Which MP3 Player Should I Buy?

I'm ready to dive into podcast listening. I realized I need an MP3 player and good members of my family are asking what I want for the holidaze. Oi. Which one to pick. One son says iPod. Another says iRiver.

I *think* I'd like the ability to record onto the little thingie as well as listen. Any readers have recommendations? If I do all the research myself (and I started to!) I will never make a decision. This stuff paralyzes me. (Should I mention I also need to replace my digital camera and that I like small ones that take decent pictures in low light for when it is utterly rude to use a flash?)

HELP!

Labels are for Jars & the Power of Online Connection

I'm on a roll this afternoon with stuff I'm generating and haven't even caught up with all the draft material I have sitting in the queu: links, references, comments on other blog posts. So be it. The curse of a blogger. That said, this one is worth a side track: Labels are for Jars. From their home page.

What is this Labels are for Jars thing anyway? It’s a state of mind. Do you look at a person and automatically, consciously or unconsciously, label them as a loser...or homeless... or hungry... or an addict?

If so, you’ve just made a judgment about them without knowing what’s inside. That works fine for jars, but it doesn’t work so well for people. People deserve better than that.

Have you ever walked down a street in a major city that has homeless or hungry people and rejected their request for money or food? Have you whispered under your breath “get a job” when you walked past them?

What labels do you have for people who need food?
Homeless? Crazy? Welfare Case?

Labels create distance between “us” and “them,” making their problems seem less and less like our problems. Close the gap. It is your problem. Help feed the hungry.

How Labels helps feed the hungry is through the sales of clever two sided T-Shirts, packaged in plastic jars that they then ask their customers to fill with change to donate to local feeding programs in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the poorest city in the state.

So what does this have to do with online interaction? It is an interesting story. Around 5 years ago I did an adolescent health project here in Washington State (USA). In my research I found a bunch of interesting interactive teen sites and created a page to share them with people involved in the project. I mostly forgot about that page in the every growing miasma of my website. But a couple of times a year I would get requests from non profits serving teens asking me to add their site to my list. But I kept wondering, how did people find this old, rarely updated page? Search on Google and, boing, the page comes up #1! So this connection to me kept occuring.

Earlier this week I got an email from a Label's board member/volunteer Will Newton. Actually, it was his second. The first one must have gotten lost in the spam filter. So Will instantly got my attention from his persistence. This guy was serious about promoting his project. And he was a board member walking his talk, not just going to quarterly meetings. YAY!

I emailed Will and have since learned more about the project and wanted to share it with you, dear readers. And then I wanted to share Will's email because it is exactly this kind of interchange, that comes out of basically a "cold call" email, that can blossom into an opportunity for connection, learning, action. Just the sort of stuff I was rambling about in my last post. (See, there IS a connection here!) Will said it was OK to share his emails, so here are some snippets. And by all means, go to the Labels site and read more. Then do something -- like buy a T-shirt for $19.00 USD (I think my sons are getting one for the Holidays!), and gather some change for Lawrence, MA.

Will's First Successful Email to Me

Good Morning Nancy,

I am writing to follow up on an email I sent to you a few weeks ago. As you may remember, I am on the board of directors for an organization called Labels Are For Jars. Labels Are For Jars is raising money to fund the construction and ongoing operation of a meal center in Lawrence, MA. If you are unfamiliar with Lawrence, it is the poorest city in Massachusetts, and is rampant with crime, drugs, prostitution, homelessness, and hunger. It is a community so poor that often times working families must chose between paying the rent and buying groceries. Of Lawrence's families, 21.2 percent live below the poverty line, compared with 6.7 percent of the statewide population. An overwhelming 31.7 percent of children under age 18 in Lawrence live in households below the poverty line, as compared to 11.6 percent of children under age 18 statewide. Unbelievable conditions for a city just 25 miles north of Boston. I work with a group of volunteers who have come together in an effort to help improve Lawrence, and improve the lives of its men, women, and children. Our goal is to raise as much money as possible to feed as many hungry people as possible, and to do so we have designed a thought provoking black t-shirt, which in addition to looking great, helps to undermine societal labeling. The shirt is adorned with a commonly used negative label, such as "addict", "troubled teen", or "mentally ill" on the chest, and "Labels Are For Jars" across the back. The shirts are sold from our website and through direct sales by high school and college students, who have a unique power to affect change in our society. Labels Are For Jars is comprised completely of volunteers, so every cent we collect is used to help feed the hungry in Lawrence. Our target audience are teens, and we encourage them to not only buy the shirt, but also to help us by becoming street team members in their communities. We not only want to help feed the hungry, but we want to make young people aware of this issue and show them that they can make a difference in a positive way. I am writing to you in the hope that you will be willing to allow us to post a link on your Full Circle Interactive Teen websites site, under the specific issue-related teen sites section. I am happy to discuss our project with you, and also happy to discuss needs you might have in order to create a link from your site. I encourage you to check out our website and learn more about our project. www.labelsareforjars.org Labels Are For Jars is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization.

Thank your for your consideration, I look forward to hearing from you soon. Best wishes, Will

And I responded:

Hi Will

Sorry I did not respond to your first email. I did not see it and caught this one in the spam filter today (no perfect solution, that's for sure.)

Sure, I'd be glad to add a link. I'll also blog about it in the next day or two at http://www.fullcirc.com/weblog/onfacblog.htm

I'm curious, what kind of response are you getting to the campaign? Do people write you about it? I'd love to know and include that in the blog post. I'm not a top blogger, but some of my readers ARE top bloggers. If they pick it up, it can get some good exposure

N

Will replied (quickly, I might add!)

Hi Nancy,

Thank you very much, you are going above and beyond anything I could have hoped for. I have been part of this project since inception, which I think would put us somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 months. So far we have been getting a great response from 99% of the people that hear about the project. The only exceptions are from people that don't really "get" the concept and are turned off by the negative connotations of the labels. But, like I said nearly all the responses I have seen/heard have been very encouraging.
I don't know how thoroughly you examined our web site, so let me tell you few of our success stories. We have been adopted by two area high schools, and a few area colleges, whose students have formed what we call street teams. These teams go out into the public to raise awareness for our project, and help to sell t-shirts and encourage people to visit the site. I think this sort of "street" marketing is really mutually beneficial for the project and the kids. It helps us by having our target audience talk to our target audience and explain what we are trying to do. It also, and I can say this because I have seen this first hand, has really served as an eye opener for a lot of kids who otherwise might not get involved in a project of this nature, and has served as a powerful lesson that they can really help others and influence positive change.
We have also been able to catch the eye of several local papers including the Boston Herald, which has featured a few articles about Labels Are For Jars. Additionally, we have been allowed to participate at a Boston area radio station's (WFNX) Christmas concert, and sell shirts. Hopefully this will be a great event for us because this station is very popular with high school and college aged kids. Our most recent accomplishment has been the ability to order our second batch of shirts.
We need to raise about $1.3 million to build and operate the meal center, so our goal is certainly lofty, but with some hard work I really believe we can make it a reality, and help some very needy people.
Again, thank you so much for your support. If you would like any more details about the project and the accomplishments of the street teams, etc, please check out the "buzz" section on our site, www.labelsareforjars.org One last thing, when you have a chance to post our link, please send me the address so I can have our web team input the information. We list all of the sites that support us by link, so hopefully you will receive some increased traffic as well.

Thanks again for your support,

Will

Building Relationships Online

I am in the midst of more than one interesting conversation (see previous post) this week. I'm also participating in iCoheres online conference on Virtual Organizational Development. I was sitting in on a telecon/chat today with Frances Long of KnowPlace, listening with one ear while I multitasked on today's deliverables. Near the end, someone asked about what we thought about relationships built online. My ears perked up.

I think about the relationships I form and nurture online all the time because there are a lot of them and they are significant to me. At the sametime, my non-online friends still look at me with skepticism.

I think you can and we do form significant ongoing relationships with people online, some of whom we may never meet F2F. In someways I think it is easier to develop these relationships than, lets say for example, someone you meet at a F2F conference and with whom you do not have an online interaction.

In online relationships we can build identity and deepen the relationships through a series of smaller, frequent communication interations. For those of us who spend a lot of time online, this fits smoothly and seamlessly into our daily practice. It may be emails, blog comments, discussion boards, IM, or skype. But it is a fabric that gets woven over time and which can be revisited with a few strokes of the keyboard.

For the fantastic people I met at the AI conference in September, I did not have this ongoing, persistent connection. I have emailed them, but alas, not a peep in return. What felt like the start of a new connection has faded and without significant rekindling from one side or the other, it will evaporate and remain one of those one time connections.

Now some of this is clearly an indictment on my habits and practices. No question. And the ease with which I do form online relationships has an obvious downside: volume. What kind of quality can I maintain after a certain threshold. Serious questions.

But the nubbin is that I can and do form serious connections with people online and maintain a larger network of connections than I did before I went online. This is because I can build relationships with frequent, small, iterations of communication that fits into my daily practice. I wish I could have done a social network analysis of my network pre online and now. I'd love to try and see if what I believe is really true.

Defining Our "Communities"

On Jerry Ash's fine AOK list where there is a two week focus on Joe Cothrel and Jenny Ambrozek's Online Community Survey results, Jenny wrote:
"...a number of researchers are looking at "community" building around blogs. I just noted a related conversation on Denham Gray's blog talking about some of the techniques Lilia Efimova is using to quantify this phenomenom. "

I responded on the list. I also thought it relevant to post here and crosslink to Lilia's and Denham's musings.

The example of this "KM blogging community" is a nice way into this conversation (about the field of online community) -- a concrete case to think about how we define this field moving forward -- how it is evolving into an interesting, complex social environment containing diverse social structures mediated by a fluid set of technologies and processes.

How does Lilia define the community of KM bloggers? Denham asked his readers how they see themselves within that community?

To see (situate?) myself, I have to "see" the KM blogger community in some way. The social environment.

• Without saying virtual, my assumption is that this is a dispersed community.
  
• My assumption is that while the publishing of blogs is one of the boundary definitions of this "community," it may also include readers and “commentors” of KM blogs.
  
• As Denham mentioned, back channel (or use of multiple group and private communication vectors) plays a key role in the practice of this community -- very hard to visualize.
  
• Because this “thing “ is hard to really visualize, is as much a construction of what I _think_ or perceive it to be as it actually is. (_If you could_ picture it concretely.)
  
• If there was a social network analysis of this "community" would it look more like a network that contains communities? The distinction for me is that a network does not have clearly defined membership boundaries and persistent participation by members, but a community does in some sense (not absolute.)
  
• I'm sure y'all could add much more. ;-)(And please do!)

Once I figure out “what it is,” then I have to situate myself within it: position, identity, role. Again, this has become far more complex than the early days of online community -- and even more so when we think about how many groups we can now potentially belong to online. I’ll leave my comments on that for a subsequent post . I'm already alarming myself at the length of this post!

What emerges is a complex social structure that may be perceived in diverse ways by the people within it and around it. This ain’t simply a “community,” is it? Bottom line: with the constant evolution of technologies, processes and the ever diverse and numerous types of groups, we have the emergence of complex social structures that contain many of the complexities of F2F social structures PLUS particular elements mediated by the technologies and constantly the blurring lines as the interaction shifts between technologies and online and offline. We are just now trying to figure out how to define these systems, let alone optimize them for specific purposes.

So how can the exploration of this case help us define the elements of the field? What would you say are the key emerging definitions and practices to answer Lilia and Denham’s questions around the “KM Blogger Community?”

OpenTap Home

TappedIn, the vibrant, global online community for k-12 educators, has released its software as an open source application. Fantastic news! If you aren't familiar with TappedIn, pay a visit. Not only is the virtual world they created interesting from a platform perspective, but what makes it sing are the people. Become a member (free) and log on. See how long it takes before someone offers to lend a hand in your orientation.

OpenTap Home: "OpenTap is the open source system that underlies Tapped In, an online community of educational professionals developed by SRI International with funding from the National Science Foundation. It features a geographical metaphor of campuses and buildings with public, group, or personal rooms, integrated communication tools like chat, threaded discussion, and private messaging, and many other features."

BloggerCon: Mary Hodder Notes on Values Session

I was doing work avoidance (hm, blogging, and reading blogs is now a key work avoidance enabler in my life!) and came across the notes from the recent BloggerCon.

I appreciated the notes Mary Hodder posted on her session on values. This is near and dear to my facilitator's heart. Practices often stem from values. But if we don't talk about the values, the practices often misfire. I also think values has gotten another strange reputation after the US presidential elections, which concerns me. But I'll not drift there right now. I am posting an extensive quote.Summary of Core Values of the Web Session at Bloggercon

We started out with a rule: if you mention your personal value system, that you relate it to the topic at hand, and if you go on too long about it, I might have to redirect the session to the next topic. But I was very lucky to have such a thoughtful, smart group of folks to discuss this issue, and the rule never was invoked.

I read the first couple of the items in a list (at bottom)... folks commented sharing their experiences. Periodically, I would throw out another issue. Many other issues came up from the discussants: online trust, reputation, why we care about transparency. Because people shared different needs they have as they write or read blog posts, it became apparent that different value systems come into play, and we need different levels of transparency. In reaction to some of this, people suggested either legal or technical controls. I feel that controls like this are often heavy-handed and I prefer community moderation, but didn't want to say that. I wanted to see if people would come up with that on their own, and within a half hour of discussing various control scenarios, among other things, and sharing values and the subtleties of face-to-face interaction verses online interaction, people began to express that legal and overbearing technical controls to reduce unsavory behavior felt bad. They wanted to use the community interaction to ferret out bad behavior, discuss it as it comes up, and then moderate it down. And a couple of folks expressed that they feel this currently works in the blogosphere. This is often what I see in online behavior with groups. I watched our discussion take on really interesting issues and decide that trusting the community to moderate behavior, trust and the value of information was better than heavy handed centralized controls.

We also talked about how our social norms might shift as the blogosphere grows, what it means to feel cheated by someone apparently giving their own opinion, after which we find out they are being paid to write. We want disclosure and the chance to evaluate the biases people have. We want more subtle ways to understand bloggers we don't know than simple inbound link counts, and I pointed out that top 100 lists don't mean very much to me. There was a request for a categorization system for blogs similar to DMOZ, so that we can more easily find people talking in smaller communities.

We talked about whether the values we were discussing applied to the whole web, as the title suggests, or what aspects might just apply to the blogosphere. We talked about finding new voices and how power laws might be disrupted. We also noted that with podcasting, there is a need for more than just metadata to search, so that more than just highly linked or known authors can be found based on content and topics, if the author is not known already. We also talked about the internet as a place (metaphor) verses as a delivery system for content that includes the metaphor of shipping reflecting the old analog content system, and why the place metaphor may need more thought and integration into the digital.

We described why anonymity works in some situations, and why it doesn't work in others, and why it's very necessary in some circumstances. We talked about the assumptions we make, based on certain social and informational cues online, and whether these assumptions make sense. We agreed that relationships are very important, and behind them are various kinds of trust about the person and the information, and we need trust, good information and reputation to varying degrees to maintain our online relationships well.

At the end of the session, we made a list of things we value:
Democracy
Non-exclusivity
Attribution
Transparency – disclosure
Innovation
Personalization
Accessibility
Honesty
Creativity
Knowing who people are
Editorial Independence
Connectedness
Anonymity

Things we devalue:
Power law economics
Lack of Attribution
Anonymity
Wuffie-hoarding
Links for money

Rebecca MacKinnon: Blogger Corps?

Blogger Corps?:

"At various sessions of Bloggercon III, I opined that we need to think more about how blogging tools and the blogging process can be used by the non-profit and activist community - not only in the U.S. but around the world. This is not merely a matter of blog-evangelizing to the uninitiated. It's also about adapting blog tools and blogging techniques to the needs of people who want to go beyond online conversations to real-world action. For early blog-adopters, blogging was an end in itself. For the activist community, blogging has to be an effective means to a concrete end.

...I suggested that socially conscious members of the blogging community (of all political persuasions) might want to organize a 'Blogger Corps.' Through it, bloggers could donate their time to help poorly funded activists or non-profit groups to figure out what blogging tools are right for them, set up blogs, and develop effective blogging strategies.... what do you think would be the most effective and efficient way to organize a Blogger Corps? Please share your ideas in the 'comments' section."

So what do I think? I think this exists in some ways that I know of, and I presume many that I don't know about. I think about how I was taught by other bloggers via a page set up by the folks at SocialText. I think about the work that goes on in a spate of "ICT for Development" groups.

Do we need a Blogger Corps? Or do we need to continue to do a bit more overtly what already happens: help each other. Post short cuts and tips. Welcome each other. Point people to free resources. Read and comment on new bloggers' blogs as a form of coaching and encouragement.

Working in the NPO/NGO community, I get a bit jaded about yet another group. Maybe we need to simply plug into existing groups? On the flip side, creating a service identity in the blogosphere has value as well.

So yeah, I think the intent is fabulous. I think the practice of helping folks in the NGO/NPO sector is fantastic. (I'm thinking right now of Ethan Zuckerman and BlogAfrica! And the many similar sites which aggregate in the NPO world.) I am conflicted on the format.

The Power of the Note Taker

I've always been a note taker at meetings. It started because I was in a lowly support position way back when. I gained skills at agenda creation, note taking and highlighting ACTION items. Then when I became an online creature, my typing speed accelerated to the point where I could take nearly verbatim notes for a different style of reportage. Now note taking is a common practice with colleagues, particularly when working on the phone (which I don't love, but do a lot of these days.) It is a key virtual working skill and practice.

I have always been struck by the power of this position of note taker, and its continued lowely status. Then I saw this from Tom Peters: 100 Ways to Succeed #24: Agenda-NoteTaker-Notes Publisher "Spin" Power!

He/She who writes the Agenda and Summary Doc (innocently called "Meeting Notes") wields ... Incredible Power!

Believe it!

The question is innocent, "What should we cover at the Weekly Review Meeting?" The response is not. The "agenda" is in and of itself a Group "To-Do" list. (More important than any pretentious "strategic plan".) And: A "To-Don't" list. (What's left off ... to the Supreme Annoyance of many Power Players.) Moreover, some stuff will be at the Top ... some at the bottom (and probably won't get covered, or be given short shrift). Hence a "mere" agenda Establishes & Determines the Group Conversation for, say, the week, or even the Quarter. And ... the lovely catch ... concocting the Agenda by soliciting members is typically a "crappy task," unwanted by one and (almost) all.

My message: GRAB IT! (And chortle as you do.)

Of at least as much importance is the grubby-demeaning "Notetaker" (and Publisher thereof) task. Talk about ... UNVARNISHED POWER! Everybody is so damn busy preening, interrupting, bullheadedly pushing their pet peeve, etc ... that they seldom hear what actually goes on. Only the meek & quiet Notetaker knows the story; and long after the participants have washed the memory of the meeting clean from their crowded lives, the Notetaker's Summary comes along explaining what transpired ... Carefully Edited.

You get my drift, I presume. The "powerless" soul who agrees to "develop the agenda," "take the notes," and "publish the notes" ... may just be the ... TRUE POWER PLAYER!

(I believe this so strongly and fear it so greatly that I religiously publish my own version of notes, in summary form (never more than 4 or 5 lines), within minutes of the end of a meeting—just to try and co-opt the damned notetaker. I call it ... Spin!)

Yup, the note taker is a powerplayer. If you work or facilitate online groups, this is a key issue. Take note!

Useradio (and I still haven't dipped my toe in)

I continue to have a fascination from afar with web and audio. Work overload is clearly a barrier for me. I have not even dipped in a toe, let alone dived in. But I'm fascinated what people are doing. Here is another one...

August Black:Userradio:

"Userradio mixes the new technologies of personal communication with ``old'' broadcast radio technology. It is a set of tools for collaborative networked audio production, where an unlimited number of individuals can mix multiple channels of audio simultaneously and together from anywhere on-line using a standard flash-capable browser. The audio output of the application is broadcast on terrestrial FM radio and the users are ideally within the broadcast diameter."

[via Robin Good]