I was only scheduled to give one presentation (“How to talk, or not talk, to your clients about Perl”) but after hearing some of the opening remarks at the conference that spent too much time and energy, IMHO, declaring that “Perl is not dead!” I signed up to give a new talk about possibilities for re-framing that sentiment.

You can view a video of the talk, or you can view my slides [PDF].

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!

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.

It turned into one of my most intense speaking experiences to date.

I’ve given presentations and led discussions about a lot of different stuff, but they usually trend toward technology topics with which I’m very comfortable and have lots of experience talking about. They also tend to be specific enough that I don’t have to demonstrate a greater understanding of the universe or tie a whole bunch of big themes together. But in “Going Local,” it was about taking a hard look at how we (humans) got into the mess we’re in (energy crisis, climate change, economic collapse, widespread war and injustice) and making some very specific recommendations about what to do about it on the local level. Personal suggestions. Things that might offend, or at least cause discomfort. Things I’ve had a hard time saying out loud before.

It was also a kind of culminating presentation for me. The place where community-building, good communication and discussion, concerns about the energy and climate crises, and creating a vision for the future of Richmond meet is a nexus where I’ve been spending more and more of my own personal energy lately. There’s minimal personal risk in talking about optimizing a website for Google’s search engine, but when you’re talking about the sustainability of our lives in the place we call home, it somehow feels more edgy, vulnerable, scary.

Despite my anxiety, I think it turned out quite well. What’s more, I think it started some good conversations, some of which are still going on. I was grateful that the talk was not only attended by the somewhat academic population at whom it was originally targetted, but also local economic development officials, business owners, sustainability educators, friends, and at least one member of the media. Thanks to everyone who came and who shared your feedback.

For those who were there, I’ve posted the “menu” of suggested action items for futher comment and expansion, over at ProgressiveWayneCounty.org. And if you weren’t there, the suggested items may make more sense when you hear the rest of the spiel – I’m available to give the talk to your group or organization if you want. I’m ready to face the discomfort again, knowing how important having these conversations might be, trusting that I still have much to learn, and hoping that it will get easier each time.

I, having met Richard Heinberg and read his book The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, of course presumed it was something related to addressing the impact of the end of abundant, cheap oil. The cover has a very similar image that complements the book’s exploration of our relationship to oil. But when I visited the website that the postcard mysteriously directed me to, I found that it was an ad for…a credit card company. Their solution to the energy crisis? Gas credits when you make lots of charges on your card. You know we’ve reached a new level (high or low, I can’t say) of public attention to the state of affairs when credit card companies think they can make a few dollars off of people who are worried about our dependence on oil.

If you’re interested in a more effective approach than “going into debt for Mother Earth,” you could join me at the upcoming Fourth Annual Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Heinberg will be speaking. It’s always a smashing good time, grounded in an accessible exploration of real community-based solutions.

To complement Diana’s whirlwind tour, it was great to hear next from Liz Walker, one of the founders of the EcoVillage at Ithaca. If you’re reading this and have a pre-conceived notion of an ecovillage or intentional community as a place full of dirty hippies living in a run down barn, you should definitely check out the photos of the Ithaca setup – such an impressive place, and such thoughtful, interesting people behind it. Liz talked about the numerous adventures and barriers they came across in creating it – finding the land, how to lay it out, creating a balance of privacy and community, designing a common house, cooperative decision making, publicity and community relations, etc. Cool stuff!

Megan Quinn talked next about Agraria, “a small community being designed for a post-Peak Oil world.” Because there is so much detailed info about Agraria at the website I linked to, I won’t repeat it here, but it was great to hear about this great project being carried forward in my region. Megan concluded with a great quote from R. Buckminster Fuller that I’m sure is repeated in these circles a lot: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change things, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

The three morning presenters held a panel together to answer questions about creating alternative communities, and there were some reasonable questions, a subset of which there was time for thorough answers. All of these speakers emphasized that creating intentional communities is a journey and a path you go down, not a destination or a place you build. From talking to the people I know who have lived in these communities, I can say their experiences back that up – even when you have the physical space fully built, you can be a long way from a complete community.

After lunch, we went into our final sessions for the conference, with a theme of “Going Local – The Journey Home”. The first speaker was Robert Waldrop, a loud and hilarious guy who had started the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, an impressive web-based service that connects family farms in Oklahoma to those wanting to buy food locally. He had great stories to tell us about how he got this entity up and running, and how rewarding it has been to connect people to the land and the food they eat more directly. He also mentioned that they would soon be releasing the software they use to run this service under the GPL so that other cooperatives can use it for free. Two quotes were “doing it yourself *is* instant gratification,” and “Food shouldn’t be cheap, but it should be valued!” He got the whole room riled up with his success and his passion for what he does.

The conclusion was made by Richard Heinberg, who accurately noted that after so much had been said, it would be difficult to add anything new. But he successfully put this conference and the topics we’d discussed into the larger context of current events – the hurricanes bearing down on the gulf coast, oil production, the Iraq war, economic downturn, etc. He noted that when looking at Peak Oil from cultural anthropology perspectives, the opportunities for cultural change are profound, and that the people who think about and act on these ideas are the ones who can help shepherd those opportunities into a better world.

After applauding all of the speakers and the organizers of the conference, it was time to go. We gathered our things, said goodbye to some of the nearby participants who weren’t such strangers anymore, and hit the road. As we dropped Dayna at the airport and Frank and I rode back west, I think we experienced that weird sensation of being at once overwhelmed and energized by the things we’d learned and heard through the weekend. Not only was it a lot to digest, but it’s information and imperatives that apply directly to all of us on a personal, local level.

And though the overall theme of the conference was one of hope and possibility, as I returned to Richmond, I definitely felt intimidated by the uphill battle that I would have if I were to try to bring this information and these opportunities to this particular local community. Coming into town, Frank drove us past the strip malls and the Hayes Arboretum with its newly fallen trees making way for more chain stores, and it was hard to fight off despair and an urge to move. It’s not that the people here don’t want what’s best for our city and our people, but the conversations around just what that is have become so muddled and confused that it’s hard to have hope for a positive driving vision to emerge, especially in the context of “external pressures” like an energy crisis.

But if I took one thing away from the conference, it’s that our local communities and making changes in our own lives *are* all we have to turn to in the face of global issues like peak oil, and that they can be places of hope for creating solutions to problems that otherwise seem insurmountable. Whether it’s Richmond, Indiana or any of the cities in any of the 39 states and 5 countries represented by participants at the conference, I’m excited to know that there are people out there working hard in their communities toward a sustainable, healthy, happy life together.

His talk was to be about “changing our lives and the direction of society”, but I have to say that I’m not quite sure that he made it around to a central point. He talked about his history as an activist and some of his recent activities, and generally went on about the poor state of the world as a result of petroleum’s role in it. He showed us a short Global Public Media film, “Our Synthetic Sea” (which you can view online). Lundberg’s bottom line was “we need to abandom petroleum,” and while I think a lot of folks in the audience resonated with his thinking, he didn’t really give us a lot of new information or insight to chew on. (To be fair, he was the post-lunch speaker in a long day of speakers, and he didn’t have any visuals, and the lights were low, and his voice was sort of deep, and….you get the picture.) A lot of the Q&A that followed was about “the collapse” – the event or series of events when modern petroleum based civilization can no longer support itself, and collapses. Folks wanted to know about how to deal with the chaos and nightmare scenarios they had dreamed up in considering what that event might look like. Here, Lundberg’s answers were more positive and clear: if you can create a lifestyle for yourself now that uses less petroleum and brings you joy – through walking, biking, being more efficient, eating healthier, etc., then you will help to mitigate the pain of any collapse that does happen.

The next segment was a video presentation of “Peak Oil, Cuba and Community,” a film that documents Cuba’s response to its “artificial peak oil” experience after the fall of the USSR in 1990, when it lost 60 percent of its oil supply. The film was introduced by the producer, Faith Morgan, who was excited and emotional to be showing it to this audience. She noted that peak oil is something that we don’t have a precedent for in the existence of humankind, and so we need examples that will guide us through it, and Cuba is one such example. The film, despite being unfinished and in need of some polish, was a great look at the cultural and structural changes that Cuba underwent as a part of this massive shift. It described the initial “special period,” where there was a great deal of confusion and suffering and despair, and then walked us through the ways that Cubans have adapted and survived. Rooftop gardens, community building, mass transport, conservation, etc. were all impressive to see. The film was followed by a panel discussion about the subject and Q&A from the audience. I missed out on some of this as I needed a break from sitting in the same room all day long.

After a break, the floor was opened up to an “open forum,” where the various participants could tell us about their background, interests, and questions. As I complained about from Saturday morning, there was still a general lack of sensitivity on the part of many people who rose to speak, thinking they each had 20 minutes to give us all a life history, when the forum facilitator (who was excellent in tone, phrasing, and method, BTW) had made it clear that they were to be brief and to the point. As a result, there were again a few nuggets of wonderful insight and questioning, but mostly it was a time to blurt something out and then be cut off, without much dialogue. Oh well.

After dinner, we had a really great presentation by Michael H. Shuman, author of Going Local, on “Buying Our Future: How Consumers Can Lead the U.S. to the Post-Petroleum Economy.” (Pardon the irony of linking you to Amazon for that book – buy it locally if you can!) I found Shuman’s talk to be particularly inspiring and motivating because it spoke to a lot of the issues and interests I’m dealing with in pondering the future of Richmond, Indiana, my local community. As with Jon Ikerd’s talk, I’ll just repeat the aspects of his talk I was able to write down, knowing you can check out his book for more.

Shuman presented two common mindsets that small communities tend to adopt when it comes to economic development. The first is “TINA: There Is No Alternative”, which aims to bring a Toyota plant into its back yard, focusing on exporting of goods to a global alternative. The second is “LOIS: LOcal ownership / Import Substituting,” which focuses on locally owned and operated economic entities and finding substitutes for good and services that might otherwise be imported. Shuman showed that, in the fight of LOUIS vs. TINA, LOIS tends to be a better deal. For one, TINA has a lower cost per job because of the enormous subsidies and tax abatements that are usually come with TINA.

Why is locally owned important, asks Shuman? 1) There tend to be little or no “destructive exits” with local businesses – an entity pulling up all its roots and extracting itself from the community. 2) They build long term wealth in the community, instead of shipping that wealth off someplace else. 3) Create higher standards of living – the locally owned entities have to be a part of rising labor and environmental standards (again, because they tend not to just exit when they don’t like those rising standards). 4) Greater economic multipliers – dollars circulate internally, reducing the cost of doing business locally.

Shuman also talked about why self-reliant communities in the LOIS model tend to be stronger and better in the long run: 1) They are less vulnerable to sudden shocks / destructive exits happening as a part of the larger economy, 2) they tend to have more skills and diversity, which makes them able to adapt better to changing environments, 3) they can diversify their exports instead of being subject to the health of a single employer/producer/product, and 4) they are easier and cheaper to build and maintain. In the context of a post-petroleum economy, Shuman also said there were a few key ways in which LOIS would prevail, namely it serves as an inoculation against shocks coming from changes in oil production. As energy costs rise, TINA becomes less productive: distribution costs go up, oil costs go up, environmental impact increases, etc.

LOIS requires a couple of key kinds of initiatives. Find the leaks in your city and plug them – find the places where dollars are leaving the economy and where self-reliance can be increased…more local banks, home ownership, retail. Find training (higher education and supporting entrepreneurs), support local investing and purchasing, etc. He noted that most pension plan dollars are going outside the local economy, and suggested setting up programs to create shareholder interest in local businesses. These allow owners to exit gracefully when the time comes because the community has an interest in the continuance of those businesses, increases the value of the business for the entrepreneur, and increases accountability.

Shuman talked about a “hierarchy of purchasing”, the guiding principle of which is encouraging, not requiring, folks to think about buying local, asking the question “could I buy an equivalent, good, comparatively priced product locally” before buying elsewhere. The specific hierarchy is:

• Don’t buy anything at all (“Can I do without this product?”)
• Use a product with local ingredients, locally manufactured, or locally sold
• Buy it from a local vendor
• Buy it from a regional vendor
• Buy it through a process that encourages fair trade
• “The Rest” – buy it from whomever has it

He went on to make some specific recommendations for ways we can all as individuals work toward creating more self-sustaining local communities, the top three of which were 3) eat locally, 2) cut your automobile use in half, and 1) own your own home (or at least make sure your renter or mortgage lender are locally based).

Shuman’s talk was received with standing applause, and there was an inspired Q&A session afterwards. I don’t really think I did the talk justice here, but I’ve since obtained his book, and it looks to be a much better coverage of these ideas, so I’ll refer you to it for more.

After a long day, they had set up an evening gathering complete with a wide selection of delicious pies baked by an apparently famous “pie lady” in Yellow Springs. A few of the presenters/participants played music together, but we didn’t stay around too long after sampling the pie and catching up a bit with an Antioch student I’d met a few years ago in Cincinnati. We fell asleep soon after our arrival back at the hotel.