Archive - 2010
November 10th
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 11/10/2010 - 09:30
November 9th
Understanding Our New Haven Promise
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/09/2010 - 17:25Yesterday, I received a press release from the City of New Haven. It was announcing an event scheduled for this morning that would
be an announcement of national interest that will change New Haven and the region forever...
and will be viewed by every student at every New Haven Public School because the subject of this event will completely change their lives, their families and their neighborhoods.
It sounded pretty exciting. Could this be an announcement about GoogleHaven? Or, would it simply be some overhyped city announcement.
What I found interesting is that it was tied to the site Our New Haven which is being run by the folks from Ripple100 who have been so involved in GoogleHaven and many other social media activities around New Haven.
It coincided with a ‘Social Media Sync’ gathering at The Grove. Many social media enthusiasts sat down to pancakes and share thoughts as they waited for the announcement.
The live stream started, stuttered, and then failed for many people trying to watch it. There just didn’t seem to be enough bandwidth, and GoogleHaven wasn’t the announcement telling people of more bandwidth to come. Instead, it was ‘The New Haven Promise’.
Already, venerable news organizations like the New Haven Independent have their stories about New Haven Promise up and if you want details about the program, it is a good place to start.
The article talks about Ripple100‘s involvement:
To promote the new program, the school board on Monday approved a contract of up to $20,000 with media consultant Andre Yap, and his business Ripple 100 on Chapel Street, to maintain a New Haven School Change/Promise Website from Oct. 26, 2010 to June 30, 2011. The money will come from the school district operating budget.
Andre was at The Grove to talk about The Promise. He talked about how a similar program in Kalamozoo increased housing values by up to 10% when it started. He spoke about people moving to the area. They would shop at local stores. They would build the workforce. They would make New Haven more attractive to companies looking to hire. It all sounded a bit like the liberal version of trickle-down politics.
This is where the discussion got interesting. One noted critic of the DeStefano administration said that he had always been skeptical of the city’s school building agenda. Yet with The Promise, it all came together. To have a successful program like The Promise, you need to have good schools. Promising tuition to students who achieve in high school doesn’t do much if you don’t provide better ways for them to achieve. Yet at the same time, providing better ways to achieve in school without incentives, without a promise, also isn’t going to do much.
There were discussions about how this applies to undocumented students as well as students attending magnet schools. While out-of-town magnet school students are not promised college tuition, proponents argue that local students will be more motivated. This will result in more motivated teachers, and this will benefit all students, no matter where they come from.
Many of the regulars at The Grove are tied to non-profit organizations and the question quickly moved to what can we, the members of the greater New Haven community do to help students succeed. As various people talked about different programs, the Citywide Youth Coalition was highlighted as a potential focal point and clearinghouse for people interested in helping New Haven High School students succeed.
There was also a lively discussion on Twitter. Some spoke about accessibility to post-secondary education for undocumented students and the importance of the Dream Act. Others wondered when a similar program would be available in their municipality. @Gaber205 tweeted, “I am waiting the similar announcement from Quinnipiac about Hamden kids. No?”
The New Haven Independent article noted
Promise will also pay up to $2,500 in tuition for in-state, nonprofit colleges and universities, including Albertus Magnus, Quinnipiac, Yale and Wesleyan.
So, Quinnipiac stands to gain from this, as does Wesleyan. Perhaps Middletown should be considering Promise as well.
The article at the New Haven Independent ended off with the standard back and forth between cynical and hopeful readers. In many ways, the success of the program most likely boils down to how involved the people of New Haven become. Those who sit back doing nothing but predict decay are likely to contribute to that decay. Those who take an active role in revitalizing New Haven can make a difference. It is a choice each one of us makes as we think about our social contract with the people around us.
November 8th
Music Monday - Tony Mena, a Veterans' Day Special
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/08/2010 - 12:01I stare into the waves.
I ask them to calm down and behave.
Everything in life tastes sweeter,
when you slow it down.
I suspect many of my readers can relate to the opening verse of Tony Mena’s song, “I Felt the Earth Spin Today”, but when you learn a little bit more about Tony, these words have even greater meaning.
His bio reads:
Tony Mena began learning the piano at the age of 12 with encouragement from his parents. At the age of 14 he gave up the piano and focused on high school athletics.After 9/11 he joined the military and entered the Special Operations community with the Reconnaissance Marines. At the age of 24 he was stationed in Okinawa, Japan and began re-learning to play the piano after buying a small keyboard.
During his tour in Iraq, his musical skills were needed by his Battalion and he played the piano for four separate funeral services. During the downtime between missions in Iraq, he began learning how to play the acoustic guitar with the help and instruction of several members of his platoon.
Tony Mena received a Navy Achievement Medal with a V for Valor for multiple acts of bravery while under fire in Iraq. Upon completion of his military service, he attended the University of Missouri where he surrounded himself with music and poetry as a means of dealing with many of the events he experienced in war.
When I first saw Tony’s submission on Sonicbids I wanted to put up a review right away. Then I thought about holding it off until this week. Thursday is Veteran’s Day and if you want to thank a vet, a good way to start is by going out, seriously listening to some of Tony’s music and sharing it with friends. It is that good. It is that powerful.
“I Felt the Earth Spin Today” continues with
I felt the earth spin today
and it was beautiful.See the world,
through my bright eyes.
Not only are the lyrics beautiful, but the guitar playing is solid, the melodies haunting and tied together with great singing.
As a final tribute, please watch and listen to this Youtube video:
If you check out the notes below, you will find that Saturday was the fourth anniversary of the death of Kyle Powell and Jose Galvan who were Killed In Action in Iraq.
Please, remember Kyle and Jose this Veteran’s Day. Please think about Tony who has taken his experiences to create beautiful music and poetry, and please think about all the veterans that are back in the States today living with injuries visible, and invisible.
Hard Cider Sunday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 11/08/2010 - 09:35Saturday, Beardsley’s Cider Mill in Shelton, CT made more cider than it ever has in a single day. Sunday, I was there to get some of the cider. Here’s the story.
A couple of years ago, after we had been pumpkin picking at Jones Farm, we stopped at the Cider Mill to get some cider and donuts. We noticed a Hard Cider Making Kit that they were selling and my wife said that probably we had all the tools we needed to make our own hard cider. Her first husband had been a brewer and we could probably have one of his old “carboys”; a big glass jug.
So, we picked up a carboy and started making our own hard cider. It’s pretty easy and I encourage first time readers to go back and read through the Hard Cider brewing section of my blog to read my experiences and pick up a few tips.
Beardsley’s gets a lot of people coming into their store after pumpkin picking and when the weather is good as it was this year, October can be a great month for them. As the later apples ripen, often with higher sugar content, many claim the cider gets better for fermenting. I must admit that I really like the hard cider brewed from some of the first apples of the year, but that is a whole different story.
So, as the pumpkin traffic dies down and the later apples start coming in, the folks at Beardsley’s Cider Mill make a special batch of sweet cider. Besides the Northern Spy and Winesap which make up most of the apples in the cider, they throw in some other apples and even a little bit of quince to make the cider a little tarter. Then, hard cider enthusiasts from around the state descend on the cider mill on the first Sunday of November. They line up their carboys waiting to get them filled.
As they wait, they share some of their best batches from previous years along with stories and tips about how to brew it. Personally, I like to make a very simple hard cider. I like to use an ale yeast, do two fermentations, and either add a little maple syrup, or nothing at all. This year there were a lot of people sharing ciders they had made with honey added. There was also a really nice raspberry cider that I’m thinking about trying next year.
Last year, the cider mill made 350 gallons, and it got sold out before everyone get their carboys filled. This year, they doubled the batch and made 700 gallons. On Sunday, they sold 440 gallons, so they still have some available.
If you’re a hard cider brewer, or thinking about brewing hard cider, this would be a good week to get over there and get some of this cider before its gone. For that matter, it is also a great fresh cider, so you might consider picking up a gallon or two just to drink as is.
November 7th
Pathways to Transformation
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 11/07/2010 - 11:24Recently, I was speaking with an organization about their social media presence. The head of the group spoke passionately about their commitment to ‘transformation’ and sure enough, ‘transformational’ was used twice on the front page of the website. It was in the title of one of the seven different menu selections and was in the title of the main block on the front page.
Looking a little bit deeper, they talked about transformation in terms of pursuing excellence, doing research, and training the next generation. Yet it didn’t jump out at me. Why? I suspect it was about more than just the font choices or color selections. It seems like everyone claims to be seeking transformation and pursuing excellence. I mean, common, who but a few wacky politicians are going to seek mediocrity or seek to turn back the clock of progress?
In writing, I’ve always been told to try and show something, not just tell people something. Show me how you are being transformational, don’t just tell me that it is what you are trying to do.
It was with this in mind that I attended the second session of Story.lab. Ken Janke continued his discussion about understanding the missions of our lives as stories we’ve been living and have yet to write. He spoke about transformation as the keyword for his story and how running storylab at the new coworking space, The Grove, in New Haven is part of this story. (See Jack Nork’s blog post about Friday’s meeting for more information, and especially, pay attention to Darius Goes West.)
Ken challenged us to think about the keyword for our own stories, and a few different keywords were presented; connectivity, engagement, and creativity.
This was from a group of people closely related to another group in New Haven. This second group has been talking about marketing and moving people’s engagement with a brand from the left side of a chart indicating low engagement to the right side where people are engaged in advocating for the brand.
I’ve often thought in similar ways about political engagement. We need to move people from not registered and not paying attention to paying attention, to registered, to getting out and voting, to getting involved in issues and campaigns, and perhaps even to running for office.
It seems as if all of these ideas come together into a path of transformation. The starting point is to get people connected and engaged. These two ideas are closely linked. By connecting with people that are engaged, new people become engaged, and as new people become engaged they establish more connections with other engaged people.
Yet being connected and engaged is just a starting point. When I spent time talking about the book Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope: Lessons from the Howard Dean Campaign for the Future of Internet Politics, I often spoke about what I like to call the ‘invitation to innovate’. The Dean campaign knew that they needed something special, something different, something new to make a difference, and they invited those supporters who had become connected and engaged to innovate new ways of getting out the political message.
To return to the storylab workshop, this is where the creativity comes in. As we connect and engage people, we need to invite them to be creative. We may have to help them learn new tools that they can use to express their creativity. Then, as groups of connected, engaged and creative people emerge, we can get real transformation.
Will this happen at storylab? Amongst my online marketing friends? Or at the organization I mentioned? I sure hope so. Meanwhile, I will do what I can to get people more engaged in their missions, to connect with one another, to create new ways of doing things that can transform our lives around us.
