The dynamic duo have teamed up to do it again for Blog Indiana 2009, which starts later this week.  It looks to be an expanded and amplified version of the inaugural event – the conference will span three days with multiple tracks – blogging and social media, higher education, non-profit, etc. – and it sounds like there will be a lot more people there too (with great representation from Richmond).  Summersault has returned as an event sponsor, and I’m also presenting again, this time with a session on “Using Social Media for Real-World Community Improvement” and as a panelist in a session about “technology.”

I’ve apparently also been nominated for the award of “Best Hoosier Blogger” in the “2009 Blindy Awards,” and while I’m not saying that I will give you significant amounts of cash just because you click on this link and vote for me, I’m not saying I won’t do that either.

I’m looking forward to gathering with fellow bloggers and fans of technology, and sharing about how these tools can help us make life a little better for everyone.  I hope to see some of you there!

First, I want to say that I do offer my genuine congratulations to the youth, their mentors and supporters who put together Richmond’s application and saw it through to the win.  To achieve national recognition for our city is commendable, and I know that the passion, time and energy you put into this effort comes from a deep love of this community and its potential.  Richmond needs more people like you who care enough to act, and who do so with a bright future in mind.

Now on to the harder part:

My fellow blogger Jean Harper has written a critique of this effort that raises some very worthy questions about the value of spending our time trying to win this label.  Other people in other candidate cities are asking the same questions. The recurring theme: “why should we put all that time and money into competing for a title that is just a title, when we have real problems to solve back home?”

I think it’s a good sign that these questioning conversations are happening, but I have a difficult time with some of Jean’s more biting comments:

I would like to take the community leaders aside and say this: Look. Quit lying to our kids. Quit filling their heads with boosterish nonsense. Quit leading them on these exhausting exercises which result in virtually nothing.

I posted a response to her entry on her blog, but I thought I’d share it here too:

Thanks for putting out some challenging thoughts about this award news.

I’ve been cogitating on similar ideas for a while now, and while I share your concern that the return on investment for this effort might not be justifiable, I’m not sure I can follow you all the way to the point of calling it lying to the youth involved, or to saying that a community improvement effort that doesn’t necessarily directly engage the homeless is one to eschew.

This comes from my general philosophy of community improvement, which I think fellow commenter Aaron touched on: “There is no one right way to make Richmond a better place.”  That is, it just won’t work to say that there’s a single plan of action for helping this community solve all of its problems, and then execute it and hope for the best on the other side.

We do need to engage all of the disenfranchised populations you talked about, and re-think our education system and notions of meaningful employment.  But we also need the rallying and the parades and the vague award titles and the hype.  We need all of it, and we need anyone who has a bit of passion and energy for this place to manifest their care in whatever way they think they can bring the most to the rest of us.

Richmond has suffered recently, I think, at the hands of those who preach homogeneity and “one right way, there is no alternative” when it comes to community improvement and economic development.  So I just can’t begrudge the successes of someone who is willing to say “well, what if we try something else?  What if we go a different direction and see what happens?”  I may have serious concerns about their particular choice of direction (as I do in this case), but until there are more people taking Richmond’s future into their own hands, until there are so many “shovel-ready, high-impact” projects for people to plug into that we don’t know where to start, I don’t think we have the luxury of criticizing those who are making a go of it in their own way.

Even with limited resources, even knowing there are those with other clear and pressing daily needs that are not being met, I still think there’s value in diversity of approach.  We don’t know what might spark the kinds of revival and rejuvenation that really will make a big difference.

Thanks again for calling us all out on this, not allowing for unquestioned or unconditional glee when we know reality demands more of us.

• Hospitality for the Coming Age: Sharing in the midst of scarcity: Anna Lisa’s new blog chronicling her ministry formation work around sharing resources – food, listening, time, hope – when such things are scarce. Brand new, ready for your comments!
• indexed: astute and sometimes funny observations about the state of the world, presented as simple diagrams on index cards.
• Project 10 to the 100th: Google is giving away $10 million for good ideas – anyone want to partner on a submission?
• FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments: in the tradition of lolcats, some really funny and scary stuff here, like this abomination of truth in marketing.
• Found Magazine: random bits of other people’s lives found, scanned, and posted to the web. Wow.

• Dave Pollard’s process flowchart for blogging [GIF]
• travis poling, the blog – A new blog by Travis, who’s taking blogging to a new level
• Bikes as Transportation – A new blog by Mark, locally based but globally appealing:
• Three great local/regional food blogs I’ve come to know recently: Middle West Meals, Indieats, and Going Local.
• Indianapolis Startup Weekend – anyone want to go start up a tech company together?
• When Gmail Goes Dark – or, “why it will be a long time before I depend on Google Apps for mission critical business tasks”
• Fun with FOIA – scans of various internal forms used by the National Security Agency. I love that stuff.
• ChaCha – human-powered search engine accessible via SMS text message – great for parties.

I really appreciated that it was a “grassroots” conference, organized by Noah Coffey and Shawn Plew of Indianapolis, and not a big corporate conference organized by people trying to sell us stuff. Sure, there were corporate sponsors (Summersault was one of them), and there were some grumblings about session leaders spending too much time promoting their own products/services. But on the whole, this was a group of people who are passionate about new media and wanted to get together to see what else was out there, talk about some of the issues that come up, and just get to know each other better. Oh, and we also totally geeked out on Twitter.

I presented a session on Blogging Basics right at the start of the conference, and from what I can tell it was useful to the folks who were there – I think a few of them were starting blogs at the conference with some of my tips, which is great. As much as it was a technical talk, it was also a look at the culture and context of blogging in the Internet overall, and I really enjoyed spending some time looking at that.

I was also on a panel with Laurin Manning, Ruth Holladay, Joshua Gillespie, Steve Dalton, and Thomas Cook about how blogging and social media affects politics and the current election cycle. Things went okay, but we didn’t really have enough time to dive into some of the more interesting issues, and it was more of an orderly rotation of monologues than a panel discussion. That said, I hope it started some other conversations, and at least now I can say I was on a political panel with the Director of Political Operations for a presidential campaign.

I’m going to blog more about this later, but there’s something really great about remembering that, contrary to a lot of the messages out there about what it means to be successful on the Internet, you don’t have to be a Silicon Valley star or national figure to feel like you’re making a difference in the online world, and to some degree then, in the offline one. Travis touched on this nicely with his post about placeblogging – noting that it’s the textures of our everyday lives that end up being most relevant and interesting, not how many times we’re thrust into the spotlight in a sea of people who otherwise don’t connect very well to our own experiences. I feel more grounded in my “place” in the world of blogging and new media for having experienced those discussions with people who were not only in touch with the technologies, but who are also connected to this geographical place in some way.

This was amplified given that I was joined at the event by Richmond bloggers Anna Lisa Gross and John Dalton, and finally got to meet Doug Masson from Lafayette, whose blog I already follow regularly.

What’s next? Well, I hear that preparations for a 2009 Blog Indiana event are already underway. Locally, I’m hoping to be a part of producing a “New Media Summit” for Richmond and Wayne County, where we can explore some of these topics and do some of this education at an even more local level – stay tuned for more information on that soon, and let me know if you want to help make it happen.

Roundups and reflections from other bloggers:

• Blog Indiana 2008 Wrap-Up
• BlogIndiana conference: All good things must come to an end
• Blog Indiana Conference
• Technology-Enabled Attention Help
• BlogIndiana
• Blog Indiana Conference Notes and Presentation
• Noah’s Photos
• helloleticia’s Photos
• Photrade Gallery of Photos

Other related links:

• Blog Indiana 2008 Wiki
• Blogroll of conference participants
• Indianapolis Star article: IUPUI event helps bloggers find audience
• My delicious links tagged with “blogindiana”

And don’t forget that the Richmond blogger community is alive and well – if you have a blog missing from my list, please let me know.

I’m putting together my own notes and tools for bloggers just starting out, but I thought I would also put the question out to you, constant readers, about what tips, tools and conventions you would have found useful or even essential when you first entered the world of blogging? Even if you’re not an active blogger, I’d still enjoy hearing your thoughts on how you think blogs (especially newly formed ones) can be made more useful, engaging, exciting, etc.

What advice would you give to a blogger just starting out?

The cool part is that the conference is only $49 for both days, and even cooler, I’ve got a 15% discount for you if you use this link to register. If you’re interested in blogging and social media at any level, I hope you can make it.

• I’ve been updating my list of local blogs and bloggers in Richmond and Wayne County, Indiana. Check out the new additions, and if you have any blogs to suggest or corrections to make, please let me know.
• My page of custom RSS feeds doesn’t have a whole lot going on these days, but one feed I’ve started actively maintaining again is a Kicks96 / 930WHON News feed. As one of the few other newsgathering entities in the area, it makes a nice complement to the custom Palladium-Item news feed (which is usually updated earlier in the day than the one they provide). Since Kicks96 doesn’t publish any RSS feed themselves (why, in this day and age, oh why?), I hope you find it useful.
• Remember that you can use ProgressiveWayneCounty.org to get easy access to a consolidated feed of local progressive bloggers and local news feeds.
• Despite not feeling Twitter, I can’t help but highlight a link Thomas Kemp posted in the comments: TwitterLocal will help you find people Twittering in your area so that you can…I don’t even know.
• And finally, in the theme of aggregating useful information into one place, check out LegiStorm, a site that makes information about Congressional reps and their staffers available all in one place, including salaries, trip records, and what other organizations they are affiliated with. For example, it notes that on a recent trip to Boston, Mike Pence (R – Indiana, 6th) had some unusually expensive hotel charges – $476 for one night. I hope he got a mint on his pillow.

And then, shortly before 4 PM, with snipers looking down on us and rain steadily pouring, Clinton’s motorcade pulled into the parking lot of Fire Station #1. He worked the crowd, walking deep into it and engaging each person warmly, if only briefly. Photos flashed, agents controlled the crowd, books were signed. Call after call was made to loved ones not present, “I just shook Bill Clinton’s hand!” and “I’m never going to wash this hand again” and just “Wow, oh my gosh, I can’t believe it.” Laughter, chattering, smiles, shouts, strangers gathering around the spectacle.

And then he spoke in the crowded firehouse, handing over words he didn’t need to come here to deliver in person because they’re the same words he handed over earlier that day in Lawrenceburg, IN and that he would hand over later that day in Fort Wayne, IN. But the crowds still cheered and gawked and tittered about. And then he was gone, and I doubt he’ll remember much about Richmond after a while.

I won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton, and I’d be somewhat embarrassed if a visit from her husband had any significant impact on my thinking. I suspect that a significant portion of people who came out to see him might feel the same way, or have perhaps even been among those who actively decry the Clinton legacy and their politics. But that didn’t stop us from coming together around a historical figure in the life of our country, and one who still makes international headlines today. In some ways, it was almost as if we got some of what we were looking for in our bid to host a Presidential Debate, but without the multi-million dollar price tag.

And now we can go back to work, back to life, back to looking at our own community and how to make it better with the resources we have here. But maybe those moments of excitement will inspire us a bit, help us think a little more highly of ourselves, show us that greatness doesn’t have to be as far away as it might sometimes seem.

Of course, if you missed the visit, there’s all sorts of coverage: the Palladium-Item has done an excellent job covering it from all angles on a very short turnaround time, with photos, video, audio, blog entries and more. A number of us took our own photos and posted them on photo sharing sites, including Hopi, Jim, WayNet, Becky, and me.

Thanks for the visit, Mr. President.