Was taking a moment to check the RSS feeds for BrainJams posts when I ended up on Swicki’s aggregator search page – forgot I set this up a while back. While it still needs some beefing up, it is actually a pretty cool way to get an insightful look at key concepts I have previously written about across the blogosphere. Well, at least for me it is…

From the looks of it, the people wanting to ensure ‘Equal Employment Opportunity’ (EEO) are really mucking things up for everyone, including the people they want to serve most. From this article on CNN Money, I was shocked to learn of the new requirements for both employers and job seekers which seem extremely confusing and difficult. Perhaps it is even not to ensure EEO, but rather to make it more difficult. Regardless, it is the exact sort of excessive regulation we should be striving to push out of government.

According to the article, one of the elements of the new regulations you need to watch closely concerns:

Keep your resume up-to-the-minute current. “The rules allow companies to pick a random pool of applicants by searching the job boards for ‘most recent’ qualified applicants,” Crispin [Gerry Crispin from CareerXRoads] notes. “In those cases, no one will even look at a resume that is more than two or three weeks old.” Yikes.

Hopefully, I won’t be searching for any ‘real’ jobs in the near future…

Technorati Tags: jobhunting

On Wednesday I got some fantastic news via an email newsletter. JazzFest is on this year for the last weekend of April (4/28-30) and the first weekend of May (5/5-7). My first thought was “let’s go down there and organize a BrainJams between the two weekends”. After some back and forth with Kristie concerning our hectic travel schedule for the first half of the year, I took the plunge and have made all our travel arrangements. Now all we need to do is find a venue.

This is a fantastic opportunity for us, and incredibly good news for one of our favorite cities in the world. Given my feelings about how everyone screwed up on every level of government down there after Katrina, this is a good chance to move beyond the couch potato rhetoric and contribute to the solution instead of the volume of complaints. Of course, it also a great chance to have an incredible time listening to some great music. I feel very blessed that I was able to see NOLA before the Hurricane, going to Jazzfest last year for the first time.

We would very much like to have a discussion about the best way to approach this very special BrainJams. It would be great to perhaps revive the discussion around Jeff Jarvis’ Recovery2 and perhaps Sam Perry’s work on Reliefopedia. Then again, we could just focus on how people can use technology to rebuild their society after a disaster. Of course the great thing about holding BrainJams is that we don’t really need to figure that all out until everyone gets in the room together, but I do think we need to set our intentions around an organizing principle first and foremost.

Regardless, we need local volunteers to help coordinate logistics, we need a space for 120 people (if interest is high enough, perhaps double that) and we would like to very much involve the local government, chamber of commerce, non-profits, musicians and technologists. If anyone knows someone from BamaWorks, we would really like to get them involved too.

If you have any interest in being there for this incredible event, I recommend booking now since our hotel is already sold out for those dates and airfares are still relatively inexpensive.

Technorati Tags: brainjams, brainjams04May2006, brainjams:neworleans, NPTECH, reliefopedia, Recovery2

I have a lot of blog posts I am working on, but this is so sad and funny, I had to get it out right away. So I was talking with Greg Narain on our cell phones a few minutes ago, and the connection just went bad – it was all static and dropped words. So rather than trying to call each other back, I just sat down at my computer and we switched to Skype. The clarity was 10x better than mobile and it makes me think I will one day soon be using Skype as my primary channel of voice communications…

Technorati Tags: skype

Our BrainJams here in DC on Monday validated many key ideas and taught us many lessons. While we had expected around 35 people or so, 16 (plus Kristie and myself for 18) showed up for the morning BrainJam, in which I was finally able to participate. The good news is, it is a start – and a good one at that. Everyone I spoke with thanked us profusely for doing this in DC and was really enthusiastic about the format, the people and the insights shared. The afternoon Breakthrough sessions began with two groups, one for newcomers and one for more advanced discussions, but they merged during the course of the afternoon.

I have lots to share that I learned from the great people in attendance, as well as thanks for each of them for coming out on a Monday, even though many said “I didn’t know what to expect, or even what it would really be”. A few photos are on Flickr, but we did not get a chance to take many since we were so involved in the conversation.

Yesterday and today, I received a few emails which really tell the story of the event better than I can.

Matt Gallivan from NPR said:

“It was a great chance to meet a lot of interesting people in the community and to talk about a lot of interesting stuff.”

Mirsada Pasalic, an emerging ‘fresh face for aging advocacy’ said:

“First of all I want to thank you for a FABULOUS day yesterday. I truly enjoyed myself and learned a lot. It was a great mix of people and the “energy” was all good, so thank you for putting it together!”

Camille Preston, an insightful leadership coach, said:

“Thank you so so so much for a truly powerful, inspiring and learning day! As I was describing it to a friend last night, all I could say was that it was fabulous and that my mind was literally truly jammed with so many new insights and perspectives. (as an extraverted nerd – I loved the intensity of learning and wished I’d planned to join the evening!) It was a truly wonderful opportunity to jump into something I “knew I should be doing”… but didn’t know where to begin! There are a few things I’m ready to dive into – and I know that the learning will continue.”

So all in all, BrainJams30Jan2006 makes it way to the win column. Best of all, it seems as if there will be a community of people willing to do what it takes to do this again and again…

I am delighted to tell you that Grace Davis is organizing Woolf Camp down in Santa Cruz over President’s Day Weekend. She is opening up her house to other bloghers (and bloggers 😉 to just come together and be. Her original blog post is a good indicator of the wonderful energy she is cultivating.

Come, evolve with us. Come teach, come learn, come eat a lot of M&Ms, come hang out.

World peace through blogging,
GraceD

Besides Grace being a great writer and all around cool person, she has doubly blessed me by citing BrainJams as one of her inspirations (along with BarCamp) and dubbed me as one of the “techies who are not afraid to be human”. Ever since I first saw that kind tribute, I have been wanting to hang out with her and get to know her better. Now Kristie and I have our chance and we are really looking forward to it. Might even go down FRI night beforehand and stay somewhere on the beach…

Will be a good chance to work on posting some of my old poetry and perhaps writing some new stuff. But given the wonderful home spun schedule she has proposed, I just might be too busy “Invent(ing) entirely new art forms and genres of bloggity literature or maybe doing something “workshoppy” while “shyly wander(ing) onto (her) flower-filled deck”.

Technorati Tags: amateurevents, brainjams:bayarea, brainjams:related, socialconference

Wow! Once again I am amazed at how people can just come together without a lot of planning and make something cool happen. After reaching out to a few of our former Patrons to help with DC and Berkeley next month, things are feeling really solid.

Not only will be have the right sort of people showing up (including a few Web 2.0 luminaries and a few main stream journalists who really get it), but Lawrence Coburn from Rate It All just stepped up to sponsor the refreshments for BrainJams DC on Monday and to be a supporting sponsor for our Berkeley BrainJams on Feb 25. Shortly after hearing from Lawrence, I got a call from Scott Beale at Laughing Squid who also just signed up as a supporting sponsor for both events. Both have been with us since the beginning and I cant thank them enough.

And now the link love is growing and the word of mouth is spreading…

I am writing another post to go deeper into what we are doing Monday, but in the meantime would like to hear your feedback on this idea: At traditional, academic conferences, researchers submit papers for consideration by the conference. Why not borrow a little from this idea to create a better framework for our conversations at BrainJams? So for Monday’s BrainJams event, I propose that everyone submit a Blog Post for consideration by other participants concerning what you want to talk to people about on Monday. Once you do so, please tag it forBrainJams30Jan2006 (just copy and paste the code below into the bottom of your blog post if you do not know how to tag blog posts yet). Another alternative is to write the blog post and then tag it on Delicious or Furl or wherever you place your social bookmarks. Alterantively, you could tag something that has already been written elsewhere that you would like to discuss or just submit the link to the blog post you want to talk about in the comments to this post.

I have already tagged 2 posts to Delicious I think would make for good conversation and am working on writing an original one – so what do you want to talk about?

Technorati Tags: brainjams30jan2006, brainjams:patron, brainjams:planning, forBrainJams30Jan2006

Ok, so we all see the silly credit card offers with useless shwag, and quite a few other funny ones that come in the mail, but this one took the cake for me. Just the pure irony I guess, but Kristie didn’t think it was that big of a deal. Why Business 2.0 magazine would offer a useless no-name organizer like this I dont know. Perhaps stretching the readership a bit to a wider, non business savvy audience? Even then, at least get a Palm or PocketPC device.

I expect they will ship me mine and I, likes thousands of other subscribers who have PIM on my phone and in my Palm, will end up throwing it away – a not so great use of landfill space if you ask me. Perhaps if you would just be so kind as to give me the extra dollar back off the subscription price, or perhaps donate the money to a good non-profit lilke Creative Commons, Internet Archive or maybe even that new little startup non-profit BrainJams I keep hearing so much about 😉

Actually, that would be a great way to do promotion like this sustainably – let the subscriber choose a cause to which the magazine can donate, and perhaps even cover in the magazine with regular updates…. hmmmm

Having just begun promotions for the DC event late last week, I was happy to see that we do already have 12 registrations (other than Kristie and I) this morning, including 2 people who already sent in the suggested donation of $10. At least we have made our minimum number of participants already and I expect the word of mouth to start picking up today and through the week as I get back to blogging (and reading blogs) and making some more new friends.

In addition to Kristie and myself, 2 of the brightest Web 2.0 luminaries from DC have registered – Stowe Boyd and Ken Yarmosh. Everyone knows Stowe – he is one of the driving forces behind Corante and Ken is fairly famous for his innovative use of tagging via the blogosphere as a means for convening a new form of online conversation via the Blogoposium1 tag.

I just got off the phone with Greg Narain who is working on his new startup called SyncPeople. You may have heard of him from his Beercasting days. We can directly trace the lineage of BrainJams back to him – because if it was not for his random phone call one day last spring from my registration for a beercasting event in Florida, I never would have went to Gnomedex, which means I never would have met Will Pate, which means I probably never would have gone to BarCamp – where I met the people who inspired me to take action myself. Which in the end, is what I am really trying to get across to people – that anyone can take action using the amazing and free, easy to use Web tools that are available to bring people together and make a difference.

So the excitement builds….

Technorati Tags: barcamp, brainjams, brainjams30jan2006, Web2.0, Web2.1

As the ideas behind Web 2.0 get more and more complicated and far reaching in their scope, I am finding it nearly impossible to write about all the great things I am discovering from others and insights I am personally developing. With my time now being taken up by client work, as well as BrainJams, I am in dire need of creating a more specific focus for my professional blog. It is tough for me to do with so many topics of interest receiving so much attention these days. I often find that I have 40+ tabs open at any one time I want to write about, but don’t have the time.

This really hit me as I was reading through Dion Hincliffe’s blog and came across some great posts he has written lately: Five Great Ways to Harness Collective Intelligence, Notes on Making Good Social Software and The Web 2.0 Revolution Spawns Offshoots.

I am not entirely sure what angle I will be taking yet, though with my interest in The Noble Pursuit, People Powered Search and Brainjams that it will involve collaboration, innovation and collective intelligence. To this end, I plan on moving my professional insights, over to Insytes.com and keeping a personal journal site in addition to using BrainJams as a group blogging platform.

Would love to hear some more feedback from those of you who keep separate blogs for such things as well as those of you who keep one blog to rule them all…

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc collaboration, Web2.0