An Interview With Me At My New Workplace

July 23, 2007

I was recently interviewed by my director for piece she’s going to publish about my recent hire with NAMAC. Here’s the outcome of that interview:

1. Who are you and how did you get involved with CTC Vista?

My name is Morgan Sully and I enjoy using my passion for technology to inspire and connect others to the knowledge and resources they need. I got involved with the CTC VISTA Project in 2005 after a few months of a difficult transition. I had just left a steady and secure job I loved while living at home to explore living down in San Diego with a friend. I had no job lined up, but did it because it was simply something I wanted to do. I had a few months of struggle before finding the CTC VISTA project – it provided an opportunity for me to blend my passion for creative technology use/exploration with compassionate community building. CTC VISTA provided an excellent path for professional development.

2. What is an online community manager from your perspective?

From my beginner’s perspective, an online community organizer is someone comfortable enough with online technology to figure out how to use it for connecting people to each other in meaningful or life changing ways. It’s been said that online organizing provides the far and wide scope in reaching people, but lacks the depth of the personal, human touch that face-to-face offline organizing brings and vice versa. An online organizer simply leverages technology to attend to and balance both.

3. How did you get into developing yourself as an online community manager? What drew you to this area?

Ironically, it was not necessarily what I did during my ‘on’ hours as a VISTA, but what I did during my ‘off’ time that really brought me to online community management. When I first moved to San Diego, I noticed that there were many niches of electronic musicians but not any way for them to connect in any really meaningful way. I decided then (and this was BEFORE I became a VISTA) that my personal mission in moving to San Diego would be to connect them to each other. Meeting up with them, in person seemed the best route, but how? I did a little online/offline filed research and decided to take up the reigns of an already established ‘meetup’ group (www.meetup.com).

I then exported some of these (offline) techniques to my organizing efforts as a VISTA. While being a VISTA, I also discovered a global network of media artists who would gather in different cities around the world for ‘open jams’ – think open-source performance with no distinction between participant and performer. These resonated quite well with me and I soon ‘graduated’ from meetup and formed the 3rd (global) node of Share to catalyze and nurture artist development in San Diego. There are now at least 7 nodes spanning about 5 countries – we started nearly 2 years ago. Much of what I learned from that experience has also informed my practice as both an artist and professional organizer.

4. How do you envision helping NAMAC and by extension, the field, as you begin this assignment?

I envision supporting the development of media arts organizations – and by extension, the media artists and community that benefit from them – in their creative development and connection to the resources and information that they need – what I feel is my essential purpose anyway. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to found a media arts organizations for precisely this vision/purpose.

It’s a bit of a ‘meta’ level of community work for me – working at a national organization like NAMAC, but one that I envision having a far reaching impact for inspiring others. Local roots are still important though, as well as depth. It’ll be interesting to see how we tie in our national web/community development with the local support of the media ecologies we work with. There is always room to ask, what is the opportunity that exists?

5. What do you like about working in a nonprofit, and specifically NAMAC?

Coming into an already established hub, understanding its strengths and weaknesses and developing a plan to make it better. The publications are awesome, the vision is far reaching, and it ties to my own personal vision for what I want to do with my own life.

6. In no more than 25 words define Web 2.0 for our distracted readers. Your interpretation strictly!

Well, you certainly can’t download it. It’s just an idea really. Of course, all that is possible seeks expression through human (being) and ideas are simply the seed of that (I didn’t come up with that by the way, some old smart dude probably).

7. How do you see the media arts interacting with web 2.0? (Please be brief)

Neutralized distribution channels with insecure ROIs, small revolts and a return to ‘little’ ecologies – and ’smart’ media that talks to each other – many in ways that we have yet to imagine but that generations after us will take as second nature.

8. What do you plan to do at the NAMAC Conference to showcase the NAMAC Project and the CTC VISTA project? Can people get in touch with you?

Id like to showcase stories of change which reflect the ‘positive core’ of the media arts field while putting a face to the people on the ‘front lines’ of this movement. I’d like to see this presented through the various projects that VISTAs ingeniously plan, develop and implement in the communities that they commit to during their years of service – show EXACTLY how valuable national community service is to the communities that need it most.