New Media Evangelist Dan Gillmor to Speak in Vermont

Dan Gillmor, author of We The Media: Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People, is coming to Vermont this Saturday. He'll be at the 30th anniversary celebration for the Center for Rural Studies, on a panel about communicating with rural communities.

Dan spent 25 years as a journalist in the newspaper business (including several years here in Vermont) before leaving the biz to focus on developing "citizen media." He's currently running the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, a new project of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

I interviewed Dan back in 2006, prior to a talk he gave in Montpelier. Here's an excerpt, describing his departure from the San Jose Mercury News:

When he departed in 2004 to become a citizen media evangelist, news junkies took note. In a letter to his editor, Vindu Goel, Gillmor said he was sorry to go. "Something powerful is happening," he wrote. "It's in the early stages and I have a chance to help figure this out... I hate the idea of leaving. But I'd hate not trying this even more."

Goel praised Gillmor in an announcement about his departure: "Dan has a rare gift among journalists: foresight," he wrote. "He can see what's going to be important long before other people, and he tells readers why they should pay attention."

See Gillmor — with panelists Chris Braithwaite of the Barton Chronicle, Dick Drysdale of the Herald of Randolph, Lauren-Glenn Davitian of Ch. 17, and Jim Leddy of Vermont Agricultural College Board — on Saturday, October 4, from 5-6:30 p.m. at the Mount Mansfield Room in UVM's Davis Center.

Thanks, Michael, for the tip!

Connecting the Dots

At FreshTracks, my partners and I have the opportunity to interact with a wide variety of entrepreneurs, investors, job seekers and service providers every day. Our primary responsibility as venture capitalists is to invest in promising businesses, work with entrepreneurs to grow their companies over time, then exit these companies to maximize the return we provide to our investors. But a byproduct of our efforts is that we often also “connect the dots,” and introduce companies to outside resources, partnerships, new hires and like-minded entrepreneurs that can help further their business plans. These efforts include helping a wide range of companies throughout Vermont whether or not we ever make an investment in these businesses, as we believe in doing whatever we can to build a vibrant entrepreneurial economy here in Vermont, and that this, in turn, will benefit FreshTracks, since “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

While the brand images often associated with Vermont include mountains, tourism and specialty foods, as you scrape beneath the surface, there is an impressive amount of entrepreneurial activity, and the formation of some exciting technologically-focused business clusters right here in our state. Vermont 3.0 is a great event that is helping to shape the vibrant creative and technology sectors that continue to grow and take root here in the Green Mountains.

Elaine Young on Live at 5:25

I just noticed that Vermont 3.0 blogger, and Champlain College prof, Elaine Young is slated to be the guest on Channel 17's  Live at 5:25 this Monday. That means that, at 5:25 p.m., you can call the Channel 17/CCTV studio and ask Elaine a question on the air. The topic of the broadcast? New media usage.

The show will air live on Monday, September 29, at 5:25 p.m. on Channel 17.

These are the numbers listed on the CCTV website: 802.862.3966 & 802.862.1645

Microblogging Your Day in 140 Character Installments

I use Twitter. I use Plurk.

One could say I'm a microblogging addict.

Really.

It goes something like this.

I wake up in the morning and I post something pithy to my Twitter and then I jump over to Plurk and post something pithy there (all of this via my Crackberry, of course). In the background via magical internet forces, what I posted in Twitter lands in my Facebook "what am I doing now" status. And then, by the magical forces of FriendFeed, my Plurk ends up on my Facebook wall.

So, in a mere two 140 character posts people know things like: my daughter is being very slow today, that it's a beautiful fall morning in Vermont or that I'm a bit stressed about the economy and am thinking about putting money in my mattress.

Yes, I know it seems a bit odd. Why would anyone care? Why would I want to share that information with people I don't even know?  Very good questions...

October 25th -- Save the Date!

That's when the next Vermont 3.0 Creative/Tech Career Jam takes place. It's happening this time around at Champlain College.

We've been busy putting together the schedule for the event. This time the theme is "So, You Wanna..." As in, "So, You Wanna" build websites, design robots, shoot video, solve cyber crime, write for the web, work in biotech, etc.

To that end, we've organized 13 panel discussions, featuring CEOs, employees and professors. We're not quite ready to announce the lineup, but trust me when I say it's impressive.

We'll be posting more info on this site as it becomes available. Check back for updates. And save the date: Saturday, October 25, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. at Champlain College. Admission is free.

Square Peg, Meet Round Hole.

Science fiction author, internet activist and uber-blogger, Cory Doctorow, has a piece at internetevolution.com about how we should stop judging new media from an old media framework.  Sitcoms seem like they work best in 22-minute (plus commercials) segments because that's the box that sitcoms fit in, but we shouldn't infer that all comedies in the video medium must therefore conform to that standard...

Twenty-two-minute sitcoms are highly evolved creatures, as formally bounded as a sonnet. Their highly paid practitioners have an arcane vocabulary and procedure to describe the system by which they are assembled to achieve maximal effect; we, the audience for these shows, have imbibed so many of them that we unconsciously expect the twists and turns the storytellers are delivering, even if we lack a conscious understanding of the formal structure and the specialist jargon needed to describe it.

By contrast, the short Internet video isn't a single genre -- it's more like cosmic narrative dust hurtling through space, clumping together here and there into larger conglomerates, then splitting apart before stabilizing. There's no formal structure to the eight-minute teenage-ramble-from-the-bedroom -- both the creator and the audience are winging it.   

Ack! Another blog!

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.  If I could somehow arrange things so that I actually made my living cruising around the 'net and writing about stuff that interested me, I'd be a pretty happy camper.  Alas, my contributions to this blog are strictly voluntary, as per usual. 

To kick things off, I'd like to offer the following words by writer and thinker of Big Ideas, Douglas Rushkoff, who's guest blogging at Boing Boing this week.  This is from his opening remarks at the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC this summer...

To me, “Personal Democracy” is an oxymoron. Democracy may be a lot of things, but the last thing it should be is “personal.” I understand “personal responsibility,” such as a family having a recycling bin in which they put their glass and metal every week. But even then, a single recycling bin for a whole building or block would be more efficient and appropriate.

Democracy is not personal, because if it’s about anything, it’s not about the individual. Democracy is about others. It’s about transcending the self and acting collectively. Democracy is people, participating together to make the world a better place.

One of the essays in this conference’s proceedings – the book “Rebooting Democracy”- remarks snarkily, “It’s the network, stupid.” That may go over well with all of us digital folks, but it’s not true. It’s not the network at all; it’s the people.

Welcome to the Vermont 3.0 Blog

We've been thinking about starting a Vermont 3.0 blog ever since we held the first Vermont 3.0 Creative/Tech Career Jam last January. It just seemed like a logical extension of the networking that was happening that day.

Our goal is to make this blog a place where businesspeople, students, geeks and creative types can connect and exchange ideas — while waiting for the next Vermont 3.0 event, where they can meet and talk face-to-face.

A Visit to Competitive Computing

Ed. Note: This is the first in a series of posts about Vermont companies and their creative solutions to technical challenges. Look for Nate's next profile in a few weeks.

I've always suspected that there is a lot of technical innovation happening in Vermont that no one ever hears about. When Vermont companies get any sort of media attention, it is usually because of product they sell. Ice cream. Clothing. Snowboards. What you don't hear about is the technology and "information innovation" that went into making that company and keeping that company successful. As an Information Technology Director, and general all around geek, that's the kind of stuff I want to know. So I went looking for it.

Competitive Computing is a company that provides many IT solutions for Vermont companies.  They often shorten their name to C2, and if you visit their website, you're presented with many of the services that a consulting company provides, from server infrastructure to eCommerce and portal solutions.  And then your eye wanders to the bottom of the page where you see an image of a leaf followed by the statement "Green Computing."

Everything is going green these days. Green cars, green houses, green clothing. All of it is driven by the practice of making a product more environmentally friendly. It produces less waste. It uses less fuel. It uses fewer natural resources. It creates fewer toxins. Green has become intertwined in marketing today. People today want to save the planet and live a healthier lifestyle and they do it with their dollars. Which gets us back to "Green Computing."