, I just need to alert my lawyer
• Continue finishing the research deliverables for TheStreet.com - Design personas, context scenarios and then putting together the overall proposal
• Write up an identity abstract for dot matrix - The team (top secret ;) needs to respond and help shape the vision
• Write an RSS 101 post - As promised last week to the wonderful folk at Kindermusik
• Get Nick Reville the half submitted bounties - I had to give up my volunteer gig managing BountyCounty, but I’ve been behind transferring the remaining emails. Can you see why?

There’s so much more, but I’ve_got_to_focus…

I’m participating in the Technology and Social Activism workshop at day 2 of Beyond Broadcast. The discussion is a bit broad — we’re throwing out various technological approaches to furthering social activism. Yeah, I have no idea where that conversation begins and ends either.

The first solution introduced was SMS, which was deemed by the group as a great technology for early adopters to organize on the fly, but when it comes to the average person or an illiterate community on the other side of the digital divide, it’s non-effective. So we shifted gears and started talking about community-based switch boards as a example to connect people to people without relying on reading and writing, with the cost of entry as low as the cost of a pay phone call. It’s an interesting solution, especially within communities which organize and socialize within familiar real world spaces, such as churches, barbershops, pubs, etc.

We’re now discussing creating a site that presents an aggregate list of social activist’s technological solutions; pros, cons, insight, tips, workarounds, etc. Okay… it’s time to run upstairs to present our findings. I’m months away from launching the interface for The People, Yes (there’s much more grassroots organizing and networking to do beforehand), but I’m walking away with a few tactical ideas for spreading, encouraging and mobilizing community-based citizen media.

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.

I met with Jordan Nance, my lawyer, earlier tonight at The Green Bean. We talked a bunch of shop and chatted about the future possibilities of The People, Yes! It was the first time we’ve met, and Jordan seems like a great guy with a lot of interesting ideas; I’m very enthusiastic about our partnership moving forward.

One part of tonight’s conversation dealt with a 501c (3) provision that (paraphrasing, here), “The corporation, members, etc. shall not use the corporation to lobby legislation for political gain.” Jordan is going to speak to David about the context of The People, Yes! within the parameters of this provision, but we don’t think it’ll be an issue. I mean, I don’t plan on setting a political agenda for the site, though the participants will use the platform as they see fit.

So on one hand, the minimal editorial presence of the officers should keep the corporation well clear of the provision, while the content generated by the participants themselves might be political in nature — from the innocuous (i.e. describing poor community programs) to the explicit (i.e. bolstering a particular campain or party).

It’s a bit of a catch22.

Jordan mentioned that we’ll have to establish a clear narrative to describe the corporation when we apply for non-profit status, so I guess we’ll flesh it all out in the process.

This is why I’m glad I have a lawyer working with me.

By mid-next week I should have the paperwork ready for submission to North Carolina. From there, it’s a four to six-month process with the IRS to establish full non-profit status.

Now that this process has been kicked-off, it’s time to get out into the community and meet with the people and listen to what they want in a platform.

Michele! ;-)

Within hours of posting my need for pro-bono legal assistance in setting up The People, Yes! as a non-profit organization, Liza Sabater got the word out at culturekitchen and Sue Polinsky — local blogger, tech genius and contributer to everything non-profit — pointed me to David Kyger at the local law firm, Smith Moore LLP.

Today, I’m very grateful to be able to announce that David and Jordan Nance have taken my project under their legal wings.

Thank you, gentlemen.

I need a few hours of consulting to help get thepeopleyes.org set up as a non-profit. If there are any lawyers out there with non-profit experience, and are willing to donate a little time and/or a few emails, I’d really appreciate it. Please comment here or get in touch with me at spcoon~at~seancoon~dot~org

(I’ll also gladly take advice from people with experience in non-profits)

UPDATE: I just spoke with a law firm here in Greensboro that might be able to assist me — pro-bono — on this project. Once our relationship is official, I’ll post the name of the firm and the gentleman who gave his valuable time on the phone today. Thanks for the tip, Sue!

Blogger gal vs. Newspaper guy!

Well, not quite, but it makes a great lede, eh?

Sue, Lex and I met over lunch yesterday to discuss potential strategies for evolving the News & Record’s citizen journalism efforts. And no, we didn’t have a stare off.

Man… Lex is in a tough position; he’s completely open to forward-thinking ideas (I mean, his title is Citizen Journalism Coordinator), but he also seems to be up against a bottom line business that’s very adverse to risk. Apparently, changing the approach to meeting a historically profitable bottom line is a tough sell, even within an industry that’s on shaky ground.

It’s amazing how palpable sand can become to the heads of industry during innovative times.

That’s not to say that the N&R hasn’t been progressive with their citizen journalism efforts to date — they have — but Lex knows that in just a few years the N&R (both print and online) will have to directly compete with new forms of dynamic, community-based, participatory, online news applications (e.g. Newsvine), which will be free of legacy organizational overhead and be able to react with agility.

And you can’t forget those pesky bloggers.

The N&R needs to step up their game.

So we chatted. And ate. And chatted some more. And by the time our conversation came to a close, we had a number of interesting ideas on the table:

• Personal Relationships - Lex is looking to develop relationships with members of the Greensboro community, offering them the opportunity to use N&R resources (legal, photography, journalist feedback, etc.) to craft substantive citizen journalism. To me, this approach perfectly fits the future of print newspapers, as time-based news is dead on paper. They’ll have to compete as daily magazines (more depth, less coverage).

• Real-time Blogging Input - I suggested promoting a tagging schema that matched the classification structure of both the paper and the site:

  For example, identify and promote a unique set of “greensboro[xxxx]” tags, for anyone to use on blog posts, flickr images, etc. when generating Greensboro specific news, events, opinions, etc.

  Internally, the N&R editorial staff would then set up RSS aggregators with subscriptions of each tag search result.

  The real-time input of potential stories and assets would increase exponentially, while the N&R would continue to have editorial control, as the aggregator would serve as the queue into the publishing process

• Representation Across The Community - Sue focused on the concept of encouraging participation along the lines of community diversity (her connections with Uplifter is right along the lines of my focus with The People, Yes!). We talked about ideas ranging from developing blogging 101 material to share with a non-computer literate demographic to grass roots representation within sub-communities (e.g. school board meetings) to encourage live-blogging with the unique tag identifiers

An interesting start, but there’s still one major component that we’re skirting: Revenue incentives.

Lex made it clear that creating a participatory revenue model doesn’t fall under his charge, but the N&R is open to ideas. My perspective is that without incentive, participation will be lighter, with less quality and dedication. Any revenue generated out of these relationships should be viewed as found money, so share and share alike:

• To tap into the wisdom of the blogosphere by republishing the original post or an edited version, a buisness needs to develop a revenue model that fairly represents such a relationship.
• To partner with individuals from the community to generate community-based journalism, a business needs to develop a revenue model to encourage such a partnership.

It comes down to this: Pony up or we, the citizens, will simply get together and form collaborative blogs, creating relevant identities, gain a better footprint in Google over a 3 month period of time and, eventually, sign up with BlogAds to support our own voice.

That’s not a threat. ;-) I’m looking forward to our next conversation, folks.

UPDATE: Six months after the fact, in the NORG session at ConvergeSouth, Ed Cone backs up my philosophy regarding partnering with local bloggers/writers in a revenue share program.

Yesterday, Andy and I had the opportunity to rap with a handful of UNCG film students, as his former professor (Matt Barr) invited him to present his documentary, reveal his creative process and expose the realities of the distribution game. I tagged along to introduce the possibilities of the web; how it can be used as both a creative channel and a viral mechanism for distribution.

Andy dove right in and introduced the story behind his documentary (Greensboro’s Child) to the students — the ties between the 1979 KKK shootings of five worker’s rights protesters and the unjust sentencing of a civil rights activist’s child to two life sentences for unarmed burglary just 7 years later.

The entire time I sat listening intently to my brother’s passionate presentation, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of times he mentioned his desire to not only go back into the film and improve upon his student-level production techniques (he began the documentary back in 1996), but to continue to document the unfolding story by re-editing the film and updating it with the findings of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

While I completely understand his intent and agree with the desired results, I just don’t agree with the approach — not in this day and age.

As a blogger and an enthusiast of web/documentary projects like the Echo Chamber Project and The War Tapes, my perspective of an evolving narrative is completely different than Andy’s.

When I think about Greensboro’s Child, I view it as a foundation of knowledge; an element that can be built upon with new elements of video, images and text to create an even broader and more reputable narrative thesis. It’s an impossible goal to continuously include the numerous, ever-evolving tentacles of the story (the Greensboro police department, the community attitude, etc.) within a single 1.5 hour long documentary.

So once the lights came back on and the students finished their Q&A, I introduced myself, a bit of my career history and proceeded to find my zone… Somewhere in the midst of my presentation, I introduced:

• myself as an activist, rather than a designer (a first)
• the possibilities of using cutting edge video distribution channels to introduce their voices to the world, such as youtube, currentTV, democracy
• how a mixture of blogging and video can have a more lasting reach than both tv and film (Rocketboom for example)

By the time my diatribe subsided, I found myself engaged in a conversation surrounding The People, Yes. Once we moved beyond the concept of the collaborative blog for the homeless of Greensboro, we evolved into a conversation about weekly trips into the community to capture the various stories of the underprivileged, on camera, and turning it back around as weekly shorts in a vlog. Heads were nodding left and right as the film students seemed eager to participate in such a project.

So I now have a new angle to TPY… and quite possibly a pool of energetic, dedicated, creative filmmakers to participate in the cause.

While walking off the UNCG campus, I turned around to take in a final glimpse… something, I don’t know what, just seemed different…

It’s amazing how much you can learn about yourself and someone else over a “coffee cup” of coffee.

Cara Michele and I agreed to meet over at The Green Bean yesterday to discuss how we can get moving on our new joint project. Well, after 4 hours of caffeine and an intense conversation ranging from the project at hand to religion to the MPAA, I realized that while we’re very different, amazingly enough, we’re so very much the same.

She’s a devout Christian, living and serving humanity through the love of Christ, and tends to look for absolutes to help guide her through life.

I’ve found my higher power, yet I don’t call it anything particular, believing instead that “it” is woven throughout our actions and surroundings. I’m wary of anything claiming to be an absolute, instead looking for natural patterns to clue me onward to my next experience.

We’re completely different, right? Wrong.

We both share a strong desire to empower the men and women who are left on the periphery of society; Cara Michele has been walking that walk for years, while I’ve been going all city since ‘91. So while I strongly believe in the power of information and she strongly believes in the power of Christ, our common desire is upliftment.

It’s all good.

Now if I can only get her to be comfortable with the fact that there are endless ways to describe a “coffee cup”… ;-)

Photo by Colin Gregory Palmer

I usually tend to keep announcements under wraps until I’ve made enough progress to warrent them, but in the spirit of Tantek Çelik’s building blocks presentation, Kent Bye’s Echo Chamber Project and Chris Messina’s barcamp escapades, well, here goes nothing:

thepeopleyes.org

Bruce Sterling isn’t throwing a party this year, but he’s loving the bubble echo of this 2.0 SXSW2006 get together. He says “enjoy it while you can.”

He’s loving flickr and Wikipedia; companies that are completely unlike anything else, opening up their API’s to create platforms, not sites. What a contrast to standard, American business. “Only in America… where dying phone companies lobby the government as if they’re Indian casinos.”

“Are people in Washington drinking their own bathwater? The guys in power are so eager to monetize the web, they’re turning America into Banana Republic with rockets.”

Get his book: Visionary In Residence

Serbia is absolutely disfunctional; Sterling has a ringside seat. He’s global, as many more are becoming. His Austin stead collects mail, while he bounces around the world. “National borders are like speed bumps.” America is a state at war. “The dollar is low compared to the Euro, which should be in intensive care.”

“Creationism is an intellectual calamity.”

al Quada bomb mosques. How many are enough? (we Americans don’t give a fuck about the “near enemy” issue). When the culture war is over — we are within a culture war — one doesn’t get to say “I served on this side.” “We’re on a slider bar between the unthinkable and the unimaginable. We’ve got a fire in a theater, but the exit signs are just a bunch of glowing letters in jumble.”

Warren Ellis: “The spread of the possible futures and the people on the ground figuring out how to use them.”

Unimaginable does not mean catastrophic, nor does unthinkable.

The word: Spime - In 2004, Sterling did a speech at SIG-GRAPH and spoke of spime. It’s not a word; it’s a tag. It’s a theory object. William Gibson’s cyberspace is a conceptual realization. We’ll never have that, but the word is now passe.

Spime is a speculative imaginary object:

• An interactive chip, unique identity, It’s got a tag
• Local precise positioning system
• A powerful search engine, auto-Googling object
• Evolved in cradle to cradle recycling
• 3D virtual models of objects; a product of CAD cams
• Rapidly prototyped, it’s a fabject — a laser-centered model

If 21st century objects had these qualities, people would interact in unimaginable ways. Spimes begin and end as data. We want to do it to build an internet of things; engage from the moment of invention to the moment of decay. It’ll feel like auto-magical inventory voo doo. I ask, and I’m told. I Google to find my shoes. This concept needs distributive participation.

“The semantic wit is turning into the wetlands of language.”

A theory object is a platform of development. The 20th century could not write, think in this way. Theory objects can have permalinks, trackbacks, databases, etc. This is why the legacy media is going down, because legacy people don’t get it.

We need to become the change we want to see. Make no decision out of fear. None! (my emphasis).

Globalization needs to be understood culturally. Leaders are culpable, but the people are complicit. A society that lived in a locked closet and fed on their own illusions (Serbia). How different are we? Evil has a face in the world; people who don’t like people who don’t buy into their parochial bullshit.

But time passes with historical perspective.

Sterling closes by quoting Carl Sandburg. Picture 1937, the age of depression, WWII at the door…:

The people, yes

The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold again and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.
The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
Is a vast huddle with so many units saying:

“I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
And it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself and maybe for others.
I could read and study
And talk things over
And find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time.�

The people
With the tragic and comic two faced hero and hoodlum
Phantom and gorilla
Twisting to moan with the gargoyle mouth
They buy me and sell me
It’s a game
Sometime I’ll break loose
This old anvil, laughs at many broken hammers
There are men that can’t be bought!
Fire borne or at home with fire
The stars make no noise
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing
Time is a great teacher
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march:

Where to? What next?

—–

I didn’t finish my live-blog of Bruce Sterling’s brilliant speech; I couldn’t.

In the midst of his swaying through global references of humanity, ubiquitous concepts and reflective precision, Sterling briefly mentioned the humanity of the Serbian people, how they still gather to listen to poets speak and grown men openly weep within their shared language, as if their hearts were still broken.

I felt that.

When Sterling hit the very first line of Carl Sandburg’s poem, he began to weep; I immediately closed my laptop and felt the words of a man in the midst of a depression tumble out of the mouth of a man in the midst of priviledge.

Bruce passionately pressed on, as each word struck a newly discovered nerve, setting off a choked up throat, a twist in his chair and freshly drawn tears. And I wept with him.

My last words at SXSW2006

The rule of the robber baron corporate power structure might be coming to a close, but that is no victory. Not even close. Each of us — the creators and collaborators in this 2.0 revolution, especially the ones fortunate enough to spend this time together — are the new leaders of this world.

Each of us.

The choices we make will shape our world; from the choice to harness our personal voice to the choice of developing real relationships with our fellow human beings to the choice of creating an innovative, enabling world of objects in-between…

There is nothing else but choice. Don’t you fucking think for a moment that there isn’t.

So, the next time you come up with a brilliant service idea, try going that extra step to make it just that much more useful for your neighbor… or for that family living on the other side of the tracks… or for that child who was born into a depressed world where jobs were scarce, children were starving and a world war was on the horizon.

Because, you see, we already live in such a world.

Thank you, Bruce.

UPDATE:

• Video of Bruce reading Carl Sandburg’s poetry.
• A complete audio recording of his presentation.
• A full transcript of his presentation.

(via down the avenue, Jill Brown, and Sean Harton respectively)