Could there be an Incredible Edible Franklin?

Pam Warhurst explains how they started:

We tried to answer this simple question: Can you find a unifying language that cuts across age and income and culture that will help people themselves find a new way of living, see spaces around them differently, think about the resources they use differently, interact differently? Can we find that language? And then, can we replicate those actions? And the answer would appear to be yes, and the language would appear to be food.

Food, ah yes. We all need to eat to live. This TED Talk describes how the community of Todmorden is working to change what they eat and how they eat. The Incredible Edible Todmorden is a story worth replicating.





We have the basics of this underway already in Franklin with the Community Garden. We just need to get more folks involved.

For more information on Todmorden, visit their webpage here
http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/

Three C's

Content: a harvest festival, a gathering of vendors and businesses sharing information, crafts and all kinds of stuff.

Conversation: what happens when people meet. They stop and talk, about the weather (if the rain would stay away) and perhaps get into a more serious topic after catching up on the other's happenings.





Community: if the content that brought the group together and started the conversation, such that the conversation continued to build among the group, developing a respect and trust for those participating, then there is a possibility of that content and conversation creating a community!

There were seeds of such a community (or communities) planted on Sunday at the Harvest Festival in Franklin.

Something is lacking

One of the signs added to the Franklin Community Gardens:



While it makes sense to say this to help ensure that the time and effort of those caring for the gardens is indeed enjoyed by them, I feel it is lacking.

What does it lack?

It lacks the encouragement to build community. To foster the conversation that can occur over this plant or that arrangement. The kind of conversation that I was fortunate to have on the recent walk about with Chris Clay.

What do you think? Any suggestions for re-wording this message?

Happy eggplants

These eggplant are happy. They have good soil. Some one tends to the weeds, provides water. They can just hang out and grow. Are you taking care of yourself? Do you feed your brain good stuff?

How does your garden grow?

One good thing about having a community garden is that you can talk with your garden neighbors.




Find out why they are doing what they do and learn from their success or failure. That this garden bed is overflowing will lead to a revision of what and how they will arrange the plants for next year.


Whether gardening or looking for work, talking with your neighbors is one good way to learn and share information that may help you take the next step. On Friday, Sep 2, the next Job Search Jam Sessions will be held in Hopkinton. We have a good lineup of speakers and sessions that will meet your needs.

Tickets are available here. You can pay by credit card online or pay by cash at the door.

Community and the fire circle

This image tells the story for how you want to and need to get your message out.

You have your community, these you can reach. These you can talk to. Those folks have their network. Your message will spread via their conversations if compelling enough. If the message is indeed, clear, consistent, and has a compelling call to action - then the larger crowd can join in.

You don't focus on the crowd. You feed the community, the circle that is close to you.

I talk more about this in my "Fire Circle Story" which is written here and you can find an audio version of here


Thanks to Rachel Happe at the Community Roundtable for the pointer to Amy Sample Ward's image

Personal branding - 2nd session notes from Community Camp

My notes from the second session of Community Camp held on Saturday, Apr 23 at RISD.

The seats have cushions in Room 412, yes!

set up your account, go out and listen
pay attention to what others are doing

get into a LinkedIn Group, in medical equipment, go to a buyers group and listen
Glide can understand slang or the context with slang

follow key targeted people within the company and not just the company
keep it social, don’t just send a sales pitch

Dr Sam Lam
http://lfp-blog.com/

http://lfp-blog.com/


Other examples
http://garyvaynerchuk.com/

http://danschawbel.com/

http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/bio.htm

if you want to be found and recognized, use the same image everywhere
some folks change it far too frequently

for those with visual work, this is a good site to look at
http://www.behance.net/

Klout provides a rating for social presence
http://klout.com/home

somewhat controversial - look at Charlie Sheen’s score of 90, how?

JoAnn says “Klout is a mood ring”

Twitter Counter, even the free version gives better info
http://twittercounter.com

Driving Traffic - sessions notes from Community Camp

 Driving traffic to a website

questions
how to use social bookmarking sites
website referenced with LinkedIn

local search and the professional directors are the places to be
engage with the positive reviews, do damage control for the negative reviews

http://www.thumbtack.com/

http://www.hotfrog.com/

http://www.yelp.com/

http://www.merchantcircle.com/corporate/

http://www.brownbook.net/

Youtube links are highly rated, consider using video, create a channel
http://www.youtube.com/

if you don’t have time to do this full time, how much of this is a one time setup and then let it go with minimum maintenance

a lot goes into setting it up, local search can take care of itself once set up

https://foursquare.com/

http://hootsuite.com/ up to five accounts for free, can assign team members to accounts

posterous
https://posterous.com/

http://nutshellmail.com/

Google Alerts
http://www.google.com/alerts/

Radian6 is not for the local personal blog, company

BatchBlue
http://batchblue.com/

Go to where your audience is, comment on their blog, they'll find you and come to your page

Content, conversation, community!

A big day today!

The 5th PodCamp Boston runs today and Sunday. I will be at the Welcome/Registration Desk and am also scheduled for one session on Blogging 100/101/102. The session will go where the participants want to take it. From the beginning to, or off in a related direction.

Why PodCamp?

It is one place where I know that there will be passionate people intently focused on conversation around good content. When you get those two C's (content, conversation), there is a natural outgrowth called community. And when that occurs, it is special!

Lessons on discussions from Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky's talk at the recent Personal Democracy Forum is now available to view. He tells three stories then summarizes his 'findings' as follows:

1 - raise the cost of communicating
email is cheap, blogs are cheap, comments are free but maybe if you made them real comments instead of anonymous comments you'd get a better (i.e. progressive and not just noise) discussion. The commitment needs to be there

2 - get them to do something other than send an email
with a higher group commitment, there is more action and less overall signal (i.e. volume) but a high quality signal

3 - assume factions, give them a place to play
"Once you assume there is no such thing as a special interest group, all groups are special interest groups".

4 - regard elected representatives as partners and not targets
here, here! By creating the targets, the conversation tends to drift to a tone where getting the representative involved becomes difficult. The signal to noise ratio is too high a bar for entry.

You can watch Clay here:



If the sandbox is set up properly, there is real play (i.e. learning through play) with fights less likely to develop What are your take aways?

Young Professional Organization forming

If you have the idea that the Chamber of Commerce is an "old" organization then consider participating in the launch party for The United Regional Chamber's Young Professional Organization. The Young Professional Organization (YPO) will focus on the 20 and 30-somethings who have a interest in social and business networking, community involvement, and professional development.

Get in on the ground floor. YPO events will be a mix of networking and fun held in some of the coolest places in the area. You can help determine what and where.

If you know anyone that you think might want to get involved - invite them!

The introductory gathering will be held at Preservation Framer on North Washington St in North Attleboro.

After the initial discussion at Preservation Framer, head across the street to the Speed of Thought Playhouse for some great music and drinks.

* You must be at least 21 years old to participate in the Young Professionals Organization.

Reference Links:

• The event page for Thursday, May 6th from 5:00 to 7:00 PM
• The Facebook Fan page for the YPO
• The United Regional Chamber Facebook Fan page
• The United Regional Chamber web site

Note: I am outside the target market age but as a member of the United Regional Chamber of Commerce, I am volunteering to provide help for the formation of this group. My background in community development and mentoring should be able to add some value.

Job search notes: 3 word goals

Good ole' Punxsutawny Phil is reported to have seen his shadow on Feb 2, otherwise known as Groundhog Day. I saw mine while out for my morning run.

I realized while running that I needed to catch up on my three word goal for 2010. I had been busy with work, et al but now with that project complete, this is as good a time as any. I continued to draft this in my head as I finished my run through Franklin.

My three words for this year come from a discussion with a good friend as we re-work my resume. My prior versions as accurate as they are of my corporate and chronological work experience leave out the developments I have made outside the workplace all along the way. I felt that the community building work with the unconferences and Franklin Matters was not fairly represented. Over the course of several conversations, some themes revealed themselves and I'll use these are my 3 word goals for this year.

Conversation - continue to explore creative ways to engage folks in a conversation. I want to get to the heart of the matter for their point of view. Sometimes easier said than done. It will take time, patience, and good listening to 'read between the lines' as to what they really mean when they say what they say.

Content - the subject matter at hand. I have a few areas of content creation. I used to have more and skinned down to writing about Franklin, job searching and exploring the good experience. JJL has ended but the life long learning needed to do more than survive in this economic world will persist.

Community - My good PodCamp buddy Chris Brogan in his book Trust Agents (co-authored with Julien Smith) advocates building an army. In Franklin, I have grown my subscribers to over three hundred. With 19,000 registered voters, my BHAG is to get to 10,000! There is plenty of work to do.

How do the three words connect? I am looking to create good conversation around content that matters and build an engaged community.

What do you think of this? How am I doing?

What are your goals for this year?


-------------

Last year's goals:
http://steves2cents.blogspot.com/2009/01/3-word-goals-for-2009.html



Mid-year status:
http://steves2cents.blogspot.com/2009/06/3-word-goal-status-check.html

The tide was low before #PCB4 started

but it didn't stay low for long. As the folks arrived, the conversations started, the energy grew and is continuing even now. The Twitter stream for PCB4 is continuing to be active as the folks post their recaps, pictures, thoughts, etc.


The tide was low before #PCB4 started it has risen with the arrival of folks and, originally uploaded by shersteve.

I'll have mine here eventually.

It was a great event and I have a few takeaways to share. Just need to integrate the time to post those with everything else going on this week.

In the meantime, watch the Twitter stream or the Flickr group.

The future is now

Via Scott McLeod at Dangerously Irrelevant, I find this great talk Dr. Richard Miller, Chair of the English Department at Rutgers University. Well worth a few minutes to watch.





What do you think of this view?

Are you in the Tribe?

Seth Godin makes his case for Tribes.



What tribe or tribes do you belong to?

dial tone vs. presence

Jeff Pulver stopped for a few minutes to give an interview at SXSW and touched upon a number of social media topics. The change in communication patterns is open for discussion.



What do you think?

"LEGOs: Different parts fit in different places"

How do we bring together different people, ideas, cultures, values, into a cohesive whole?

Off the top of my mind I have seven answers, surely an incomplete list - but here are some ways to conceive of joining disparate parts.

Continue reading Mark Hurst's 7 models of community here

5 for Friday

Here is some key points from this week's reading:

1 - the time is ripe

A confluence of biophysical and social processes — the physics of heat trapping gases, the faltering of the consumption-driven, global economic system, and the re-energizing of our own democratic political process – all this has created space for deliberate human action to reshape the future. As a nation, the decisions that we make — or fail to make — in the next year will have profound consequences, not only for our children, and for their children, but in fact, for every human being who will ever inhabit the earth from now until the end of time.

Read the full article on the global warming education effort written by Eban Goldstein here

2 - on a similar track along the road to Copenhagen

For Obama, the political winds at his back are now as favorable as they will ever be. He is in a position to seize 2009 and do three things to meet the climate challenge: properly educate the American public about climate change and the need for immediate action; exercise the full might of his executive powers and regulatory discretion under the Clean Air Act to jump-start action; and spend freely from his enormous store of political capital to lead the government to enact comprehensive federal climate legislation. If he does, the United States will reclaim the mantle of global leadership when it takes its seat in Copenhagen.

Read the full article from the Yale Environment 360 here

3 - on the green jobs front

Nationally, there are about 1.7 million low-income youths (16 to 24) who were out of school and out of work in 2005, according to a report by the Center for American Progress. Many of them live in areas of concentrated poverty and are often striving for precious few opportunities that the corporate media glorify--rap stars, professional athletes. When Thrower tells young people in Manchester about green jobs, "it goes in one ear and out the other." Despite this, he is confident that once he starts to put solar panels up in his neighborhood, he'll become a tangible new role model young people will want to emulate.

Read the full article about green jobs here

4 - In January, I had found a discussion between Van Jones and California State Senator Darrell Steinberg as they discussed green jobs. You can find the audio discussion here.

5 - and finally, from Wil Richardson

So those of you who have heard me speak know that I love to tell the story of Laura Stockman and the good work that she’s been doing in her community and writing about in her blog “Twenty-five Days to Make a Difference.” Laura is only 11, but her willingness to do community service of all kinds and to share those experiences with others sets her apart in many ways. Through her blog, she’s been able to connect with people from every part of the globe, and she’s even been asked to teach other kids in other classrooms how to go about changing their own places for the better. Because of her efforts, Laura has been invited to the Special Olympics in Idaho this year to be a part of its Global Youth Summit. It’s all good stuff and I think a great testament to how even younger kids (with the help of their parents and, hopefully, their teachers) can use social media to sincerely “make a difference.”

Read the full posting about Laura and how you can help to make a difference here

Enjoy!

"great change is communal"

“We live in such an individualist culture today,” she said, “but great change is communal. The power of song is a vast instrument to draw people together and deliver a message. I think we need to take out our iPod earphones and begin to sing together again.”

Click trough to read the full essay at Patti Digh's 37Days here

Mark Doty: Poetry is

Image by ronk53 via FlickrContinuing my recap of fine moments from one of the sessions at the recent Dodge Poetry Festival, I recall Mark Doty saying:

"Writing becomes a way for discovery. Do the opposite of what you know. Write what you don't know - it's a way to find out."

"Bodies are always in danger. Bodies are always on the edge."

"Poetry is a meaning that can't be reduced to anything else."

and

"Artists try to find a family to fulfill their creative needs."

If you substitute bloggers for artists, this helps to explain how we find each other in the wide world of the internet.




As a special bonus for reading this, why not jump over to Mark's blog and see what he writes there.