Alan Gutierrez

Over at Think New Orleans, I’m discussing my civic blogging platform. I’ve created a new weblog for Morwen Madrigal, otherwise known a Gentilly Girl, a community organizer from Gentilly.

I’ve been in New Orleans long enough that blogging is only a wee bit of fun.

These days, it boils down to spending more time in front of the computer. Not good.

It’s too nice outside.

It’d be nice to get some information out there, though. I’m conviced that blogging is a good way to do it.

It once was the case that I’d blog to converse. That was a colder climate.

Here are conversations aplenty just over the courtyard walls. High-bandwidth conversations, with eye contact, hand waving, and table pouding. Pure entertainment.

Human contact spoils you for the keyboard and CRT.

Much of the online conversation now seems dreadfully dull and self-referential. It’s a lot of conversation about a handful of industries, namely, software, media, and marketing.

I make the case for blogging as publishing, but not for conversation.

It’s hard to explain the value of blogging if you show a person the echoing non-sense of the A-List. It’s self-referential, and mostly meaningless.

I don’t show my neighbors the blogs that feature incessant articles about gadgets, networks, or copyrights.

I don’t show my neighbors the national political blogs, with their angry open threads. The polar politics that so closely mirrors the cable news cycle is both dull and horrifying. These are the rantings that people expect when they think online diary.

Rather, I show my neighbors something that is civic and human.

I show them Ann Arbor.

I show and tell recent articles, from Ann Arbor bloggers, exemplary of their authors.

You’ll here me tell of such bloggers as
Ann Arbor Is Overrated a look askance at the city’s culture, Ypsi~Dixit who tells tales of public transportation, Arbor Update with it’s scrutiny of city development, Superpatron Vielmetti’s writing on his work with the Ann Arbor Public Library, Larry Kestenbaum vinettes about Washtenaw County officaldom, and my friend Dave who writes about beer.

These are civic bloggers, with civic agendas.

They have blogrolls that link to the blogging citizens of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Their blogrolls represent a network of friends and fellow citizens.

It is a challenge to get people in New Orleans to leave the anonymity of email, and move towards a more transparent way of organizing.

It is much easier to get folks to transition, when they see that the message does not travel that much futher.

Blogging is not broadcasting. Blogging is not journalism.

Blogging is not a about being naked, it’s about being transparent and inclusive.

Blogging is perfecly civic.

Read/Write Does Not Scale

I’m overwhelmed. My Google reader has more unread entries.

Every day, I’m liable to read the first twelve entires. I will comment on half of them. I do this to get my name out there. To make connections. To give a little ping.

It builds traffic to my blog.

Traffic of dubious value.

More traffic will lead to more feeds to read. More comments to write.

I don’t want traffic.

I want influence.

Consulting Does Not Scale

As a programmer, I hate to work for hire.

The annoyance, of selling oneself. The rub, that once sold, one must slog through hours upon hours of work to collect on that sale.

In those heads down hours of programming, my network unravels, while my social skills atrophy.

With this arragement, programming is lothesome, tedious.

It is a treadmill.

I do enjoy programming in pursuit of an idea, but not to service an invoice.

There are only so many hours that one person can work. You need to keep time open to network. You cannot sell more.

On top of it all, the folly of surrendering the work product. It is a life of bupkis.

Influence Scales

Influence is passive. You influence a person when they honor you with their consideration.

The act of consideration affects a change. That which you offer for consideration may cause them to alter their actions, since an individual take action based on information.

At the very least, that person’s attention is not somewhere else, an action in itself, though one must endeavor to be more than a distraction.

At the very best, yours is a guiding influence.

Influence scales in two ways.

1. You can increase the number of individuals who you influence.
2. You can increase the influence you have on any individual.

I blog to influence and to increase my influence.

My blog is a humble, tireless appeal for your sincerest consideration.

Mission Restatement

I’ve developed a mission statement for Think New Orleans. I’m going to restate the mission a number of times while I blog, so I can find something that is punchy.

Think New Orleans is a non-profit organization community effort whose mission is to help New Orleans communities share information in such a way as to maximize the reach through syndication and search indexing.

Or more simply…

Think New Orleans is all about getting New Orleans soaking wet with Google juice.

I have to find a million ways to say it. It has to be the same thing every time.

Syndicating New Orleans

We’re now working on turning the Think New Orleans blog into a group blog for community organization.

The organizers of the FQTH and L9 Homeowners, Jimmy Delery and Rep. Charmaine Marchand, have been working with me to organize their communiciation online, and movng foward, to create an online record of the decisions in meetings.

Christian Roselund has been digitally recording these meetings. Pending the delivery of a compact flash digital audio recorder, I’m going to fan out with and gather more audio.

The audio is an important service for those who have to choose between relevant meetings, or for those who have to miss meetings due to their busy post-Katrina lives.

Diaspora Volunteers

Learning to blog is not a precondition to community participation.
As I did in Ann Arbor, I’m going to maintain an e-mail list that will serve as a work queue. If a community organizer wants to share information, they can e-mail it, with attachments, to the work queue, and a volunteer from the NOLA bloggers can put the posting in place. The blogging volunteer is at liberty to punch it up with links to relevant articles.

This division is important. People in New Orleans are overwhelmed and simply don’t have time to learn new software.

They will never see the benefit of syndication, because it will be too long in coming.

It is far more important the community organizers and citizens communicate in the high-bandwidth, high-signal, low-noise medium of face to face conversation.

Got back from an open board meeting of Erace New Orleans, where Bill Knecht turned to me to talk about the Eracism blog. I described the open letter to Google, as best I could. We then talked about how we could make the blog an effective organizing tool.

Immediately, Paul Schafer raised the issue of the long rant I allowed through moderation in the Chocolate City entry.

I said that I let that go through as an example of the sort of stuff you might expect, heartfelt and angry. Nothing that would be expressed at a face to face Eracism meeting.

I wanted to spark a discussion of the moderation guidelines, and Sandra did just that. I’ve invited the Eracism organizers to continue the discussion the Chocolate City entry.

I ask that the regular readers of my Blogometer pop over and help them out, explaining your moderation guildlines. Tell them your troll stories.

UPDATE: The discussion is underway over at Eracism Blog. It’s lucid. You all should head over there and get to know some of these community oriented folks from New Orleans.

Yup. Ray Nagin was at the last 9th Ward Homeowners Association meeting. We recorded his message online. If you want to hear Ray Nagin speaking clearly to his constituents, go listen to his statement.

I really enjoyed listening to him speak. He’s a plain dealer. It was business communication, and full of information and opinion.

• Ray Nagin at the 9th Ward Homeowner’s Association

Rather than comment here, please leave your comments in the Think New Orleans post for the audio, 9th Ward Homeowners: Guest Mayor Ray Nagin.

The quality of information that comes out of the 9th Ward Homeowner’s Meeting is amazing, by the way. It is a very well moderated, and open community forum.

At first glance, Nancy White’s post about online archetypes appeared to be a good starting point for understanding the actors in an online community. She references a classification of online personalities put forth by Patrick Lambe.

Full Circle Online Interaction Blog: Worth another link - Online Archetypes

Patrick’s archetypes are:

• The mediator
• The energy vampire
• The lurker
• The angry little man
• The beginner
• The hostage
• The backstabber
• The professor
• The sophist
• The visionary
• The guru

On the list Rob Peterson suggested another archetype to add to Patrick’s list, the intermediate / general participant. Rob described this as:

• knows a little but by no means an expert
• can reply intelligently to communication though not at the level of the guru
• often shares information at a less theoretical level
• asks questions and responds to others in near equal ratio
• a stepping stone to other archetypes, prof, guru, visionary, or even the more negative ones

In the comments Edward Vielmetti makes a point that leads me to dismiss this set of categories.

Edward Vielmetti in the comments of Worth another link - Online Archetypes

Wow, I’m amazed at how negative most of these archetypes are. You all must have some bitter discussions you want to do online. Is an online discussion the best way to handle this?

Generally for public discourse (lightly moderated, but public, mailing lists) you can go a long ways by modelling good behavior, so that there is a group of people who show the others what’s to be expected.

To this Scott Moore goes one step further.

Scott Moore in the comments of Worth another link - Online Archetypes

I’ll expand on Ed’s concern over the negative archetypes and flatly state that I don’t find the flame warriors or the vermin archtypes helpful in facilitating good communication between people or fostering community-like behavior.

To your question Nancy if archetypes will help, I find that archtypes, even positive ones, seem to encourage people to label themselves and others which can create roadbloacks to communication.

Ac-cen-tu-ate the Postitive

Is is reassuring to hear that the negative classifications are too many. I’m not sure what I would do to accomodate the needs of an “energy vampire” versus an “angry little man” in a community I was attempting to establish.

This exchange leads me to believe that it’s better to displace participants that detract by focusing on participants that contribute. It seems like you would attract more detractors simply by focusing your energy and intellect on them as problem, rather than on contributors as a resource.

As a perpetual amateur, I find myself taken aback by the polarity of Patrick’s archetypes, and futher flummoxed by Rob Peterson’s peculiar definition of what appears to be the bulk of us.

Surely these intermediates and general particpants are the true weight of the community. They are not simply journyman gurus, visionaries, or professors. This taxonomy seems to only encourage grandstanding in public forums.

I’m afraid that the attitude that this taxonomy encourages will tend to drive the dabbler/denizens such as myself away.

New Think New Orleans

I’ve put a WordPress blog at the threshold of Think New Orleans. I’m working with Jimmy Delery to host text and audio from the French Quarter Town Hall meetings at Think New Orleans.

I want to start to blog aggressively about New Orleans, mainly the Sliver by the River in which I live. The Bywater, Quarter, Marigny, Treme, CBD, Warehouse, and Lower Garden. This is the range of my bicycle, where I find myself day to day.

A Community Notebook

My neighborhood does not need an online forum. Everything that needs to be said can be said face to face. We see each other every day.

It could use a notebook however, to record the outcome of our meetings, and prepare for coming meetings. It could use a place to post details about fire prevention, garbage collection, and the mechanics of the upcoming city elections.

I want to create a digital social network to parallel the analog social network. Not an attempt to herd people online. Nor is it an act of citizen journalism.

It’s simply a place to write some things down.