Exercise your voting rights early this season! And have fun doing it. My Yard Our Message is a project sponsored by the Walker Art Center, MN Artists, and the UnConvention. And you get to vote and the medium and the message.
Scores of artists and designers were invited to submit yard signs around the theme of what it means to actively participate in a democracy. Their wildly creative proposals deal with information access, the cost of ignorance, get-out-the-vote messages, the war in Iran, tragedy in Darfur, the environment, and virtually every other concern facing voters in a democracy.
Here’s the offer you can’t refuse: You, your family and friends, check the FaceBook rendering of the artists’ proposals. And then you get to vote for the signs that you would be willing, nay eager, to post in your yard!
I spent almost an hour yesterday weighing the messages, the neighborhood, and my willingness to put the yard sign where my mouth is! Virtually every artist’s creation gave me pause and a keen sense that I’d like to talk about this with the neighbors!
The votes will tabulated (and the process monitored with due diligence….) The top fifty vote-getting designs will be announced August 1. They will then be made available to order as a full-sized political yard sign for $20. Top designs will also be available as free downloads. The frosting on the cake -- the Walker and MNArtists are going to print the winning yard signs and place them around the TC’s , with particular emphasis on neighborhoods immediately surrounding the habitués of the visiting RNConventioneers.
Cast your votes now (yes, you get to vote for more than one) by clicking here!
Monday, July 7, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Play it again, NCMR
In several conversations during the past few weeks I’ve heard people mention that they wish they’d been able to attend the June 6-8 National Media Reform Conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Never mind the Strib reporter and Bill O’Reilly didn’t appreciate the opportunity - in fact, their negative take might have expanded the audience.
Take heart - all of the keynote and other major talks are streamed online. You’ll see and hear Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, author Amy Goodman, political analyst Bill Moyers and a host of other speakers on the NCMR website. There’s also an audio file, transcripts, photos of participants and speakers, and an expanding collection of follow-up reports and developments.
Take heart - all of the keynote and other major talks are streamed online. You’ll see and hear Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, author Amy Goodman, political analyst Bill Moyers and a host of other speakers on the NCMR website. There’s also an audio file, transcripts, photos of participants and speakers, and an expanding collection of follow-up reports and developments.
Access sine qua non
The lynchpin of access to government information rests in the hands of every voter. Still not everyone votes, and not everyone knows how to get access to the voting systems. There’s lots of get out the vote information, of course, much of it sponsored by organizations that would like to advise you on how to vote.
Two national groups rise above partisan ship to provide the public with easy-to-use and understand guides to the election process, including information about the rights of voters, the process, local rules and regs. I thought I was tuned in because I know I’m registered and I can find my polling site -- but I just spent two hours plumbing the depths of these resources. There’s an amazing amount of information here, carefully aggregated and analyzed by trusted national organizations.
The League of Women Voters has a great guide in the June 2008 issue of The National Voter. It’s replete with information on where to look for voter registration information, polling places, guides to PSA’s, involved organizations, and links to scores of resources.
OpenTheGovernment has also gathered a ton of information about the complexities of voting in its Election Resource Center., everything from a discussion of “caging” to how to challenge an election.
Minnesota has a history of poll site registration and other open policies. Still, not everyone who can be is “in the loop.” These two nonprofit organizations, and others, have done the research to ease access to the system. Before you post that get-out-to-vote sign in your front yard you might want to know where to send would-be voters for the facts. You don’t have to know the answers, just know where to look.
Two national groups rise above partisan ship to provide the public with easy-to-use and understand guides to the election process, including information about the rights of voters, the process, local rules and regs. I thought I was tuned in because I know I’m registered and I can find my polling site -- but I just spent two hours plumbing the depths of these resources. There’s an amazing amount of information here, carefully aggregated and analyzed by trusted national organizations.
The League of Women Voters has a great guide in the June 2008 issue of The National Voter. It’s replete with information on where to look for voter registration information, polling places, guides to PSA’s, involved organizations, and links to scores of resources.
OpenTheGovernment has also gathered a ton of information about the complexities of voting in its Election Resource Center., everything from a discussion of “caging” to how to challenge an election.
Minnesota has a history of poll site registration and other open policies. Still, not everyone who can be is “in the loop.” These two nonprofit organizations, and others, have done the research to ease access to the system. Before you post that get-out-to-vote sign in your front yard you might want to know where to send would-be voters for the facts. You don’t have to know the answers, just know where to look.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Mourning Coalition of Journalists for Open Government
As readers in cities around the nation lament the cuts to their local newspaper, their primary source of accurate information and reflection, I am mourning the demise of a related organization, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government. I got to know the CJOG through Sunshine Week activities, a project in which CJOG was a major force. The Coalition also provided a forum for collaboration and communication among the many journalism organizations that stand up for open government, particularly at the federal level.
The work of the CJOG will be picked up by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, headed by Minnesotan Lucy Dalglish, and by the National Freedom of Information Coalition; Sunshine in Government will also continue to post information on federal open government issues. These are good, reliable -- but very busy -- hands in which to leave an important function.
Needless to say, the reason for closing the virtual doors at CJOG is money. Long ago I learned that people/organizations will pay for goods first, then services, and almost never collaboration. There’s no tangible, visible product, just the payoff of shared responsibility, division of labor, and the powerful impact of collective wisdom. Sometimes those benefits get in the way of other agendas, e.g. obfuscation of facts and empire building.
Thanks to Peter Weitzel for his efforts on behalf of open government and for his continued involvement at the federal level.
The work of the CJOG will be picked up by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, headed by Minnesotan Lucy Dalglish, and by the National Freedom of Information Coalition; Sunshine in Government will also continue to post information on federal open government issues. These are good, reliable -- but very busy -- hands in which to leave an important function.
Needless to say, the reason for closing the virtual doors at CJOG is money. Long ago I learned that people/organizations will pay for goods first, then services, and almost never collaboration. There’s no tangible, visible product, just the payoff of shared responsibility, division of labor, and the powerful impact of collective wisdom. Sometimes those benefits get in the way of other agendas, e.g. obfuscation of facts and empire building.
Thanks to Peter Weitzel for his efforts on behalf of open government and for his continued involvement at the federal level.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
National Media Reform Conference Distilled
The intensity of the National Media Reform Conference held recently in Minneapolis was overwhelming. It’s taken me days to unravel and process the themes of the conference and its countless pre- and post- sessions. The one mainstream media report on the conference, buried in the back pages of the Star Tribune, did the conference a disservice. I can only conclude that Neil Justin and I just attended different sessions, or maybe different conferences.
The sessions in which I participated and the excellent exhibitor representatives, provided context and content to a real movement. This is a surge of energy that has been simmering for decades.
Bill Moyers’ keynote absorbed - and deserved - much of the media attention and garnered scores of ovations. And then there was the terrific exhibit of books sponsored by BirchBark Books, a local independent. The exhibit, offering an impressive selection of related titles, was doing a brisk business every time I ventured past.
One particular observation I have is that participants ranged from teens to people who have been fighting the good right even longer than I have. The session with George Stoney, the “father of public access”, and visionary FCC Commissioner Nicolas Johnson, both from the past century, well documented that fact.
In spite of the information overload I’m proud to have been a participant at this juncture of the media reform movement. Most of all, I’m proud that once again Minnesota played host to a conference devoted to openness, freedom of information, and an informed public.
Same time next year, Minnesota hosts the annual conference of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.
The sessions in which I participated and the excellent exhibitor representatives, provided context and content to a real movement. This is a surge of energy that has been simmering for decades.
Bill Moyers’ keynote absorbed - and deserved - much of the media attention and garnered scores of ovations. And then there was the terrific exhibit of books sponsored by BirchBark Books, a local independent. The exhibit, offering an impressive selection of related titles, was doing a brisk business every time I ventured past.
One particular observation I have is that participants ranged from teens to people who have been fighting the good right even longer than I have. The session with George Stoney, the “father of public access”, and visionary FCC Commissioner Nicolas Johnson, both from the past century, well documented that fact.
In spite of the information overload I’m proud to have been a participant at this juncture of the media reform movement. Most of all, I’m proud that once again Minnesota played host to a conference devoted to openness, freedom of information, and an informed public.
Same time next year, Minnesota hosts the annual conference of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.
Peter S. Popovich Award
We want to say congrats to the Peter S. Popovich Award winners this year - especially to our own Robbie LaFleur.
Mary Flister, who has been recording Maplewood city meetings and making them available to the community, despite rebukes from to stop, and Robbie LaFleur, director of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, who has been an unyielding advocate of information accessibility for the general public, both received the Peter S. Popovich Award.
Peter S. Popovich Award is awarded by the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists.
Mary Flister, who has been recording Maplewood city meetings and making them available to the community, despite rebukes from to stop, and Robbie LaFleur, director of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, who has been an unyielding advocate of information accessibility for the general public, both received the Peter S. Popovich Award.
Peter S. Popovich Award is awarded by the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Missing Harlan Cleveland
It’s a sad and sobering irony to reflect on the recent death of Harlan Cleveland mist the energy and hope that reign at the Media Reform Conference going full steam this weekend at the Minneapolis Convention Center. For decades Harlan Cleveland has been my guiding star in a turbulent information era.
Twenty-five years ago I was involved with a conference bearing the irresistible title “A Question of Balance: Public Sector, Private Sector Interaction in the Delivery of Information Services. The conference was a typically Minnesotan response to a report from the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science -- from whence we derived the catchy subtle. With prescient naiveté we gathered journalists, media moguls, access advocates and gangs of librarians for two days of weighing the issues raised in the report, a report that one speaker accurately described as “pernicious.”
[The gathering was not without its lively moments - most notably the spectacle of Paul Zurkowski, head of the Information Industry Association, storming down the aisle, pointing his cane as he snarled “Poppycock! at the elegant visionary Anita Schiller.]
The keynote speaker at that event - and my all-time Information Hero - was Harlan Cleveland. He spoke, as he frequently wrote, about the characteristics of information “as a resource, “the basic, yet abstract information.” Cleveland lamented that “we have carried over into our thinking about information (which is to say symbols) concepts development for the management of things - concepts such as property, depletion, depreciation, monopoly, market economics, the class struggle, and top-down leadership.” It might help, he opined, “if we stop treating information as just another thing, and look hard at what makes it so special.”
In Cleveland’s 21st Century construct, information as a resource possesses these unique characteristics:
Information is expandable - “The facts are never all in - and facts are available in such profusion that uncertainty becomes the most important planning factor.” Thus, “the further a society moves toward making its living from the manipulation of information, the more its citizens will be caught up in a continual struggle to reduce the information overload on their desks and in the lives in order to reduce the uncertainty about what to do.”
Information is compressible -- “Though it’s infinitely expandable, information can be concentrated, integrated, summarized... for easy handling.”
Information is substitutable -- It can replace capital, labor or physical materials.
Information is transportable -- “In less than a century, we have been witness to a major dimensional change in both the speed and volume of human activity.”
Information is diffusive -- It tends to leak - and the more it leaks the more we have.
Information is shareable -- Information by nature cannot give rise to exchange transactions, only to sharing transactions. Things are exchanged. “If I give you a fact or tell you a story, it’s like a good kiss: in sharing the thrill, you enhance it.”
Cleveland would relish the exuberant exchanges echoing through the Minneapolis Convention Center this weekend -- snippets of conversations involving 3000 reform advocates talking about knowledge, wisdom, informed citizens and their role in a democracy, transparency in government, media ownership, network neutrality. Many of these attendees may not know the name Harland Cleveland, but they understand - intuitively and empirically -- that information is a resource that is expandable, compressible, substitutable, transportable, diffusive and, most important, shareable -- like a kiss!
Note: One of the earliest iterations of Cleveland’s thoughts on information as a resource is found in the December 1982 issue of The Futurist. Check the site for much more about Harlan Cleveland’s life as well as numerous articles written by Cleveland through the years.
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Twenty-five years ago I was involved with a conference bearing the irresistible title “A Question of Balance: Public Sector, Private Sector Interaction in the Delivery of Information Services. The conference was a typically Minnesotan response to a report from the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science -- from whence we derived the catchy subtle. With prescient naiveté we gathered journalists, media moguls, access advocates and gangs of librarians for two days of weighing the issues raised in the report, a report that one speaker accurately described as “pernicious.”
[The gathering was not without its lively moments - most notably the spectacle of Paul Zurkowski, head of the Information Industry Association, storming down the aisle, pointing his cane as he snarled “Poppycock! at the elegant visionary Anita Schiller.]
The keynote speaker at that event - and my all-time Information Hero - was Harlan Cleveland. He spoke, as he frequently wrote, about the characteristics of information “as a resource, “the basic, yet abstract information.” Cleveland lamented that “we have carried over into our thinking about information (which is to say symbols) concepts development for the management of things - concepts such as property, depletion, depreciation, monopoly, market economics, the class struggle, and top-down leadership.” It might help, he opined, “if we stop treating information as just another thing, and look hard at what makes it so special.”
In Cleveland’s 21st Century construct, information as a resource possesses these unique characteristics:
Information is expandable - “The facts are never all in - and facts are available in such profusion that uncertainty becomes the most important planning factor.” Thus, “the further a society moves toward making its living from the manipulation of information, the more its citizens will be caught up in a continual struggle to reduce the information overload on their desks and in the lives in order to reduce the uncertainty about what to do.”
Information is compressible -- “Though it’s infinitely expandable, information can be concentrated, integrated, summarized... for easy handling.”
Information is substitutable -- It can replace capital, labor or physical materials.
Information is transportable -- “In less than a century, we have been witness to a major dimensional change in both the speed and volume of human activity.”
Information is diffusive -- It tends to leak - and the more it leaks the more we have.
Information is shareable -- Information by nature cannot give rise to exchange transactions, only to sharing transactions. Things are exchanged. “If I give you a fact or tell you a story, it’s like a good kiss: in sharing the thrill, you enhance it.”
Cleveland would relish the exuberant exchanges echoing through the Minneapolis Convention Center this weekend -- snippets of conversations involving 3000 reform advocates talking about knowledge, wisdom, informed citizens and their role in a democracy, transparency in government, media ownership, network neutrality. Many of these attendees may not know the name Harland Cleveland, but they understand - intuitively and empirically -- that information is a resource that is expandable, compressible, substitutable, transportable, diffusive and, most important, shareable -- like a kiss!
Note: One of the earliest iterations of Cleveland’s thoughts on information as a resource is found in the December 1982 issue of The Futurist. Check the site for much more about Harlan Cleveland’s life as well as numerous articles written by Cleveland through the years.
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