Embracing my Digital Youth

When I was a kid, someone told me that the best way to see if spaghetti was cooked was to throw it at the wall and see if it sticks.  I was reminded of this today while attending a media and technology conference .  So many middle-aged, middle-management nonprofit professionals throwing all kinds of “new media” tools at the wall to see what sticks and helps them raise money, gain exposure, save children in developing countries, etc.

  I participated in a panel on “digital youth and analogue adults”, and I learned that I truly am right on the cusp of a major generational shift.

I am in charge of website and communications at my work, I am on facebook at least 10 times a day, talk to my colleagues across the office on google talk, and, update my blog at least every six months (ha).  But still, I’m very different than people just a few years younger than me.  For instance, I have a land line.  I watch TV (though I DVR my favorites).  I read the actual newspaper (but only on Sundays or while I’m sitting alone at lunch).  I rely more on email than on txting, twitter, etc.   

Sitting with a bunch of nonprofitheads pondering the use of social media I couldn’t help thinking that for most, they’ll never be able to pull it off.  Part of marketing your organization is about disseminating a strategic message.  But participation in any online community requires being your genuine self - any hint of a pitch, whether you’re selling a product or a cause - can get sniffed out immediately.  How do you balance getting your message out and really being a member of a community?  Thoughts are welcome.

The Good

Some time ago my friend in the publishing biz referred me to the magazine Good.  I usually judge things like this from the quality of its free schwag, and I still have have two tokens from its premier issue hung up in my office- a 3 in x 3 in card that’s titled “personal manifesto” ( “_____________ like you give a damn”), and a small pin with an american flag in the shape of a heart. 

These things (and the magazine) captured my imagination by the cleanness of their design, the provocation of their message without being shrill or polemic, and the marriage of those two elements.

I recently picked up the newest issue of Good, and it had these great visual representations of statistics that subtly agitate you to ask questions of why things are the way they are.  And asking questions is the first step to change and shifts in power to make our world as good as it can be.  Check them out below.

 

The Accidental Pun

Yesterday, I was in a meeting for work.  We were debriefing recent trainings that we’ve done, and my coworker (who was calling in via phone) started telling us about his training with the National Association of Letter Carriers, you know, the people who deliver your mail.

So my coworker said, “blah blah blah so yeah it was really great, we did some new things and really pushed the envelope.”(!!!)

So of course I start laughing uncontrollably, which the person calling in via phone couldn’t understand at all. 

I love puns, probably an abnormal about.  So I got to thinking about puns and the people who love them, and how they are considered a cheesy, even base form of humor.  I would agree with all that - with the notable exception of the accidental pun. 

Part of the reason why puns are so groan-inducing is the sense of desperation clinging to them.  It’s like, implicit (or explicit) in every pun is a guy with big eyebrows going “eh?  eh?” and jabbing you with his elbow.  But if they come about by coincidence or happenstance, then that air of desperation is washed away and you’re left with pure, unadulterated funny.

The Harvest

Well, it’s sukkot, as well as fall generally here in the midwestern lands, and i’ve had a lot of reason lately to think about local foods. The change of seasons always makes me inexplicably nostalgic - the smells of fall give me all these sense memories of childhood. As usual most of my memories revolve around eating, like crisp apples in my mom’s kitchen, or pumpkin bread/pie and sweet potato cheesecake.

In honor of sukkot and sense memories, here are my favorite food-related sites: a harvest of the internet’s offerings.

Organic Valley
You’ve probably seen this brand of dairy in whole foods, but you probably didn’t know that OV is the biggest Co-op in the country and if you buy their milk in Chicago it comes from local organic farmers in IL, MI, and IN. They also have great materials on their farmers as well as recipes on their site (featuring OV products, obvi)

Local Food Routes
Well, you all know how I feel about mapping. This site provides a good background on the benefits of local food, as well as a map (linked above) where you can enter in your zipcode and it shows you food producers in your area!

Crop Art at MN State Fair
The above link takes you to a flickr stream of photos of the crop art offerings at the 2007 MN State Fair. Crop Art is an art form where the medium consists entirely of seeds, grasses, dried beans, etc. It lives in the agriculture building with the 2 ton pumpkins.

Smitten Kitchen
Sort of cloying but interesting food blog that just so happens to highlight bagels in its most recent post.

Rootabaga Stories
While not exclusively about food, Carl Sandburg’s series of children’s stories that are at once completely fantastical and relatable are part of the inspiration behind the name of this blog. The link above goes to a harvest-appropriate story called “How to Tell Corn Fairies if you See ‘Em”

The World as You Can Make It

I am obsessed with mapping.  Mostly this is a work-related obsession, because as I work to keep track of our impact on the world and the “ripple effect” of the work that we do, I have visions of visual representations of progressives and their good deeds spread out across the country like so many amber waves of grain. 

Google lets you do custom maps now, but there other applications have features like a bulk upload of multiple data points and open source editing.  I’m working on a map over at platial.com that features all the candidates we’ve trained that have been elected to public office.  It’s still a work in progress but check it out by clicking here.

I know this isn’t revolutionary or MAJOR BREAKING NEWS or anything like that, but I find it interesting for reasons beyond the standard “I can make a map of all my favorite places and show it to my friends!”  I think in terms of progressive momentum building, the more we can actually see a critical mass of people, campaigns, or organizations, the more likely we are to get involved in those things.  Also, if you collect data and map it, you can see where the holes are - where is there excess progressive capacity and where do we need to build more. 

 Sorry if this is totally dorky in several ways, but that’s me! 

The Tax Dollar at Work

I’m nothing if not a sucker for politically manipulative online tools.  This one came across my inbox this morning, from the National Priorities Project.

Their cost of war counter doesn’t just showcase the arbitrary, difficult-to-contextualize total number of tax dollars being spent in the war in Iraq, in real time.  It also allows you to see specifically how much your community is paying, based on some formula that is beyond me to describe.  Once you select your city/town, you can also click on links like “public housing” and see how many units of public housing could have been built with the same amount of money, or “pre-schools” and see how many youngsters we could have sent to Head Start.

They have an embed feature but it doesn’t seem to be working, so visit the Cost of War Counter by clicking here.

The Awkward Turtle

To start this off I can think of nothing better than to share with you the latest craze in hand signals going around our office. Like many phenomena it’s not clear how it started or where it came from, but a google search tells me that it’s been making the rounds with the socially-deficient campus set. However, the Awkward Turtle (AT) has become essential to inter-office communication in my workplace as well.

Simply described, the AT is a means of diffusing awkward situations/interactions by pointing out the obvious with a simple gesture recalling the funny/sad condition of a turtle on its back. Take the following (hypothetical) situation:

Officemates A & B are involved in animated conversation about a past event.

Officemate C tries to insert him/herself in conversation repeatedly, while slowly realizing that s/he wasn’t actually there and s/he was thinking A & B were talking about some OTHER event.

Officemate C tries to cover.

Officemate A realizes Officemate C is covering; laughs and says “awkward turtle!” while performing the following gestures:

both hands, palms up, are placed on top of each other, slightly angled inward.

thumbs then rotate randomly, like the flailing legs of a turtle upside-down.

Please pass this on as necessary.