Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
PodcampCT Sessions - #pcct
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 10/15/2010 - 10:32PodcampCT is tomorrow! Have you registered yet? Have you submitted your ideas for a PodcampCT session?
More and more people are, and with Podcamp tomorrow it is well past the time for me to start organizing my thoughts about whom I want to meet and talk with, and which discussions I want to attend. (For those interested in why I said which 'discussions' I want to attend, as opposed to which sessions, or even worse, which presentations, check out my post, Podcamp Reflections - #PCCT. While you're at it, check out a related blog post about REBarCamp.)
Looking at the list of registered participants, I've been building a Twitter list of PodcampCT attendees. A few other people have been building similar lists. It gives me a chance to get to know some of the people ahead of time, although I must admit, I know a lot of them fairly well already. Please check these lists yourself and find people you want to meet at PodcampCT.
The other thing I'm checking is the list of session ideas for PodcampCT. There are some great ideas and I expect some great discussions. Exactly how the sessions will be arranged, in typical unconference style, will be determined the morning of Podcamp. However, that doesn't mean we can't spend time talking about the ideas, how they might be grouped and other ideas right now. With that, I'm putting together some of the groupings that make sense to me.
Location
Morriss has suggested Geolocation – It’s Everywhere! and Sonya has suggested Location-based social networks. The two sound fairly similar, but there is probably enough to discuss in a few different sessions. Which service is best? What about privacy? Why do this at all? How does this relate to location based advertising? How does it relate to storytelling?
Related to this is a session idea by Giulia, Continuing the Social Circle – Online and In Person Doing things in person takes place at some location. What is the location? What roles do locations play in continuing the social circle?
Suzi had a similar idea, Crossing the Online Border: Taking Conversations Into the Real World.
Barcodes for fun and profit
Barcodes, and especially two dimensional QR codes, are a topic I’ve long been interested in. It is a topic that stands by itself quite nicely. Should we use QR Codes? Datamatix codes? Microsofts 2D codes? Are there advantages to using one dimensional barcodes like the UPC codes? How can you use them to promote your business? What can be done for fun and games with barcodes? Who is doing interesting things with them? To me, one of the most interesting aspects is how this ties together with location. Typically, I see a QR Code in some location. What is the location and how does it relate to a companies location specific marketing?
Narrative
Another topic that is really important to me is narrative. What is the underlying story of any event, blog post, political campaign, or social media discussion? I have plenty of stories about the importance of narrative, so much so that my business card now describes me as an “Internet Raconteur". There are a lot of different ways to approach this. Andre posted a session idea, The Power of Story in Social Movements. This sounds like a good high level discussion. There are also questions about how it relates to business and other activities. Examples of successful narratives are also worth exploring.
As an aside, it is possible to vote, thumbs up or thumbs down on a topic, and Andre’s session idea about story received a lot of thumbs up, but it also received a lot of thumbs down. I’m curious about why.
Joe suggested an idea that is closely related, What’s your Social Media success story? Perhaps Joe and Andre can collaborate on this
Narrative is especially important in journalism. A good journalist tells a story that people can relate to while providing context and important information. Kirk has suggested Getting Social with the News Media. For me, news has always been social, especially passing around sections of the Sunday New York Times on the beach and getting into lively discussions about the articles. How do news organizations take this experience and recreate it online? This could be a fascinating discussion.
Another interesting take on this is Richard’s session idea, How to engage your community and stimulate dialog?. I guess that reflects some of my own thinking. Community engagement, to me, is based on narrative and discussion. Richard writes about the quality of the traffic, which fits nicely into the discussions about SEO and analytics below.
Tools
One topic that has brought a lot of interest are tools related. How do I do this or that task? Perhaps the best starting point is a session Jack came up with, Help Me! I’m New, Where Do I Begin? This should be one of the first sessions. It may help newer people figure out how to get the most out of the day.
Paul submitted Screencasting 101. How do you set up a screencast? What tools do people like to use? I haven't really done any screencasting. I've recorded sessions, using tools like FRAPS on the PC and load-applet on the N900 , but that is about it.
Besides screencasting, there are videos. Michael suggested How to use video sites such as YouTube, UStream etc… Hopefully, people will leave stream video from PodcampCT, share their videos on YouTube, etc. Another important topic related to this is editing tools. What do you use to edit your videos?
Christopher posted Using Audio to Market Your Business: Blogtalk Radio, Talkshoe, Podcasts. This sounds like a great session. My daughter has been doing an Internet based radio show using Blogtalkradio for over two years. It isn’t about her business. If anything, it is closer to a StoryCorps idea. I’ve been interested in looking at how Talkshoe contrasts with BlogTalkRadio. I’m interested in hearing what people are doing with Skype, SIP, Google Voice and other tools. I’m interested in finding out if there are other similar services. Also, I’m curious about how cellphones fit into this. I use Skype, SIP and Google Voice with my cellphone. As with video, editing is also an important subtopic here.
My preference would be to have this be a bigger topic than simply using audio to market a business. Going back to my focus on narrative, I would like to see something like, “What are the best tools to tell your story online using audio?”
Derek suggested 3D Virtual Worlds and Social Media. I really like this idea. I’ve written a lot about virtual worlds. This can also tie nicely into the various discussions about video and screencasting. I am a big fan of machinima and I’d love to see some machinima podcasts. A great illustration of what can be done with this on a very simple podcasting style is Virtually Speaking a talk show done in Second Life and simulcast on BlogTalkRadio.
Betsy has posted Teach me SEO Basics. I often dismiss SEO as snake oil salesmanship, yet I try to use as many SEO techniques as I can. My site is built on Drupal which is well set up for SEO. I joined in a great discussion about SEO basics at one of the WesternMass Podcamps. Charlie, who unfortunately won’t be able to make it, suggested I need more web traffic! This seems to fit nicely into a broader discussion of SEO and other ways of building traffic.
Betsy also posted Teach me How to Understand and Interpret basic online analytical tools. I play a lot with Google Analytics, Compete, Quantcast, Alexa, internal metrics and other tools. It is a great topic that people really need to discuss. It also fits very nicely with the SEO topic.
Identity
Much of this relates back to our online identities. Sherry has suggested Handling “handles”. How do you manage multiple Social Media accounts?. Another suggestion I saw, but can’t find now, is about managing email. That one seemed fairly specific about moving from Outlook to Gmail, but I think the bigger and more interesting issues are around how we handle our email, in terms of having multiple addresses, and perhaps multiple personae related to the addresses, how we organize the emails so we don’t get overwhelmed. All of this fits nicely into Sherry’s idea.
Tim suggested a closely related topic, Managing my social media time, or Let’s get real – I’m already busy running my business!
This post was created as a fairly quick perusal of session ideas and adding in a few thoughts of my own. I hope people will spend a little time thinking about what sessions they find most interesting and I look forward to seeing everyone tomorrow.
New Haven Amended Miranda Rights
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/14/2010 - 08:52The New Haven Independent has posted an article about the tasings of Yale students at a club the other weekend: Cell Phone Commands Led To Club Tasings.
The article talks about the New Haven Independent obtaining police reports through a Freedom of Information request after the police refused to disclose details of what happened at the club.
The reports indicate that the two arrests stemmed from the disobeying of an order to put cell phones away. The reports do not explicitly state why that order was given.
The article placed the event in the context of “a number of complaints about excessive police aggression in other incidents”.
The students were charged with “one count each of inciting a riot, interfering with a police officer, and disorderly conduct.”
The case for interfering with a police office appears to be based on the following:
“Lieutenant Reddish explained that Jefferson’s actions hindered the investigation by deterring other officers from doing their duties by having to repeatedly come back to him and tell him to put his phone away
It appears as if the real interference is based on the police department’s repeated efforts to avoid scrutiny of its actions in their unreasonable and unsupported demand that people put away cellphones. If this request had not been made, the officers would not have been pulled away from doing real police duties. This interference is further illustrated by the police department’s refusal to release these reports until compelled to do so under the Freedom of Information Act.
The counts of inciting a riot and disorderly conduct appear to be based on the following:
While the Lieutenant was speaking to him Jefferson kept looking away and rolling his eyes, Jefferson was smirking and laughing at the lieutenant
There is nothing more disorderly than laughing at a police officer on a power trip. Yet these power trips are what do the most damage to law enforcement. There are many great law enforcement officers in Connecticut and I am proud that includes several relatives of mine. It is unfortunate when a few bad apples damage the reputation of law enforcement officials and the City of New Haven would be well advised to weed out those bad apples as quickly as possible.
This is not to say that the students are above reproach. Too often in our country, people place their individual freedoms over and above their responsibilities. They act as if they deserve some special privileges because of the family they are born into, how much money their family makes, or how skilled they are athletically.
However, if we begin tasing people because they act obnoxiously out of their self-importance and belief that their rights outweigh their responsibilities, then we would probably have at least half of the people running for office in hospitals.
All in all, as a person committed to transparency, it appears as if the real fault lies with a few bad apples in the New Haven Police Department who are more committed to coverups than to community policing. It was compounded by recent events around New Haven clubs and senses of privilege that some people have. Either the New Haven Police Department needs to get rid of the bad apples, or it needs a new version of the Miranda Rights:
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say on a cellphone, or even attempting to use a cellphone in the vicinity of a police officer will be used against you, not only in a court of law, but as justification for excessive physical abuse. You have the right to speak to an attorney. You just can’t do it on a cellphone in the vicinity of a police officer. If you cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for you. If you go to Yale, you can count on your parents hiring some of the best lawyers in the land, probably Yale Law School graduates or lecturers and suing our asses off.”
Wordless Wednesday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 10/13/2010 - 09:49
Awareness
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/12/2010 - 20:51Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro and Democratic candidate for CT Attorney General spoke to students at Southern Connecticut State University about the issue of domestic violence. Surrounding the podium where small red flags, part of the Red Flag Campaign designed to educate friends and peers about “red flags” or warning indicators of dating violence, and encourage them to intervene in the situation by saying something.
Domestic violence is a big problem, especially for college age women. Rep. DeLauro noted that two million women are injured each year because of domestic violence, and three women die each day because of it. A starting point is to make people more aware of the problem and of resources available to address the problem.
Yet in many ways, domestic violence is really but one form of a larger problem. That problem is people being uninformed and apathetic. Even worse are those that are not apathetic, but actually argue against society trying to step in and protect the abused. They misuse fancy legal ideas like “nullification”, arguing that we should nullify those parts of our national social contract that are inconvenient to their profit motives.
Students across the country may be unaware of classmates that are suffering from or perpetuating sexual violence. Even if they know about what is going on, they too often don’t want to get involved or don’t know what to do. The Red Flag Campaign is an important resource for them.
The same thing is happening in politics where some are suggesting nullification, reduced regulation, and other ideas to make it easier for large corporations to screw individuals. But there is something that can be done. Students and others who are not yet politically involved need to register to vote. They need to become more informed. They need to look closely and who will stand up for people getting screwed by corporations.
During his time as a legislator, George Jepsen co-authored the state’s first comprehensive plan to prevent violence against women. He has fought hard to make sure that we have a government of, by and for all the people, and not just the large corporations which the Supreme Court now calls people, and those who would enable these large corporations to screw the rest of us.
So, today, people gathered to raise awareness of domestic violence. Look for red flags that indicate your friends might be having difficulties and do something. Awareness was also raised about why we need people like George Jepsen and Rosa DeLauro fighting for us in Hartford and Washington. Look for the red flags that indicate that our democracy might be having difficulties and do something about that as well.
Kevin Lembo Talks with Bloggers
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/12/2010 - 10:24Monday evening in New Haven, Connecticut State Comptroller candidate Kevin Lembo sat down with a group of bloggers to discuss his campaign. Different topics interest different bloggers. Some lean more toward activism, others towards journalism, and often they end up somewhere in the middle, so the discussion was fairly broad based.
Many of the bloggers were already well acquainted with Mr. Lembo from his early explorations into running for Lt. Governor and from the Democratic Convention and Primary. War stories and strategy was discussed. Yet the real meat of the discussion came around Kevin Lembo’s vision for the Comptrollers office.
In many ways, the Comptrollers job is pretty nonpartisan. The goals of a good comptroller, no matter what party they are from should be transparency and efficiency, and Mr. Lembo spoke well about both of these topics.
For transparency, he spoke about the State Comptroller’s Bond Allocation Database. It is a useful tool that is probably not well enough known. Mr. Lembo spoke about it being a good start, but that his vision was to ultimately put the whole budget up by agency, by line item and update it regularly as money is spent for the budget items.
As a longer term goal, Mr Lembo hopes to see some of the award winning work of the State Legislature on Results Based Accountability incorporated into an online website for the Comptroller’s office.
He hopes that this will be a valuable tool for people to compare budgets and results across states. Such comparisons and further research has the potential to considerably improve government efficiency beyond the simple efficiencies achieved by making spending more transparent.
When asked about other states, he said that the comparisons would need to be done on a case by case basis. He did speak highly of the work to promote transparency that Susan Coombs, the Republican Comptroller of the State of Texas has done on their Window on State Government.
Some state government spending data is already online here in Connecticut through the Yankee Institute’s CT Sunlight Project. He lauded the project yet he thought this project should have been done by the state, and expressed concern about protecting the security and safety of some people listed in the CT Sunlight Project page.
Another key area for improved government efficiency is in health care purchasing. It is a large part of state and local budgets. By consolidating health care purchasing, even starting simply by bringing in DSS and corrections, Mr. Lembo believes significant savings can be realized. Ideally, he would like to see such savings be used to further expand health care offerings to the uninsured and to small businesses. As a large purchaser of health care, the state can also push for more efficient and better health care.
There were other areas where Mr. Lembo believes that the state can improve efficiency in delivering vital services. This could involve combining agencies to work more effectively together as well as reviewing previous spending records to see where budgets could be adjusted.
The wide ranging and frank discussion focused on the issues our state faces should serve as an example for others seeking office.
