connecting*the*dots

(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