Posts tagged as "community" - Chris Hardie

If you spend any amount of time following my online adventures - through my blog, Twitter, Facebook, or otherwise - then there are some things you need to know: Please don't assume that you know me because you read my posts or status updates. I'm not saying this because I think I'm mysterious or hard to know, I'm saying it because I believe reading someone's status updates does not constitute an engaged and genuine human relationship.  I do use the Internet to express myself, but only one very...

Most of my blog posts are a main course dish with one primary taste.  This one is more of a salad with a bunch of different tastes thrown together. I did eat a salad for lunch today (nice transition) - radish, green onion, and goat cheese on spring mix greens, with poppy seed dressing.  Everything but the dressing was grown/made at Abundant Acres Farm, the provider of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share that I bought this season.  Friends Kent and Dori have again done a great job making...

I tried a little experiment with Twitter last week.  I see lots of folks talking about how to make money with social media exposure like Twittering, but hadn't yet seen anyone talking about how to give away money via the same.  So on Wednesday I put out a challenge that for each new Twitter follower I got  on my account between then and 5 PM on Friday, I'd donate $2 to the Boys and Girls Club of Wayne County. What happened? I honestly didn't expect anyone to really notice the challenge,...

Richmond seems to be experiencing a rise in home invasions and robberies, including one early this morning that happened within shouting distance from where I've lived for 5 years.  It could be the case that the increase is just a matter of perception (because more are being reported and then covered by the media), but the facts seem to bear out some sort of trend, and possibly a serial home invader at work. It's hard to know what to think about this trend. It could be the work of a very disturbed...

One of the trends that disturbs me about social networking sites and perhaps even online conversations in general is that the experience of interacting in those virtual spaces is seen by some as a substitute for real world experiences and interactions.  Or put another way, it's like we spend more of our time talking about how interesting and good we are at talking to each other, instead of actually talking about something.  I don't say this to discount those who have meaningful online exchanges...

Every time I go on vacation or get a little bit of time to step back and think, I end up making long "to do" lists for myself.  The lists are about projects I want to start, books to read, things to learn about, people to get in touch with.  It's common for some significant chunk of those lists to be related to how to make my home, Richmond Indiana, a better place to live, work and play. At the same time, I recognize that other people are out there coming up with their own ideas about how to make...

I've been thinking lately about the moments in a conversation when the people participating make a choice - conscious or not - about whether to let it go "deeper," or to keep it at a pleasant and polite level of chit-chat. I'm exploring that because (A) I really enjoy deconstructing how we communicate with each other, and (B) I want to take responsibility for my own part in the cases where more depth would have been a good thing, but was avoided. (I even kind of wrote a little poem about it a few years...

This Friday, when you're gathered with friends and family trying to figure out what to do with yourselves after that meal, consider participating in the National Day of Listening.  It's an opportunity to hear and record the stories that we all have to share about our lives, our greatest and hardest moments, and the lessons we've learned.  (And as some have noted recently in Richmond, the local community could benefit from having a better sense of our own narrative.) All it takes is some kind...

I've said before that to truly participate in public life, we must do so as ourselves, with our identities revealed.  Online discussions are now a part of the public sphere, and when used well, can bring people together in ways that complement and enhance real-world community. A related trend I'm appreciating is the increasing number of tools available to help make online conversations more personalized.  A particular tool I'd like to encourage you to start using right now is that of a Gravatar...

Flash mobs are large groups of people who assemble suddenly in a public place to perform an unexpected action, and then quickly disperse. For example, here's a mob hitting New York City: Flash mobs are interesting to me for a few reasons: They're usually groups of strangers who don't necessarily have anything else in common, coming together to do something out of the ordinary for just a few moments. They tend not to be activists protesting anything, and generally aren't trying to make...