I wanted to push up a quick post about various projects I’m working on right now that may be something you’d like to get in on as well. Of course if you don’t see something of interest here you can bet that this list is always evolving so check-in with me if you’re looking for some work.

WOSU Projects

I am currently engaged in a couple of WOSU projects that are going to need greater community involvement as we move forward. Whether you would like to help on the front end, be a participant in the event itself or just be a cheerleader passing along project information as you will we (myself and WOSU) would appreciate the help.

• WOSU Columbus Neighborhoods Program

The first WOSU television program about the Short North is due to air on March 8, 2010. Currently WOSU has funding to create television content about six neighborhoods in Columbus along with a companion website (this is where I come in).

ColumbusNeighborhoods.org (not yet live) will be a place to document stories about your Columbus neighborhood (or suburb) using video/audio/photos/text. Some of the area historical societies have agreed to work with us to get some of their archives uploaded. We’re looking for interested residents to join in and share their content as a way of building the story of Columbus, its neighborhoods and people, in an easily accessible online format.

Hopefully this will lead to enough interest that WOSU will receive further funding to do more of the neighborhood programs including programs about the suburbs that make up Central Ohio.

• WOSU Public Media Camp

Currently this event is scheduled for Saturday May 8, 2010 and will center around the question of: “Using collaborative project opportunities, how do we strengthen the relationship that WOSU has with the community?”

I was honored to attend the first national Public Media Camp with WOSU last year and this local camp will be an extension of what began in Washington, DC. WOSU has three core opportunities that they want to explore for collaborating more closely with creative and informed residents. This event will be a chance to discover what innovative ways we can turn those opportunities into real life collaborative efforts.

Upper Arlington Centric Projects

• Leadership UA Website

I’m currently working on a redesign of the Leadership UA website. The current site is at http://leadershipua.org and I would be happy to get some feedback from people about what they might find useful but is lacking on that old site. I hope to launch the new site in the next couple of weeks (there’s a deadline to this one so it has to happen sooner rather than later).

Some features of the new site that are in the works will be an RSS feed, monthly leadership notes and more multi-media content.

• Conversation Arlington

A very select few of you may remember that a few years ago I was a class member of the Leadership UA program and helped to develop the Conversation Arlington format for hosting conversations in UA about civic opportunities and issues. This has transformed into a few different outreach projects for Leadership UA (which I’m now a board member of) along with helping to bring together an Upper Arlington Art of Hosting Community of Practice.

Under Leadership UA I, along with some of my fellow board members, are looking to expand our conversations to help sustain productive dialogue in our community. Look for more on this once the new website is in place.

• Upper Arlington Family Bicycle Tour

This came about late last fall when I had a conversation with Tim Maloney (UA Parks & Rec) about an idea for a bike ride to help foster greater family bicycling in UA. After a meeting with James Gant (UA Parks & Rec) and word that UA would soon be home to 2 bicycle stores, both sitting pretty on Lane Ave (Trek store and Roll:), we are planning for a first event to happen late spring/early summer with two other events to follow.

The idea is to hold three events: one tour of the northern UA parks and schools, one tour of the southern UA parks and schools and then a longer ride that connects all of them. If you’d like to help out or just make sure that you’re alerted ahead of time as to when the events will be held then let me know!

• UA Bicycle Route Map

I’ve heard rumor of the existence of a general outline of a bike plan in UA that came about around 2001 or so during the transportation planning phase of the UA Master Plan. I have verification that some of these plans exist so I’m working to develop a nicely packaged version of this that will hopefully inspire even more families to get out and pedal instead.

A component of this will be a project that I want to propose building a bicycle boulevard that connects UA to Marble Cliff to Grandview to Downtown Columbus. Are you in? Let’s get to work on it then!

Columbus Projects

• Casino Free Columbus

Contrary to what some of the groups out there would have you believe our organization (http://cfcolumbus.com) is opposed to any casino in Columbus. We are of the opinion that casino’s are exploitative and that we, as a community, should be looking at innovation to solve our problems instead of exploitation. We aren’t taking a particular stand on the amendment to move the casino location because for us it really is about the fact that we don’t want a casino at all. This isn’t a NIMBY issue for us. If you agree then please show your support on the website or at the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/?act=24621824#/casinofreecolumbus.

• Our Optimal Health

This is another website project that I’m working on and hope to at least do a soft-launch of in the near future. For the time being there isn’t much that I can ask you for in terms of outside help but just be aware that it will eventually surface and you’ll be invited to give feedback.

• Columbus Art of Hosting Community of Practice

Columbus has a rapidly growing community of practice that is growing the use of hosting techniques at an exponential rate. We’re all thinking about good ways to capture this story and this is something at the front of my mind. With any project that just feels colossal it is often beneficial to get feedback from people who are outside of the process. Any takers?

Writing Projects

• Social Knowledge: Using Social Media to Know What You Know

I’ve gone through a review round with this and am awaiting the latest revisions from the editors. The book should publish later this year (2010) as I believe we are still on track for that but we’ll see. If you’d like to get a sneak peak so as to give me some constructive criticism let me know.

• This Week Upper Arlington

As you will have noticed I picked up another freelance gig writing editorials for This Week Upper Arlington. Is there a community story that you feel needs some focus? I’ve got 5000 characters a month to tell it in.

• WOSU 820

I’m happy to say that I’m still on the air about once a month or so. Now, that doesn’t mean that Columbus is happy about that. As with my This Week UA articles I’ve come to find the truth in an old reporter friend of mine who used to say, “If you aren’t pissing off everyone then you aren’t doing it right.” Cheers to me I suppose! 500 words isn’t much but it’s the three minutes of airtime I get. Do you have a story you think I’d be interested in?

• Capital City Radio

I’ve been set loose on the Capital City Radio blog (http://capitalcityradio.org/) as another outlet for my unique musical tastes. Capital City Radio would like to focus more on local musicians and I’d be glad to help out with that if you have someone to send my way. Let me know if you’ve got some tunes online that we can link up!

Speaking Engagements

• OSU Digital Media in a Social World Conference, Mendenhall Lab Columbus, OH Presentation “Bridging the Gap Between Offline Engagement and Online Social Networking” February 20, 2010

What strategies are there for bridging the gap between traditional offline engagement and using social media and online collaboration tools? Using local examples of success and failure I will show that while the face-to-face meeting is still king, digital media is making those meetings much more productive than ever before.

• Flagler College Communications Week Presenter, St. Augustine, FL March 25, 2010

I don’t have all of the information yet as to who all I’ll be addressing at this talk but I know I’ll be speaking to a classroom of students as a part of this which will surely be about taking advantage of having your own keys to mass communication. Let’s see if I can inspire them to do something with those keys!

• Columbus State Community College Communications Conference, Columbus, OH May 1, 2010

How do you open your own doors of opportunity? Would you like to make your passion your career? Let me show you how by using social media and new technologies as a way of launching brand YOU. In this session you’ll learn best practices for expanding your online outreach and landing those all important face‐to‐face meetings with potential clients and employers.

Where to find me…

Of course I’m always accessible via my blogs at ElephantsOnBicycles.com and Andrew-Miller.com as well as at Twitter.com/Digitalocracy and other points in-between.

The conversation was held at the Ohio State University Urban Arts Space in the newly renovated LEED certified Lazurus building. I was honored to have a chance to work with Rick Livingston on hosting this event and we couldn’t think of a better space for this conversation to occur.

Who was called?

A wide net was cast for the invitation but a take-away for me in this conversation is that there is a real need for some focused invitation in the future. In attendance at the conversation were many wonderful people who had already started to explore what their inner climate change was happening in response to what they see as the global climate change crisis.

My dream for this conversations potential however would be to bring people in who do not currently feel that immediacy or crisis, or perhaps even a connection to global climate change. I believe it is important to engage with those individuals and find that place of commonality between the two sides of this issue. As one participant last night spoke, “This issue is inclusive because of its ramifications. So even if you deny the reason for climate change happening there is still room for you to participate in guiding action.”

Harvest

Even without the realization of my dream of full inclusion on this conversation there was still an amazing synergy that took place. I can’t thank the participants in this conversation enough, they were all lovely. Below I would like to share the visual harvest from the evening with you.

I’m working with the organizers now to determine if there is a good fit for me to lead one of the discussions. I’ll keep you posted in regards to that. Either way I am registered and excited for this important event to happen. I hope to see you there!

[Full information available here and LinkedIn page here]

Change Leadership on the path to Democratic Governance

Initially, the focus for this symposium started as individual topics at the frontier of change leadership. These topics included complexity science as a framework for understanding change, interconnection of change at different scale (personal, organizational, and societal), building community, and managing a portfolio of change. However, as the topics were evaluated it became clear there was a common theme involving the continuing movement into a knowledge era and how individuals choose to structure their relationships as they organize with others.

Within this shift, “Democratic Governance” is starting to surface as an approach to community governance. This approach seeks to involve more stakeholders in the decision-making process and works to overcome conflicts by addressing root causes. Yet, while Democratic Governance normally involves local governing bodies, the same issues are involved in empowering teams and collaboration among organizational stakeholders with different goals.

Therefore, this symposium will examine a number of issues within the framework of the greater change processes underway today. It will seek to build a holistic understanding that incorporates leading edge thinking about change processes. Attendees are expected to come from a range of backgrounds with expertise in different aspects of organizational change and thereby share their knowledge within the framework of building a sustainable model of Democratic Governance.

Adopting new approaches for organizing diverse groups of people, the symposium is designed to be different from traditional conferences and workshops. Collectively, attendees will experience techniques for building a sense of community around common interests and move to deeper levels of learning. Attendees will be encouraged to be active participants by investigating the numerous issues that arise as you scale from small groups with single focus into larger groups bringing conflicting agendas to the table. It is these larger issues that are expected to dominate the symposium dialogue.

Registration fee: $20 includes lunch, afternoon refreshments, and symposium supplies. Contact Dr. Ross Wirth at wirthr@franklin.edu or 614-947-6128 for more information. Profiles of those attending are being organized at http://www.linkedin.com/e/vgh/1865279/

Yes, I will be presenting! Come and find out about the Digitalocracy on Friday, July 19, 2009 at OSU.

From July 2009 Columbus CEO, Social (Media) Studies:

This week has been a tough one; and that’s a fact of life.

There are times in each of our lives when we have a hard week and we start shutting down, saying “life’s not fair”, and wishing away our troubles until we’re blue in the face. I’ve done that in my life too from time to time. That is merely opportunity lost though.

Opportunities come too few and far between to let them slip away like that.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with some really great community leaders at Experience Columbus to discuss growing the number of “Columbus Advocates” and how we might affect this via social media. Before the meeting my head was a million miles away, full with all of my weeks negativity. Sitting in that room, talking with passion about the community and the technology that I love was all it took for me to remember opportunity.

Experience Columbus provided the perfect backdrop to this mind switch. One year ago this organization invited about 40 local bloggers and social media savvy folks to the premiere of the Experience Columbus social media strategy. While it had some good elements to it the total package did not go over well.

Experience Columbus had spent a great deal of time designing a failure.

Instead of engaging their online networks up front they brought them in on the backend. The message fell flat without the buy-in that develops organically from early engagement and continued collaboration. Experience Columbus, like many organizations, might have walked away from this and headed back into the vacuum. But the didn’t.

Experience Columbus found the opportunity in this failure.

The meeting held yesterday was only one of several being held. Beside the meetings, the employees of Experience Columbus have spent this last year getting personally involved in building their social media networks throughout the region. Along with that development they have been gathering massive amounts of user generated content from the local blogging and social media networks.

What did our group learn at its meeting then?

First of all is that Experience Columbus has an incredible amount of information to share – and do they ever want to share it! Unfortunately all of us at the meeting not directly employeed by Experience Columbus had no idea how much of this info was already available because it wasn’t convenient to find and the Experience Columbus site (and story) wasn’t compelling enough to get us to search it out.

Experience Columbus continues to learn.

The Experience Columbus team had amazing questions and insights to offer as the discussion moved on. Seeing how committed they have been to learning from the failure last year I expect this interaction will only spur them on to even greater work. I really appreciated being asked to participate in this important community effort.

Want to help by being a Columbus Ambassador? It’s easy, just keep spreading the good word about Columubus and look up the folks at Experience Columbus and offer to help!

On Friday I gave the above presentation to the MORPC (Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission) Green Pact members, about 60 people were in attendance and I believe we had a very good session. Unfortunately, when giving a basic presentation about dipping your toe into the world of social media you don’t get that instant feedback you get from a group of seasoned social media users you are either praising or bashing you in realtime on Twitter, etc. My gut tells me that the audience got some good information and ideas out of our conversation.

Slideshare didn’t link up the presentation notes for some reason so the presentation will hopefully jog the memory of the attendees and may give you some things to investigate. If you’d like further background info, etc. feel free to contact me directly.

Thanks to MORPC for inviting myself and Jody to present and to all of the attendees for your attention and great conversation!

So first things first. Ignite is an excellent opportunity to share and listen to exciting ideas and presentations in a very fast paced setting, giving maximum bang for your virtual buck (it’s free is what I mean). Alvin aka @wyliemac along with Dan and several others have setup the next Ignite Columbus #IC3 for Friday, June 19, 2009 from 6-8pm at the OSU Mendenhall Lab. I’ve submitted my presentation “A new social movement I call Digitalocracy” and need your help to make it up to the stage.

Take a moment to visit http://ignitecbus.uservoice.com/pages/general and cast a vote for me. While you’re out there take a look at other ideas and check out the Ignite Columbus blog.

In other blogging and presentation news:

• My blog post “Trust Management” was selected as the Best Trust Post of the Month on the Carnival of Trust website. Initial props were given by the good folks at EGYII who first linked the post up.
• I received an email from the fine folks at Schmap that they wanted to use one of my photos from my St. Augustine trip on thier latest mapping mashup. This is particularly ironic because I took the photo while I was at Flagler College giving a presentation about Social Media and Collaboration – and here it is in action!
• Finally, I’ll be presenting at MORPC on May 1, 2009 with my friend Jody Dzuranin about how non-profits and local communities can utilize Social Media and Collaboration Tools to promote a greener, more sustainable and communicative city. I believe it is open to the public in case you’d like to check it out.
• Oh, and next Tuesday, April 28, 2009 is when my next commentary airs on WOSU 820. This one will be about Volunteering Your Way Out of the Recession – I’ll post it up here as well but tune into 820am!

Keep your eyes out for these upcoming projects that aren’t yet fully cooked yet but will hopefully start to boil in the near future, including:

• This years garden/mini-farm in the backyard will include a new special garden for Sophie.
• Hosting conversations that matter in the city of Upper Arlington.
• Launch of OurUA.org community website and conversation point.
• OSU Communicative Cities presentation.
• OTEC presentation (hopefully).
• More to come about my manifesto, Digitalocracy, and my contribution to another Social Media book project.

As I tried to post on Fine Repasts site but it never made it past moderation (another clue to the site’s understanding of interactivity) is the fact that all the lawyers in the world (no offense directed specifically at you Wyliemac) need to think about what is best for society instead of what is best for the few. IP law has gotten so out of control and so far from what our founding fathers prescribed that I’m surprised that anyone can learn, share or create anything.

All of the major traditional media’s were born out of some sort of technology sharing (often piracy). At this point however companies can even claim IP on the very foundations of life  (like DNA) – see Monsanto for examples.

I would agree that from a pure legal standing you could make strong arguments on either side of this. I think more important though is what hyperlinking and free sharing of knowledge means. I subscribe to the efforts of the Free Culture movement (good, short book available free online here: Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig). Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said it best, (paraphrasing) “Imagine a time when the whole of the world’s knowledge is available to everyone for free…”

I’m going to assume (it was sorta said but not quite) that Fine Repasts upset because Walker makes a living with the CU website and does so, in part, by aggregating content (such as from Fine Repast) and thus feels he should be paid for that. As was pointed out by several other people Fine Repast should consider a long list of other people to sue for payments before getting to CU (because they are much better funded) such as Yahoo!, Google, Digg, etc. All of these sites do exactly the type of thing that CU/Walker do.

At this point in our history we have the ability to put our content into a digital format (as opposed to creating a physical ‘zine – Fine Repast could choose to do it that way) and by putting that digital content online we set it free. At no point has Walker or Google, etc. claimed that they created the content. These people/companies have simply found a way to monetize what people are giving away for free. Fine Repast could certainly charge users to view the content and could also try to cut all of their connections to the rest of the online world but that isn’t what they have chosen to do. So, by opting in to the way that the digital world functions they have taken away their argument for people quoting and linking them. More importantly is the fact that Fine Repast wouldn’t have any readers (or an extremely small number) if they were inaccessable through the websites I mentioned above (particularly Google/Yahoo).

There is a strong divide over IP “protections” which generally come from the fact that people are upset when they aren’t the first to figure out how to make money off of their amateur work. The other source of IP protectionism comes from large corporations who understand the effectiveness of bullying and hope to maintain control over distribution channels.

Interesting to me is that the question has been raised as to why the local traditional media outlets haven’t sued CU over its aggregating and linking of their content and I think it is clear that they are starting to “get” it. CU has an audience that otherwise doesn’t pay attention to traditional media so CU manages to capture and bring some of that audience over. Audience that goes directly to the Dispatch.com, etc. would do that anyhow but audience that finds the Dispatch.com through articles posted on CU may not have gone there otherwise. By not cut/pasting the full story Walker forces readers who are interested to go to the original site – I don’t think that is necessary but I think it is nice that he does that.

Ok, so I’m going to guess that no one has read my rant all the way to the bottom but if you have then feel free to take me to task…