GPOYW - Surprise 3 page spread in the newspaper edition.
Some nice ink for Solutions, Give & Take (watch that spot!) and the WBSC in last week’s Southwest Journal. That’s Troy on the left.
Aaron Landry took this picture of me acting a fool on stage last night. Here’s another picture from the event that Ryan Loomis took.
Oh also: I finally met Paul Merrill of Stuff About Minneapolis fame. We’re super excited to have him on board as a presenter at next month’s Give & Take!
Give & Take last night at Intermedia Arts.
Thanks to everyone that came out to Give & Take last night! Presenters, volunteers, audience… you guys rock. I’m especially excited to see Kaeti’s photos from the event. More soon!
(BTW, this and the WBSC’s Opening Night Social are to blame for sparse updates around here lately. BUT, I’ve got a ton a great stuff I’m just going to unload on you next week, so stay tuned!)
Love this bumper sticker. Maybe STC could partner with the Minnesota Native Plants Society to do a Minnesota themed campaign:
This is a Prairie Parkland.
This is the Eastern Broadleaf Forest.
This is a Tallgrass Aspen Parkland.
This is a Laurentian Mixed Forest.
More on native floura & fauna here and here. I’ve blogged about my disgust for the stereotypical grass lawn before as well.
I bought a MacBook Pro.
And like that (finger snap), STC doubled it’s productivity.
Congrats dude.
We just registered give-take.org.
There’s nothing there yet, but there will be soon.
The dash is annoying, but better then our other options… for instance, try “gvndtk.org” on for size.
Yeah, we were actually considering that.
“Arrives”? That shit has been here for at least a little bit with Solutions and other quick-demo forums.
Kind of a slap in the face.
Be on the lookout, we’re cookin’ up something fresh!
Matty Lang from Twin Cities Streets For People came over on Sunday to help us edit video. This was our workstation.
Troy and I were messing around with Wurdle and we used our recent submission for Changemakers to “visualize” Solutions Twin Cities. These are the top 100 words out of about 950 in the grant (which, by the way, we didn’t get).
(John Dwyer at Solutions For The Other 90%)
I’ve been tumbling a bit recently about a competition (The Power of Us: Re-Imagine Media) that Troy and I just entered to win $25,000 in start-up capital for our non-profit Solutions Twin Cities.
Our concept is simple:
Changemakers around the world share a common drive to make the world a better place, but many have nowhere to physically gather, share their ideas, or connect with others in their geographic community. Solutions Twin Cities was founded to create a multi-faceted platform in which local communities can support and foster innovation and positive change. We do this through storytelling, inviting changemakers to share their ideas at live events and then disseminating those ideas globally through online social media. By making local ideas and the people behind them real to the communities they serve, we inspire the public to get involved in shaping their world.
We’ve been at this for 18 months and in that time have highlighted over 70 unique projects at 6 major events, curated an exhibit on new forms of mapping, hosted a handful of creative social activities, and partnered with a variety of established institutions such as The Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Science Debate 2008, the Walker Art Center, and Intermedia Arts to put together programs and events unlike anything else in the Twin Cities. Parallel to this we’ve archived each event for the web and are in the process of making it all accessible online.
Here’s the thing: we’ve done this all without any major funding and now we’re ready to start growing this thing.
And that’s where you come in: Troy and I have a favor to ask (in an easy-to-follow sequential format!):
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. No really, thank you!
Your feedback will help our chances in the competition and also help us grow as an organization. As always, just drop me Gmail at “colin.kloecker” if you have any questions or comments you’d rather leave privately.
Good or bad, I’ll be keep you up to date on our competition status come February 2nd when the finalists are chosen. Thanks again!
Colin Kloecker
Co-Director
Solutions Twin Cities
And so are at least 280 other projects.
Now, we wait.
for Troy and I to finish our entry to the Re-Imagine Media competition. It’s only $25,000 on the line, so no pressure or anything.
I’m kind of enamored with this idea. From their site:
The selection of content in The Printed Blog is based solely on the votes of readers and their geographic location. In such a way, The Printed Blog revolts against the top-down, ‘one size fits all’ model of newsprint, as we know it. Instead of one paper serving hundreds of thousands of people, as is often the case, The Printed Blog publishes hundreds or even thousands of highly-localized editions based on what a community declares is important to them. The papers are distributed to neighborhood pickup points in A.M. and P.M. editions, and will incorporate rapid turnaround reader comments.
The web has done amazing things for networks. If I’m an architect in Minneapolis I can instantly connect to a network of architects all over the world. This is awesome, no doubt about it. But how much direct effect will it have on my day-to-day practice in Minneapolis?
You know where it’s at right now? Using the same web based social tools to strengthen connections between the people in your city, your neighborhood, even your block. Then, if you can couple that with reasons for these new local networks to come together on a regular basis, actually connect face-to-face, I think that you can activate those connections to actually make change happen on all of those scales.
Anyway, that’s what Troy and I are working on right now with STC.
