You know what I’m talking about. Damn that was like a punch in the gut.
Author Archives: Karl
Condolences
To Susie Madrak, who said goodbye her father last weekend. Read her tribute to him. If you don’t know her, you are missing out on knowing a special, passionate soul. Her part in running the Norgs unconference was central to it being a success, in every way.
And to my friend Lynne, who lost her grandson this weekend.
My heart goes out to you.
Congrats
To Philly blogger Antonella Pavese for getting a new job at a certain large search firm that just bought a certain large video community.
To Philly blogger and Philly Future volunteer, and friend, Albert Yee for his well deserved raise and promotion at PhillyCarShare.
To Danie for her birthday this past weekend – Happy Birthday Danie!
Sleeping Angels 2006 fundraiser
Sleeping Angels held its 2006 Beef & Beer fundraiser on Saturday. It was terrific hanging out with so many friends for a good cause. Pictures at Sleeping Angels and over at my brother Dante’s blog “The Mountain View”.
If you weren’t there… I missed ya.
Norgs Stories for October 10th
Whadda week!
- Google acquires YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock and everyone’s hearts are a flutter. There’s been much grousing about what this means (see Memeorandum), but like damn near always, I find what’s missing is a historical perspective. Google acquired large particiaptory media companies in the past. Think Blogger. Think DejaNews. This fits what has always been in the company’s DNA. A recognition that the web is social software. The frightening thing is that companies are liable to take the wrong lessons from this. Time for everyone to take a deep breath. For some interesting thoughts see Scott Karp, Scott Rosenberg, Niall Kennedy, Susan Mernit, lostremote, Jeff Jarvis, and Don Dodge.
- ONA sounded like it was a success this year, where real progress was made and minds opened.
Jeff Jarvis called it “The death of Eeyore”, sharing the optimism and passion he noticed at the conference.
But it had to happen. Someone had to go back to that tired fiction,that tired lie – that of a ‘fight’ between blogging and journalism. This time it came from a blogger – Mike Arrington, of Techcrunch – who talks about it, from his point of view on his blog.
It’s clear that from Jeff’s perspective, and Staci’s at paidContent,Arrington turned it into a polarized circus, and helped make bloggers look bad.
Mike Arrington doesn’t speak for the rest of us folks. Take note of Staci’s and Jeff’s reactions. We gotta continue to build bridges of understanding – not walls.
Amy Webb was there and thought that papers might be looking to hard at video as a savior.
- Speaking of building bridges of understanding – Doc Searls has a set of ten tips for newspapers, that sound very much in line with what we’ve been discussing here. It’s a good read, even if you find yourself nodding in agreement the whole time.
- Jay Rosen’s Q & A at Slashdot is a real must read. He answers, in depth,questions about NewAssignment.net, Citizen Journalism and the news industry.
- Rebecca Blood, talking about product customer service, and a concrete example with United Airlines, explains how Social Media Works.
- A long piece, that I have yet to read, but which looks to have much to chew on, is Alice Goldman’s paper (of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law) Community Node-Based User Governance: Applying Craigslist’s Techniques to Decentralized Internet Governance.
Hey – what’s a Norg? And there was an unconference you say? Uhuh. And an ongoing conversation. We need to get our site rolling.
Upcoming: Sleeping Angels Beef & Beer
Sorry I haven’t been posting that often folks. Still here, just nutso busy.
This coming Saturday I’m going to be at the Sleeping Angels Fund’s Fifth Annual Beef & Beer.
Sleeping Angels, ran by my brother’s family, is a non-profit that provides memorials, for infants who have passed away, for families that cannot afford them. The Beef and Beer features fun karaoke, prizes provided by a terrific list of sponsors, some tasty sandwiches and of course – beer 🙂 It’s for a good cause. If you’re in the area, I hope to see you there.
Ross: “for you jr. detectives out there, piss off”
Ross, a friend of mine, details his experience getting to Digg’s home page. He’s surprised at the small number of negative comments posted (it was a how-to on motion detection and your webcam). I’m not. Ross can write a how-to better then anyone I know.
Timely new featured blog at Philly Future
I’m happy to share that eRobin and her Fact-esque is our latest featured blog at Philly Future. Fact-esque has a strong focus on election reform issues, including electronic voting machines, and local Bucks County politics and news.
Norgs stories of the week
Craig Newmark doesn’t plan to cash in on the current tech media bubble: “We both know some people who own more than a billion (dollars) and they’re not any the happier. They also need bodyguards.”
Michael Kinsley in Time asks Do Newspapers Have a Future?.
Seth Finkelstein in the Guardian writes why you might not want a Wikipedia piece on yourself. Leads me to comment on his blog, “I feel craven and souless – but I *want* someone to care about what I’ve done so much as to contribute to Wikipedia article on me and Philly Future. But I’m not *notable*. Just an average Joe. And as some would say (Ben Franklin I believe) – I guess I haven’t done anything worthy of being written about yet.”
Newsvine plans to expand into local news coverage according to Mike Davidson in a thread at paid Content having to do with the economics of local news coverage and an interesting article at The Seattle Times on Citizen Journalism.
Does Bob Woodward have enough juice left to influence the debate on Iraq? Or will his book be looked at as just another partisan hit job (ridiculous considering the other books he’s published painting Bush in a positive light)? Do facts matter anymore? Or is all that matters in this post-modern me-media age is our own points of view?
I’m starting to see technologists waking up to the political situation in the country now. About time. Lets ask ourselves, in this age of uber-connectivity and communications tools – why are we growing ever more divided, and ever more frightened?
Jay Rosen is taking questions about Citizen Journalism at Slashdot.
Mark Glaser publishes a guide to Citizen Journalism referring to a timeline published by IndyMedia’s Chris Anderson.
But where’s the mention of Slashdot?
Terry Heaton says that papers should work harder to provide databases of local information:
Remember that Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it easily accessible. That ought to be the core goal of any Media 2.0 business, because that’s where the eyeballs and the money will be. We can either be contributors to the knowledge/information base by supplying content (the expensive end of the value chain), be the aggregator of local the local knowledge/information base, or we can do both. Let’s see, hmm. Which path should we take?
Hitwise opens up to reveal some interesting information from its datacenter. Look at the market share the top 25 have. It strikes me that it is so… small. Think about it.
Journalists confronting each other was a theme this week as The Philadelphia Daily News’s Will Bunch challenged the Washington Post’s David Broder to do better journalism and Salon’s Scott Rosenberg challenge’s Slate’s Jacob Weisberg to do the same.
Google Reader, Google’s RSS personal aggregator, upgrades. Its new functionality and UI are good enough to provide Bloglines with its first real challenger, as far as I’m concerned. I think I’m switching.
Jeff Jarvis gets on ABC with a clever piece about participatory media.
Hey – what’s a Norg? And there was an unconference you say? Uhuh. And an ongoing conversation. We need to get our site rolling.
WWII, Cold War, War on Terror, leadership styles
FDR: Oh, I’m sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we’re coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How’s that going to feel?
CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We’ll be in the pub, flipping you off. I’m slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I’m sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.
JFK: You’re going to put nukes where? I don’t fucking think so.
REAGAN: Okay commrade, you’ve gone and built enough nuclear weapons to radiate the world. You have spies stealing state secrets and minions spreading ideology from one continent to the next. But. ummm, I’m sorry red, you still don’t get it. You’re the evil empire but that doesn’t scare us, we have faith in our system of government, in our people. Sit down with us – negotiate – or show the world the coward you are. Don’t even think of attacking us. Put down your guns. Wage peace while you have the chance. Tear down this wall.
US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike … NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!
WE GOTTA PUT UP SOME WALLS! HURRY! Anything that stands in our way is pre-9/11 thinking, including that document interpreted by activist judges (I think that’s called the Constitution, damned liberals).
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The previous is an expanded take on the brilliant “Wait, Aren’t You Scared?” by John Rogers and “Fear itself” by slacktivist. Make sure to read both.
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Politics is an on again, off again subject here, but like Rafe, I found I couldn’t help myself. “How can people not get it?” I don’t know man. I don’t know.