Welcome to an experiment in social technology.

Featured Articles and Links

Why the Council should have the final say on a second motorcycle rally
Bikes Babes and Bling

You may or may not have heard, but there could be a second motorcycle rally this year in Fayetteville. Organizers are calling it Bikes, Babes, and Bling, and the event is planned for Independence Day weekend.

UPDATE: The City Council vote has been called off. Details inside.

Read more of this post.
January's Cause of the Month: Move your money to a local bank
Bailout people not banks.

Three years ago, I walked into a Bank of America branch and closed my account. When they asked me why, I told them I was fed up with escalating fees, the sterile feeling I got from doing business with them, and that I wanted my money to be used to support more local jobs.

Read more of this post.
Dislosure: My blog will be profitable at the end of 2010
full disclosure

It's been a year (or close enough) since I published this website, and it's had its share of false starts. One of my New Year's resolutions is to finally buckle down and start using the Internet the way I've always meant to.

That means creating content. I've gotten pretty good at sharing things, but I've failed to get in the habit of creating original content regularly. That's all about to change. Right? Right!

Read more of this post.
Podcast: Kyle Kellams explains how NPR expands their news service without using a subscription model, and other topics
Kyle Kellams

In this podcast, I interview Kyle Kellams from our local NPR affiliate about the future of news. We cover a broad range of topics, and if you're interested in the changes happening to journalism, you'll enjoy this interview.

Read more of this post.
The Five Stages of Social Media Grief
Replace this text to ensure web-accessibility for the blind.

I found this list on Scott Monty's website a few weeks ago, and I really liked it. He's the new media guru for Ford Motors, and he's adapted the grief model from psychology to social media.

It's really quite clever, and it reminds me of the social media resolution I brought to the Council near the beginning of the year. In the weeks after introducing the resolution, I watched the public go through each of these stages, until finally the resolution was passed and we entered stage 5: acceptance.

Read more of this post.
The green economy vs. the knowledge economy
A farmer plants seeds of knowledge that grow into life-sustaining crops.

When we talk about creating a sustainable economy, the subject of growth often comes up. To say the least, questions and predictions concerning growth are usually oversimplified. It's clear that we will eventually end up with a steady state economy, but unlike other sustainability leaders, I don't think green jobs will make up the majority of the new economy.

Although the materials-based sector still makes up a strong majority of our economy today - and green jobs will make up a majority of that sector - the potential of the knowledge sector dwarfs the growth we have seen up to this point.

Read more of this post.