connecting*the*dots

It’s time to get down and dirty with real political discussion.

Nick Reville just pinged me a few minutes ago, pointing me to a new Participatory Politics Foundation project called Open Congress.

Don’t look now folks, but we’re about to 2.0 the hell out of government.

I’ve dropped that phrase a bunch of times online, added some potential feature flavor in a comment thread and even spoke to dev friends about what it would take to build something like this, but there’s no need now; this puppy looks like it’ll grow strong legs moving forward.

And from a first glance, I really like the approach that PPF took to legislation being the primary object of focus in the domain.

The original idea for my project was to position a domain around the 535 seats within Congress and pull in information and data that contextualized the job that individuals were doing in their role serving their constituents — keeping a record of all current and future seat information.

I hoped that if we could build a rich interface for displaying information about and by representatives — voting records, financing, news events, press releases, blog posts, video, audio, etc. — then a Digg-like rating system could work with an “on the job” algorithm to rate each representative. They would then be forced to step up and be more transparent with their rationale for, say, voting against the will of their constituents on particular legislation.

I still think that approach is important, but it should be secondary if we, the people, are participating in a democratic institution.

The actual job focus of our representatives is the business of the people — the legislation that shapes our lives within a representative democracy.

So if you design a domain with too much of a focus on the Senators and Representatives, you just might create an even greater echo chamber for rumor mongering and feeding polarizing bloggers gallons of liquid for their pissing wars, whether they’re Democratic or Republican.

With this approach — legislation first — bloggers are given the opportunity to track what matters first and foremost. And if our representatives fumble within those processes — like a Ted Stevens with his Bridge to Nowhere — then we can hop on them like flies to shit.

What I’m hoping happens now is that other political transparency domains — like Jim Harper’s WashingtonWatch and Denise Roth Barber at FollowTheMoney — ping Nick and crew, with an invite to share their data for the OpenCongress interface.

As Robert DeNiro so eloquently stated in Brazil: “We’re all in it together“

The above photo is of a 3′ x 3′ charcoal or rubber marking, found about 30 feet from the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C. It was one of about five in the area, with the rest of the bunch all smaller and no more menacing than this particular marking.

I took the picture around 2pm, as my brother and I participated in and covered the anti-war protest.

Now, a number of conservative blogs — with large threads of clueless readers — are referring to this benign event as protesters vandalize Capitol building! In the posts, there are references of “spray paint” as the protester’s media of choice “to spray their dissent all over the steps of the U.S. Capitol building.”

Take a look at the picture above — it looks like someone busted out a rubber heel of a bar stool and rubbed the mark to fruition.

In any event, for the two hours we spent on the steps of the Capitol, as far as I can report, nothing worthwhile regarding violence or destruction occurred. At least nothing to dent the taxpayer’s wallet.

I can report, however, that there were some awkward, interesting, funny and stunning expressions of free speech just a few feet away from the steps of the Capitol:

The Soldier’s Wife

Man, this scene was rough.

This poor girl — she looked no older than 19 — just stood in place for an hour while completely releasing her frustrations regarding her husband’s deployment to Iraq.

It was great to see the wife of a soldier at the steps of the Capitol, releasing her pent up anger and frustrations, but man… I actually felt for the fuzz. When she finally left, after an hour of non-stop venting, the cops sort of looked at one another, took a deep breath, and stood at attention once again.

It’s too bad she can’t get 5 minutes on the floor of Congress — speaking directly to the people who can actually put an end to this madness — instead of spending an hour shouting into the wind directly outside.

To The Capitol! (Where’s The Capitol, Dude)

While the soldier’s wife vented, a huge group of punk rock kids walked over the grassy knoll to the right of the steps, chanting different things at different times — though I have to say the funniest was, “To the Capitol! To the Capitol! (followed by the guy in the lead with “Dude, where’s the Capitol?)”

We were standing right in front of it.

Various members of the group attempted to look menacing, but it was obvious that they were a bunch of students — a remnant of the 60’s radical organization, the SDS — who seemed to be looking for something to do on the fly.

They might have been the party guilty of tagging the pavement earlier in the afternoon (again, I don’t know for sure, but it seemed to fit their vibe), but by no means were they violent or radical.

The above picture isn’t showing a guy with a bullhorn working a crowd into a fist-raising frenzy; the leader of the pack simply asked the kids to raise fists if they wanted to join the “normal protesters in the march” or, and I quote, “just go do other stuff.”

They decided to join the marchers.

Dance, Dance, Revolution

This girl had me cracking up.

As the SDS broke off to meet up with the “normal” protesters, she moved directly in front of the officers guarding the steps and before you could say, “Michael Jackson,” she had already started to bust a move.

That was funny by itself — the bandanna covered revolutionist dancing her ass off — but as she continued to gyrate, she started a one-way conversation with the officers in front of her:

Come on, dance! Dance! It’s good for you! Dance! I see you smiling, come on, why can’t you dance?!…

That went on for at least 20 minutes. Somewhere in the midst of her bopping and prodding, someone screamed, “Dance! Dance! Revolution!” and as if on cue, she emulated the dance moves on the floor interface of the arcade game with the same name.

Too damn funny.

Tri-be: Performance Art

Identical triplets from tri-be performed all around Washington D.C. Each square inch of red cloth represented a specific number of casualties in the War on Terror.

• The businesswoman represents the victims of 9/11
• The soldier represents the fallen US service men and women
• The Muslim woman represents the fallen Iraqis and Afghani’s

From the silent execution of the performance to the details of the wardrobe to the absolutely compelling subtext of identical triplets as the participants, I was moved to my core.

Check out tri-be for yourself.

So Did The Protest Make The Slightest Dent In Policy?

I’m not sure if anti-war protests these days have the same teeth that they did back in the 60’s and 70’s. Quite honestly, law enforcement on the scene seemed pretty laid back, almost as if they were babysitting for the afternoon.

I’m not advocating chaos or violence as a vehicle for change, either.

On this day, the crowd was already diversified via organizational groups and each seemed to be focused more than a few degrees away from the next — one would be for the impeachment of Bush, the next for the liberation of Palestine, etc. Without a focused and consistent message — and a organized, regimented march — the message itself became diluted. So instead of delivering a powerful message through the action of tens of thousands of coordinated Americans, protesters, as a whole, opened themselves up to be reduced to “anarchists” and pegged as “anti-American.”

But there is a flip-side to such a perspective.

The internet in 2007 allows like-minded people to not only connect with one another, but to extend discourse beyond letters, meetings and protests — as anti-war activists were limited to 40 years ago.

These permanent hooks of discourse now live in the ether of the web, ripe for furthering conversations and introducing new realities to millions of Americans and global citizens each day.

Four years into the Iraq war, the representative arm of our government has heard the voice of the American public loud and clear and is beginning to at least challenge the administration’s policy. How long, and how many protests, did it take for a similar foothold to take place in the anti-Vietnam war era?

Much more than four years and a protest counter-culture needed to become established.

For numerous reasons, modern day American anti-war protests are an immature brand of past struggles — no centralized and respected leadership; no coordinated approach to physical movement; no single, simple message to sell to the other side — but the unpaved, decentralized streets of the internet just might be the flip to the script that makes the difference in the long-run.

For all our sakes, let’s hope that’s the case.

Marc’s Voice
Welcome IBM to the corporate world of social networking

[…]

Synchronizing corporate and business data between networks can take on a whole new level of possibilities once IBM gets the corporate world to bite off on this.

I can’t wait to see what the initial implementations of IBM’s Lotus Connections brings. This is the best news Broadband Mechanics has ever had!

‘Cause they’re doing my advertising for me.

Welcome IBM to the world of white labeling social media. Add in widgets or a mobile gateway, mix in some product databases and static propoganda - and you might even have stumbled upon “digital lifestyle aggregation�.

We’ve been betting that this day would come. That corporate social networking (which included blogging) would make it to the big time. Now I get to compete with IBM on price, service, features and brand.

Let’s rock.

I can see Marc salivating from here (hm, maybe that’s drool).

This flavor of passion regarding corporate change reminds me of Cluetrain, 8 years ago.

Please open your bible to Chapter 5, The Hyperlinked Organization:

The Web, in short, has led every wired person in your organization to expect direct connections not only to information but also to the truth spoken in human voices. And they expect to be able to find what they need and do what they need without any further help from people who dress better than they do. This has happened not because of a management theory or a bestselling business book but because the Web reaches everyone with a computer and a telephone line on her desk.

So, the gulf opens between those who are connected and those who think an office with a door is a sign of success. The gulf is one of expectations, and expectations always guide perception. As a result, the company thinks it’s doing one thing while accomplishing the direct opposite with its connected employees. For example:

• The company communicates with me through a newsletter and company meetings meant to lift up my morale. In fact, I know from my e-mail pen pals that it’s telling me happy-talk lies, and I find that quite depressing.
• The company org chart shows me who does what so I know how to get things done. In fact, the org chart is an expression of a power structure. It is red tape. It is a map of whom to avoid.
• The company manages my work to make sure that all tasks are coordinated and the company is operating efficiently. In fact, the inflexible goals imposed from on high keep me from following what my craft expertise tells me I really ought to be doing.
• The company provides me with a career path so I’ll see a productive future in the business. In fact, I’ve figured out that because the org chart narrows at the top, most career paths necessarily have to be dead ends.
• The company provides me with all the information I need to make good decisions. In fact, this information is selected to support a decision (or worldview) in which I have no investment. Statistics and industry surveys are lobbed like anti-aircraft fire to disguise the fact that while we have lots of data, we have no understanding.
• The company is goal-oriented so that the path from here to there is broken into small, well-marked steps that can be tracked and managed. In fact, if I keep my head down and accomplish my goals, I won’t add the type of value I’m capable of. I need to browse. I even need to play. Without play, only Shit Happens. With play, Serendipity Happens.
• The company gives me deadlines so that we ship product on time, maintaining our integrity. In fact, working to arbitrary deadlines makes me ship poor-quality content. My management doesn’t have to use a club to get me to do my job. Where’s the trust, baby?
• The company looks at customers as adversaries who must be won over. In fact, the ones I’ve been exchanging e-mail with are very cool and enthusiastic about exactly the same thing that got me into this company. You know, I’d rather talk with them than with my manager.
• The company works in an office building in order to bring together all of the things I need to get my job done and to avoid distracting me. In fact, more and more of what I need is outside the corporate walls. And when I really want to get something done, I go home.
• The company rewards me for being a professional who acts and behaves in a, well, professional manner, following certain unwritten rules about the coefficient of permitted variation in dress, politics, shoe style, expression of religion, and the relating of humorous stories. In fact, I learn who to trust — whom I can work with creatively and productively — only by getting past the professional act.

Something’s gone wrong. Or maybe something now is starting to go right.

[…]

Bottom-Up

The Web is undoubtedly a part of your business plans. You’ve got it safely contained, under control, managed. Why, your organization has probably already installed a corporate intranet so it can publish the human resource policies that no one read on paper to people who now won’t read ’em on screen. Excellent!

Yes, your centralized corporate intranet has eliminated some paper and is making management feel vaguely cool. But that’s not the web that’s going to shake the foundations of your fort.

While you’ve been hiring consultants to create a slick corporate intranet, establishing policies about who gets to post what, and creating a chain of command to ensure that only appropriate and approved materials show up on your internal corporate home page, your engineers, scientists, researchers — hell even the marketing folks — have been creating little Web sites for their own use.

No one is controlling what’s posted on them except the people doing the posting. No one is making sure that the corporate logo is in the right place. No one is making sure that the writing is official, officious, and as dull as the pencil drawer of a recently downsized middle manager.

The real party got under way while you were still setting up the banners at the corporate prom. (This year’s prom theme: “Responsibility in a Web Age!”)

For example, by the time Sun Microsystems got around to counting, they had eight hundred intranets. And when Texas Instruments put in their corporate intranet, they invited everyone who had one already in place to register with the top-down one. Within a few months, two hundred and fifty internal sites had registered, and no one knows how many unregistered ones there were. Even a top-down intranet can take on a bottom-up feel, as happened at Lucent Technologies, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. After Lucent brought together a product-development team of five hundred engineers across three continents and thirteen time zones, it watched dozens of them insert their own pages into the project intranet. Some of these pages related directly to the project; others were strictly personal, like, “Hey, look at this picture of me and my dog!” Either way, the project took on a human cast that never would have been present otherwise. In the end the team leader attributed the success of the project in no small part to “the ultimate Democracy of the Web.”

Granted, these are technology companies, but you don’t have to be a technical genius to create an intranet. If someone wants to share some information, they can turn their computer into a Web server. It’s free, and it’s getting easier every day.

The intranet revolution is bottom-up. There’s no going back. If a company doesn’t recognize this, the top-down intranet it puts in can breed the type of cynicism that results in ugly bathroom graffiti and mysterious golfing cart accidents.

The intranets under the radar screen — and the rest of the Net panoply, including e-mail, mailing lists, and discussion groups — ignore the corporate blather and ass-covering pronouncements. Instead, these new Web conversations are actually being used to get some work done.

And the work continues…

(originally uploaded by noonespillow)

By Jason Lefkowitz, in a comment thread on Joho the Blog:

Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution says:

“The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative…”

One Congressman for every 30,000 citizens was the rule until the early 1900s, when Congress simply fixed the size of the House at 435 members. I’m no lawyer, but I’m not sure how they could square that with the language of Article I; anyway, that’s been the rule ever since.

The result is that today each Congressman represents roughly 700,000 people — an order of magnitude more than the Founders intended them to. The result is that House campaigns are just as media — and image — driven as campaigns for greater offices, which is a shame.

An interesting thought experiment: if we went back to the Article I rules, we’d have something like 10,000 House members today. How would the operations of government have to be modified to accommodate them? A Virtual Congress? Regional Congresses?

What’s interesting to note is the actual intent of this detail in Article 1, Section 2:

The total number of Representatives is set by statute, not in the Constitution. The detail concerning 30,000 means that the ratio would never be lower than 1:30,000 (like 1:20,000). This was done to prevent the House from getting too large and to prevent larger states from having an overwhelming number of representatives. The average ratio today is about 1:640,000.

So, legally speaking, we’re actually guarding the concerns of our forefathers with such numbers — they wanted a decent sized House in order for business to get accomplished.

But our forefathers couldn’t have imagined the information age.

I left a comment in the thread that might sound radical, but I think it would be a great way to up the degree of transparent discourse in government.

What do you think?

(originally uploaded by dsearls)

Doc and company are working on making VRM a reality. Well, here’s my shout out to the ether: I wanna help!

(self-portrait by dsearls)

Sorry, Doc — I couldn’t quote your Jupiter Research post without a Rageboy-like visual.

Turning funnels into megaphones
Doc Searls

[…]

Think for a minute about how much more useful (or obsolete) marketing would be if customers had actual relationships, or the means to initiate relationships — on the customers’ terms — when and where they wanted to initiate them?

Wouldn’t it be handy if customers could, at their discretion, by themselves or in whatever groups they feel like assembling (in the wild open and free marketplace, rather than in any vendor’s or intermediary’s silo), tell vendors what they are looking for, and under what conditions? Including what they are willing to pay?

We’re talking about a real marketplace here. Not eBay or any other walled garden.

We’re talking about relieving vendors of the need to do complex guesswork about what customers want.

We’re talking about efficient and easy ways to satisfy money-in-hand demand, rather than more ways of ‘creating’ or manipulating demand.

We’re talking about obsoleting advertising as we know it. Marketing too.

We’re talking about re-framing markets as real places where transactions, conversations and relationships happen between independent participants on terms and conditions that are work well for everybody.

We’re talking about creating the means for leveraging customer independence, choice and rights to obtain respect and authority independent of any private online marketplace, or any search engine.

We’re talking about VRM, for Vendor Relationship Management. Some have suggested RM for just Relationship Management. Others have suggested XRM, for managing relationships with anybody, including one’s own social networks — ranging from memberships in organizations to email white and black lists. Whatever we call it, the subject will be front & center at the Internet Identity Workshop coming up in December.

We’re talking about individuals managing the means by which their every gesture is recorded (or not) and put to use (or not).

We’re talking about giving research organizations and their clients reasons to stop looking at each of us as “consumers”, “audiences”, or cattle that can be “driven” to do anything.

We’re talking about flattening the power relationships between vendors and customers, for the good of both.

I could go on, but it’s Sunday morning, and I’m off to make breakfast, have some fun with the family, and buy stuff from vendors who don’t treat people like plankton.

As much as some people might like to believe, we don’t define ourselves as a nation of market silos, with various connecting retail channels and media mechanisms enabled to advertise new and retreaded products for mass consumption — either in the brick n’ mortar space or the new wild west of the internet.

We define at ourselves as people, first and foremost. And, God forbid, we like to be treated as such.

The problem that Doc has framed in the past, and is dealing with in this post, is that the majority of players who guard and influence the American system of capitalism can’t seem to roll with the idea of influence neutral and people-centric business practices.

Why you ask? (come on, ask)

Because systematically backing individualism comes at too high of a cost.

Consider the fact that:

• mass manufacturing and targeted advertising in the industrial age set the standard approach to maximizing short-term and long-term profitability; customization and new media conversations throws a huge monkey wrench into that methodology of perpetual product pimping and production.
• the more catering the individual receives — regardless of the depth of their pockets — the more that the levers of the traditional supply and demand model must change; this affects not only the politics of the market, but the politics of the nation, as citizen participation and influence flattens and widens the playing field.

To me, it sounds like Doc wants to live in a world where we have enough breathing room to get a handle on our own needs and wants — as opposed to our current state of constantly being poked, prodded and influenced into needing what marketers and advertisers want us to buy.

Don’t we all want to live in such a world?

By enabling smart social mechanisms that allow us to — for a lack of a better term — ping the ether when we desire, alerting other human beings to hit us back who own aligning attributes of proximity, supply, price, quality, etc., we can move towards a way of life that is free of the walled constructs that serve the bricklayers more than the bartering parties themselves.

We don’t quite have such a commons in place yet, and our new economy mechanisms are still somewhat crude, but we’re heading in the right direction.

In order to ensure our new world dreams don’t get trounced by the same people who clipped the wings of ham radio operators and the promise of public access television, we need to be vigilant in monitoring the old guard who won’t evolve — for as innovation creates opportunities for the masses, it also marginalizes old technology and the people who hold on for dear life.

These people will not go quietly into the night.

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.

Artist: Bob Dylan
Song: The Times They Are A-Changin’

==========

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

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.

(originally uploaded by wmchu)

(originally uploaded by ’stpiduko’)

Just as we were getting used to how folksonomies can help us find relational information, ‘dem darn kids take it to the next level.

Long gone are the days when protesting corporate bullshit was limited to groups of people gathering on the street outside of a main office. Nowadays, you can protest by simply dropping a single word into the workings of the retail experience itself.

Check out what DefectiveByDesign is doing:

How passé is crafting a product review now that you can group multiple sucky products that share a common sucky trait with a few key strokes? Why tag your frustrations on your blog, when you can hit the fuckers where it hurts the most — in the virtual aisles and checkout lines themselves?

Excuse me while I head over to Amazon to spread my love of hating DRM.

UPDATE: Tag-daddy, Thomas Vander Wal, makes a profound statement on my flickr comment thread.

(via BoingBoing)

Lisa Scheer and I spent a few hours over at M’Coul’s Pub yesterday, melding minds over how to best use the web to expose her amazing eye to a larger audience and start a conversation about her passion.

Enter tagging.

After a few hours of exchanging philosophical approaches and dissecting interfaces, Lisa left with laptop in tow to start exploring her new sandbox.

Her castle is going to be dope.

This post is the result of pseudo-live blogging (there was no WiFi access at the N&R). All quotes are paraphrases.

Jay Rosen is a journalism professor at NYU and the driving force behind the Pro-Am journalism experiment, NewAssignment.net. He’s come to Greensboro to meet with the N&R and the active blogging community we have here, to spread the word of his project and hold a discussion regarding its possibilities.

Jay begins by giving a brief history of newspapers/journalism and the internet in three stages:

1. Newspaper ownership began using the web in 1995 by simply re-purposing print content and surrounding it with ads. Why not? The content was already paid for and there wasn’t a need for much development
2. Blogging, citizen journalism hit big from 2004 to 2006; a wake up for people not using the medium to extend conversations and the news.
3. Where we’re heading (and NewAssignment.net is attempting to lead); bringing journalists, web users and citizens together to create dynamic, well-researched and disciplined journalism.

NewAssignment.net will:

• Employ editors to manage resources, the narrative and quality of reporting
• Hire occasional reporters for story development
• Tap into the idea that smart mobs + editors = smart, collaborative, widely-distributed input and richer output

Jay made a point to describe the advantages that a NewAssignment.net has on the traditional world of journalism:

• It’s Not a business; there’s no VC or ownership to demand a particular return
• There’s no production routine to follow; no quota of time to print
• No absolute set of topical coverage; unlike modern news outlets, they can cover anything they feel is relevant
• Local, national, international; there’s no geo-specific coverage
• There are no legacy methods or traditions to change or fight through
• No inertia from old school participants who don’t want change

“Journalism isn’t traditionally innovative; this could be different,� Rosen says.

By operating as a non-profit in academia, NewAssignment becomes R&D for major news operations. Along those lines, Reuters has given a $100k gift for research and Jay is using the gift to hire an editor.

No strings attached, mind you.

Newspapers are aware of citizen journalism, realize that it’s where the future is heading and many from within the industry want to contribute using the enablers of the web and raise the quality of journalism. Or at least that’s what Jay’s hoping for.

As long as salaries can be sustained, I’m thinking it’s a pretty solid bet.

If you’re an interaction designer, think about the process of generating design personae while listening to Gladwell.

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…

No, not some crappy ceramic mug, I’m talking about a digital SRL camera with built-in geotagging.

Yeah, I know there’s no such thing… so, HP, Nikon, Sony and the rest of the bunch need to get busy.

Chop, chop!

Here are the only two features that are essential to making me happy:

• Automatic geotagging of digital images for instant goodness when I upload to flickr
• Y-axis geotagging for shots taken above ground (to support hobbyists like Doc)

‘Tis the season in… two months and 8 days. I hope to have this on my wishlist by then.

(illustration by Serifcan Özcan)

Good Magazine
Political NASCAR
by Morgan Clendaniel

In the 2006 midterms, Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Rick Santorum (R-PA), both running for re-election, have raised the most money of any candidate in their respective parties. Here are the NASCAR-style uniforms they would wear if companies were proud of their political donations, and if running for senate required a flame-retardant suit.

HILLARY CLINTON
Hillary Clinton’s top contributions by sector
Finance, Insurance, Real Estate $4,650,601
Lawyers & Lobbyists $3,533,740
Other $3,258,584
Miscellaneous Business $2,332,809
Communications/Electronics $1,808,119
Health $1,122,341
Construction $521,796
Ideology/Single-Issue $432,270
Labor $340,545
Agribusiness $211,565
Energy/Natural Resource $206,462
Transportation $118,210
Defense $86,050

TOTAL (as of June 30th): $33,180,949

RICK SANTORUM
Rick Santorum’s top contributors by sector
Finance, Insurance, Real Estate $2,812,841
Miscellaneous Business $1,373,537
Lawyers & Lobbyists $1,357,125
Health $1,258,021
Other $1,243,951
Construction $666,015
Energy/Natural Resource $651,541
Ideology/Single-Issue $563,073
Communications/Electronics $474,990
Agribusiness $399,237
Transportation $299,574
Defense $76,000
Labor $56,706

TOTAL (as of June 30th): $17,252,473

Like many people, I often think about the chasm in the relationship between our state representatives and us, the constituents; how in so many cases, our elected representatives tend to not represent the desires of the people that put them in office, instead succumbing to the efforts of lobbyists and special interest groups.

While the concept of wearing logos on campaign duds is probably a bit too extreme for our culture, someone really needs to build a web site that displays such contributions and relationships in an easy to digest manner, across numerous data slices. I assume that the information is already available to the public; the big question is whether or not it’s being gathered, managed and distributed in the most open formats available.

I mean, can I get an RSS feed of newly submitted documentation of Clinton, Santorum and, say, Vernon Robinson campaign contributions?

If the answer is no, then why the hell not?

Maybe when the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) is finally passed, we can start serious work on the infrastructure and interfaces that support centralized repositories for decentralized accountability. Or is this not sexy enough to fit into the social networking investment craze of Web 2.0?

(via BoingBoing)

Can flickr be any more fun without spinning in circles before exploding into fiery, shimmering glitter dust?

For those of you not in the know, geo-tagging is when you apply specific (or general) geographical tags to an object in order to identify its location. flickr has done an amazing job out the gate with this puppy, as the drag and drop interface is so good, so very easy to use.

(click here for a full-sized interface screenshot)

I’ve spent this entire evening digging back through my photostream, eyeballing maps and looking up the addresses of specific places where I took my shots. Some are easy to find (my house, M’Coul’s), while others are a bit of a challenge (wedding pictures, scenic shots), but it’s a fun exercise either way.

My question to Stuart and crew: This is going to become socialized at some point, right? (UPDATE: The map just appeared in my Explore tab! More here.)

I mean, how fresh would it be to be working your map and easily flip from how you’ve experienced a location to how someone else has? Essentially, take the concept behind the tag globe icon and apply it as a metaphor within the map interface, opening it up as another exploration tool? (I realize that I’ve just described a lot of the functionality of Plazes, but it already relies on people uploading geo-specific flickr images of hot-spot locations to their interface… hm, another Yahoo! acquisition, possibly?)

The Business Of Mashups

When I interviewed/presented at A9 last June, they were in the midst of that highly publicized “send a college student around in a van to take pictures of every block of every city” campaign. The idea being that seamless visual context of a business location on a Yellow Page business interface could be both useful and fun.

Well, sure, but the most useful? I approached the interface challenge from a bit of a different angle.

My presentation ended up clashing with what I perceived to be their primary context scenario for the product (people finding particular businesses with city block pictures). I argued instead, focus first and foremost on improving Yellow Pages search results and try to get businesses to “tag” their particular inventories to expose their goods to the A9 engine. Simply put, lead with the most useful user scenario, not with the eye candy of street scenes, which can always come later.

Now, flickr is, and should be, all about enhancing eye candy (finding it, sharing it, etc.); enabling people to find geo-specific businesses that have what they need is someone else’s business model.

See where I’m going with all of this?

Imagine how sick of an API this geo-tagging feature would be for a Yellow Pages product — one completely optimized to the teeth with a killer business tagging interface, providing exponentially more degrees of findability than simply scraping language from the business name, description and reviews found on the business interface itself?

Say a kid, fresh on campus, is looking for a local Chinese food restaurant and stumbles across the smartly exposed collection of quarter-mile range of images on the business interface of a Yellow Pages service. I can imagine the following conversation busting out:

Dude, check this out! ‘Swallow Balls‘ Haha. I’m getting that for Joe, he’s such a ball swallower. Ha! Oh man… they even serve scorpion? Okay, we have no choice, grab your chopsticks, we’re so there!”

Viral goodness of flickr madness; good for you, me and Mr. Chen.

Gnar, dude.