Email me if you’re interested in going to a CounterPulse round table discussion tonight about urban food systems. The event features Brahm Amhadi, of People’s Grocery, and several other leading thinkers and activists around the issue of food security.

CounterPulse, 8 PM, 1310 Mission St., San Francisco. The event is open to the public as part of a series on the topic of “Nature in the City”.

Disclosure: People’s Grocery is a client. They’re a client, and they’re doing very important, very challenging work. I’ll promote them any way I can.

Steve Portigal has posted a thoughtful event summary about an “unconference” organized last weekend. The event was called “Overlap”. Congratulations on the success of the event. It sounds like it was a meaningful process.

Steve wrote:

“But this shifted into a discussion of social responsibility or rather Social Responsibility that seemed off-topic. But had tremendous gravity for the group. It became this underlying theme for the event (why, I am not sure).”

Steve suggests that at one point the conversation involved a bunch of designers on retreat talking about how to save the world. How interesting. I’ve been in similar retreats with MBA students where we did the same thing (from a business perspective).

Steve makes an excellent point: we are not “designers” or “MBA’s” or any other type of professionally defined social-responsibilitists. Read the rest of this entry »

Compare the WTO’s description of the Seattle 1999 conference to Wikipedia’s. Which seems more historically open, honest, and accurate to you?

I was at the Battle in Seattle with a group of legal “witnesses”. We were there to observe the demonstrations, in an effort to reduce the risk of violence and prevent human rights abuses. It was a monumental occasion for me personally, and it may go down in history as a global societal tipping point between open and closed governance models.

Consider Clay Shirky’s views regarding social media as an emerging field of philosophical political economic inquiry.

Consider this 1999 statement from Sierra Club Exectutive Director Carl Pope:

“What happened in Seattle was that the secretive, closed-door, corporate-dominated process broke down, and I don’t think they can put it together again.”

Consider the role that seattle.indymedia.org played in coordinating and publicizing the demonstrations and aftermath. I’m not personally aligned with their politics, and it’s more interesting to me to understand the role their site played in Seattle. By all accounts, their influence was huge.

Compare that to the subsequent explosive growth of online political organizing, and the corporate recognition that citizen bloggers are now an important dimension of the public relations landscape.

I try to keep politics out of this blog. My own personal politics are immaterial to your business. Yet it’s difficult (and at times meaningless) to write about trends affecting the economy without acknowledging the political environment.

And so I’m just publicly wondering; when will we declare the end of closed processes in American public business and governance?

I agree with Carl Pope that we witnessed the de facto end in Seattle, November, 1999. I’m increasingly studying social media strategies because I think they’re affecting a profound change in business and society.

The blog now has RSS enabled. Sorry for the long delay. I hope it helps.

If you’re new to RSS, please check out Nick’s helpful summary on the topic.

This month I finished reading Cluetrain Manifesto and Naked Conversations. Both books provided a lot of good material and strategies for making better use of this space. I largely agree with the authors and editors of both books and I highly recommend them to anyone who is using the web for business. They’ve thoughtfully laid out a lot of useful rules and suggestions. As usual, I don’t expect to follow the rules very closely, and I’ll continue making things work the best that I can.

The headline in a CNN article reads “Coming Soon: The Web Toll”. It’s a propaganda piece designed to convince the public that a “toll web” is a foregone conclusion.

It’s clear that the Telcos want a bigger slice of online revenues. I’m curious to see if other industries are going to do anything to stop it.

Every industry would be affected by the changes that the Telcos are proposing.

It’s interesting to wonder what kind of cooperative networks will spring up in the wake of this decision? I sure would love to stop paying Comcast $60 per month. AT&T and Verizon… Oh man I can’t wait to lose those clowns.

I don’t suppose that the scientists and engineers who created the ideas behind web are going to sit around, shrug their shoulders, and go back to watching American Idol. The ideas are out. It’s too late to go back.

It’s true that Telcos have a lot of power over and responsibility for the present network; and I guess it’s possible that the current administration doesn’t have the public interest at heart.

Too bad for now. It’s certainly not the end of the web.

If they hijack the present superhighway, so what?

What should I be afraid of?

Losing my access to a conversation of independent voices and free thinkers?

Losing my ability to distinguish between bullshit corporate propaganda and real people talking about real issues that really matter?

Yeah right… I fear not.

One of my favorite part time jobs was to wander Michigan State’s campus and staple obnoxious flyers to the annoying flyer boards. I only was in the game for a few months, and I liked the flexibility and independence of it, and soon something more interesting came up. The job was to promote Kaplan test prep services, and in addition to my meager $5/hr., they gave me free access to a lot of learning materials. I used these to study for the GRE and the GMAT. The whole situation worked out pretty well.

I mention all of this because I’ve been researching the idea of “street teams”. Kaplan hired people like me to be part of their “street team”, although they didn’t have a name for it. Plus, they actually HIRED me, with wages and other valuable benefits.

This morning I came across an example of how a music industry site in Finland is recruiting “street teams”. They’re bringing in volunteer kids, paying them in “creds”, and assumedly offering the respect and appreciation of their favorite bands. The whole thing is cleverly packaged as a grassroots community, and they use phrases like “Teaming up is power!” Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday I was involved in a strategic conversation with a client and a few other consultants. I’m not the lead developer on the project; my role was to contribute ideas. These types of conversations are what make my job a lot of fun.

It struck me that it would be helpful to have some sort of framework for the ideas that the developers and I were talking about. We want to help our client understand how we approach questions such as:

• What is the purpose of the site?
• What are goals to help guide our publishing efforts?
• What type of information will we share on the site?

Here’s the graphic framework I’ve come up with. I’m particularly interested to know (1) what layers could I add, and (2) what phrases did I miss?

People now pay $465 to hire a zebra painted jeep ride through the lower 24th community. They wear safari hats and stare at pedestrians.

It’d be comforting to think that they were on their way to see one of the local attractions, like Balmy Alley or the Precita Eyes Mural Arts center. They were definitely staring at pedestrians. They even slowed to take my picture.

“Look over there honey, it’s one of those Mission telecommuter tech guys from the book! He’s got coffee and a croissant, ohhh, amazing… zoom in quick, I think he saw us.”

Or so it seemed.

I’ve been working with People’s Grocery as a strategic planning advisor. It’s a great job and I love doing it.

I’ve been familiar with PG’s work for years, and I can honestly say that every aspect of the organization is doing meaningful work. We’re working to take social enterprise to a new level, and the whole team is working with integrity, excitement, and purpose.

PG is on the verge of some major new breakthroughs that promise to create big waves in Oakland. We’ve got our work cut out for us, and we’re doing everything we can. We’ve been growing pretty quickly and we could use some help.

PG is currently hiring two positions:

1.) Outreach and Events Coordinator, and

2.) Individual Donor Associate

This is a great time to get involved. Please visit PG’s site to learn more. Thanks!

File under: high brow marketing strategy lecture.

I’m going early because last time I tried to get into a Long Now event the line was too long.

Perhaps this waiting is an intentional part of their experience design. It’s a natural filter when you think about it. How else to ensure a room that’s consistently future oriented? Pass them all through a “patience” screen at the door.

7:00 at the Palace of Fine Arts, SF. Send me a note if you want to bike over there on the early side.