dangerouslyawesome

This week I’m included in Technically Philly’s sponsorship thank yous as their first “philanthropist level” sponsorship. It’s no secret that I’ve been a long time supporter of what Brian, Chris, and Sean do, and that’s not because they’ve written about me and IndyHall a bunch of times. I think they’ve identified a real need for covering the emerging technology community in Philadelphia with an honest, authentic, and approachable candor that is still backed by true journalistic ethics and execution.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts about their announcement of NewsInkubator, their Knight News Foundation grant application, that I’m still tuning and molding, but I think that it’s important that Technically Philly is able to sustain itself without the NEED for those grant resources.

They have a phenomenal community of readers, and an increasing number of those readers fall into the category of “we like what you do and want to do something about it”. My decision to sponsor is not to get a link or attribution every week…quite frankly I’d be just as happy without it. The reason I decided to sponsor TechnicallyPhilly was to lead with my actions rather than just my words.

I attended their first Technically Philly Happy Hour earlier this week and the ~30 people who also attended came from all corners of the technology scene in Philadelphia. My favorite part about the people who I met was that it was my first time seeing many of them. The fact that Technically Philly is able to act as a hub, as a connector, between disparate but related industries in Philadelphia is something that they recognize as valuable, and I’m thrilled that they’re able to find ways to execute with that connectedness.

Things like this, among many others, inspired me to put my money where my mouth is. $50/month isn’t nominal, and there’s of course a tradeoff. Think about $50:

It’s 3 dinners cooked at home instead of out at a restaurant (average $20). Homecooked food is better for you anyway.

It’s 5 walks (or even buses) across town instead of jumping in a taxi (average $10 from old city to 30th st). That walk will not only make you feel better, but you’ll see the city from the sidewalk instead of the street.

It’s 3 CDs or DVDs you wait to add to your collection (average $20). What’s the last good thing Hollywood put out anyway? Except IronMan and its impending sequel. I want to be Tony Stark when I grow up.

It’s 13 coffees brewed yourself instead of going to Starbucks and getting a $4 latte.

It’s 8 cheesesteaks (average $7). Ok, I hope you’re not eating 8 cheesesteaks a month. That’d be absurd.  http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/. ‘Nuff said.

And speaking of fat…you’re not even using that gym membership but you pay $40+/month for it. If you’re gonna toss that money at something, why not something that actually has value?

You get my point.

$50/month isn’t a subscription to Technically Philly, and I don’t think it should be thought of that way. It’s a way of supporting something that I hope becomes an institution in Philadelphia, and continues to grow with this community.

The Summit is officially underway, and there’s a possibility that if you’re reading this…that you’re already at the Philadelphia Convention Center, or you’re on your way there.

There’s still a massive amount of distortion in the continuing debate about my posts, mostly circling around the assertion that “bottom up” is better than “top down”. That wasn’t the point, unfortunately. My two attempts to articulate what I was feeling were largely misinterpreted, thanks to fragmented conversations.

Someone will inevitably make the statement that if I’d participated in the summit, the fragmented conversation could be unified.

In the words of Billy Joel,

You’re may be right. I may be crazy. But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for.

My point was to make some observations about concerns that I have based on things that I see in front of me, through my own lens. My goal was to encourage people think for themselves, not to agree or disagree with me.

That’s a hard thing to do without a little radical expression.

I’ve had conversations like the one on my  blog at least 50 times in the last 2 years with various members of the community. Many times with different conclusions, often times resulting in more questions than answers. Rather than continue having it behind closed doors, it seemed like it could be helpful to discuss things in the open.

I’ve spoken with a LOT of people about the posts, and the resulting discussions, in private. It seems that’s where a lot of people are more comfortable having difficult conversations. I understand why, but I think it’s a damn shame that people aren’t comfortable being honest in the open. Smart people. People I respect.

I’ve had some of those people tell me I am an unreasonable douchebag. I’ve had some of those people tell me they are happy that I spoke up. I’ve had some of those people tell me that they don’t really understand what all of the fuss is about.

I’ve had moments where I said to myself, “Why’d you even bring that it up?”. Then I remember, “because nobody else would”.

I guess there’s another Billy Joel song worth remembering. For all of the ego I slung in the “controversial” essay I wrote, I hope those of you who know me realize how reality tempers my words.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks.

Today is day one of the Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit, and I’m still not attending. But a lot of you are, either as a presenter or an attendee. Or a sponsor. Or a volunteer.

My honest to goodness hope hope is that this discussion over the last 3-4 weeks has heightened your senses about what you might, or might not experience in the next two days.

I’m not a fortuneteller, so I don’t know what you’re in for. Nobody does. But if you’re reading this, that means you’re paying attention.

If you’re a presenter, I congratulate you, and hope that you’re met with a welcoming audience and an opportunity to make an impact.

If you’re an attendee, I implore you, to look around at the people and their actions and interactions as they are happening around you.

If you’re a volunteer, I hope this experience proves valuable experience and you take lessons learned and organize your own events as well. This city is ripe for them.

If you’re a Philadelphian, I hope you show our out-of-town guests what makes Philly truly awesome.

If you’re visiting from out of town, I hope you enjoy your stay, and you get to see more of our city than our Convention Center. A lot of us like it here, and I hope you get a glimpse into why.

And everyone who is participating on any level, I hope you spend more time those two days listening than talking. There are a lot of great voices here. I hope you spend more time building new relationships than slinging business cards. I hope these relationships tighten (or begin to form) your bond with Philadelphia.

I look forward to hearing from everyone who IS attending the event about how it went.

Final thoughts, Billy Joel? Who started the fire is still up for debate, but when we’re gone, it will still burn on, and on, and on.

Disclosure: neither Billy Joel nor any of his staff actually supported this post. My lyrical references were for only effect. As far as I know, Billy won’t be at the summit either, but not because he’s angsty about it. I’m sure he’s just busy.

I’m a week behind on Cluetrain posts. I know. My bad.

Things have been pretty wacky at IndyHall the last few weeks, us hitting capacity on a regular basis and ultimately stressing me out about growth in a pretty big way.

I’ve been burying myself in work, partially to cope with that stress but also to get a bunch of things done, so I’m admittedly behind in the Cluetrain series again. I’ll binge again soon and get caught up, there’s no doubt about that.

In the mean time, I wanted to share a post that I wrote last year for Centernetworks.com’s Startup Tips Month. Allen had asked for some of my perspective on startup as an independent, and I got the chance to share some of my core philosophies that were born while forming and growing We Know HTML and have carried over into subsequent projects.

Allen is re-featuring the e-book he created from the month’s worth of posts from entrepreurs I’m proud to be featured among, including Tara Hunt, Pete Glyman, Shawn Ward, Ted Rheingold, and David Weekly. You can download the whole ebook, or just read my post about how to get started as an indie.

The tips I expound are:

1. Bootstrap
2. Organize and “polish” your resume and portfolio
3. Start Blogging
4. Get out in the field
5. Don’t underestimate the value of word of mouth
6. Stay horizontal for as long as it makes sense

While a lot of these tips may feel obvious, as I’ve lived them so long, I’m sure many people can benefit from my tips and the others in the series, so I’m glad Allen is re-publishing the ebook. If you’re “recently liberated”, “newly independent”, or considering a small entrepreneurial venture, I think all of these tips still apply.

Oh, and subscribe to Centernetworks.com if you dig honest, high quality content about technology and startups beyond the usual echo chambers. Allen doesn’t pay me to say nice things about him, I truly really appreciate his approach to tech journalism. Keep up the good work dude.

Reposted from IndyHall.org, since I know not everyone here keeps up on that site as well.

IndyHall and a number of other (but hardly all) of the members of the fabulous geek scene we’ve been a part of over the last 2 years got a really great FRONT PAGE feature in this week’s Philadelphia Weekly. The author, Steven Wells, did a great job capturing some of the diversity that makes Philly’s geek scene totally kick ass. There are some great quotes from Geoff and I, as well as a comparison to a sage Yoda and an impulsive Luke Skywalker. I don’t think anyone’s ever pinned Geoff and I so well.

It’s on newsstands around Philly all week, so if you want a hard copy grab yours now.

Thanks again to everyone who’s contributed to, led, supported, and cheered along with us over the last couple of years.

Geeks rock, and Philly geeks rock hard. Congrats Philly.

I’m still really impressed by the positive response still coming in from my first post on Mashable, now a few weeks old. The team over at Mashable has also been super supportive…and excited for more.

Sharon Feder, Adam Ostrow, and myself have been corresponding about ongoing posts for Mashable, and they’ve extended an opportunity my way that I’m pretty excited about.

When Sharon came to me after my presentation at BlogWorldExpo in Vegas (co-led by my buddy Jake “CommunityGuy” McKee), her initial concept for me writing at Mashable was something that had me hooked pretty quickly. She liked how I had answered questions during our Q&A/discussion portion of the session, and wanted to harness that.

I’m stoked to announce that Mashable is giving me the opportunity to do a weekly Q&A column on their site, related specifically to social technology and community development (relevant topics for their audience, and my interests).

I’m even MORE excited that the structure of this model gives me an opportunity to mix my own answers/thoughts/opinions with interviews with other industry thought leaders. I’m personally looking forward to regularly connecting with the people who are really making great things happen, online and off, related to the topics we’re interested in.

So why am I announcing this here…not on Mashable. And why am I announcing it before I’ve got my first piece written?

Well it’s tough to do the “A” portion of the “Q&A” spot when I don’t have a backlog of “Q’s”. So we’re going to be taking submitted questions from each week’s comments section, via twitter (just @alexknowshtml in the message, I’ll get it), as well as things coming in through my comment form. Each week or so, we’ll pick one question to focus on.

I truely believe this is a great opportunity for sustainable contributions rather than me running my mouth about what I think is important. Even I get bored of that stuff. So send in your questions and let’s get this party started!

In my last post (just a few hours ago, I know), I mentioned how I was most fulfilled when I was doing.

I wanted to further clarifiy that point, in that I was most fulfilled when I was doing something that makes life better. Makes the world better. Makes something better.

In the continuing effort to get off my soapbox, I wanted to highlight someone that I met recently that continues to impress the daylights out of me and inspires something unique, I would hope, in all of us.

I was walking back from the lunch break at BlogOrlando along side a guy named Erik. Erik and I were exchanging small talk, he asked me if I was from nearby, and when I said I’d come from Philadelphia, he first remarked how far I’d hiked…then asked, “oh…are you the guy from IndyHall”?

We chatted about coworking, why I was in Orlando (fact is, I really dig the scene there and am continually impressed by their potential). The walk back didn’t really afford much time beyond the ability for me to find out that Erik lived in the general area and was also involved in the local social tech community.

I was ashamed at the end of the day to find out that the closing speaker was the same Erik, Erik Hersman. Moments prior to him taking the stage, my buddy Alex started talking up this guy and how rad he was. He didn’t even get close.

Uploaded on September 30, 2008 by seanosh

As it turns out, Erik is a long time techie. Furthermore, while his family is in Orlando, he grew up in and continues to spend a great deal of time in Africa. He’s a notable technology leader in regions like Kenya and Sudan, where he grew up. I’ve since subscribed to his personal blog, WhiteAfrican, as it gives some insight into the very cool stuff Erik is up to: most recently, some great breakdowns from during and after BarcampJozi (that’s Johannasburg, as I learned). I also now check AfriGadget, which highlights gadgetry and handmade innovation in Africa. Read the first page of this blog. You will have a whole new outlook on technology.

On WhiteAfrican, Erik recently posted follow up from MobileActive08 (also in Johannasburg) which was attend by Blaine Cook, formerly of Twitter, and Rabble (who created Yahoo’s FireEagle platform). What do these three guys have in common, and what does that have to do with Africa?

Well, that’s where my admiration for Erik comes in. In the beginning of this year, he helped create a tool called “Uashahidi“. Erik’s knowledge of technology in a place where not many of us understand it’s importance (or availability) allowed him to leverage technology, specifically mobile technology, to make something better.

There was some serious political turmoil leading to violence in Kenya towards the beginning of 2008. Erik knew that mobile technology was reasonably ubiquitous, even if it only was the simplest forms available. He took that as a prompt to prototype a system that took citizen updates from mobile, email, and web, and map them: both for journalistic intentions, as well as for relief purposes. From the website:

The core [Ushahidi] engine is built on the premise that gathering crisis information from the general public provides new insights into events happening in near real-time.

Think about that for a second.

This was not building something to cut jobs, improve project turnaround, or increase profits.

This was not something built to chat, discuss, banter, whine, or kvetch.

This was not something built to gather friends.

This was not something built with a “market” in mind.

Ushahidi leveraged two of the most important technology concepts of our present: mobile and socially contributed content for the purpose of making something that really sucked – a violent nation – and gave it simple tools to make it better.

As you might imagine, this project caught the eye of the news and Erik and the team (all of whom I now desperately want to meet) and got some much deserved press. Since, they’ve secured funding and grown the team, and will be launching a new version of Ushahidi this fall. Open Source.

<applause></applause>

We’re talking about an application that can be applied to real life problems domestically and abroad because it uses a least common denominator and takes into account some basic human interaction.

How is Ushahidi different from most other (not all, just most) “social software”?

I’d venture to say the same way “coworking” stands out from “desk sharing”.

Ushahidi was created because someone cared.

This is the kind of doing that I like to see. This is the kind of doing that I hope to accomplish.

Update: Looks like cone provided some more details in a revised copy of the report that’s now available. The survey is based on 1,092 surveyed, 525 men, 567 women. 1000 people is NOT report-worthy. 2.5x that follow my lame ass on twitter.

So I caught wind via Jackie Peters (whose path I crossed repeatedly during my last month of travel) of a report by Cone, INC that threw out the most absurd statistics I’ve ever seen in a report. That’s probably because I don’t waste a lot of time reading reports, though.

At any rate, the Cone report stated:

According to the survey, 93 percent of Americans believe a company should have a presence in social media, while an overwhelming 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its consumers via social media. In fact, 56 percent of American consumers feel both a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.

Now hang on a second. 93% of Americans believe the same thing? Any thing? I don’t buy it. 85% of Americans believe that companies shoudl interact via social media? How many Americans have even HEARD of social media? Not 85%. I’m pretty sure that the percentage of Americans who’ve heard who the presidential candidates for the 2008 election are is less than 85%.

Of course, I know that these statistics are based on a census or survey, skewing the results based on whatever census audience the agency chose. This is the problem we’re up against, folks. No WONDER companies think that social media is a cure-all, and are willing to drink it by the gallon (to the tune of $400/hour).

Seth Godin said during the ONLY time I’ve seen him speak that “you can be the best in the world at anything you do because you’re in control of what ‘the world’ is”. Unfortunately, that same technique that’s helped many small companies and individuals self perscribe some happiness can be used for a dasterdly alternative. And reading this report is one frightening example of that.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go rinse my mouth out with some Kool Aide.

This afternoon I attended my first City Council hearing. Frankly, it was my first time inside City Hall. Today’s hearing was related to a topic that is known to be near and dear to my heart: the city support of the so-called “creative economy”.

I found out about this event, as most people did, last minute. And my desire to attend was minimal, chiefly because I have a strong distaste for the types of meetings that end up being mostly masturbatory: if I don’t leave a meeting with some sort of actionable item besides having another meeting, I’m usually pretty unhappy with the use of my time.

However, I was drawn to this event because a number of my peers, notably some that I have a pretty large amount of respect for, had been invited to present on panels to the hearing board. That group included Blake Jennelle, Philly Startup Leaders founder, and Matt Fisher, President of Night Kitchen Interactive and long time member of PANMA. I knew that these particular leaders shared my views of the local scene, shared opinions about the strengths and needs of our community, and were extremely capable of vocalizing these messages succinctly and effectively. If nothing else, I would have an educational experience in how a city council hearing is conducted, and support my friends. The only guaranteed loss was being indoors on such a beautiful spring afternoon.

As I was walking into City Hall, I decided that it would be interesting to live-twitter my experience. Not only for record keeping purposes…but sort of an experiment to share my at-the-moment opinions (as heat-of-the-moment as they were) with my followers.

So it began. I quickly learned that there was a video feed (which I’m working on finding an archive of), and others were watching from afar. And before I knew it…my twittering turned my timeline into a back channel for the Philadelphia City Council Public Hearing on the Creative Economy.

I’d be very surprised if this was actually the first time a government event had a backchannel…but what was interesting to me was that it ended up proving incredibly valuable. For a number of reasons.

First, as my original thought was, for record keeping. If you look over my tweets in chronological order, the hot-topics were tracked in twitter forever. Sweet.

Second, was me opening my brain. Not that I wouldn’t have done that anyway, but instead of passing notes or whispering in my neighbor’s ear, and being disruptive…I got to put my disruptive behavior to good use.

Third, and most interestingly, it engaged a number of people who could not be in the room do to prior commitments, or lack of notice. I’m lucky that I don’t have a boss I have to ask if I can take the afternoon off to go do something. Most people aren’t. Did all 1500+ people that follow me care about the contents of the hearing? Of course not. But a number of them certainly did. And some of them cared enough to chime in on the conversation. And thus, the backchannel was born.

Whats most interesting about the people who cared, is that not all of them were even in, or from, Philadelphia. One of the really important parts to remember about all of the creative economy and city branding initiatives that we’re involved in is that they are, at the very least, two-fold. There’s the need for better awareness inside our city limits, but just as valuable, are the external perceptions of our city, its economy, its workforce, and it’s general contributions to the rest of the world. So when people started listening, and better yet, chiming in from places like New York City, Kansas, Austin, and LA…the message was being spread MUCH further than the city council ever could have anticipated. And the best part about this message? It’s showing the rest of the world, not only that we’re doing something…but we’re looking to them to reciprocate in many of the potential relationships we’re creating.

Its worth noting that I only have a limited scope to this online backchannel…my own tweets and the tweets of the people I follow. If someone said something and I wasn’t following them, I missed it. If someone responded to one of the people I was following, I likely missed that as well. So the message may very well have gotten even further than I’m aware. And that’s freaking rad.

There are a lot more thoughts I have about the contents of the event. Some of it was intensely, intensely positive. Some of it was intensely, intensely frustrating. I’ll save those thoughts for another post as my mind starts weaving things together. Most notably, though was some really really glowing support for the things I care the most about: Indyhall, of course, but also P’unk Ave and their Junto, Geoff DiMasi in general, and iSepta (a new app thats sprung up out of some really awesome organic collaboration between some IndyHall members). IndyHall, P’unk Ave, Geoff, and I were mentioned by no less 3 separate panelists. If the city didn’t know about us yet…they sure do now.

In the mean time, today was the day I realized the value of live, citizen journalism.

Today was a pretty important day.