continuous partial attention

Atlanta Coworking Update

The next JellyinAtlanta Coworking session has been scheduled for Friday, December 17th (rsvp via this link) at Urban Grind in downtown Atl. This will be Jelly #3!

JellyinAtlanta was mentioned in yesterday's Daily Candy Atlanta! Congrats Kristyn!

I've updated the wiki page for Atlanta Coworking to reflect recent developments. If you're just starting to learn about coworking events in Atlanta, start there!

If you'd like to keep up to date on Coworking events happening all around Atlanta, join the "Coworking Atlanta"  group in Yahoo's Upcoming service. Jelly is the only gig in town as of now, but hopefully there will soon be more!

Kristyn writes on the Jelly wiki:

I've picked up a lot of chatter about a Jelly on the northside of town - I think this is a great idea! After Jelly3 (December7), we'll look at spots on the northside for a get together. This may become another Jelly altogether, or we may just alternate locations to try and accomodate everyone's locale. Hope you can make it on December 7th! Thanks! ks

As I mentioned in a previous post, I want to start a Coworking group on the north side of Atlanta. However, I don't want to fragment the community while it's still budding and have been trying to gauge the initial demand for Coworking. The current idea for Jelly right now is to have an event every other week or so. I'd like to get to the point where there is a Coworking event happening every week somewhere around Atlanta. This way we can be as inclusive as possible while also providing people the opportunity to Cowork regardless of their geographic location.

It's all a question of timing, and while I may be getting ahead of myself due to excitement, I do feel like there will soon (within a matter of months) be enough momentum to support a number of loosely (and strongly!) tied Coworking groups meeting all around the Atl.

As for what to call a Jelly spinoff? Right now I'm thinking "Nap Coworking", for: North Atlanta Peoples Coworking. Or: North Atlanta Professionals Coworking. Or even: North Atlanta Productive Coworking! Perhaps the "P" could stand for whatever you want it to. The tagline? "It's Nap time in North Atlanta!" or "Join us for the most productive Nap time ever!"

In the meantime, I think it would be best to at least have one JellyinAtlanta on the north side to keep the momentum of the core group going and growing.

Thoughts?

A Georgia Blogosphere Holiday Call to Action!

I just got back home from North Point Mall where I was doing a bit of preliminary Christmas Shopping with my family. On the way back, my father pointed out how strange it was that the usual Salvation Army volunteers were nowhere to be found.  They're usually out by this time of the year.

For whatever reason, the Salvation Army has never been one of my nonprofits. Usually when I give money for a social cause, it's either for a cause involving the environment, research to find a cure for one disease or another, or other similarly global causes. I usually don't gravitate towards causes that make me feel warm and fuzzy intentionally because I prefer to donate to causes that treat the roots of problems rather than symptoms.

But there's something to be said for giving back to causes that are closer to home.  Because for the people entrenched in whatever problem they're trying to solve or bring relief to, it's not a "symptom," at all! Far from it. These are in fact the problems that demand our attention and humanity the most! For these kinds of causes, I much prefer to give my time. It feels much more personally meaningful to me that way.

But I digress from the reason I'm writing this blog post. I was following this train of thought earlier, and came to the realization that I want to do something special this holiday season. And I'd like to enlist members of the Georgia Blogosphere to join me!

This past year, I've seen tremendous growth in the local blogosphere. The Georgia Blog Carnival (a wonderfully moving target) is proof that our community has grown by leaps, bounds, and in connectivity! We're developing our own culture here and creating some new traditions.  I have a new one I'd like for us to add to the books blogs.

This holiday season, I'd like focus on a Georgia based cause and try to collectively raise money for them through Georgia's Social Media Community.

We can pick one, a few, or everyone could pick one for themselves! Although, I personally like the idea of us getting behind one specific cause so we can take advantage of the amplification effect many voices can have.

Involvement can take a number of different forms. At the most basic level, we'll have a widget we can put on our blogs so our readers can make donations. Beyond that, blogging some piece of the story behind this cause! Such storytelling can be especially powerful during the holiday season, and telling the story of someone or some group who can't tell the story themselves is a great way to give back.

So in essence, I'm looking for a cause to give back to this holiday season. And I'd like to enlist whomever in the Georgia Blogosphere is interested in joining me because I believe we've come to a point where we can make a much bigger difference than we could even dream of as individuals.

So, what do we need for this? We need a pick a cause to mobilize behind, first of all. After that, we need to settle on a widget platform, and maybe get a google page up. And after that? We do what bloggers do best! Whatever that is. ;)

Today is November 25th; exactly one month until Christmas day, and six days until December 1st. I'd like to have this running a week from now, if possible. I realize that this proposal is rather haphazard and not completely thought out, which is why I'd like to throw it out to the rest of you at this point. If you're a Georgia blogger, and you'd like to help me put this together, blog about it this next week! If there's something I haven't thought through you'd like to contribute your thoughts and additional planning to, do so! And most of all, if any of you have any thoughts on what cause we should mobilize behind, definitely blog about that too. The only condition is that the cause needs to be Georgia based in some way.

At the end of the week (let's say.. Friday evening) I'll followup with a post summarizing the blogosphere conversation and we'll see where we're at in terms of planning and execution bringing this to life! (Be sure to shoot me an email with a link to your post to make sure I see it.) If for whatever reason there's a heated conversation by the end of the week and difficulty in making a decision, we'll find some way to democratize the process.

And if anyone would like to talk about this with me in person, I'm running an Atlanta NetSquared Meetup this Tuesday night focused on Blogging for social causes. If enough people show up interested in talking about this we can have a mini-planning session then as well!

The thought of creating new holiday traditions in the social media realm makes me a bit giddy and I can't wait to see what this actually turns into!

JellyinAtlanta #2

This past friday was the second JellyinAtlanta casual coworking event, and it was held at Octane!

This was actually my first coworking experience, and if I must say, it was everything I'd hoped and dreamt it would be!

In addition to meeting a bunch of cool people working on all sorts of stuff from Web design to microchip fabrication (Yeah. Seriously!), I definitely felt that the networking and feeling of camaraderie that came from this didn't detract from productivity. In fact, I found that talking about my projects with people helped with motivation! I'm sold.

Jbrotherlove wrote a great blog post summarizing JellyinAtlanta #2.

The next Jelly coworking session is tentatively scheduled for November 30, assuming a biweekly format. Stay tuned for more details.

Towards the end of the session, I noticed that The CoSpace, a group that had been thinking about opening their space up for coworking earlier this year had updated their web presence, so I sent them an email to see if they would respond.

I've received a response back, and they're definitely still interested in hosting, so I'll be talking to them in the coming days about the possibilities.

To conclude, I'd like to submit a link to an article that was on the front page on CNN today titled: Pitfalls of telecommuting.

This was submitted by Careerbuilder.com, and I'm guessing it's supposed to convince people that working from home is ok, but at some point you'll want to go back to the office? Or maybe that working from home may sound awesome, but it has negative points to it as well and get a job that let's you work at home (or not if you want) at Careerbuilder.com!

Regardless of the actual intent, this article makes a great argument for Coworking IMHO!

A day at What a Concept!

Today was a great day working at What a Concept! As of last weekend I am the proud owner of a Macbook, and have am now mobile in my ability to do work! This is thrilling on so many levels.

So, this morning Sherry and paid a visit to our attorney for some legal advice, and than went to Caribou Coffee to get some work done. I stayed behind while she went to her sons Thanksgiving lunch, and than she returned and we went back to her home to work some more and wait for some exterminators. When the wifi stopped working, we went to a nearby Starbucks where we continued to work on projects until the exterminator called and she had to briefly leave to go back home. She got back home and got online and we worked remotely while the exterminator did his thing. Following this, Sherry returned to Starbucks where we worked for another hour until we had to pick her son Dylan up from school.

As we drove to the elementary school, we were discussing emails we needed to send out as well as a newsletter that we're working on. This was actually the highlight of my day! Why?

Because before I had my MacBook I would always have to go home in order to get work done and be productive. My office space comprised of either my basement, or Sherry's basement. And now?

My office comes with me! My first day working with Sherry in person this week involved two coffee shops, and wardriving through an elementary school!

That's right! It may not sound very glamorous, but some of our most productive time today involved writing emails and Sherry dictating a newsletter to me while we drove around an elementary school to get the best wifi reception. And yes, as we were leaving we decided to turn back around and park to get one more email out!

This is why I love working at What a Concept! What's your office like?

Blogging out of obligation?

    This NaBloPoMo thing is a bit of an interesting exercise for me. For the first part, I've become busier than I can remember these past three weeks. After working with Sherry and others for two years in building What a Concept!, I feel like things are finally coming together now in terms of our vision, our team, and the potential we have for doing some good around Atlanta/Georgia/theworld/etc! For the past week it seems like I've had three meetings a day in different parts of Atlanta (lots of driving) and the thought of blogging something each day when I'm barely at a computer for more than five minutes other than to check email and work on projects frankly seems a bit ridiculous.

Secondly, I haven't actually been a strong blogger historically. Although, if you were to chart my level of engagement online you would likely see an upward sloping curve. I've gone from drinking from the firehose to actually contributing to the water flow myself in..

That analogy could have been executed better, and has thusly been executed well before completion. Let's go with straightforward speak.

Secondly (take two), I've been blogging a lot more in different places around the web, but usually in response to something else. Lot's more comments, lot's more annotation, bookmarking, microblogging, etc. Stopping to put together a blog post that's self contained and actually worthwhile seems a bit daunting for an every day commitment.

And when I get home near midnight on a day when I haven't even had time to respond to anything, there isn't even a barrel for me to scrape the bottom of.

So, I'm blogging out of obligation because I couldn't do so at any other point out of the day. Obviously, the commitment takes a bit more than just sitting down at the last moment and thinking of something to write.

It would be nice if I was able to write bits and pieces of blog posts at various points throughout the day when I'm not home... what to do?

That's my round about way of saying: I'm -finally- investing in a MacBook this week! :D I'm so excited, and I'm going to have some member of my family take pictures of the process for me to put on Flickr.

See? I did actually have something to say, and we'll at least have blog posts chronicling the process of my getting my first MacBook as well as the difference becoming a mobile blogger will make to look forward too! And hopefully further such posts won't be last minute and ramble on and on about nothing due to sleep dep and some strange sense of obligation I've imposed upon myself.

The Live Music experience in Second Life

Despite my expansive background in Second Life (I lived there for a year) I don't blog about it enough. Perhaps I should change that. Rather then go the technical angle, let's start with something cultural!

A link just hit my radar that talks about a new development that hints at the future of live musical performance in virtual worlds! Incidentally, it's written by one of my Second Life friends (based in San Francisco that I've met in real life) about one of my Twitter friends (based here in Atlanta that I haven't yet had the pleasure to meet).

"Live music is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and immersive experiences in Second Life. Some musicians here have been able to develop dedicated communities and followings that rival real life artists. But where does the future lie for this kind of performance? Grace McDunnough suggests an answer with Musimmersion, a new system of scripting sets which enables a Resident musician to instantiate custom-made 3D environments to accompany specific songs they're performing."

"The aspect most astonishing about concepts such as Musimmersion is the convergence of many skill sets for the purpose of developing ever more compelling interactions between a virtual 3D space and the person sitting in front of the computer. The future of live musical performances, whatever that will be, is likely to hold a mix of incredible art, scripting, and unique musical talents, which should make us take another look at McDunnough's vision, “We are in the age of a new renaissance - the emergence of a technically capable creative class.”"

Check out the complete post at New World Notes.

"Digital Ethnography"

You may not know the name Mike Wesch, but it's possible that you may have seen one of the Youtube video's he produced on the web! The first one that got a bunch of attention was titled "The Machine is Us/ing Us."

His new video entitled "Information R/evolution" just came to my attention, and it's just as excellent as his first, and I thought I'd post them both here for quick future reference.

From his Youtube profile page:

"My videos explore mediated culture, seeking to merge the ideas of Media Ecology and Cultural Anthropology.

Currently we are working on an ethnography of YouTube. You can check our progress at http://mediatedcultures.net/"

The Machine is Us/ing Us

Information R/evolution

Atlanta Foodbank Fundraiser

Dorothea Bozicolona-Volpe, a frequent of the Atlanta NetSquared meetup, is the organizer for a fundraiser for the Atlanta feed bank. She passed some information onto me about the event, and it looks like it'll be a bunch of fun! And fun for a good cause, which is my favorite kind of fun. :)

I would like to thank everyone for the years of support in my cause to address the issue of Hunger in our community.  As many of you know, "The Nourishment Cocktail" for seven years has raised awareness of Hunger and supported the Atlanta Community Food Bank (ACFB.org).
The 2007 Nourishment Cocktail event will be my last and I am asking everyone again to continue their generous support of ACFB's initiatives in supporting children and families that are in need of meals.

Nourishment VII: Cocktail in support of the Atlanta Community Food Bank
Nov 3 at Opera, 7-10 pm
Please access the following link for further information:
http://www.bondgirlproductions.com/events.html

If you are unable to attend, please forward this EVITE to friends and colleagues and consider a donation to the ACFB. I encourage you to donate at this link:
http://www.bondgirlproductions.com/events.html

Or you can arrive at the event to drop off food beginning at 7pm
Just $10 provides 100 meals to families, children and the working poor.

Thank you again for your support this year as in years past.

**Nourishment VII is dedicated to the memory of George Chang 1959-1999**

Warm regards,
Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe
Chair
Nourishment VII-Benefit for the Atlanta Community Food Bank
www.acfb.org
www.bondgirlproductions.com

I'll definitely be there tomorrow with cans of nonperishable food in hand! If any of my blog readers are thinking of attending, let me know so we can meet up!

NaBloPoMo!(What?)

While reading my daily digest of blogs last night, I found out about NaBloPoMo via this post on the Spunlogic blog! Now, I've known about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which is held every November, but I'd never heard of NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month, wherein participants are to write at least one post every day for the month. I also hear rumor of a National Podcasting Month that also runs parallel.

Perhaps we should just rename this month NaWriWriMo (National Writers Writing Month) or even NaCrePubMo (National Creative Publishing Month).

How about NoVeMBer (Not Very Much... ok, I got nothing.)

Anyways, as I've always thought NaNoWriMo was an awesome event I'd love to participate in, I'm willing to settle for NaBloPoMo.

So, I'm throwing my hat in the ring. May the Almighty Zeus strike me down if I neglect to write a blog post for every day of this month!

Tags: NaBloPoMo, blogging, november