Life In a Day weaves together moments of joy and sadness, frivolity and struggle, plainness and great beauty into a wonderful fabric of the human experience.  It at once shows the ways in which the routines of our days are shared across cultures and landscapes (we wake, we clean up, we eat, we interact, we travel, we love, we argue, we sleep), but also the stark contrasts of wealthy and poor, privileged and oppressed, healthy and unhealthy, troubled and care-free.

There are only a few “characters” we see multiple times throughout the day -- a man bicycling around the world, a family struggling with cancer -- but the amazing editing and soundtrack create a story arc grounded not in personality or plot twist, but in the experience of having 24 hours pass and all of the amazing (or mundane) things that can happen in that time.  It’s a masterpiece that will perhaps seem quaint in a few decades, but that could not have been possible even 5 or 10 years ago.

Life In a Day is inspiring and moving.  Best of all, it’s real.

Here, you can start watching it right now:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaFVr_cJJIY

Culture

Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick
Finally, Mitnick gets to tell his side of the story when it comes to his adventures in computer cracking and social engineering.  Though his writing style isn’t particularly compelling and his personal meditations on the interpersonal aspects of his adventures are a bit awkward, the details of how he pulled off some pretty technologically impressive (albeit illegal and sometimes destructive) hacks – and how law enforcement responded – make for compelling reading on their own.  As someone who spent a fair number of hours in my childhood trying to deconstruct how the phone system and the emerging world of BBSes and Internet nodes worked, Mitnick’s book is a great visit to the past and a reminder that humans continue to be the weakest link in all computer security.

What We Leave Behind by Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay
Partly a book about how our society views waste of all kinds from all sources, from our individual person to our households to our cities, and what we do with waste based on those views.  Partly a book about the ethical, intellectual and spiritual challenges that come with seeing a truth about how the world works, and then deciding what to do with/about that truth.  As with other Jensen books I’ve read, the experience of following his train of thought is at once uncomfortable and enlightening, and always takes me to new places in my own consideration of “the meaning of life,” even when I disagree with some of the thinking that got me there.

The End of Growth by Richard Heinberg (partial)
Chock full of data and economic analysis that refutes conventional wisdom about the state of the world economy.  Heinberg basically says (as he has in other books and settings) that in the face of rising energy and food prices, debt levels, and disastrous choices about our relationship with the surrounding environment, growth as we’ve known it can’t continue (not “it shouldn’t” but “it’s not physically possible”).  Especially as I work on economic issues here in my own town, his discussions around the point that there are no new jobs, just jobs moved around from one place to another, were particularly poignant.  But Heinberg as always does a good job of painting a picture of a version of humanity that can see “progress” without depending on “growth.”

Novels

Daemon by Daniel Suarez
One of the best high-tech thriller novels I’ve read.  A mix of Neal Stephenson, Stephen King and Tom Clancy.  A cautionary tale about the power we give to the organizations and corporations (and individuals) who manage our electronic identities, and some imaginative examples of possible abuse.  And like the best tech thrillers, the technology references are realistic and accurate, paying respect to the hackers and hobbyists who can spot a fabricated plot device or an oversimplified explanation of how hacking an unsecured Wifi signal works a mile away.  Don’t let your housemates read it if they’re skeptical of your home automation efforts (you’ll see why), but I couldn’t put it down.

The Associate by John Grisham
A lawyer gets into an interesting and sometimes dangerous situation involving powerful corporations and other people he’s not quite sure he can trust, and requires creative legal maneuvering and the confronting of his personal demons to get out of it alive.  Yes, it’s the plot line of most every other Grisham novel, and yes, it was once again an entertaining read.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Such a good novel! Well-written, exciting, immersive, touching, real.  I had recently forgotten what it felt like to read a book where you start to care deeply about the characters and what happens to them, and where even when the situations or places or time period feel far away, the human dynamics and choices that are described bring insight and understanding about what it means to be alive.  Haven’t seen the movie, don’t know if I want to replace the rich imagery in my head with the Hollywood version.

The Apostle by Brad Thor (partial)
Political intrigue.  War and terrorists.  Secret operatives and daring missions.  Blah blah blah.  Maybe I didn’t give this enough of a chance and Mr. Thor seems to have found a winning formula for bestsellers, but I found it shallow, plastic-y and unreadable, even for vacation reading, and finally gave up after a few hundred pages.

Business & Politics

Campaign Boot Camp by Christine Pelosi
Politics the Wellstone Way by Wellstone Action! and edited by Bill Lofy
Two hands-on, how-to books for those who want to be engaged in the political process, especially candidates.  While in many cases I was pleased to see that I’ve often been doing “the right things” in my own first venture into running for elected office, it was helpful to have these two contributions to the conversations I’m having with my volunteers and supporters.  The Pelosi book was perhaps more basic conceptual information while the Wellstone book was more of a practical guide to getting certain campaign things done, with examples and templates to help.

First Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
Extensively researched and well written reflections on what “great managers” do differently from all other kinds of managers.  I took a lot of notes on this one, and am working my way through implementing the valuable advice I found for my own company, but it would be a useful read for anyone in a position of leading a team.

The Carrot Principle by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton
A quick read on how to reward and engage members of a team.  Not ground-breaking, but well researched and full of good ideas.  Complements some other works by the same authors that I hope to check out soon.

It’s Okay to Be The Boss by Bruce Tulgan
Tulgan calls out what I think is a real problem – leaders who don’t actually lead – but then proceeds to write what I found to be a fairly surface-level look at when and why it happens and what to do about it.  He seemed intent on appearing to be in opposition to most kinds of conventional management wisdom (or even some of the more modern refinement of said wisdom, see above), but in the end just ends up presenting the same kinds of advice in slightly different ways and, I’m sorry to say, with much less attention to the power dynamics and humanity of management-employee relationships.  Not recommended.

What have you been reading this summer?

Some will talk about the dangers of having weapons of various sorts and sizes available to individuals like Breivik and passionately implore for tighter controls and regulation of firearms or other weapon-making materials.  Indeed, we should be asking hard questions about when, where and why we create weapons designed to kill other human beings, and how we allow them to be used.

Some will talk about how this is a clear cut example that acts of terrorism are an ongoing threat and need to be safeguarded against using increased governmental or military power to fight terrorists and prevent attacks.  Indeed, we should be asking hard questions about whether current efforts to prevent acts of terrorism are effective, and what else could be done.

Some will speak of a lone madman who was mentally ill, and how we must find better ways to diagnose and treat mental illness of this sort before an individual’s darkness can turn into violence.  Indeed, we should be asking hard questions about how those among us who suffer from mental illness are treated and how they are helped.

But we must not forget that behind all of these interrelated paths to such awful acts of violence, there is a singular cause that no amount of weapons control, military might or psychological analysis can predict or prevent:

Somehow, this man was able to construct a worldview for himself in which it was permissible to murder other people because of their political views.

We might like to convince ourselves that creating or adopting such a worldview is not something that can happen to rational people.  But we know that our brains and our mental models of the world are pliable.   They can be shaped and reshaped easily, sometimes with almost trivial effort.  This is why television ads and billboards convince us every day to buy or do things we wouldn’t otherwise buy or do.  And we know that people from all backgrounds, all social classes, all levels of education and intellect can do awful, horrible, unthinkable things…if they just come to think about the state of the world in a way that necessitates those things.

In his long manifesto posted to the Internet, Breivik stated that “The time for dialogue is over.”  A simple and chilling statement, but one not too different from the sentiment expressed in social and political discourse happening every day in the US.

As the news media and 24-hour cable news machine tell urgent stories about seemingly great injustices in the world, thinking for us about how to delineate between what is clearly good and clearly evil without lingering too long on any facts or context, they enforce a worldview that suggests the time for dialogue is over.  (I’m looking at you, MSNBC and Fox News.)

As political parties create contrived and over-simplified arguments for why one candidate or another is essential to the future of the city, state or nation, and brush aside nuance or complexity in what effective governance might look like, they send the signal that the time for dialogue is over.

As religious and cultural institutions imply or suggest directly that because someone is of a certain gender, religious belief, sexual orientation or ethnicity that they are not fully worthy of some right or privilege that others are granted, and in fact may be inherently evil, they reinforce for their members or followers that the time for dialogue is over.

As communities trade away their public squares and opportunities for substantial conversation about the future of their neighborhoods in exchange for more opportunities for convenient shopping and individual instant gratification, we create places to live where the time for dialogue is over.

And when we no longer see any room for real dialogue, for meaningful, introspective, vulnerable, respectful exchanges about the way the world can and should work, we reinforce a worldview of “us vs. them” and begin to create that pretext for violence as the path to victory.  Maybe it’s not physical violence…maybe it’s economic violence or cultural violence.  Maybe it’s not a swift act of destruction, but a long slow whittling away of resources or dignity.   But when the time for dialogue is over, what’s left other than the leveraging of power and the exertion of force?

The acts of violence in Norway are to be condemned, the lives lost to be mourned.  But we must also recognize that this came about not because of a lack of gun control or not enough money spent on policing and anti-terrorism or a failure to stop a lone act of insanity.  They came about because our culture is creating and reinforcing a narrative about the future that allows for and even encourages exactly this kind of violence against each other.

Until we can imagine a new worldview that doesn’t end up at murder and oppression as a logical conclusion, that seeks to build shared understandings through genuine dialogue, and that values life over power and profit, we participate in creating a pretext for even more violence.

The movie was incredibly well made.  Aaron Sorkin’s writing was as good as the best days of The West Wing, each member of the cast seemed to just nail their role, the editing was some of the best I’ve seen, and so on.

Perhaps most enjoyably, this is a mainstream movie that is at least in part about the culture and goings-on in the modern world of Internet entrepreneurship, I believe the first of its kind. It fully embraces the geekiness that was and is a part of building a web application like Facebook: in the first 30 minutes, the Apache webserver software project is mentioned at least twice, there are dramatic lines about needing more Linux webservers running MySQL, there are punchlines that involve the emacs text editor, and scenes of glorious code writing marathons – wow.

The Social Network also takes on the complex and sometimes dirty aspects of Internet start-ups, business partnerships that go sour, the role of lust, greed, insecurity and power struggles in creating beautiful things, and the general messiness of human relationships in a post-industrial world.  Some of this is probably over-dramatized; if you believe the narrative it presents, success in the world of the Internet means being ready to screw over your friends and then lawyering up to defend against their lawsuits, treating women as decorative sex objects to invite to website launch parties, and deferring basic care of one’s body in order to write software all night long.  My experiences as a web developer in the Midwest have been much less sensational…but then again, I’m not a billionaire, so maybe I’m doin` it wrong.

The movie doesn’t purport to be factually accurate, but there’s enough real history in there that it will likely become the popular understanding of how Facebook actually came to be; it might be close enough.  If you use Facebook, or if you’re interested in some of the crazy stuff that happens to take a start-up business like Facebook to what it is now, I think The Social Network is a great film to check out.

If you’ve seen it, tell me what you thought!

I installed compact fluorescent bulbs throughout my house, and the big box stores lit up their parking lots day and night.

I decided to drive my car less, and the oil companies spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

I installed a rain barrel to water my organic garden, and the big agriculture companies shipped genetically engineered, highly processed food around the world for me to enjoy at a moment’s notice.

I made a living running a business that tried to care first about doing the right thing, and my government used the taxes on our income to prop up businesses that lie, cheat and steal.

I participated in the democratic processes, and my elected representatives acted out of fear, ignorance and pursuit of personal gain.

I volunteered in my community to try to make it a better place, and my neighbor threw a bag full of trash on the sidewalk in front of her own home.

I tried to honor all forms of life and make space for non-humans in a life crowded with humans, and I killed a bird with my car.

I tried to resolve my conflicts in a non-violent, restorative way, and my President sent tens of thousands to kill and die in my name.

I tried to honor and respect women, and the culture said I wasn’t a real man.

I tried to live with integrity and tell the truth, and the people said I wasn’t doing my part to perpetuate the commonly accepted narrative.

I tried to have hope, and they said but someone’s got to pay the bills, there’s no time for that.

Encouraged

My friends Hilde and Charlie are creating a bakery on their land in Michigan, Laughing Tree Brick Oven Bakery.  They built a wood-fired brick oven themselves and they’re focused on using local grains and ingredients.  I’ve tasted Hilde’s baking before, and so when they offered an opportunity for friends and family to invest in the business, I didn’t think twice about signing on.  Excitement!

Aaron is taking several months to bike across the country.  He’s experiencing the poetry of the places he visits, and having many other adventures that he’s been kind to share on his blog.  He seems fit to wander.

Richmond has rallied around a local business owner who has taken on the daunting and exciting task of restoring the train depot building here.  He’s got big plans, and he’s invited the community to join him in his dreaming.  It’s been good for us, and even better for our children.

Beautiful murals evoking light, laughter, history, music and movement going up all around town.

A retirement celebration full of love, laughter and deep admiration.  New chapters and a sense of the great wide open.

A small chance of further complications, just a few more procedures to get through.  Sighs of relief and easing of fears, more than I realized.  So glad we’re doing it together.

Friends and loved ones who are advocating for their own happiness in new ways, saying — sometimes quietly, sometimes out loud — “I’m not going to take it any more.”

A summer bright and bold, constantly reminding us of its presence with pounding heat, daring us to waste all of a beautiful day to the droning of the television or in the make-believe world of air conditioning.

Tasting the bounty of the earth, proof that heaven is here and now.

Life created, life given, life received, life renewed.

Well, you’re in luck!  I really enjoy cataloging and categorizing these kinds of things, and so I’ve put together this list of 12 kinds of social networking status updates.

Most every status update will fall into one of these categories:

1. I want you to know how happy I am. I have really amazing family, friends, career, hobbies, food, or some other factors that I will go on about publicly to hundreds of strangers, and I just want you to know how perfect everything is in the world right now.
2. I am incredibly busy and productive. But, I’m taking some time out of my incredibly busy schedule to tell you how incredibly busy and productive I am.  But as soon as I’m done with that, it’s back to being incredibly busy and productive!
3. I am kind of a big deal. Here’s some information about me that’s only thinly veiled as informational, but is actually designed to show you how important, successful, athletic, skilled, wealthy, well-connected and/or influential I am.
4. I want you to know how unhappy I am. You won’t believe how pathetic and unworthy I am, but I’d like to try to tell you about it anyway.
5. I am really clever and insightful. Let me just say this really clever or witty thing and let you bask in how amazing I am.
6. I would like to tell you about my physical location. Here is where I am right now.
7. I’d like to share about the activities of my child or children. Let me show you how cute and/or irreverent they are.  If you don’t have children, consider taking this opportunity to feel inadequate.  If you do have children, consider taking this opportunity to feel like you don’t enjoy your children as much as I do.
8. There is an injustice that needs your attention! Some person, organization or company has done something unacceptable and I need you to take action RIGHT NOW to help make it better.
9. I have a link that I’d like for you to click on. It’s really interesting, and it’s possibly going to change your life.  Come on, just click on it.  What if it’s a really cool photo of a cat in some situation you’ve NEVER seen before?  There, wasn’t that amazing?
10. I have a medical condition that I’d like to share about. I’m sick, or I’m getting better, or I’m having surgery, or I broke something, or someone or something threw up on me or I threw up on them.  Let me tell you about it.
11. I would like to comment on some aspect of popular culture. Allow me tell you why a particular television show, movie, celebrity, singer, actor or athlete is in or out of my favor right now.
12. I am mysterious. I would just like to post this string of characters that may or may not resemble words in your language, hoping to increase your confusion while also instilling some sense that I know something you don’t.  598234.

Do you have other categories to add?  What kinds of status updates do you tend to post?

After the initial total failure of my cable-less schemes for watching the Superbowl online, and the subsequent grumbling trip to an alternate viewing venue, I enjoyed watching the game. I say “enjoy” as in, “it roused the part of me that enjoys the technical aspects of physical competition and spectacle,” not enjoy as in, “I really appreciate the Superbowl and what it says about the state of humanity.” And I couldn’t help but feel pretty dirty afterward.

Let’s try out the “alien anthropologist” test: what kind of singular unprecedented event in human history would justify over a hundred million people giving their energy and attention for four hours straight all at the same time? Was it some sort of miracle that brings hope and happiness to our people? Or maybe it was some sort of massively collaborative conversation about the state of the world and how we can make it better? No, it was a sporting contest that really only needs to take a little over an hour, but is painfully drawn out to four hours so that there’s enough time to sell products and degrade women.

I have some sense that the Superbowl is a big deal because the Superbowl is a big deal. In other words, if you took away the hype and the clever advertisements and the fancy camera angles and the overpaid players and the self-absorbed sports commentators, I doubt you could draw 100 million people. Maybe you’d still have an interesting contest and maybe it would still be worth watching, but then again maybe there would be more interesting ways to spend four hours in your own community. The spectacle breeds spectacle, and we humans love that.

And yeah, maybe I’m just an overly-sensitive, epicene failure of a manly man, but what’s up with so many of the ads this year not even pretending to be anything other than misogynistic trash? Here’s the script from a car commercial:

I will get up and walk the dog at 6:20AM.
I will eat some fruit as part of my breakfast.
I will shave, clean the sink after I shave.
I will be at work at 8:00AM.
I will sit through two hour meetings.
I will say yes, when you want me to say yes.
I will be quiet when you don’t want me to say no.
I will take your call and listen to your opinion of my friends.
I will listen to your friends opinions of my friends.
I will be civil to your mother.
I will put the seat down.
I will separate the recycling.
I will carry your lip-balm.
I will watch your vampire tv shows, with you.
I will take my socks off before getting into bed.
I will put my underwear in the basket.
And because I do this.
I will drive the car, I want to drive.

Really??

Translation: I hate you and all of the things that you bring to my life which are obviously contrary to my natural state of being an unhealthy, pig-headed moron, but I will temporarily stifle my hatred so that I can channel my insecurities and immaturity into the experience of transporting myself quickly from one place to another in a particular impractical vehicle that will serve as a poor substitute for any real sense of self-worth. I have no other reason to care about you or your happiness.

Compelling stuff, right? Ugh.

I know that there are people who thoroughly enjoy the Superbowl and all kinds of pro sports and all of the interesting cultural things that go with them. I’m not here to criticize them or tell them how to spend their time. My only hope is that there is some sense of clarity and self-awareness (for me included) that, by saying “I’m going to watch the Superbowl,” we’re at least in part also saying, “I’m going to give some of my limited life energy to support what the Superbowl stands for.”

So, um, did you, uh, watch the game? How ’bout them Saints?

I’ve asked a version of this question before: Must we become the change we wish to see in the world? You can maybe tell that there’s a theme here – impactful personal lifestyle change is not often convenient, and sometimes it is downright scary.  But that’s not a reason not to spend as much energy and time as it takes to try to live more sustainably, right?  Change has to happen with each person individually before we can expect the system to change, right?

Or does it?

There’s an essay out there that’s been weighing on me lately, bothering me, in fact.  Essays like this don’t bother me unless either (A) I know they’re speaking the truth and I’m having a hard or slow time integrating that truth into my own life, or (B) I know that they’re missing something important in their treatment of the subject, but I just can’t put my finger on what it is.  In this case it may be some of both.

The essay is “Forget Shorter Showers: Why personal change does not equal political change” by Derrick Jensen.  Jensen basically says that it’s problematic to see an individual living more sustainably as an effective political act, and that devoting time and energy to doing so is not necessarily worth it unless it’s personally rewarding for you.  His reasons:

1. Simple personal living as a political act is focused on harm reduction, instead of on helping bring about needed positive change
2. Simple personal living assigns the blame, guilt and burden to individuals for addressing sustainability issues, instead of to the entities (corporations, governments, etc.) who are creating and perpetuating the problems.
3. Simple personal living as a political act accepts the capitalist redefinition of people from citizens to consumers, reducing our forms of action to “consuming” and “not consuming.”
4. If we don’t question the intellectual, moral, economic and physical infrastructure that create destructive, unsustainable ways of life, but insist that we want to personally be a part of the solution, the inevitable conclusion leads us to self-destruction (or, as Jensen puts it, suicide).

I’ve rephrased some of Jensen’s reasoning, so I hope you’ll read the full essay to get his original thoughts.  But here’s my take on what he’s saying and my original question:

I agree that it’s silly and self-defeating to expend significant resources on personal change without also challenging the pieces of infrastructure that cause harm in the first place.  I do think that a balance can be found more easily within the construct of a community than it can within an individual’s life.  Some people may be really good at effecting personal lifestyle changes while not so good at doing the work needed to challenge a broken economic system, and vice versa for someone else.  Working together, a community unit can do both effectively.

I also agree with Jensen that we must not accept the premise that we as individuals hold the sole power to make our existence as humans more or less sustainable, and that our mechanisms for doing so are choosing what products we do and don’t buy.  I feel embarrassed that I spend any time worrying about making sure the hallway light is off when I’m not using it as I drive by empty strip mall parking lots lit up like daylight, using far more energy than my hallway light ever will.

But I also know that corporations, governments, etc. are made up of individuals just like us, and so I believe that there is power in changing individual minds, modeling sustainable living for each other, and planting seeds of possibility.  It may not be as powerful as getting that strip mall to change their lighting practices, but it’s not nothing.

Jensen concludes his article by saying “the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.“  I know a number of people who believe that they’re doing both – that by navigating systems of oppressive power well, they are playing a role in confronting them, changing them, and even taking them down.

It may come down to the math of the situation, in equations where we can’t know all of the variables right now.  If enough people effecting personal lifestyle change or working within broken systems is enough to actually make a lasting difference, then we’re all set.  If it turns out that the systems of power and corporate/governmental destruction and resource consumption are far more effective than we could ever hope to stop, then we better hope that our individual decisions along the way were personally rewarding, as memories of a life well-lived in the face of a world breaking around us may be the only reward we get.

How does the math work out for you?  Is personal lifestyle change worthwhile and effective?

1. Watchdog journalism involves writing stories that hold public officials accountable for their actions or stories that help to right wrongs in the community, for example. In what ways could we improve in this area?

The Palladium-Item is to be commended for its consistent presence at government and institutional meetings, no matter how boring or routine they are.  That said, the paper often seems to be getting its stories out the door about important or controversial issues just as those items are reaching some sort of final decision point.

At some level I’m sure this is what many decision makers and news makers would prefer – their jobs are easier when there’s less time for the public to be outraged before it’s “too late.”  And it’s true that it’s still the responsibility of the citizenry to make itself aware of what issues are before, say, Common Council, and not depend entirely on the paper to note items of possible interest.  But I would be pleased to see the Palladium-Item try to maintain even more context on community issues that are under discussion, before they’ve reached a point of ostensible “no return.”

On the other side of the matter, there’s the issue of accountability once a wrong or disservice has been committed.  The general “media strategy” practiced by most public figures in this community when they’re involved in something controversial is “wait a few days and everyone will have moved on to something else.” They’re generally right that the collective memory of the community is subject to manipulation and distraction – hey, what’s that shiny thing over THERE….oh wait, sorry – and so we do need the paper to look back at how decisions were made and hold the decision-makers accountable.  It can be tough sometimes when the mindset of the reporter understandably becomes “how many more stories can I do about disingenuous plotting by council members to de-fund the Human Rights Commission, we already DID that one?”   But know that nonetheless, I think there’s a real thirst in this town for follow-up and perspective on those kinds of things, because they help us remember what we did wrong, and how we can do better next time.

And when election time rolls around, don’t just print the candidates` answers to questionnaires and their prepared responses at a debate – show us their voting record, their public statements (or noticeable lack thereof) about important issues, their actual contributions to the community (instead of their provided list of affiliations).  Tell us their story in a way that fits into the larger narrative of the community, and don’t take their word for it.

2. The Sunday edition of the Palladium-Item has, by far, our biggest single-day circulation. Past feedback tell us its the day our readers have the most time to spend with the paper. It’s also an important day to our advertisers because of the bigger audience it enjoys. What could we do to make that edition special for you?

When I sit down to read the Sunday paper, I don’t want to just read articles, I want to have an experience.  Yes, I want it to be like reading the New York Times.  I want there to be options, different subject mater, formats and voices.  I want to be challenged and amused and provoked, and then I want to sit back and think about that, and then I want to move on to another article or section and do it all over again.

The current experience of reading the Palladium-Item on Sunday is about a 10-15 minute process on average, and some of that is getting all of the advertising circulars separated out and thrown away so I can tell how much “real” content is left.  That’s not even enough time to get me through a cup of coffee and breakfast, let alone a lazy Sunday morning.

Okay, I know that it’s unlikely the Pal-Item is going to be able to ramp up content production to NYT Sunday levels.  And I know that short of a rich uncle depositing some bags of money in your laps, you’re physically limited by the number of staff you can afford to have working on that edition.  But if you have resources to expend on making the Sunday edition “special,” please make sure you focus on expanding your reporting and news analysis – that would feel very special to me.

3. We want our Web site to be viewed as a primary source for breaking news in our area. How can we make that happen? What would that look like on pal-item.com?

I’ll tell you exactly what it looks like: collaboration with other sources of local news to display their headlines and links to their stories on your site.  Yes, I really said that and no, I’m not kidding.  With your current staff resources, you can’t expect to always be the first news organization to break a story, and so you have to position yourself to still be the place where people come to read about breaking news, even if it’s not your content. If they know that if they go to Kicks96/WHON and G101.3/WKBV and Twitter and the EDC site and the Chamber site and WayNet.org and so on to find stories and information you don’t have yet, then pal-item.com will always just be one stop along the way for most users, not a primary source.  You need critical mass.

The nice thing is that the pieces are all almost in place for this to happen.  If you can collaborate with other news reporting / news breaking entities to insure that RSS feeds are readily available, you can build a “breaking news portal” with little technical effort.  Yes, they might build their own breaking news portal too, but that’s okay.  Really, trust me.

Also, crowdsource it.  Find trusted local readers (even if they have conflicts of interest and affiliations and biases) and give them the power to post information directly on your breaking news pages (or via their own RSS feeds, Twitter streams, etc).  Don’t moderate it, don’t filter it, or if you do, let other readers do the filtering and moderating along with you.  Yes I really said that, no I’m not kidding.

4. Traditionally, newspapers have had a leadership role in their communities, and that’s something we would like to continue here. How would you suggest we take a greater role in that?

As I think you and your colleagues know, being in a true leadership role is not something you can necessarily choose or create, it’s something that’s earned over time by consistent acts that bring something to the community with integrity and perspective.  The paper has one of the loudest voices in town when it comes to shaping the thoughts and conversations of our everyday lives.  If I were running the Pal-Item, I would ask every day, “does our news product and the work of our staff use our loud voice in a way that builds up the community, informs and challenges our readers with new and different perspectives they’re not getting elsewhere, and helps create or promote a vision for a sustainable, enjoyable future that can be enjoyed by all?”  If there are times when the answer is “no,” make changes and move on.  If there are times when the answer is “yes,” then you’re serving in an important leadership role, keep it up.

I know the values implied in this question are very different from the traditional journalistic imperatives that shaped a newspaper’s role in a town for so long, but times they are a changin`.

5. What can we do to improve customer service?

I’ve never had a negative customer service experience with the Palladium-Item.  That said, one weird thing you could resolve is the way you ask people to submit information or letters to you through your website.  There’s the filling out of a form and the cramming of text into a small text box, which is totally inconvenient if you’re submitting a press release that’s already been prepared as a PDF or Word DOC.  It’s understood that the Pal-Item staff use e-mail (and sometimes you print their addresses in the paper), so why not provide direct e-mail as an alternative to the weird form?

Also, take the lead in getting this community to use QR Codes.  Please? Thanks.

…

Thanks to Jason for asking for reader/public input on the paper’s operations and future.  If you have your own thoughts on what the local paper needs to do to stay relevant, engaging, and, ahem, solvent, feel free to share here or on Jason’s blog post.

It’s something that I think about a lot (especially when we’re trying to hire someone), but I didn’t have a ready answer – partly because there is no simple answer, but partly because I hadn’t really ever taken the time to write one down.  Below is a list of ideas and comments, in no particular order, that came out when I put the question to the wider Summersault staff.  I hope that you’ll contribute your own thoughts and suggestions, and I’ll pass the list back to the Chamber and anyone else I can find who might be in a position to work on some of these things.

1. If there were more resources and locations in town that catered to the “do it yourself” computer builder/hacker, we might see an increase in people building up their own skill sets.  Opening a Freegeek location here would be a great start.
2. We need more social venues and public spaces that aren’t “the bar scene.”  Coffee shops with free wireless access and decor/atmosphere appealing to the 20s/30s crowd are usually ideal.
3. Technology toys are a luxury, and consumption of them is probably not going to flourish in Richmond right now, especially in a depressed economy.  But, there are a small population of people with dollars to spend on high tech stuff.
4. Some of the existing computer hardware businesses in town are geared toward fixing broken computers, instead of getting people excited about what’s possible with technology, or catering to “gadget lust.”   If a computer business could provide an experience more like what you get when you walk into an Apple Store (technology is fun/cool/interesting, not hard/frustrating), they might serve as a better gathering place or hub for local geeks.
5. Perhaps obviously, more technology-oriented businesses in town will yield a larger number of people, conversations, potential hires, skill-sets, etc.   Having more diverse businesses here in general adds to the appeal of Richmond, and allows geeks to find what they want locally without leaving for Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis.
6. There’s a strong crossover for geeks with bike culture and people generally interested in alternative transportation.  Other hobbies that have a “do it yourself” quality to them are generally found thriving within geek culture, so promoting those (especially cycling) could help.
7. We need more opportunities for conversation and networking among geeks and people interested in technology.  Whether it’s classes or seminars or informal meals, tech people need low-pressure ways to gather. We noted that environment at events hosted by the “Young Adult Professionals” is generally not friendly to introverted geek types.
8. Younger children need to be encouraged to share and learn about any interest they might have in technology, and given opportunities to really explore it.
9. Local higher education institutions need to do a better job of incorporating the “Linux culture” into their programs.  A number of local technology businesses (including Summersault) have trouble finding qualified candidates for our technical positions because the local educational offerings are geared toward an entirely different paradigm.
10. Richmond sometimes needs more “presentable” spokespeople for different parts of its geek culture.  Sometimes the awkwardness and relaxed attire and unique personal hygiene standards that come with being a geek are not conducive to effective public relations and messaging.
11. Richmond needs to generally be more open to a culture of subcultures – it’s okay for people to  have hobbies, interested, specializations that don’t fit into some single notion of the “mainstream” way of life here.  We should support and encourage that, not alienate it.
12. The creative arts are a huge part of encouraging a strong geek culture – when there are artistic endeavors like theater, music-making, film-making, etc. going on in a community, geeks have more opportunities to thrive.

When I asked our group a more direct question about specific actions that an entity like the Chamber of Commerce could take to support geek culture here, we came up with a few ideas:

1. Fund a grant for expanding the existing Hardware Cooperative into a Freegeek location.
2. Provide sponsorship for events and gatherings geared toward geeks, but let some geeks organize it.
3. Work toward having reliable wireless internet access across the city
4. Include the geek demographic as a target in the marketing that you do for your organization and the city as a whole.

That was the result of our initial brainstorm.  What do you think it means to grow a geek culture in Richmond (or in your own community)?