Making Heads or Tails of It
September 29, 2008 § Leave a comment
I have been trying to educate myself about mortgage backed securities and commercial paper within last two weeks, as I indicated in my earlier post about the information resources I have been collecting that best explain the economic crisis.
By far the best resource that I have found so far is the Planet Money blog and podcast from NPR. Thier stories are featured on some of the regular programs, like All Things Considered and Morning Edition, but the podcast through iTunes has a few nuggets that I haven’t heard anywhere else, so its worth downloading.
The contributing journalists to this effort offer down-to-earth easily understandable break downs for the average listener who doesn’t have a degree in finance or economics.
I need to understand this stuff for my job, and as a citizen I see it as a responsibility. The journalists here clearly see it as their job to educate the public on how some incredibly important decisions might impact our world and our day-to-day life for generations. They do a great job.
Oh, and I was thrilled tonight to find that they also have a Twitter feed.
Twitter Election Feed
September 27, 2008 § Leave a comment
I have discovered another Twitter tool that has captivated my attention: The 2008 election feed.
Twitter has provided this brilliant platform that citizens can use to give their two cents about developments related to the 2008 presidential election. I discovered this while watching the debates last night. Not only did I find a handful of interesting people to follow on Twitter, following the feed allowed me to take the temperature of what the rest of the world was observing about the debates. People are actively using hash tags, which will enable you to more easily follow specific threads, but there seem to be some technical difficulties with this function. The hash tag links always seem to give me an error message. I can’t wait until they iron out the problems with this feature.
I picked up the feed again this morning to find some interesting news items and opinion pieces, as well as to hear the latest controversies, specifically about whether or not McCain muttered “horsesh*t” under his breath in response to Obama’s assertion that McCain wouldn’t meet with the Prime Minister of Spain. Fascinating stuff, let me tell you.
There is a lot of crap that folks are tweeting out there that you would expect from the lowest common denomenator. My overall assessment of this tool, however, is that it has the potential to encourage more people to talk to each other and debate the issues.
Perhaps even *gasp* across state and partisan lines. Now that would be exciting.
Information Resources for the Economic Crisis
September 21, 2008 § Leave a comment
At work this week, I was asked to interpret how the current economic crisis might impact the bottom line of fundraising at the University of Chicago. I thus began to compile the best information resources to help translate what is happening.
So far, the best resource I have found yet is the Planet Money blog from NPR. Here they are compiling their best stories about the crisis. It all started with the story on This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money. Totally worth the $.95 for the download.
Other good resources include
- The finance section from The Economist
- Crain’s Chicago special section on the crisis
- The New York Times U.S. Economy page
- The Financial Times special section on the global financial crisis
- My friend Grace recommended this blog: The Big Picture
- Abnormal Returns is a blog recommended by a colleague from work
- That same colleague also recommended Infectious Greed
I’m sure that there will be others emergin in the next days and weeks. I’m particularly interested in gathering anything that speaks to fundraising and philanthropy. If you have others to share, I welcome your comments. Thanks!
Chicago New Media Summit
September 14, 2008 § Leave a comment
While I won’t be attending this event, I will most certainly be watching the ning site and following the Twitter feed, looking for content emerging from the happenings there. Being on the periphery of this burgeoning community, this looks to be an exciting event. The organizers want nothing less that to establish Chicago as the “New Media Capital,” which after moving here from the Bay Area almost one year ago seems like a logical possibility. Even coming from Silicon Valley where much of the new media technology was born and is still being developed, Chicago seems the likely place for the creative use of this new technology to really take off and take hold.
This is the heartland, after all, a hub representing a real cross-section of the United States and arguably the world. The diverse cultural representation that exists here is rich soil for creative seeds to be planted. Chicago has a populist tradition of intellectualism here, and people have the ability to dig down into the resourceful working class roots and history of this place to find inspiration of those who have created vibrant communities here before with whatever means they had available to them. Finally, the creativity that exists here makes for a community of artists, writers, activists, and musicians actively creating new works and looking for and finding inspiration in each other.
As a techneophyte and citizen blogger still kind of new to Chicago, I live on the periphery of this community, still feeling kind of on the outside looking in, I’m excited by the possibilities of what inspiration might come out of the Chicag New Media Summit.
Nota Bene
September 7, 2008 § Leave a comment
Regarding my earlier post about election coverage, I would be remiss not to again mention my brother-in-law’s blog, The RNC Is Coming To Town. He has been able to watch the activities from the vantage point of his downtown St. Paul condominium, as well as on the streets of St. Paul. His observations of the media’s coverage of events is enlightening. He’s another citizen journalist taking matters into his own hands.
Watching the Election: The Conventions
September 6, 2008 § Leave a comment
Back in June I blogged about watching coverage of Clinton’s and Obama’s speeches as they vied for the top spot on the Democratic ticket. I had recently discovered Twitter, and I was finding that I was getting better information and insight than I was watching any analysis on CNN, CSPAN, or even PBS or NPR. Folks I follow on Twitter (including some news outlets) were posting links leading to further information, and I was getting better information on FriendFeed, Twitter, and FaceBook.
While watching the coverage of the DNC and the RNC, I again found myself infront of the TV with my laptop simultaneously following my friends on the social networks, and again, I found I was getting more insight and information from the Internet. It have to say that it was a lot more fun, too. The night that Sarah Palin spoke, FriendFeed, Twitter, and even my friends’ FaceBook updates lit up in response. The following night when McCain delievered his acceptance speech, my friend Stacy in Ohio and I were IMing eachother our observations.
There were people Twittering during both conventions. There were alternative news sources tweeting about all of the protests and the police activity around the RNC. I heard nothing about the police raids from CNN or PBS about Amy Goodman’s arrest or the raids on private homes in St. Paul. I learned this from the UpTake’s webcast and Twitter feed.
I am continually inspired by citizen journalism and the movement to reform media. The Chicago New Media Summit is coming up next week, and though I won’t be there, I am eager to learn about the outcome of that event. I’m hoping to learn about more alternative news services as the election approaches. Meanwhile, I’m planning on watching the election returns on The Daily Show’s Indecision 2008, as well as continuing to get information from my Twitter feed.
While I am discouraged by the political discourse that is reflected on mainstream television, I look to my social networks to be reminded that there is a majority of people in this world who, like me, want to get information out there about what is really going on in American politics, and raise the level of political discourse above the drivel that the conservative media is feeding us.
Blog Day 2008 And Beyond
September 2, 2008 § Leave a comment
Yesterday was Blog Day, so as a good Internet citizen, I participated over at my personal blog, Paradoxologies. In participating in that exercise, I have been mulling over the meaning of community and what it means in the context of the Internet. I don’t know any of the bloggers that I wrote about well at all, but I obviously feel some connection to them, as they are all writers about topics that are of interest to me. I have only met one of them in person, and I have corresponded with each of them over the months that I have been following them, and occasionally responding to their posts.
Not long ago, I read another blog post (though regrettably I don’t remember which) that called on other bloggers to commit to posting comments regularly. That post really got me thinking about how important it is to keep the momentum of this online grassroots network-building by actively participating. I continue to espousing the growth of this online public discourse, and I am committing to updating my blogs at least once a week, keeping up with the blogs I like, and regularly posting comments.
Building community through social networking tools is only going to be successful if we enocourage each other by engaging each other.
InFomentation 