Robert Paterson's Weblog

Tip to Tip - getting ready

Here is a link to the Tip blog where I have posted:

• The Itinerary
• The guides and maps
• What to bring

Is this the problem stated in Money terms?

Here is Diane Mermigas talking about the commercial networks - is this the same for NPR and PBS?

The Big 4 broadcast networks’ probable loss of substantial upfront ad dollars raises pressing questions: Where will as much as an estimated $1.5 billion in spending go instead? How will their corporate parents offset such losses? How quickly can they master multi-platform monetization of increased TV viewing on smart phones and other smaller screens?

The broadcast networks’ most formidable challenge is no longer prime-time supremacy–it is adequately pricing and recouping the ad dollars and licensing fees in the digital media spectrum. The broadcast networks’ parent companies may be unable to generate enough digital and cable network revenues to collectively offset upfront and scatter market ad losses. In that case, deep cost cuts are inevitable, as are other fund-raising efforts–such as selling equity stakes in prime-time programming blocks to outsiders, as the CBS-Time Warner CW Network has done with independent studio Media Rights Capital.

Worst-case estimates call for CBS and ABC each to decline as much as 15% in upfront ad sales (to about $2 billion in revenues each), and for NBC and Fox each to be down about 13% in upfront ad sales (to about $1.6 billion each). The ad dollars could shift to cable, online and connected mobile devices, or be withheld by reticent advertisers. Even with CPMs up as much as 4%, this might not make up the fiscal difference.

Anticipated ad spending declines and shifts will reflect the long-suffering loss of broadcast network TV viewers, the crippled economy and the allocation of growing portions of ad dollars to other platforms. There also is the threat of a Screen Actors Guild strike in July and uncertainty about the amount of makegoods the broadcast networks owe to advertisers from missed ratings guarantees in the season just ending. In late March, the networks were down as much as 7% collectively–ABC was down 18% and CBS off 12%, according to Morgan Stanley. They track the continued decline in prime-time ratings: 15% for ABC, 11% for Fox, 8% for CBS and flat for NBC.

Ideastream - Cleveland - Winning Locally - Carnegie's Views

Carnegie have just produced a comprehensive report on the work in Cleveland at Ideastream - what is it like to combine TV and Radio? What is it like to live in one building? What is it like to be a keystone in solving local problems?

I have this paper at Corps here

Independence Day - What is the New Reality of a Locally Sustainable Station?

Here are some stories of how some stations are breaking free from the old contract and finding the new local one.

• Vocalo
• Ideastream
• WETA
• WOSU
• KETC
• MPR
• KPBS

All are different but have the same DNA I think. All about strengthening the local relationship in one way or another. All about getting ready for a world where network content will have to bypass and or move to free.

I smell smoke in pub media - Is there fire?

I smell the smoke of the economic slide in the model for pub media and I smell fear with the smoke.

I think that the smoke and fear are related to the deal between NPR and PBS and their stations unravelling.

Is the draw of their programming falling and hence are the costs of being in the system starting to mount?

As the draw of their programming declines are we also seeing a decline in underwriting and sponsorship?

Is there a future for a station that is in effect an NPR or PBS repeater?

What would happen to the system if the local station became truly relevant to its community?

Would this "new reality" free up the system to adjust?

Adjust to the new truths that content on its own in a infinite content world has little value. Adjust to the truth that content that is not interactive has little value. Adjust to the truth that content that is not available at the time and the convenience of the participant has little value.

Am I close?

KPBS and Google tell the Map Fire story - Imagine what you can do?

Corps of Discovery - The Best of Rob's Writings and Interviews - Future of Public Media

I first arrived in DC to talk with NPR about Public Media in the fall of 2005. I knew nothing about public media or indeed public Radio and TV then.

In 2 1/2 years, I have talked with over a thousand people in the Radio and TV systems. Since the end of New Realities, I have talked with hundreds more, I have interviewed many recently and I have written hundreds of posts.

I think that all of this conversation must have a purpose. I hope that it is that I may be able to offer back a record and synthesis of the best thinking and the best thinkers in the system.

I find it hard to find even my own material. So I have created an aggregation site that I have called "The Corps of Discovery" where I have collected what I think are the pieces that might help us all the most.

Over time I will add new material, in the hope that I can offer back the wisdom of you all to each other.

This site is roughly organized as follows:

• Stations and People - Perspectives of individual stations and their leaders
• Culture - Why it is how we see the world that will be the decisive barrier or opportunity
• Technology - What is proving to work well - how is technology affecting the economics - what is now clear about technology?
• Papers - Mini Books that include many of these parts in pdf form that you can download and then read on the plane, in the bath or on the beach

All of these posts were posted originally on my main blog or on Fast Forward. My purpose here to aggregate all of these stories into one place so that they might be more easily found.

 

City of Charlottetown to look at making Biking Safer

The City of Charlottetown is looking at what to do to make it safer to bike in town - phew!

Safety is the barrier for me. I know I am not alone either. I have come very close many times to being hit by trucks and cars who just don't "see" bikes. When I mean safe - I mean when this kind of experience is normal:

Safe is when you can take your granny and child out for a ride. 40% of traffic in Copenhagen is bike traffic now!

There is a lot at stake now too. 3 years ago I spoke with a friend who did bike all summer. She saved about $500 worth of gas. That would be closer to $1,000 now. What might that be in 3 years?

We cant change our winter weather but we can make it much safer and easier to bike from May to November.

I would ask that the City think about the approach roads to town as well. I live on the Bunbury Road and that is an accident waiting to happen. I bet it is no better coming in from Cornwall either.

In Denmark all of public transport carries bikes as well - please use a wide enough scope in this project. Alan tells me that Kingston does this too - here is the web page that shows you what this could look like:

Rack and Roll is a convenient way to travel by closing the gap between cycling and transit. Now available on every Kingston Transit bus during the cycling season for no extra charge, Rack and Roll offers cyclists a convenient way to travel with their bikes when they choose not to ride.

Some of the reasons cyclists list for using Rack and Roll include:

•     Sudden changes in the weather  
•     Travelling through high traffic areas  
•     Mechanical problem with bicycle  
•     Take your bike to work so you can bike on your lunch hour or bike home at the end of the     day  
•     Any of the same reasons you would put your bike on your car.  

Kingston Transit uses The Sportworks^TM  bike rack. The stainless steel rack is lightweight and designed for easy loading and unloading. It can be raised and lowered with one hand, and will securely hold two bikes with wheels as small as 16 inches.

 

  Opening   the rack.  

 

  Loading   the bike.  

 

  Securing   the support arm.  

The Follow on has the criteria for evaluating a city's progress to having a truly bike friendly city

 

Taxis and Oil Prices

Taxi drivers are always a useful source of local information. I got the same news from a cab driver in St Louis and on PEI this week. It's hardly worth their while anymore.

In both cities the "standards" force them to drive large cars. In both cities the fares adjust very slowly so all the increase in fuel is absorbed by the driver.

Time I think to rethink what a cab looks like and time to rethink the approach to fare setting.

Here is what New York is doing: (Far and Wide Blog - AP)

It's easy being green, just ask New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg announced a plan Tuesday that will turn the city's entire yellow taxi fleet into fuel-efficient hybrids within five years.
   
Over the past 18 months, some 400 hybrids have been tested. They include the:   

• Toyota Prius.
• Toyota Highlander Hybrid.
• Lexus RX 400h.
• Ford Escape.

Under Bloomberg's plan:

• There will be 1,000 hybrid taxis on New York City streets by October 2008.
• That will grow by about 20 percent each year until 2012.

Fast facts:

• A standard yellow cab, the Ford Crown Victoria, gets 14 miles per gallon.  The Ford Escape taxis get 36 miles per gallon.
• There are about 13,000 yellow cabs in New York City.
• Hybrid vehicles run on a combination of gasoline and electricity.
• Yahoo Inc. said it would donate 10 hybrid Ford Escapes for the city's effort.

PEI School Buses

The big news here on PEI has been that the school buses had to be pulled off the road for maintenance.

But for me there is a larger issue lurking. How will the school system be able to afford the increases in fuel for the buses? Is our entire approach of having large schools pulling in kids on buses sustainable as we enter a new pricing regime for energy?

Or another view - Is our school bus fleet really a public transport system in waiting for the time when many Islanders will not be able to afford to run their own cars/trucks?

In Cuba, during the crisis of the Special Period, public transport and a more distributed school system were two of the major solutions to the fuel crisis.

If we don't start to think like this - what will be out response? For the average salary on PEI is $26,000 a year. Food, a car and heating don't fit into that number.

Long Time no Post

Sorry I have been quiet - Hope's wedding (preview pics) kept me in the real world as did a trip to KETC this week.

Both have been momentous. It's something to have your daughter married. It's also something be be part of what might be the breakthrough project in public media.

More on both next week.

Now on a marathon trip home

Weddings - The Cycle continues

This weekend my daughter Hope and her man Charlie get married. As the father of the bride, I have kept my head down and have been obedient. I have my wardrobe selected, had my haircut, nose hairs too! I have stayed out of a planning exercise similar to D day. All I have to do is be present.

I have to confess that I am very excited. Charlie is a wonderful man. It took me at least 20 years to win the confidence of my in laws and he is already like a second son.

His own father, like mine, died young. But Lorne will be attending his son's wedding - he is buried on the hill above Charlie's boyhood home - and so will look out at us this weekend. There is a stone bench by his grave and I am sure that he will get lots of company and maybe even a drink or two.

I can't help thinking of my own wedding 33 years ago. What a different world it was then. The Vietnam war had just ended. Robin and I were so young, 24 and 22 compared to many who marry today. I had long hair and a mustache and looked very sixties with flair pants on my going away suit. In our first year of marriage we moved 3 times and I put on 30 pounds!

I can't help thinking about my own parents' wedding either. It was in 1948. The war was just over and Dad was at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Mum was 20 and he was 22. They went back as a couple to Oxford in the midst of austerity and rationing. On the trip back to England my dad was overcome with sea sickness and confined to his cabin. Mum befriended a nun who chaperoned her during the crossing. There was a coal shortage that winter and it was also the coldest winer since the 1660's. My mum would go to bed in her sweater, a scarf, socks, gloves, a hat and her dressing gown. No wonder it took them 2 years to conceive me.

I wonder what life will be like for Hope and Charlie these early years. It was hard for Robin and I and for my parents - but looking back these early years were good ones for both Robin and I and my parents. We had no money and were buffeted by life but we were young and in love. My mother's letters of that time are full of hope and joy as were mine.

I wonder what their life will be like in 33 years from now. I won't be around to know. It feels strange to know your own mortality. Lorne and I will just have to keep an eye out in our own way as he will this Saturday.

The radiology scare on PEI - another perspective

Now we have our own scare and 5,700 images are in question and nearly 5,000 people are involved.

Point #1 - Volume - But as I heard the story last night, I got to wondering - there are 47,000 households on PEI.

10% of Islanders are involved? Doesn't this sound odd to you too? What is going on that so many of us "need" imaging?

Point #2 - Volume - A huge challenge for all rural societies is to have skilled technicians locate in the hinterland. Realistically will PEI ever get a lot of technical talent here? When I say technical talent I mean the ability to interpret complex situations such as interpret pictures and to do complicated but routine operations such as knees. To be any good you have to have talent and you have to have lots of volume.

Why not have a strategy to define a sector of treatment that has to be done in a large centre and send the images there and send the patient there if necessary?

It will never happen that a place like PEI can have a critcal mass of such talent here.

Circle of Trust Meets the Long Tail - Trusted Space?

Many of us agree that in a world of infinite content, that the value will no longer be in the mass market but in the niches in the Long Tail.

Our intuition tells us that it is in the niches where the scarcity and hence value lies - attention, attraction and hence energy. If this is true, then how do we find the right niche and unleash this power? What is the best filter?

I think that our best filter is our small circle of trust. It has both the power and the reach. I believe that this "circle of trust" is defined by our biology and not by software. Real "friends" are not an infinite resource but exist only in small numbers that fit the "Magic" or "Dunbar Numbers" that in turn fit the Fibonacci sequence.

So here is the data - based on the early part of the Fibonacci sequence and where I have assumed that the Circle of influence may be to the Power of 4.

So a circle of 8 - the ideal Trusted Space - can attract, affect and influence 4,096 people. If I have 144 in my circle we can reach just over 400 million others. BUT my bet is that just as the reach goes up, the gravitational pull goes down.

2 - 16

3 - 82

5 - 625

8 - 4,096

13 - 28,561

34 - 1,336,336

55 - 9,150, 625

89 - 62, 742,241

144 - 429, 981, 696

Notice anything? As we look at the sequence we see a Pareto or power curve - it's the Long Tail.

So what do I also "see"?

I think that there are two power curves here. One is reach and the other is power or gravity.

The greatest gravitational pull is at 2 - the most effective reach is 144. There is likely a "sweet spot" along the curve where reach and pull are best found in concert.  My bet is that it is in using the circles of 8 - 13 - 34. You can reach more than a million people with 34 and you can really attract 4,096 powerfully at 4.

If my intuition is correct, then the full power of social software might be revealed as we explore these numbers and their meaning. Does this not put a new face on marketing? Does it tell us how we will find and attach to content in a universe of infinite content? Does this say something about how to organize anything?

I am a historian by training - can you help by testing this and also by drawing it?

The Web - Signal to Noise - The Circle of Trust?

When I started blogging in spring 2002, there were about 60,000 of us. 60,000 is a very small town. Charlottetown on PEI has a catchment of about 60k. In effect we all knew everyone.  We all had to behave as we all do on PEI.

Now! - Hundreds of millions of people are using social software. It's a jungle out there. Not only is there a lot of very bad manners but also crime and vandalism. I am finding much of the web more like New York in the 1970's.

Not only is it risky but the amount of noise is blocking the signal. Here is Seth Godin on the matter:

For a decade, the web kept delivering an ever better signal to noise ratio to me. I was able to hear more things, more clearly, in less time. Websites and email and my RSS reader were bringing me signals from everywhere, and processing them (and creating, I hope, new signal) was a joy.

Lately, I’m feeling noise creep.

Lately, the noise seems to be increasing and the signal is fading in comparison. Too much spam, too many posts, too little insight leaking through. I don’t use Twitter, but I know a lot of Twitter users are feeling this. So are folks who go to too many conferences. And don’t get me started on victims of Blackberry cc: disease.

I wish I could tell you the easy answer. I can’t. I just know that the faltering signal is a problem.

My answer is to keep my own community still in the bounds of magic numbers and limit my world to 150.

If you have 1,000 Twitter followers, 3,000 Facebook friends you are going to be not only overwhelmed but exposed to noise and vandals.

"I will lose touch with only 150 people in my world!" you might ask. But 150 to the power of 4 is a lot of people - it's 500 million people. I think that is enough for me.

This is my point that each "Friend" 'Follower" has their own world which gets added like a virus to yours. 1000 people to the power of 4 is a Trillion!!!!!

My bet is that the noise and the risk goes up exponentially with the number of people we allow into our circle. It's like sex and the risk of STD's. So here for fun are the key magic numbers taken to the power of 4 - assuming that each friend of mine has a close circle of 4 that I don't know. Let's see how the reach of this world scales:

• 8 - 4,096
• 15 - 50,000
• 35 - 1,500,000
• 80 - 40,000,000
• 150 - 500,000,000

I confess to be a bit stunned by these numbers. If I have a trusted group of 150 people, I can reach 500 million people.

At first glance I see a few things here.

Just because it is easy to add "friends" and "followers", your risk of noise, vandalism, crime and ennui expands into certainty as your close circle expands. There is only a small risk of missing things with a close group of 15!

Logically Trust must diminish also on a log scale as I expand my circle. So the power of your world is greatest with the smaller groups as well. So if you want to get something done, pay attention to your inner group - don't waste energy with groups larger than the 150 Dunbar number. The most power and the most support live in the 8 - 15 - 35 realms. Small potatoes for those who have thousands of friends and followers.

Imagine the web in 10 years? If you think it is a zoo now..... How we will get though the noise? How will we keep the vandals out of our world? How will we find things that we trust and that are important to us?

So how do I have a healthy life on the web? How do I want to have more support, more influence and less shit? The same way that we have to have a healthy life in the real world. We have to locate ourselves into communities that fit our biology. We have to protect and live in our "Circle of Trust".

Gas Prices - the New Election Issue - Resilient Communities

Hilary is asking for a cut in gas prices/taxes:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports.

While Mr. Obama’s view is shared by environmentalists and many independent energy analysts, his position allowed Mrs. Clinton to draw a contrast with her opponent in appealing to the hard-hit middle-class families and older Americans who have proven to be the bedrock of her support. She has accused Mr. Obama of being out of touch with ordinary Americans who are struggling to meet their mortgages and gas up their cars and trucks.

Mrs. Clinton said at a rally on Monday morning in Graham, N.C., that she would introduce legislation to impose a windfall-profits tax on oil companies and use the revenue to suspend the gasoline tax temporarily.

“At the heart of my approach is a simple belief,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Middle-class families are paying too much and oil companies aren’t paying their fair share to help us solve the problems at the pump.”

Of course this sounds great - who wouldn't want cheaper gas and soon cheaper food? But such an act only delays the day of reckoning and makes the final price too great. My bet is that politicians will try this for a while and then of course fail. The political cost will be huge. People will feel betrayed because they thought that politicians can hold back the tide.

Both the people and the politicians hope that we can keep the kind of life that we have now. But I fear that this is no longer possible

Food will get expensive.

There is no substitute for cheap oil.

Life and every aspect of how we live will have to change. We are going to have to make our local community as self sufficient and resilient as possible.

In some ways this could be very exciting as it will mean that we all have to get together and help each other

More later

Making the news more relevant - Public Insight Journalism - Interview with Michael Skoler

In the week where it was rumored that CBS may be getting out of journalism and when the ABC "debate" outraged many, I called Michael Skoler of American Public Media/Minnesota Public Radio, to see how he saw the opportunity for the public radio/TV system to step up to the challenge of delivering high quality news to Americans.

"Today’s journalism was born in a time when there were few alternatives to mainstream media and it was tough to gather reliable information from diverse sources.  Only a small number of organizations had the resources to gather news and to distribute it.  Journalists took on the role of finding and sharing the news that they deemed important, and many in the news business saw this as a sacred trust".

"But for twenty years, public trust in journalists has been eroding and, in some cases, lost."

I asked Michael how this trust had been lost.

Michael made the point that many news organizations have become disconnected from the people they serve.  With media consolidation, there are fewer reporters, and those reporters are asked to produce more stories, usually by phone rather than by spending time in communities.  With fewer resources, the major media increasingly rely on the same set of expert sources to explain the news – people with titles who may not have direct experience or knowledge of the news, such as the military analysts that were the subject of the recent exposé by the New York Times. 

Journalists have become more vulnerable to those that try to manipulate the news agenda.

Another trend is the fragmentation of the audience.  As the numbers of cable channels and Web news sources has expanded, it has become harder for the mass media to gain and hold a large audience. A network news show can no longer be assured of 30 million viewers a night. A city newspaper can no longer be assured of a mass readership. To get the numbers, many news organizations believe they need more flash rather than more substance.  They invest in hyping stories, fancy graphics, and celebrity coverage.  In short, they have shifted toward "entertainment".

Getting attention is often a case of a louder voice.

Michael feels the current crisis for mainstream media is a crisis of relevancy. He cites a recent Zogby Interactive poll (http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1454) where 70% of Americans acknowledged that the news is important to their quality of life.  But 67% said that traditional journalism is out of touch with what they want from their news.

I asked if this was not "good news" for public radio and TV. After all, many believe that the large increase in the audience for public radio in the last decade may well have been driven by this vacuum of relevancy and truth at the network and cable level.

Michael agrees that this might be the case, but he fears that public media is vulnerable to the same resource pressures and growing disconnection between journalists and the public.

His concern? That the newsrooms of public media are also relying too much on the usual sources of news – the officials, analysts and self-appointed spokespeople who often have their own agendas to push. "We too rely on ‘experts’. Our ranks are not very diverse. We can miss what is important to our listeners in their daily lives. We have to be careful about taking our relationship with the public for granted. 

Trust is built on understanding and that means engaging and listening to the audience. I think we compete best by becoming more relevant and more trusted."

I asked Michael, how this might work. How would relevance break through the noise of today’s media? How would his organization’s model of Public Insight Journalism, PIJ, help increase relevancy and hence trust and how it could help to deliver very high quality news at a cost that public media could afford?

Michael made it clear to me that PIJ is not about filling the airwaves with listener opinion. It is about drawing on the experience of the public to inform the news process.

How does this work?

People are invited to join the Public Insight Network serving Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media’s national news shows.  Here is what those who join can expect:

• • Up to one e-mail a month asking for your insight on issues we plan to cover — you respond only if you have knowledge; otherwise ignore the request

• • An occasional follow-up call or e-mail to get more information, if we follow a lead you provide

• • Confidentiality: We won't quote you on the radio or the Web without your permission

• • An open line for you to tell our radio programs what stories are important to you, your family and your community and help us set our coverage priorities

• • An occasional invitation to public insight meetings we hold in your area

• • No spam, marketing calls, or requests for money — your information is private and is not shared outside of a small circle of public radio journalists

"We ask people for knowledge and experience, not their opinions. So if we are exploring the impact of rising gas prices or looking at problems with public education, we target those in the network we think will have knowledge and ask for their experience.  What they share helps us understand how people experience the issues and enables our reporters to focus on the most relevant angles and stories."

I asked how the newsroom makes sense of all of this information - how does it turn data into news?

"Our relationships with the Public Insight Network are managed by a new breed of journalists, which we call public insight analysts. Their job is to engage people and gather information on stories, and then synthesize the knowledge and experience of the network and bring that information into the editorial process. It’s a daily process that connects the newsroom to the audience."

"We aren’t turning over the reins of the newsroom to the public.  We are creating a partnership, where a journalist’s skills and judgment are still on the line.  In the PIJ model, almost nothing from the public goes direct to air or the Web.  As we gather public insight, our journalists do what they have always done – vet the information, check out multiple sources and then tell well-crafted stories that provide truth and context. 

“We have built knowledge management tools that allow just 2 1/2 analysts in Minnesota and 3 in L.A. to manage relationships with over 50,000 citizen sources.  Our tools enable us to target groups of people within the network who are likely to have knowledge on a specific issue, so we are not constantly surveying people.  We respect their time and privacy. They are sources and we don’t share their names with our membership department or anyone else. Our goal is journalism, not marketing.  If we break the trust, we would be finished."

The result is that relevancy and impact are increased, he says. Stories, or perspectives, that might have been missed in a more closed approach are often uncovered.  And trends are spotted.  For example, Michael says, his analysts first uncovered stories about the middle class squeeze from the network – before papers like the New York Times ran a series.  Recently, some in the network revealed that they plan to give their tax rebate checks to charity and that this is causing quite a stir in the charity sector. 

I asked Michael about the metrics.

He says the network now has more than 53,000 citizen sources, with about 24,000 in the upper Midwest and the others spread across every state and two dozen foreign countries. In the last few months, he says 10,000 people have responded to requests for information and 190 stories have been informed by the network across APM, MPR and 4 other public radio newsrooms that are PIJ partners – New Hampshire Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio, Oregon Public Broadcasting and North Carolina Public Radio.

The network grows by about 2,000 a month. That is a lot of people who now have a much more meaningful relationship with their stations, says Skoler.  “So not only does our news improve, but so does the overall relationship with the audience.”

I asked whether this has helped the bottom line. "MPR’s member numbers are at an all time high" was Michael's response.

So if this is working for you, what about other stations I asked.

“The 4 stations that we have trained are very happy with how their local networks are helping their journalism. New Hampshire has about 1,200 in its network, Colorado has about 2,400, North Carolina has 500 and Oregon Public Broadcasting has over 2,600.  That growth has happened in a year or less.

"We train 2 people in each station – a journalist/analyst and a news manager – and APM provides the software tools. We learned from our early mistakes and these stations can move so much faster and with greater assurance as a result.”

If you want to learn more about PIJ - here is a link to the main site that opens with an invitation for you and I to join the network.  I append the opening words in the follow-on to this post because they speak of the new relationship that is surely at the heart of a more trusted and relevant news that public media can afford.

I close in hope that this is a process that only a public model could offer. Is this not a great advantage? Conventional news can only turn up the volume and in the end defeat themselves and fail the nation.

What will happen as public media calls upon the experience of the people in this way? What will happen to the news? What will happen to the station? What might happen to American Society?

Boyd 2008 Conference/Colloquium in September on Prince Edward Island??

There is an opportunity to hold a short, intense seminar on the applicability of Boyd’s ideas, particularly operating inside the OODA loop and grand strategy (sustaining our own morale and attracting the uncommitted), on the weekend of September 20 and 21 at the University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PEI. 

That’s Canada for all you geographically challenged wonks south of the border.

Purpose

The theme would be applying these ideas to conflict in the post-Iraq era, and more specifically to the types of diffused, networked, “open source” armed conflicts that some have called “fifth generation warfare.” We are also interested in exploring solutions, such as the role of “resilient communities” (RC), for countering them.

We envision this as a working seminar to help shape the policy agenda in the first year of the new administration.

So we’re looking for a couple dozen attendees, all of whom would either make short presentations on their areas of interest or participate in panel discussions and working groups.

We also hope that the participants will leave with their own agenda items — to improve resilience within their organizations or to prepare articles and opeds on these subjects in the months after the seminar.

Next step

If you think you might be interested, please send an email to info at d-n-i dot net.

There will be a small fee to cover the cost of the facility (quite modest on the weekend) and coffee and doughnuts. There is no obligation, but because these things involve a lot of work to set up, we would like to gauge the level of interest before proceeding.

Chet Richards
Rob Paterson

Here is what PEI is like in the fall

Net neutrality - what does this mean to all of us?

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

Two Americas? Stuck?

In 1850 there were two Americas. Only a brutal civil war could resolve the split.

I think that there are once again two Americas. Two Americas that cannot be reconciled.

One is an America that has been brutalized by the global economy that has stripped good jobs and services from their lives and left them maybe not bitter but certainly helpless. Is this not the America that wants a "strong" leader/parent figure - to make it all better. Bring back $60 an hour jobs. Seal the border. Drop oil prices. Save my home. Give me back my old life!

They don't want to participate in making their problems better, they want mummy to make them go away. It will be good to blame people. Look at Canada with all that water and oil taking our jobs in lumber. Look at those terrorists. Look at those immigrants.

If Mummy can't do it, they will vote for Daddy McCain.

The other America sees that these deep problems are not created or solved by one masterful parent but are complex and societal. They see that they are are of both the problem and the solution. They are inspired by a leader who asks them to step up and help. They don't need Mummy or Daddy.

But these people are not fighters. That's the point. They don't do blame and vengeance.

If I have this picture right, then Obama cannot reach the "kids".

But Mummy or Daddy cant reach the adults either. But as there are more kids than grown ups, we will get another 4 years of kindergarten and that much closer to a time when there is no solution possible for anyone.

I read the other day that "Tragedy" is when the ego triumphs over the soul.

It is surely tragic that America, founded in the idea of self reliance and the ability of the community to take charge, may fall because most Americans have become serfs looking for the big lady or man to save them,