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I’ve recently started work as a Program Manager at Media Arts Center San Diego. Our DIY New Media Lab now hosts the San Diego node of SHARE. Keep up with the latest happenings on our Lab blog.

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen – on so many levels.  Elias @curiousworks sent it to me.  Please share widely.
The EyeWriter project is an ongoing collaborative research effort to empower people who are suffering from ALS with creative technologies.It is a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus & custom software that allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to draw using only their eyes.
(via: eyewriter.org)

Posted via email from Morgan’s Posterous

I’ve always been afraid of two things – bodies of water (in which I cannot see the bottom) and heights. At 7, I was stung by a jellyfish while swimming. That same year, I fell off a rock face and into a crevice of fresh lava rock, gouging and slicing my flesh as I tumbled to the bottom – it felt like I fell for miles. I came to dread swimming and climbing things.

Over 20 years later, I found myself miles in the air flying across the world’s largest body of water. All to work for a small organization called CuriousWorks. I’d not heard of them until just a few weeks earlier and in a few days, I was going to be helping them make media with kids in the middle of the Pilbara – a place few Australians (let alone Americans like me) ever get the chance to see.

With just a single Tweet as the trigger, I was going to be over 10,000 miles away from home, in the middle of a vast desert, in a country I’d never been to…

I dove in.

Some mornings, I had magnificent dreams and awoke to watch the sun rise over the desert landscape.

Other mornings gave me a taste of the complex realities of kids in rural and remote communities.

And this was only the first 5 days of my trip…

My second week in Australia found me in the small mining town of Newman, Western Australia. Newman consists of about 5,000 people with an extra 2,000 as ‘fly in fly out‘). It sits about 1200 km north of Perth in the heart of the Pilbara Desert. Because of it’s remote location, food and water need to be shipped in to Newman’s only grocery store weekly. Pilbara literally, means ‘dry‘.

There’s a cultural thirst here too – particularly for the young people of Newman. Pop cultural artifacts like StarWars, Twilight and Subway sandwiches are lapped up. The kids constantly talk about wanting to see ‘bands in Perth’. In deed, many young people – Newman’s potential future leaders – end up leaving.

Because of this, BHP Billiton recognized the need for a more sustainable and permanent infrastructure – something for the long term. That’s where CuriousWorks came in.

As part of the BHP Iron Ore Legacy Project and in partnership with Country Arts WA, CuriousWorks helped Newman’s kids develop a wide range of skills they could put back in to their community. Some of these skills were gained interviewing locals outside of school. Other skills were nurtured by developing a class website. Our final part of the project was putting on Newman’s first film festival.

In starting the project, Senior Advisor of Sustainability and Community Relations for BHP Billiton, Scott Bird said:

“We really want to contribute something significant to the town that demonstrates BHP Billiton Iron Ore’s commitment to creating liveable communities that people want to participate in for the long term. We expect this project will create a lasting impact on both the community members and the landscape of the Newman Township.”

Over the next 12 weeks, we worked with teachers, students and parents to build the media capacity of Newman’s young residents. We moved between 5 different locations to conduct our after school media-making workshops while teaching new media classes in the primary and senior high schools. It was hectic, but a lot of fun and the kids we worked with were very productive.

The project accomplished some great things with and for the young people of Newman:

• our kids got on national television and a national newspaper
• our kids launched a student website with an accompanying lobbying website and youth blog
• we also learned 33 other things…

And yes, we felt happy to call them ‘our kids’. They are awesome.

While we accomplished a lot while there, we were not without our challenges. For one, we were outsiders, not just geographically, but culturally too; a Sri Lankan, a Lebanesian, a snow white Australian with a slight British accent and an Asian-American made for some curious workers in a predominantly white town. There were even a few incidents where I wondered if I’d been discriminated against because of my ‘outsider’ ness. In a conversation I had with a local school teacher, she offhandedly referred to the film production, internet literacy development, and photography we were doing with the kids as not ‘real’ teaching.

Coming into Newman, we also expected to have a stable teaching space to meet with the youth. We had anything but. Not only did the local youth center close down a week before we arrived, but the places we’d hoped to conduct our media workshops were unreliable, in spite of the dedicated efforts of our staff and our Newman partners. The recently closed youth center hadn’t even been open a year. Where were after school programs for youth going to be held? Where were the creative spaces kids could go to continue their learning, playing and making when the schools closed? Who would lead this?

Clearly, there was and is a lot of work to do. I wouldn’t say the kids we worked with were disadvantaged in the sense that Americans (like my self) normally think – poverty, homelessness, language barriers. I’d say their greatest disadvantage is the lack of a stable, supportive center that fosters the creative skills they already have.

As of this writing, there is still no youth space for the kids of Newman to meet and make media. This is the task ahead for the teachers, residents and businesses of Newman – to grow and build on the things we developed with Newman’s youth. To stay true to our intentions as CuriousWorkers, we need to ensure the communities we work with can serve themselves.

Newman certainly deserves to.

The past DAY has been brilliant.

Shakthi and I departed Newman and drove for about 3.5 hours to Marble Bar – which is the hottest town on the planet (it never went below 100 degrees for 160 days in the summer of 1923-24).  It’s not too hot now.  On the way, we stopped in Nullagine to pick up Dan and Brody, two graffiti artist who get paid to do ‘public’ (a style of ‘graf’ that’s usually commissioned by a local government, public or private agency.)

I drove nearly 2 hours to the middle of Western Australia (Nullagine) to see these pieces.

A ‘mob’ is like tribe here in Western Australia.

Brody outside a piece he and Dan finished outside the Conglomerate Hotel Motel Bar (they’ve got excellent burgers).

They had some great work up on the local…bathroom stall.  But it’s a large building (relative to the rest of the town/village).  They also did some great work at the local bar and of course, with the local kids.

After some antics with local kids, we took off for Marble Bar.  It took about 4 minutes to drive the entire length of the town.

We went out to see if we could find some kids.  None.  Zero.  So Shakthi and I went to go and check out the local telecentre – which is the Oz version of a community technology center (in the U.S.) and see what tools we had to work with:

• 4 computers running Windows XP
• Windows Movie Maker on all of them
• all configured competely differntly with Internet Explorer as their main browser

Soon enough, kids descended on the telecentre.  All on ‘Ripsticks’ – flexible, twisting, 2-wheeled boards that are ridden by twisting and wiggling your body.  We gave them a camera and my iPod (video) Nano to shoot some video and now have some great footage which we’ll be able to use throughout the week.

We also had a great time hanging out with Dan and Brody, filming them and documenting them at work teaching the kids graffiti.

So far, this trip is rockin.  More pictures from the adventure so far can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiousworksphotos/sets/72157622484375148/

Posted via email from Memeshift’s posterous

Today I set a game plan with Shakthi on how we're going to tackle the next 6 weeks in the Pilbara.  I'll need to:

• develop/find/improve on some curriculum for 'object-based storytelling'
• develop/find/improve on curriculum to introduce the 'craft' of working with audio and photography
• develop online social network strategy for cultural leaders in the Pilbara

For the first week, we're going to go to Marble Bar (population? 194) to do an ad-hoc community media class – completely open-ended, depending on who shows up an what they'd like to learn.  Could be storytelling, filming video, even djing if that's what they want;)  Should be fun.  Main purpose is to introduce ourselves to the folks in Marble Bar to as well as connect them to the community media network we're in the process of building.

Second week, we begin 5 weeks of work in Newman, culminating in a community festival.  One of our partners on the ground has already secured Thai dancers (WTF, in a rural mining colony in the middle of nowhere???), MCs and a space for the festival.

In the meantime, please enjoy this lovely video of the CW office loft in Sydney.  In it, I give a nice tour of the CW art/office loft.  It's truly one of the nicest spaces I've ever worked (and will hopefully play in soon!).

Posted via email from Memeshift’s posterous

Howdy We Operate Best Together Backers and Fans!

Apologies if some of this is old news to some of you, but I thought I’d condense the past months’ adventures for y’all in this email.  Also, I’d asked some of you if I could add you to my eNewsletter list to stay up to date on my project.  Might you resend me a yes or no – even if you already have?  Your privacy is important and I’m currently doing all these batch emails ‘by hand’ – no fancy eNewsletter software yet:p

Onwards with the updates!
-morgan

August and September have been incredibly busy and enriching months for WOBT.  The scope of We Operate Best Together has also expanded a bit to incorporate some new developments in the adventure…

—Adventures in NYC—
I visited NYC (and Boston) and had an amazing time:

•    got a free roundtrip ticket to Boston (care of Ben Sheldon thanks Ben!) for the NAMAC Conference (http://namac.org/conference)
•    toured the Eyebeam art and technology space in New York and interviewed Emma Lloyd, Director of Technology: http://bit.ly/3zfgiy
•    attended my first SHARE event: http://bit.ly/p33AG
•    squatted a loft in Manhattan with a childhood friend: http://bit.ly/1wbtFE
•    visited with WOBT friends at Digital Democracy: http://bit.ly/548f2
•    volunteered some time with the Transmission Project (formerly CTC VISTA) to redo their wiki: http://digitalartscorps.org/wiki

A brilliant, brilliant time in NYC/Boston was had by all…

—WOBT Site Relaunch—

I also relaunched and got a new URL for We Operate Best Together:  Check it out: http://www.weoperatebesttogether.org You can also subscribe to blog updates (different from this newsletter) here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=WeOperateBestTogether&loc=en_US

—WOBT is Now in Australia!—

Aaaand in the midst of adventuring on the East Coast, I got a job in AUSTRALIA with an amazing organization called Curious Works (http://www.curiousworks.com.au/about).  Through creative collaborations nationally and locally, they work to ‘reshape the systems of cultural production in Australia, for the benefit of all Australians’ using new media tools and trainings.

While here I will be traveling to remote Australian communities to do technology assessments, develop curriculum and assist with new media/video storytelling.  Throughout, I will be documenting all my work on the WOBT and Curious Works websites.

Today I venture out into a New South Wales’ (Sydney’s) first dust storm in nearly 25 years to begin my first day of work at Curious Works Sydney artist loft office.  Check out the pix below:

Operate together!
Morgan

P.S.  Don’t forget to send me a quick yay or nay to opt in for ‘hand-crafted’ future updates!

If you want ‘auto’ updates, sign up to get the latest updates from the WOBT blog delivered to your inbox here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=WeOperateBestTogether&loc=en_US

P.P.S.  Feel free to share, bookmark, forward or Tweet this post:)

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Memeshift’s posterous

On September 6th, I got to go and visit and jam at my first SHARE in New York City.

SHARE is basically an ‘open jam’ for anyone to come and play their sound/video/visual art with others.  From their Facebook Page:

SHARE is first and foremost a platform to explore expression, in a variety of artforms. Through its openjam-styled sessions, SHARE engages its participants and spectators in a continually changing dialog on art and culture. As such, SHARE represents an ongoing exploration of collaborative performance as cultural exchange.

I was also fortunate enough to meet (for the first time!) Keiko Uenishi.  We’d been having email exchanges for a couple years while I was starting a SHARE in San Diego with my friends.  Keiko (along with some of the other SHARE.NYC folks) were incredibly helpful in getting us up and running, offering advice and even visiting us to see how we operated.

This particular SHARE I attended was held at the Issue Project Room – a relatively new space in a converted can factory.  They had a really nice 16 speaker surround sound system for projecting the sound as well as a two story high wall for projecting amazing visuals.  Kieko had a pretty neat Wii controlled MAX/MSP patch that she was running.  I had Ableton Live and a built-in microphone for my jamming.  Below are a few more pictures from the night.

Can’t wait to jam again!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Memeshift’s posterous

I’m a big fan of gMail.   I’m also a big ‘plug in’ fan.  Whether it’s for Ableton, Wordpress, or Photoshop (some of my creative tools of choice), I love flexibility and keen ways to manipulate ‘things I make with computers’.

Here’s 2 Firefox addons I use in conjunction with Posterous and gMail to write rich posts without logging in to my blog.

Zemanta

I use Zemanta on this blog and it’s great.  It ’suggests’ links and images to paste into your posts via a clickable sidebar.  Simply click any images or links that appear and it automatically pastes them in – no messy HTML.  And now you can do it from your gMail. Sweet.

How:

1. Get Firefox
2. Get a gMail account
3. Install the Zemanta for gMail Firefox addon

Xoopit

Xoopit rocks.  Aside from matching the email address of folks I’m emailing to their Facebook account (and having their status updates appear in a sidebar), it gives me options for searching, browsing and sharing files – images, music, pdfs – you name it (see screenshot).

How:

1. Install the Xoopit for gMail Firefox addon
2. Configure it
3. Relaunch Firefox and log in to your gMail to see it working.

Posterous

Posterous is new to me.  But I already like it.  Edward Harran is already making great use of it.  From my gMail, I simply send an email to post@posterous.com and it posts that email (even auto-removing my signature) to any combination of social networks I like – instant, multi-outpost broadcast from your email client – rad.  You can even mix, match and specify which social networks to post to by tweaking your “To:” field

“You can also address an email to #{text}@posterous.com and it will post to any site where the url contains that text.

#apple@posterous.com will go to apple.wordpress.com and flickr.com/apple, but NOT banana.blogspot.com”

You can even reply to comments via email.  So.  Cool.

How:

1. Sign up for a Posterous account
2. Sync your blog and social networks
3. Send emails to them and play!

Okay that’s it.  I wrote this blog post as an instruction on how to write rich posts to your blog without logging in.  Was it clear?  make sense to folks reading?  Let me know.

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Thank you!

Hello internet. I’m happy to say I won my goal with Kickstarter. Thank you everyone! I could not have done it without you. For those who missed the action, I decided to do a 4 hour marathon online DJ set (that’s part of what’s documented in the video above) to raise the remaining funds for my $1500 Kickstarter project goal. Throughout it, people were Facebook chatting me, Twittering, emailing and calling to wish me luck, spread the word of We Operate Best Together and make pledges. With just 7 minutes to spare before midnight, July 4th, I MADE IT. Had I not, I would not have gotten ANYTHING. Zilch. Nada.

That said, I am now taking a little bit of time to recoup, get grounded and prepare to ROCK Europe. Not to mention that a server hiccup caused me to lose all posts from the past 7 months, shortly there after. HA! Seems a perfect time to do this before setting out on my adventure.

A strong ship makes for strong sailing, no?

If you like, check out my other cool projects below:

You can also visit me on Facebook or Friendfeed and Twitter.

Feel free to send a private message using the form to the right or leave a comment below. You can also download my resumé if you like – I’d love to have a few cool projects/websites to be working on while I’m traveling.

.

I’m proud to say that the project I was serving as Project Champion for at Netsquared won a $5000 FACT Social Justice Award!

About FACT: “The French American Charitable Trust (FACT) is committed to addressing the fundamental inequalities and injustices in our society by helping develop and sustain networks of community-based groups in the U.S. and France that educate, organize, and empower people to actively participate in developing public policies that directly affect their lives.“

It was a pleasure championing Digital Democracy’s Handheld Human Rights during the conference promoting, tweeting and implementing on the ground actions to get the word out about our project.

There were so many other cool projects too: FrontlineSMS:Medic – SMS for Medical Records and Mobile Lab Diagnostics , SeeClickFix: Report Non-emergency Local Problems and Collaborate to Solve Them, VozMob: Mobile Voices/Voces Moviles, Agricultural Market Information Service (AMIS) Project were some of the ones that stuck out for me.

Big big thank you to Emily and Mark for pulling together such a cool project as well as all the other folks I met there.  I’m really looking forward to seeing how Digital Democracy evolves into the future…

Hi Interwebz! I want to go to Europe this summer to make and learn about the electronic arts with local organizations, events and communities.

MY GOAL IS TO LEVERAGE MY MUSIC AND SOCIAL NETWORKS TO TOUR AND DOCUMENT CREATIVE COMMUNITIES THROUGH EUROPE

I know it will require a lot of work, but this is something I feel passionate about doing. This demo/album marks the start of this project. If you wanna help, here’s how:

• Download it! – it’s free! Put it on your iPod/mp3 player or make a cd for a friend.
• Tweet it – Share it with your Twitter followers. Ask ‘em to retweet it.
• Share it on Facebook – help it go viral in Facebook.
• Email this post to a friend – know some people that should know about this? Send them a link!
• Purchase it! – of course! I’m planning a trip through Europe this summer and am trying to raise funds to go. If you can’t donate, your album purchases help with this. Stay tuned for other ways you can contribute.
• Comment – go ahead and leave comments, links, constructive feedback below. This is my first time doing anything like this, but I think this is going to be fun:)

You can also connect with me on last.fm or Scrobble it if that’s yr bag – this helps my music ‘get out there’ – last.fm also ROCKS. Seriously.

UPDATE:

Inspirations:
These are creative change makers who’ve done similar

• Noel Hidalgo: On the Luck of Seven
• Paul Smith: Twitchhiker
• Jason Shim: Bikeride Across Canada For Aids
• Eddie Harran: Fundraising to Attend NTC09

BIO

I’m a community technologist. I figure out the best ways for people to use technology to engage their communities. Whether it’s through pre-existing systems and networks or custom built ones, I weave people, technology and human resources together to ensure measurable impact for your community-based online/offline initiatives.

My top three specialities:

• online relationship/social network cultivation
• Wordpress/Drupal design and implementation
• Twitter, Facebook, eNewsletter and blog communications integration

Community networks I’m engaged with:

• CTC VISTA: I regularly contribute to their wiki. I also served as a VISTA Leader.
• The National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture: I currently manage their website and online presence.
• Digital Democracy: I helped them win $5000 as a Project Champion for Netsquared’s Mobile Development Challenge
• CTCNet: I currently serve as an ad-hoc listserv moderator. I also helped facilitate a great report from the conference with Belinda Rawlins, Director of CTC VISTA.
• N-TEN: I crowd-funded my way to the conference, co-presented a session for nptechies and then helped facilitate a meetup of fellow community technologists.
• The San Diego LGBT Center: I co-developed their Digital Media Project, built toolkits and created/taught classes on digital storytelling using the Center for Digital Storytelling’s train the trainer model.

I’m a builder as much as I am a strategist. Download my resume here or read on…

THINGS I’VE BUILT

• built an online ‘listening portal’ to monitor brand mentions of NAMAC: http://bit.ly/namac-listening-post
• built a ‘federated search engine’ of a national network of community media centers: http://namac.org/federated-search-beta
• built, launched and contributed to online communities of creative audio/video/film artists: (http://bit.ly/comm-launch)
• founded and developed offline electronic music communities: (http://www.sharesd.org/about)
• developed and refined one of the Media Arts Center of San Diego’s Digital Storytelling Stations: (http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/services/digitalstorytelling.shtml)
• created a digital storytelling toolkit that was adopted and remixed for the web: (http://ctcvista.org/files/mediatoolkit/begin.html) note – the quote on that page is actually from Natasha Freidus from Creative Narrations)

CURRENTLY WORKING ON

• We Operate Best Together – a project to map the stories of social innovation and social change in creative communities worldwide. Also running a pledge campaign that ends July 4th! Make a pledge!

CONSULTING SERVICES
I can also provide a range of consulting services to help you or your organization develop it’s capacity to be effective online and off. Some of the services and trainings I can provide are:

• content management system installation, configuration, development
• choosing appropriate technology for your goals and mission
• strategic planning for your online social network initiatives
• finding appropriate technology vendors
• blogging and social network etiquette
• online community management
• online brand monitoring
• online video streaming
• Drupal/Wordpress
• content marketing
• digital storytelling
• djing
• various open-source tools and software

During my work with NAMAC, I created a ‘Social Media Engagement Cycle’ template in order to communicate with my supervisors just how we might dive in to using blogs, RSS, Facebook and Twitter to engage with our members.  Inspired by Beth Kanter’s post ‘How Much time Does it Take to Do Social Media‘ I thought I’d remix it specifically for electronic musicians and provide a template for ’social media engagement’ – self-directed online information gathering that transitions into community-based offline knowledge exchange.

I’ll cover 5 basic stages of social media engagement, how you might start and some handy tools to play with.

Getting started

1. Listening
   Listening is knowing what is being said about topics in electronic music elsewhere online and analyzing and extracting patterns from these conversations.  You can let these inform your future trajectory in conjunction with your internal strategy.   What are other electronic music enthusiasts talking about? Are they talking about the latest technology and gadgets?  Perhaps there are some new styles of electronic music that you should be aware of or a local event?  What kinds of keywords/ideas pique your interest?
   
   Tools/Things Needed :
   • An RSS feed reader like Google Reader or Bloglines
   • A startpage/aggregator like Netvibes, iGoogle or Protopage

   How:

   1. Find some RSS feeds.  Here’s a few to get you started:
      • http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%22electronic+music%22
      • http://feeds.technorati.com/search/%22electronic+music%22?language=n
      • http://feeds2.feedburner.com/cdmcomments
   2. Plug them into a feedreader (or assemble a social media monitoring dashboard)
   3. Respond/connect as necessary (see next step: Participating)

   Hot tip: Think of feedreader as you would an iPod or turntable – they’re listening stations essentially and you can put in and play what ever you want;)
   

2. Participating
   After getting a good grasp of what’s happening out there, participating entails joining in some of those conversations with fans of electronic music on other platforms – blogs, Facebook, and Twitter readily come to mind.  Simple ‘Hello!’ s and ‘Thanks for the Add!’ are common courtesy.  There are also LOADS of forums and listservs that existed long before these platforms, though participation in these is subject to it’s own ‘good nieghbor’ policies.  Any good forum will have ‘Start here’ or ‘community guidelines’  post to acclimate yourself.Also remember that you are talking with people here – the golden rule generally applies.  Be nice.

   Tools/Things Needed:

   • A list of a few electronic music communities/people to connect to
   • Something thoughtful, supportive or even constructively critical to say, though be sure you’ve got the particular netiquette down.
   • There’s also never anything wrong with introducing yourself and saying what you’re there for (this helps community managers too;)

   How:

   1. Creating a profile on an online network/community/blog/forum
   2. Adding some friends/connections
   3. Beginning to comment on other blogs, platforms, forums and online communities.

   Hot tip: Think of your online profile as a business card you might give a venue owner, fan or fellow electronic musician.  What would you want to communicate in that brief exchange?
   

3. Generating Buzz
   After establishing your own presence/ways of participating on various networks,  you can start raising awareness about things important to you mixed in with some of what you make, whether it’s original tracks, dj mixes, events/parties you are playing at or a new podcast you’ve just started.  Be careful though about tooting your own horn a little too much – nothing is more annoying than someone who’s constantly trying to ’sell’ their products to their friends/network.  Most people are immune to ‘buzz’. You also have to build trust.  Many people jump straight to promoting/marketing their own work before getting at least a basic understanding of the netiquette involved by participating in/on a particular network.  Why would anyone want to listen to you?A general rule of thumb is to promote the work of others as much as or more than your own work – we are all doing this together, plus it’s generally good karma;)
   
   Tools/Things Needed:
   • Passion about what you’re doing
   • Knowledge/experience the will contribute value to your network/community
   • Something you are proud of – that you’d do regardless of what anyone else says.
   • Discounts on stuff (shows, cds, artists’ merchandise) – music downloads are always nice too

   How:

   1. Create something awesome – be it a new track, a dj mix or even some other form of electronic music.
   2. Upload it somewhere (your blog, MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, drop.io)
   3. Share it in appropriate places
   4. Ask for feedback
   5. If your stuff rocks, people will share it.

   Hot tip: think of what you’re offering up as demos.  Perhaps it could use a little refinement, but at least it gets your foot in the door – and people paying attention.
   

4. Sharing Knowledge
   Here is where – after you’ve listened, participated and perhaps even generated a little ‘buzz’ discussions – you start making sense of and refining the information and research you’ve gleaned, solidifying and taking action to share what you (and your connections) have learned.  All communities go through this process.  By reflecting and documenting what you know (whether it’s a blog post, workshop you decide to run or something else entirely) – you empower yourself and those around you.   There will always be ways to improve on what’s already out there.  How might you contribute to that bettering?  How might you add to or refine what’s already there?

   Tools/Things Needed:

   • A good ’sample bank’ of knowledge;)
   • A network of friends you can bounce ideas off of
   • A personal publishing platform (like a blog, website, listserv – heck, even email;)
   • You can even use a few ‘techie’ tools like Lijit, Zemanta or ShareThis – these faciliate knowledge finding/sharing online if you’re an avid blogger

   How:

   1. Gather, refine and produce your knowledge (hopefully gathered from previous steps)
   2. Pick a platform or two to share on, though don’t overdo it.  No use spreading yorself too thin or reinventing the wheel. Ideally you know where where your fanbase is already by having Listened, Participated and Generated some buzz around your work.
   3. Share and email useful posts from within your community.

   Hot tip: Chances are, if you’re into electronic music, you already know about remixing and sampling.  Information, learning and knowledge are no different;)  Almost everything is remixable these days: information, knowledge and of course tracks;)
   

5. Community Building and Social Networking
   Continued fostering and nurturing of network relationships on established platforms.  This exchange is also facilitated quite well when you have offline places to meet and socialize and perhaps – gasp – even get off the internet to actually go and meet some people.A good example of this are the Share events which happen around the world.  Share provides ‘infrastructure and support for new media communities worldwide’.  Folks who may have only initially met on the Share Global listserv meet up in real time at a physical location to have impromptu audio/video jams and exchange knowledge, tools, feedback and sometimes even toys;).

   Tools/Things Needed:

   • A dedicated connector/community manager/convener/planner/organizer – you?
   • A passionate community
   • A space

   How:

   1. Put the idea out there of ‘a gathering of cool folks’
   2. Assemble a good ‘core’ of people together for feedback and mutual support
   3. Delegate some tasks
   4. Implement the project
   5. Refine as needed with community input along the way

Hot tip: Nothing beats face-to-face interaction for knowledge sharing and creating value for yourself and your community.  This really isn’t that much different than planning a sweet party either.  Except maybe not as much beer;)

Do you have any other tips, resources to contribute to this blog post?  If you liked it or found it useful, don’t hesitate to share it using the little social/bookmarking networks below.
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• How To Start Making Electronic Music (memeshift.com)
• How To Webcast Live Electronic Music (memeshift.com)

On November 13th, 2008, I had the opportunity to attend the CTCNet Conference, care of the awesome CTC VISTA Project.  Thanks CTC VISTA!  It was a rather lightly attended conference, however we – as a conference – were able to generate something which I think might be of some value to the field of CTC as a whole: a conversation with some of the best thinkers in the field of CTC to discuss the future of CTCs and our role in it.  Read on for the key takeaways of the conference or download the outcomes of the conversation at the end of this article.

If you like this report, please consider sharing and commenting with your fellow thought leaders.

Download the report here.

A Small Turnout

I must say I was a little disappointed at the turn out, particularly in relation to my previous conference-going experience with CTCNet.  The CTCNet network played a very important role in the early stages of my career as a young, non-profit technology professional.  In deed, my panel there lead to a great job with NAMAC about a year later (thanks for the hire Jack and Helen!) and the relationships I cultivated at CTCNet still give me value and inspiration today .   However, sessions at this year’s conference were small or under attended.  Some sessions had more presenters than attendees.  And some folks I’d been looking forward to seeing weren’t able to make it.  Given, this year’s conference had a lot to live up to from previous successful conferences.

Opportunities and Challenges Facing CTCs

While attendance was small (around 70 people) something really wonderful happened: we convened a face-to-face conversation with some of the best thinkers in the field of CTC to discuss the future direction of CTCs.  It was kind of like a groupmind strategic planning session.

Using ICP’s ‘Technology of Participation’ methodology attendees of the conference were asked: what are the opportunities and challenges facing the field of community technology? and proceeded to articulate a practical vision for the near future by:

• examining participant responses to  Richard Chabran’s keynote address
• uncovering common wisdom about the needs of the community technology field
• identifying potential actions for national organizations to support local organizations and for local organizations to support the national movement

Our leading question further surfaced:

• What is our coherent message?
• How do we define ourselves
• How will white space be used and by who?
• How do we create energy around the community technology movement?
• How do we create community focus and engagement?

What struck me about this is that in NAMAC’s own strategic planning session (which I was lucky enough to participate in prior to attending) we asked some of the same questions.

Might this report indicate other large scale national networks having the same questions we do?  Might it provide some fodder for future strategic development with CTCNet?  What about the CTC field in general?  Here’s another idea from Stephanie Gagne, current Executive Director of CTCNet: what if the ‘center’ part of CTC were to drop completely?  How might we align our efforts as dedicated, community and media media technology supporters with current policy work happening nationally?

These are some questions which I think are interesting.  What’s your take?

Download the report here.

How do we engage in other knowledge spheres outside of our own?

One might say, “Everything is just a few clicks away, right?”  I’m not sure I would agree with that.  I heard, second hand, of a report that says that Republicans and Democrats apparently stay on the same ’sides’ of the web as they do politically, offline.  Danah Boyd once wrote her observations about class differences between MySpace and Facebook.  I myself, out of sheer curiosity, have visited Aryan power sites – and I know these were just the tip of the ice berg for me as far as understanding views drastically in opposition to my own.

People still seem to only relate to other people and media familiar to themselves – not only offline, but online as well.

If these barriers do in fact persist, what does this mean for knowledge workers?  What might be the larger implications of this for the way people learn about themselves and the world?  What other perspectives exist?  Are we just fortifying echo chambers?

I love electronic music. I love making it, listening to it, promoting it and of course, helping other people create it. While I didn’t write these myself, I thought I’d share some helpful PDF manuals and guides I’ve compiled to get you started.

In writing this, I’m also assuming that readers have some kind of multi-track recording program (like Protools, Logic or Cubase ) or a nice sequencing program (like Reason or Fruity Loops). Ableton is my program of choice as it handles a bit of both recording and sequencing. Which ever platform you choose, a nice music making program will help you try out some of the things covered in the PDFs below.

Hopefully these guides will inspire some of the same passion I have for electronic music in you:)

Free beginner PDFs at Computer Music
This page has a really great set of downloadable PDFs including:

• Click to download The A-Z Of Digital Music Making, Part 1 (17MB)
• Click to download The A-Z Of Digital Music Making, Part 2 (12MB)
• Click to download 101 Recording & Mixing Tips (10.7MB)
• (101 Recording & Mixing Tips tutorial files (2.6MB))
• Click to download Recording Made Easy (6.2MB)
• Click to download The CM Guide to Monitors (3.8MB)
• Click to download Super Synths (6.7MB)
• (Super Synths tutorial files (2.6MB))

See the complete listing of PDFs (about 20 in all!) on how to use different kinds of effects (flanging, vocoders, eqs etc.) here.

List of tutorials over at Create Digital Music by Francis Preve
This came in my feed reader a while ago and is a compiled list of tutorials developed for Beatportal by Francis Preve. I only listed the first 3 tutorials in each category. Visit the complete (and very awesome) post over at Create Digital Music.

Subtractive and analog synthesis

• Introduction to Synthesizer Programming, Part 1
• Introduction to Synthesizer Programming, Part 2
• Some call it analog: How subtractive synthesizers work

Introduction to sampling

• Sampling Essentials – Part 1
• Sampling Essentials – Part 2

Tutorials on Reason’s Thor synthesizer

• Stealing Thor’s Thunder – Part 1: Oscillators
• Stealing Thor’s Thunder – Part 2: Filters
• Stealing Thor’s Thunder – Part 3: Modulation

Introduction to effects (series in progress)

• Tutorial: How to use compression
• Tutorial: How to use a delay
• Tutorial: How to use a noise gate

Production Master Classes (tips/tricks roundtables with established producers, series in progress)

• Production Master Class: Intros and Outros
• Production Master Class: Kick and bass
• Production Master Class: Hi-hats and top-loops

Thanks to Taylor, Yogi and Joe for asking me about getting started!

If you like this article, please share it!  You can also download my original electronic music here: http://memeshift.bandcamp.com

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I’ve had this idea floating around in my head for a couple weeks now: community as your operating system.  If you need to find the answer to something or produce some kind of ‘knowledge object’ (I can’t think of a better word) you can run queries against your network of amateur experts – your very own community operating system.

For those that are connected on their internets, making queries, running scripts, and returning/printing the results is not that much different than asking questions and getting answers back from your network – this process happens within a whole ecosystem fueled by the electricity of knowledge/information exchange, millions of calculations/conversations stored in the memory of people’s own experiences.

Dialogue is the developer platform.

Just some thoughts I’ve had around this idea.

Anyone know who made this image?

I’ve taken up a bit of a personal research project and am asking the question of this post on various networks.  What are the roles of community technology centers in building a national community service infrastructure? I hope to be able to compile and synthesize a brief report on themes that emerge.

Given the current socioeconomic context in the US and the transition of our government leadership, what role might community technology/media centers, libraries and computer labs play in establishing a stronger national infrastructure? By infrastructure, I mean access to knowledge, information and resources for contributing to the commonwealth of our country.  What are the roles of CTCs in building a national community service infrastructure?

We/I’ve already gotten some great responses to this question (private emails as well as publicly on the LinkedIn post) There are multiple ways to participate, contribute to and share this personal research project:

• Comment below
• Share/reTweet this with folks who might have a say
• Answer this question on LinkedIn to share your expertise: http://tinyurl.com/ctcdiscussion
• Answer this question on Facebook (if you’re connected to me there, you can see it as a post)
• Share this (through which ever medium you like) on on your social networks (you can use the little green ‘ShareThis’ button at the bottom of this post)

Feel free to aggregate/share any links you see as relevant in the comments below too. 

All participants will get a PDF of the compiled report as well as links to folks who contributed so you can follow up on conversations with them.

Don’t forget to leave/share/send me your contact info!

The great thing about the internet is that it allows those with access* connection to people and ideas in a lot of easy, organic ways.  However, while the tools to do this are always changing and evolving I’d argue that the techniques are timeless and work online as well as offline.  Regardless of technology, you can’t start your garden if you don’t have seeds, but people tended to gardens long before there was ever a hose.  Hopefully the resources below plant some ideas for you.

106 Tips to Become a Master Connector
http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2007/06/06/106-tips-to-become-a-master-connector/

I love this post.  I bookmarked it while ago  and there are just so many good tid bits in it.  My favorite tips are:

• Make other people more successful.
• Find your own mission in life.
• Build your network before you need it.

100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/100-personal-branding-tactics-using-social-media/

Kinda hard not to talk about online social networking (or social media in general) without some mention of Chris Brogan.  This list collects all kinds of great ideas for maximizing your personal brand – how you represent yourself professionally.  My favorites include:

• Your community knows more than you. Ask them questions often.
• Ask questions of people you meet. Get to know them.
• Contribute to your community’s blogs and projects.

Community is important.

25 Absolute Essentials for Networking Success
http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/06/25-absolute-essentials-for-networking.html

This one also has some neat take aways that I dug:

• Promote your purpose more than yourself
• The answer to every request that you DON’T make is no
• Know people in different worlds

Do you use LinkedIn and other online resources to build your reputation or brand yourself? How do you do that?

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/internet-marketing/MAR_ADP_INM/349646-25622973

This one’s a goody.  This is a great crowdsourced resource of people on LinkedIn weighing in on how they use LinkedIn (and other resources online) for building their reputation and brand.  Having a strong reputation and brand online is helpful when when augmenting the quality and scope of your relationships offline.

You!

Oh yeah, don’t forget that YOU yourself are a resource.  Many of the tips above apply to yourself – make yourself more successful, build your internal reserves before someone else needs it, know yourself in different worlds, etc.  You can’t be a master connector unless you yourself are connected.

Any resources out there that you’ve found to be helpful?
*Those that don’t is a subject of another post – volunteer with CTC VISTA if this is something you care about.  I did!

Related articles:

• 5 Articles to Help You Write a Great Artist Bio (memeshift.com)
• How Create a Mission Statement For Yourself (memeshift.com)
• 5 Awesome Resources For Becoming a Master Online Networker (memeshift.com)

‘Intergenerationalness’ seems to be a pretty hot topic in the world of online writing/blogging. In light of my own development as a young professional, I wanted to share these websites/blogs that I refer to for knowledge geared towards developing my own capacities as as professional.  The blogs below have a focus on HELPING. They offer great tools and tips for millennials to be successful in the workplace.

Employee Evolution

http://www.employeeevolution.com/

Lots and lots of tips, lists and how to’s from fellow millennials on this blog network. Two of my favorite posts from this blog:

• Being a Gen-Y Leader
• 6 Ways to Get Respect Quickly, Despite Your Youth

They also “consult and speak with organizations on best practices for recruiting and retaining Generation Y and how to effectively use social media to reach target markets”.

Brazen Careerist

http://www.brazencareerist.com/

This site is an online community network of professional Gen Y bloggers. I know that through my own work in connecting/helping with VISTAs (many in their early/mid 20s), the issues are very pertinent and resonant for me and my peers.  Two of my favorite parts on this website are:

• Coachology – it’s an area that also houses a directory of coaches that write about and respond to workplace challenges facing Gen Y
• Pay Day = D-day – this was a post particularly relevant to me.  Do one’s spending habits really have to be so difficult to manage?

Millennial Leaders
http://www.millennialleaders.com/blog/
This is a blog started up around a book called ‘Millennial Leaders’. Bea Fields – the author, is a mother of three ‘Gen Y’ers’ and works professionally as a Leadership and Team Coaching consultant for “high growth companies, non-profit organizations and medium-sized businesses”.  Two of my favorite posts (it was so hard to choose!) are:

• Why Gen Y Needs Leadership by Greg Rollett
• New Study Reveals Generation Y Careerists Are Least Engaged At Work

There are loads of great posts on the topic of leadership and the way it relates to millennials in the workplace. Bea is a true generation bridger in her conversations with millennials and her writing and research about those conversations.

This is a mix I recently completed this month. It’s the mix I want to use to start getting gigs in and around the Bay Area (and beyond?) for minimal/tech house nights.

Here’s the track list:

1. Loco Dice : Black Truffles in the Snow
2. Audio Soul Project : Community 2007 (Peace Division Remix)
3. Alexi Delano : What Is Control (Adultnapper’s What’s the Point Remix)
4. H.O.S.H. : Steppenwolf
5. Christian Burkhardt : Dragee
6. Danilo Vigorito : Heka Dark Side
7. Let’s Go Outside : I’ll Lick Your Spine (Repeat Repeat mix)
8. Ricardo Villalobos : Susse Cheques
9. Matthew Dear : Neighborhoods
10. Good Groove, Yapacc : Unflug (Franklin De Costa Mix)
11. Holden : 10101
12. Robag Wruhme : Inrespekkt

Does anyone know of any places looking for a nice, friendly dj with good taste in minimal techno and tech house?

Download the mix

(picture from Danielle Martin – thanks Danielle!)

Last week, I returned from NAMAC’s 2007 conference in Austin – The Frontier is Here: Create, Engage, Act. Being a dilettante professional relatively new to the field, this conference was a great view from the frontier. From meeting other media makers and supporters from the ‘old school’ to hanging out with fellow VISTAs working at NAMAC’s member organizations, I was thoroughly ecstatic to have attended. In going forth with my work here at NAMAC, I feel better informed as their new Online Community Manager.

One thing I was particularly sensitive to, was the intergenerational engagement between those from the ‘old school’ and those from the ‘new school’. While there were many people throughout the conference who had been involved with media far longer than I (some nearly thirty years!) there was a good portion of young people there under twenty. Many of the panels and workshops that the youth presented on were attended mainly by other youth – not as many other, more seasoned professionals. It would have been nice to have more intergenerational ambassadors to bridge dialogue between the two, perhaps provide some context and mentorship. I myself am in my late 20s and did my best to connect some of the VISTAs (mostly in their mid-twenties) to other people at the conference as well as each other.

Only Morgan Loves Me in the Pink Kiddie Hat (thanks for the pic Danielle!)

Meeting up with the other VISTAs was excellent and our panel went well. We even had a personal endorsement at the end of our panel from Jack Walsh, co-director at NAMAC. When I’ve met-up with VISTAs in the past regardless of what state, organization or project they’re from, there’s always been an uncanny feeling of camaraderie. The unique communal support that the CTC VISTA Project provides its members is priceless – both professionally and personally. Ben Sheldon (now Acting Director of the CTC VISTA Project) in his characteristic salty style, was professionally spot on and attentive with his polished schpiel about the project throughout the conference. Danielle (Martin) –the unofficial CTC VISTA queen mother – was as supportive as ever to organizations with questions as well as some of the other presenters on the panel. Her being there on the panel reminded me a bit of when I was in grade school and forgot my lines during a play – I was fortunate enough in that my co-star had some of the lines memorized much better than me, whispering them to me as I stood in that bright, naked spotlight.

One panel that I found particularly engaging was the panel on place-based media. For this panel, the presenters discussed the relationship and responsibility that media makers in rural and urban contexts have to their communities. Being a media maker myself and having lived in both contexts I felt excited to participate in the dialogue that the panel opened up. In the discussions that followed, conversations about class, race and community stewardship as the context for mediating between these sites was nothing less than fascinating. I really enjoyed talking with other media-making ‘in-betweeners’ afterwards.

Me jamming with Michelle Mayer (thanks again for this pic too Danielle!)

I must say that the highlight for me was an improvised performance with one of the installation artists at the conference. At midnight in the conference ballroom, I met with Austin-based video artist Michelle Mayer for an impromptu audio/video jam. Michelle connected her laptop up to the ballroom projector, while I plugged mine in to the main PA. Using nothing but the built-in mic for my laptop and the live, on-site recordings generated from this, I created rhythmic textures for Mayer to ‘dialogue’ with me using her own library of original and sampled video. Mayer had an amazing fluency with her manipulations and was an utter joy to perform with.

I feel the collaboration succinctly captured what the conference was all about: creating, engaging and acting.

This past week, the corporation paid for me to go out to a VISTA Leadership Training in Minneapolis as part of my preparation to be a VISTA leader. I found it pretty informative with lots of useful information. I may only use about 10% of it, but that 10% will be a VERY effective 10%. What i found most helpful was the ‘Distance Leadership’ workshop. In it, we generated opportunities within distance relationships between VISTA Leaders and Members.

I have posted all images I took from that workshop as well as the attached the typed up notes from Jean (posted in this post as well as downloadable at the end of this post).

Accomplishment(s):

• attending and successfully completing the VISTA Leadership training
• meeting other VISTAs
• getting good ideas and dialogue going about issues pertinent to VISTAS
• convening an ‘open space’ roundtable discussion of online tools
• participating and taking picture notes (see pics) of “Distance Leadership Thinktank” workshop

Resource(s) Generated:

• distance opportunity ideas for VISTA Leaders (click images to view more):

From Distance Lead…

• distance opportunities for VISTA members:

From Distance Lead…

• list of online tools

From Distance Lead…

These are also the notes which Jean kindly sent me – Thanks Jean!

*****************NOTES******************

Leading From A Distance: A Think Tank – Thinking Output
Minneapolis Leader’s Training Conference 2007

Opportunity Thinking: Opportunities for Remote Leaders
• Travel
• You set the timetable
• Ideas across borders/spread ideas
• Develop Communications Systems
• Resource accumulation/categorization

• Cross collaboration & Connecting Resources
• Allows time for Leader to fulfill site responsibilities
• Archive DJ / Knowledge orchestration
• Learn about/manage systems mechanics/engineering
• Face-to-face Project / Identity
• Develop expertise in variety of project areas
• Pollination of Leadership skills / styles
• Diversity of needs forces leadership development

• Learning about a diversity of communication styles
• On-line community development opportunities
• Utilize difference types/styles of conflict management with the variety of member personalities
• National Recognition of VISTA’s & organization
• Help a wide range of individuals
• Give VISTA members the opportunity to feel part of something bigger
• Learn different training skills to meet needs
• Strong case for funding: far reach / bigger impact

• Storytelling for capacity building & Education
• More resources to pull from
• Opportunity to become a very skilled communicator
Thinking Cue Time Frames
Immediate
• Time to process situations and issues don’t have to respond immediately
• Develop telephone conference skills
• See necessity of holding an early service retreat

Mid-Term
• Recognition of Accomplishment
• Reports (Quarterly, Monthly)
Long Term
• Documentation & Archiving everything
• Identification of Resources

Opportunities for Members with remote Leaders
• Develop/take initiative

• Develop/ practice discipline
• Have free reign
• Practice and develop creative use of modes of communication
• Create skills/discipline that increases long term job opportunities
• Take ownership of their project
• Learn from the different ways each project adapts to different context
• Access to resources
• Tapping into the variety of communities, cultures, etc.
• Learn to collaborate with different communities and cultures

• Share resources – increase the whole pie
• Learn to see big picture, system levels viewpoint
• Understand on different levels how organizations operate
• Experience independence
• Opportunity to develop own leadership skills
• Opportunities for individual innovation
• Higher visibility w/own project
• Synthesizing
• Travel Opportunities

• Learn/practice new ways of using technology
• One-on-one connection w/ community
• Take responsibility & Accountability
• Feeling like they (member) are part of something bigger
• Less competition between VSITAs
• Better / deeper understanding of a community
• Better experience as an advocate
• Strengthen networking skills

• Access to different communities / points of view
• Credibility in instances of self-promotion
• VISTA’s access is wider
• Greater avenue for expanding knowledge base & awareness
• Change/influence in lifestyle plan
• Personal Growth
• Independence
• Cultural Exchange

• Expanding comfort zone
• Changing personal viewpoints
• Instill a sense of adventure
• Self-reliance, confidence building
• Ambassadors at local community level
• Liaisons too
• New areas for recruiting
• New sites
• Local working knowledge

• Self-Challenge
• Building personal skills & knowledge
• Become an effective self-educator
• Viewpoint that allows reflective, constructive perspective of VISTA Leader & Team
• Reaching more people
• Affecting larger community
• Building off other’s successes

Challenges for VISTA Members w/remote Leaders
• Lack of experience and confidence
• Loneliness
• Maintaining larger picture
• Clashing personalities w/distance leader
• Develop sense of being abandoned
• Time Management
• Lack of resources
• Boundary setting

Challenges for remotely located VISTA Leaders
• Not being able to see progress
• Not being able to get full disclosure from members
• Note seeing project happening
• Not being able to support detailed needs
• Note easy to fully comprehend project
• Technical difficulties / too much use of technology
• Not being taken seriously
• Community sense

• Member becomes Leader and former peer members don’t buy-in
• Full awareness of members, prevent “out of sight…”
• Conflict resolution from a distance – escalation sensitive
• Travel limitations
• Inability to share power, let-go, release control

Strategies/Tactics: Maximizing Outcomes in Distance Leader Situation
• Setting a pace / time management support
• Creating an agenda / plan
• Make initial/early contact with each member

• Familiarize yourself w/ member work plans
• Create a Needs Assessment – to discern the individual needs of each member
• Set Up Conference calls
• Set the Vision
• Create/Share useful templates / plan documents
• Clarify long term goals w/each member
• Create an email listserv
• Have meet-ups @ sites maybe w/community members served
• Schedule meetings w/site supervisors

• Ensure organizational integration for each member
• Create a Welcome Packet w/contacts, welcome letter, housing assistance, community resource map etc.
• Online Community
• Keep Vs / funders connected and informed with Newsletters
• Life After VISTA Creating a Portfolio
• Connect members to local VISTA alumni
• Get local businesses to donate goods / services
• Eat, sleep and rest
• Make VISTA site / VISTA MySpace

• Process what we learned here and then draft a plan

More Strategies/Tactics
• Be available: site visits, office hours, be annoying in a caring way, identify and share the best ways to contact you, the leader, pre-set check-ins, conference calling etc.
• Building Team: Convenient meeting places, encourage members to visit one another, creative use of resources, getting team to know “teammates” activities (3 questions on Monday, answers on Friday)
• Needs Assessment, Progress Reports — using information to have personalized conversations
• Regular social activities
• Look for relevant training opportunities that all can attend
• Communications: newsletters, blogs, chat rooms
• Encourage collaboration on project events and use some other members as volunteers during events

• Sardine version of on-site visits
• Service Projects as teambuilding
• Use summer facilities on campuses for reduced rates
• Link VISTAS: Book Clubs, Chain Letters – Flat Stanley (Travelocity Gnome)
• Scavenger Hunt Activities
• White Elephant –silly gifts
• Write letters
• Make phone calls weekly – use means outside of computer to communicate
• Create Welcome Materials / Sustainability Plans, Life After VISTA and Good-Bye packet.

• “Tool-Kits” for service —-an information packed resource
• Connect remote VISTAs to other teams (local) for immediate sense of community.
• Create / Use Statewide networks providing resources that target VISTA position in holistic sense: Living Stipend tips, Education Award information, Health Coverage, Project Explanations
• Motivational Speeches
• Get different varieties of feedback using different methods, adopt feedback (monthly, quarterly, end of service)