Alan’s Kiloblog

There is a blog in Ann Arbor called Ann Arbor Is Overrated and the maintainer of said blog can launch a rolicking discussion simply by posting that he’s out of town. The premise of the web site, that Ann Arbor, Michigan is overrated, attracts many Ann Arborites, who know that their adorable city can be full of itself at times. The format is oddly effective. Something clipped from the newspaper, offered with backhanded comment, and poeple begin to draw their own conclusions. How do I run this racket in New Orleans?

I’m pulling together a Open Space Lunch on Tuesday at 11:30 am at Cafe Reconcile. One of the principles of Open Space is invitations, so I’m sending out personal invitations in email. If you have not recieved one, it is because there is no way I can write a personal invitation to everyone I know, so I wrote three invitations with two or three people addressed in each invitation. It was a means of introduction.

I totally forgot out this word, productivity. I just wrote, “We are not about identy web sites, flashing things, rather we are dedicated to helping nonprofits and neighborhoods use the Internet for collaboration and productivity.” Collaboration and productivity, using the Internet as an office network.

Neighborhoods are now the focus of the rebuild. Think New Orleans orginally intended to create a per-neighborhood Wiki we site. This needs futher exploration, or storytelling. The focus on neighborhoods, or on organizing information based on community, be it geographic, or by meeting place, well then, geographic whether it is defined by a point or a boundary. Although, by point, I do mean a congregation, coffee shop, or other such meeting place.

Everything we create must be printed. Textile will permit this. Need to create styles for headings and other semantic markup in all my templates, and encourage people to create documents with semantic markup. That way, it is much easier to print.

How quickly can I write a meaningful blog entry?

Something that I’m going to consider today. I’d like to get this week rolling by drawing attention to Erace New Orleans and Think New Orleans. I’d like to draw some of the other New Orleans bloggers that I respect into the conversation.

There are a few pressing tasks in my blogging work. Here are some of the subjects.

Analog Social Networking – Perhaps with a photoblog of the analog social networking tools in New Orleans, the Sliver by the River especially. Need a photograph of the Fair Grinds’ multi page cork board. This will include observations, criticisms of the Town Hall meetings, and other community meetings.

Open Asterisk Business Plan – I need a business to pursue whilst I’m here in New Orleans, and this is a good one considering. A great many telephone systems have been destoryed and need to be replaced. There are a number of businesses that find themselves the only business remaining. They are inundated with calls and are poised to adopt an in house PBX and CRM software.

Open Source ASP – Another business to pursue is software and web development. In New Orleans I find a lot of people who are developing basic applications from first principles. They would be much better served by resuing open source applications, or even Web 2.0 applications. Much of what people want to accomplish with their web site, can be accomplished with WordPress. If WordPress doesn’t cut it, then Mambo will. I’d like to fashion a business of creating web applications, seemlingly instantly, by fitting the customer with existing open source solutions.

Corporate Blogging – My R.O.I. on blogging can become getting New Orleans firms up to speed, by showing them how to use a blog as their corporate presensence web site. This is what I’m doing with Erace New Orleans, and the Eracism Blog. There are prospects for different industries in New Orleans. How does one sell blogging to a corporate client? What is the model? I think it is customer service.

Failure Patterns – Owning Up, Currying Favor, Proving Myself and Too Little, Too Late. These are the mechanics of my own personal Groundhog Day. A little bit of navel gazing never hurt anyone.

Living The Long Tail – The Long Tail is starting to make some intrdocutions. Yikes! When the Long Tail makes an introduction, what sort of dance does one do? The Kiloblog is an interesting exercise in living a life with no secrets of my own.