Documenting BLOJO CRED

Jon Garfunkel, who attended BLOJO Cred at Berkman, has written up a thorough summary on some of the touchier issues around the conference. He polled some of the excluded and included some thoughts from critic-skeptics, I think in part so that there would be a centralized record of what some of the outlying blog voices were talking about when the initial criticism of the conference began.

Jon did a lot of work compiling his analysis, and it shows. While I agree with his assumption that the lack of diversity didn't affect the outcome or the tenor of the conference, I maintain my dismay: That's the point. That by not assembling a more diverse group both the high priests of blogdom and high priests of journalism were safe in securing their desired positioning without challenge from their own parishioners. Each desired to win the coveted credibility grail from the other. In the end, no one got to take the trophy home.

As for the rest of us? Well, we were right, and a hell of a lot more funny, but that doesn't count for much in closed circles.

Jon concludes his essay by describing what happens when a homogeneous group tries to achieve something meaningful:

"Getting a group of fifty in a conference room tilts the conversation too much. There are just too many affluent men (and too few women) strutting their own stuff without anybody to challenge their assertions. I know; I was there; I offered the challenges. I got support from the people on the outside looking in, but the insiders had little response, and the good folks in academia who should have led the questioning had checked their skepticism at the door."

And while the conference apparently failed to achieve any accord or agreement (the best news I'd heard come out of the Berkman Center in a long time), Jon concludes that perhaps we can do a better job at talking with the elite without attacking them:

There's still work for the readers to do, and perhaps this is what Dan Gillmor meant to say. Outsider participants need to figure out ways to get the insiders' attention without dropping into personal attacks.

There are moments when I think that having civil discourse over heated matters helps. But I've found that usually it doesn't. There is a certain demographic among the blog elite that doesn't hear unless you get in their face. I'm willing to keep doing it. Partly for me and partly for those more civil than I who otherwise don't get heard when posting opinions of dissent. The ones who email me saying, "That rocked what you said on your blog."

If three or four years of fine writing and thinking -- of humor and horror, of piss and passion -- on the part of the excluded aren't enough to get the "insider's attention," then it's just not going to happen.

And that's okay.

Because what they don't seem to realize is that they are quickly positioning themselves as the "business as usual" crowd of blogdom and journalism, the institutionalized among the amateurs. They are becoming what they came here to diss.

Tee hee.

The CEOs of Blogging are no sooner going to forgo their $50,000 in "pocket change" than I am going to stop pointing out how silly they look in their fancy-dancy ties.

I think we don't need their attention. We simply need to keep talking to one another, and when they do and say ridiculous things within the hallowed halls of conferenceland, attempting to define standards and ethics for an "unspace" like the blogworld, then we keep talking to each other.

That's what we do.

Obama!

Yah! I like seeing his name up there in my google ads.

In other news, I ditched the old sidekick finally. I initially bought an HP IPAQ 6315, thinking that it would be way more relevant to me than it was. I hated it. What's with making a Pocket PC with a detachable keyboard and not making a case that houses said keyboard. Well, key"board" is probably best described as hyperbole. I should call it an itsybitsyletterbox.

Anyway, I spent a total of 10 hours on T-Mobile support calls trying to 1) Get the IPAQ do some simple tasks like say give me the email I actually WANTED, not deliver them as SMS's every two seconds. Then when I gave up and returned the IPAQ, I was left with residual data "FEATURES!" on my sidekick that insisted on delivering an Instant Message every single time I got an email in either of my two email accounts. I can tell you precisely how many SMS email alerts fill up your sidekick SIM: 39. I get 39 in a half hour to an hour on a typical workday. WHich means, in order to keep my phone SOMEWHAT functional, I had to delete messages every 45 minutes.

BYE BYE SIDEKICK.

BYE BYE IPAQ.

BYE BYE T-MOBILE.

Hello Blackberry.

Miscommunication

LONG LIVE KOMBINAT! IMAGINE GLOBALLY. PICTURES TALK TOO. PIXELS ARE WORDS PIXELS ARE PICTURES DO NOT DISCRIMINATE.

Miscommunication Originally uploaded by marekj.

Sisters CONTINUE Doing It For Themselves...

Blog Sisters has a new look and vision, thanks to the edgey eye and keen talent of Andrea and Rox. Just in time for our anniversary in February.

We turn 3 years old.

Makes a mama proud.

Blessings all.

Still Alive

There are so many things I want to post about that I can't post a thing.

I have not the time, for I am currently in customer aquisition and retention mode. i.e., busy selling and doing work.

You won't believe how well it's going. Just wait until we have a web site. I hear people use that internet to check out companies before they do business with them. 'magine that. And the whole time I thought it was just about p0rn.

So, for now, I'll spark your interest with our name:

The Content Factor.
stay tuned - coming soon to www.contentfactor.com, or for those of you who like a good article, www.thecontentfactor.com.

don't go rushing there yet.

too soon.

this is a pre-launch message.

I'm me and I approved this message.

Some Cluetrain Clarifications...

People of Earth,
[[-->Not just White People of the U.S.]]

A powerful global conversation [[-->punctuated by hyperlinks, not business cards]] has begun. Through the Internet [[-->not one-off exclusionary institution-centered events]], people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—-and getting smarter faster than most companies [[-->even popular media conglomerates, and that's good]].

..People of Earth
[[-->not just White People of the U.S.]]

The sky is open to the stars. Clouds roll over us night and day. Oceans rise and fall. Whatever you may have heard, this is our world, our place to be. Whatever you've been told, our flags fly free. Our heart goes on forever. People of Earth, remember.

[[-->no edits to the above paragraph.]]

with thanks to Cluetrain.

Remember, February is "Re-Read Cluetrain" Month!

Pick a buddy and read to one another!


Above: Doc reads Cluetrain to a class of third graders at his neighborhood elementary school

How homogeneous Can One Room Be?

About like this.

The frightening thing is, they have no idea how ridiculous they look to the rest of the world. For some of them, the world is what they report on--their oyster. Little brown bodies floating in the sea and such. They are tolerant in their own country. They will send money to others.

For others of them, not all of them of course, the world looks much like Boston, a white-friendly little jewel in the tolerant blue state area of the U.S.A. They don't like W. They might even vote for Barack Obama. But they don't think anything's odd about a room full of so many people just like them discussing ethics and standards for an online world they assume as much privilege over as their offline neighborhoods.

Hey, ho, girl, you're outta line.

And you?

I wouldn't care if they were getting together to share recipes or tips on selecting the right tie for navy blue pants. I'd even be glad if they got together to work on how to be better writers.

But I do care that they were discussing "credibility," "ethics," and "standards" about a space that is as much mine, ours, as it is theirs. A space that they can help ruin because of shared "trust" among an alarmingly homogeneous group.

What's not to trust--they don't look like criminals, they're educated, they're sitting around a table at Harvard for the love of God. Certainly they are who they say they are.

Thing is, they are assuming they know themselves. No no no. You don't know who you are. You don't know who your wives are, your husbands are--you have no idea what kind of ticking time bombs are tucked inside your hearts.

But it's easier, isn't it, to fix this space, to examine it, to quantify, verify, validate, and ejaculate it into a neat and tidy transcript. Baby, it don't work that way.

How many bloggers of color did you invite? How many reporters/journalists of color? I'm making assumptions here--I better be careful--like I'm always so careful. It wouldn't be ethical to be careless. Yes, so, I just want to know.

"It's about business models," one of them said. It's about a "shared vocabulary." It's about "a shift from analog to digital." It's about changing "the mainstream press' ideas about journalism."

No it's about your raw ass. How's that. It's about ebonics if I want it to be. It's about strawberry jam and toe jam. It's about whatever it's about.

I am glad that it had a happy ending though:

We're certainly a long way from a shared set of principles, or a code of ethics, or even an understanding of how they could come about.

Well thank the Blue Eyed Jesus for that.

For Immediate Release: BloMe Pre-Registration Begins

Don't forget--pre-registration begins next week for the spring Blogging and Media (BloMe) Conference.

This year's theme is "BloMe: Those Who Can't, Confer." During the popular Case Study track, a dozen middle-age white male bloggers will facilitate a panel discussion at Chuck-E-Cheese entitled: "The Credibility of Child's Play: How Do We Verify Enjoyment?"

Attendees will discuss the panel's growing discomfort with creativity before stealing their tickets and turning them in for tattoos at the prize counter.

When we write it, we can link

Disclaimer: I dont' have time to disclaim. Or edit. On a good day I might get time to spell check. That day's not today. Blogging is not my job. It's just something I do. And carpool starts in 15 minutes.

I hopped off to David's site today hoping to read something usually witty and realized the much anticipated BloJoCred conference is underway. Finally. Now it can be over and people can go back to writing.

I read a little bit of David's coverage. I thought, there everybody is again. Third paragraph: Winer speaks. What else is new. Then I got to Jay saying this at the conference:

Jay: Every reader is a writer. Every reader is connected horizontally to all the other readers. In Web publishing, the editing occurs after publication.

And I bristled. Because that was mine -- my words -- and though a New York Times reporter echoed this thought to Jay on the phone the same day I did, Jay agreed and we did what we do in blogging -- jammed on in the comments using one another's thinking to build the collective braintrust.

I know Jay is smart enough to have thought of all of that on his own, and I respect Jay. My beef isn't that anyone used or didn't use an idea I once had. It's seeing ones idea fly out of a community and into a closed-loop environment -- especially an environment that is exclusive rather than inclusive.

To me, the point is that in blogging, I would have been quite literally "linked" into the conversation. Here, it's Big David at Big Conference typing that Big Jay (all of whom I respect, aside from Big Conference) said X.

How is that different from the business-as-usual these folks proclaim they are helping to turn on its head? They are so right-side-up their feet should be hurting.

I am grateful to Tom Matrullo for noting this when it first happened back in April. Even then I was excluded as a 'thinker,' but the difference is, on the open frontier of the net, connections to ideas are not erasable.

All the above are sensible folks with sharp ideas, and blogging is supposed to be an open realm. The credibility of that depends on our being able to avoid selective deafness. A good idea should be recognized for what it is, not for who offers it. For that we already have academia, the mainstream press, and other white networks. The idea that blogs serve an editorial function has legs. In this case, they happen to look like Jeneane's.

Tom wrote that last April. Seems time stands still in the land of conferences.

Even Peggy says...

"Some things are constant, such as human imperfection, injustice, misery and bad government.

This world is not heaven."

I was sick that week

There's this hoopty-doo going around the land of the blogs and the home of the snobs lately. It's not just lately, actually. It's of late. I mean: it's a lot, and for a while now.

The hoopty doo in question is almost always about blogging itself and is generally intensely interesting for those involved in it. Also intensely inviting for those who'd like to get involved in it.

Then there's me. I'd like to get involved in it, but lately I've been so busy that all I catch is the backwash. By the time I get there, the lava lamp's unplugged and everyone's gone back to writing about whether or not blogging is journalism. Well that's unfortunate.

A good flame war used to last a week, sometimes two, leaving ample time for others to dive in and singe their eyebrows. Now a blogument ignites like a fourth-of-july sparkler, all flashy and dashing for about two minutes, and by the time I get a chance to catch up--get close enough to partake--all that's left is that little charred stick.

It's not fair.

It was like that in high school geometry for me. I was sick for two weeks with incredibly bad bronchitis which, if a doctor had seen me, would likely have been diagnosed as pneumonia.

Nonetheless, I missed a lot of school, and by the time I got back, they'd covered two whole units that are now very evident holes in the mathematics memory chip of my brain.

I don't want our own arguments to end so swiftly around here. What's wrong with carrying a good old fashioned grudge for a couple of months. For crying out loud, what's with all the "This is the last word on the subject" posts. Shut up. It's never the last word.

Didn't you hear? No one gets the last word on the Net.

Least you could do is give a girl a chance to catch up.

Throw a punch or two.

Not that I condone that kind of behavior.

Not me.

Unrelated Thoughts

January is never so busy for me usually. This is a good sign. Perhaps a sign of business picking up for everyone. It certainly has been good around these parts--especially for the month of the year during which I traditionally beg for a new-hire press release or two to write. That's akin to begging for scraps off the master's table. In case you were wondering.

Speaking of the master, props to the president's speech writer, professionally speaking. I could tell by the tone and messaging where he was headed, tuned an ear into how he was weaving pieces of a brilliant positioning that moved the emphasis from "fear" to "opportunity" (we do that a lot in the marketing biz), from "terror" to "freedom."

I'm driving, mind you, and I'm thinking, holy roller, he's setting the prez up as the "Global Abe Lincoln," and then I hear the radio guy who's reading the speech say something about "slavery" and "just as Abraham Lincoln," and I had to 1) pull into a Chick-Fil-A, 2) Not tell them what I was thinking 3) Get a #1 combo 4) cross the street and get gas 5) use the restroom in the gas station which gave me the rare treat of examining a made-for-men urinal in the unisex lav, and 6) collect my thoughts.

America: Freeing Coloreds 'Round the Globe.

It's a good thing I like Chick-Fil-A.

Epiphany notwithstanding, it was a typical drive home, complete with tractor trailer accident or three, me glad I stopped for gas and urinal.

So here I am.

The day was puzzling.

Tuesday's Song

You say Alprazolam
I say Lorazepam
You say Oxazepam
I say Diazepam

Alprazolam
Lorazepam
Oxazepam
Diazepam

Let's call the whole... thing...

Estimated Tax Day Illness

Hello! What's a blog? Where am I?

We've been sick overhere in our parts. I'm just coming to. To what, don't ask me. To the realization that estimated taxes are due today, and by due I hope they mean postmarked, and if that's not what they mean, please don't tell me, because I don't have time machine. Curses.

I'm sending the $. Period.

Jenna and I have been battling the upper respiratory infection from hell. Where's the shot for this? Shit. I finally gave in and popped to steroid pills today. That ought to be good for another Xanax prescription down the road...

Speaking of which, I had the pleasure of being in the company of an orthopedic specialist this weekend who mentioned that there's a NEW flavor of Xanax out--not cherry or berry, but Long Acting. He said the initials are LAX. And we both laughed about panic and air travel.

Do I know how to have fun or what?

As I mentioned recently, it's an odd thing, but I'm getting more referrers coming through various google search results each day. Looking through them today, seeing terms that take me back in time -- like my father's name, recovery room moaning, digiorno pizza, Rochester garbage plate, family dollar paper towels, and redneck neighbor -- it was very much like watching my life flash before my eyes. And I wondered, when it's my time, down the road a piece I hope, God willing, and all of that, if I won't skip the haunting visuals and simply sit back and let site meter do the work. 

Knockin' Robin

Something about this particular bird is worth sharing with you. She knocks. This particular bird first came to our house six weeks ago on a Saturday. I know, because that was a day I was trying to sleep in when Jenna ran upstairs proclaiming that something "Amazing!" was taking place.

"Mmmmm?"

Almost always my first words upon waking.

She told me that there was a bird knocking at our door. No I said, there is no bird knocking at our door, probably a woodpecker knocking on our house, go back to sleep--look it's early.

She kept at me. I begged her not to. I scored a rare win. I got to sleep.

A couple of days later after I'd dropped her at school at the ungodly hour of 7:30, I was home tapping a vein in my arm for some coffee, when I heard the knocking. Tap tap tap. TAP TAP TAP! I looked at the front door, and I saw her in the long window that runs along side our door. Knock knock knocking away on the glass, for what must have been a good reason, though I couldn't imagine what it was.

No woodpecker. A robin. Out of place in December, lows had hit 20, aren't they supposed to go someplace warm?

I walked to the window and moved the curtain. She was in mid peck/knock. I thought immediately of Shelley. How I wish she could have captured the moment. It looked like a real-life version of a Shelley Powers photograph.

Once the knocking robin saw me, she scurried up into the tree. She seemed to be waiting. But for what? I opened the door. She sat on the branch. I looked at her. She seemed puzzled.

Then she darted off to the house across the street and started knocking on their front window.

And I understood. She was saying this:

"Look people, it's fucking COLD out here--huh?! Could you help a bird out? Can't you see I decided to hang here for the winter? I didn't know the ground would freeze--I can't get to a single solitary worm, so toss some bread my way. How bout it?"

So I did what anyone would do if a robin were knocking. I got some bread, shredded it, and tossed it in the front yard. I didn't wait to see if she'd hop over to our side of the street and eat it. After all, it was fucking COLD out!

The next day, and about every three days ever since, the knocking robin comes by. I forget about her in between, but when I hear the morning window peck, I get some bread and toss it out on the front lawn.

I wonder how many of my neighbors are doing the same.

And I wonder when word will get around to other birds, maybe on your street.

Back in Qumana, I'm trying out the Pro version. One thing that's really cool--I haven't tested it yet because believe it or not, all the blogs I write on are in Blogger -- is that if you participate in, say, an MT blog and a Blogger blog, or whatever blogging tool(s) are your favorite, you can post from a single interface with Qumana. I've avoided joining some blogs because I just don't have the time to learn a new blogging tool. I barely have time to write--and that should be the most important part of blogging. So it's attractive that this Qumana dealeybob will let me get used to one composition pad and publish to various types of blogs.

I also like the MS Word feel of it--some may not. I use Word about 12 hours a day, so flipping over and posting here is familiar, and best of all speedy.

Okay, let's post.

Come, Gag with Me

Yet another attempt by Big-A-Academia to market itself as hip and human by comparing and contrasting its genitalia to blogging's.

Stay tuned for details on the Blogging and Internalism conference, coming soon to a public restroom near you!

Self-Surgery 101

Sitting on the couch next to my grandpa, at five, maybe four years old, I picked the bottoms of my feet until they bled. I didn't understand it then, the picking thing I had. Really, I don't understand it now. Even though I don't pick as often now, there are times when severity makes up for frequency.

Sounds gross I know. But not if you're kin to it.

I think the appealing thing to me about picking at such a young age was having and hiding pain. Of course it hurts to walk on raw flesh. At the same time, I had to keep that pain to myself. I couldn't tell my mother--or wouldn't. Didn't even have a grasp on what I was doing. No this was a martyrish act. It was mine and mine alone.

Pleasure Drive -> Pain Consequence. In a then rigidly Catholic household, one admits affinity to neither. Especially if they're one and the same.

As I got older, my fascination with my own skin focused on my fingers, nail beds and cuticles to be precise, extending often downward from these peninsulas to the mainland of my palm.

Usually I used my fingers. Sometimes safety pins sanitized with a match.

I'm not sure if my picking switched from feet to hands after my father and grandfather died, or if there is any correlation to those traumas and my habit.

I expect there are not only connections, but dependencies. I pause on linking them conclusively though because I'm fairly certain the picking started before my father died.

It could have started when he was sick with cancer, though, which is what I now believe. I have always felt that my passion was more endeavor than dissociation, more a job than a respite. A hyperfocus of sorts.

I've often wondered--in my older and wiser 40s--if I was attempting some sort of surgery, some act of cleansing, perhaps for my mortally damned self, and if not for me then for him. My dad. His necrotic pancreas.

After all, my goal once any picking event began was simple and consistent: Even things out. Make the edges smooth. Heal the blemishes. No bumps, no growths. How elegantly, if not tragically, that links with my strong, invincible daddy having inoperable cancer. How else can a five year old make a difference, make it all better?

Perhaps, my obsession with my own skin isn't the result of a single event or trauma--rather a combination of them. This seems the most likely genesis to me.

The notion that neurotic excoriation, or skin picking, may be genetic is, to me, bunk. What the mainstream of psychiatry has yet to realize is that we inherit our family's traumatic wounds right along side of their DNA. And genes don't hold a candle to the scars you can touch, and the ones you can't.

Once my own picking moved up from my feet to my fingers, the secret was out. You couldn't not notice my bloody stumps. Especially during adolescence, around puberty, when my finger picking progressed at a frenetic pace. I remember one aunt, trying to be helpful, who told me that she used to pick her fingers like me, but that when she met a boy she liked he didn't want to hold hands with her because of her ugly hands. So she stopped.

Jesus.

Talk about setting my picking back 10 years: boys, ugly, hold hands, stopped. Trigger trigger trigger.

Like I said, she meant well, but it felt like shame. I wore it like robe.

Today, my fingers heal up in the summer. In the summer time, chapness gives way to moist, even skin. No more unsightly cracks that must be tended to, evened out. In the summer, a tan thankfully, though not permanently, replaces reddened, torn skin.

Amazingly, perhaps, in all this time, I've never suffered an infection from my escapades. I don't know why. I guess, despite my odd obsession, my hygiene always remained proper. I've also often thought that, in a leech-like way, what I do is homeopathic. It no doubt triggers the immune system, putting little germ fighting cells on high alert. Then again, I don't think that's so good for those little guys to stay hypervigilant like I make them. Let's not think about that right now.

Let's think about smoothing some lotion on tired hands and feet.

Let's think about you telling me a secret.

from:
Connecting the dots: pediatric patients need dermatologists to unite healing between mind, body. (Special report: new frontiers).
by Hill, Suzette
source: Dermatology Times, March 1, 2003.
via: HighBeam Research
COPYRIGHT 2003 Advanstar Communications, Inc.

See also: The Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Launguage of Pain.

Shower Songs

Jenna's in the tub, which means it's song-time at the Apollo! She's now delighting me with a rendition of "I can't help falling in love with you..."

Feelings mutual, baby.

You can try these tips for brightening your mood:

Hot chocolate

Blue skies, funny people and a touch of helium

Counting the days till vacation

A warm glass of melon-aid

Knowing that they'll get theirs*

*allied recommended option

from:
WHAT KEEPS YOUR SPIRITS UP?(General News)

via: HighBeam Research


COPYRIGHT 2004 The Register Guard