Leadership UA, a leadership organization in Upper Arlington, hosted their annual leadership panel. As a board member of Leadership UA we are working to do a better job of making these events available to a larger audience. To that effect I have embedded the video from the event below.

[reposted from my ElephantsOnBicycles.com site]

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.

There is a community conversation that I have wanted to host for several months now, maybe longer. Over the past week it has become a frequent subject between myself and some of my friends in the community and now it is expanding outward, albeit very slowly, beyond this shelter of friendship.

I want to see a conversation where people of different belief systems sit face to face and find ways to open new lines of communication between each other. Right now the only communication appears to be casting verbal stones with a strong sentiment of distrust. If we are going to move forward as a community we must find a way to be more productive and less destructive.

What has made this conversation difficult to pin down is that I too am someone with strong opinions who has, at times, cast stones. So how do we host such an conversation internally without clouding the process with the persona’s involved?

The steps I’m taking right now are to build a coalition from the primary parties of contention so that a fully developed purpose can drive the conversation. I believe that a purpose derived from our communal knowledge will make this community conversation a success.

Behind the conversation I am also working on a website solution that will provide opportunities for cross organization project development. I’m taking suggestions on names for this site as well.

So, are you in an organization or community that faces similar issues and has a similar need for reconnecting factions? Reconnecting people? If so, what steps are you taking?