Digital Garden
There’s a lot of information online. People are tired of the shouting. And so we’re retreating into our safe spaces to explore concepts and connected thought. It’s the digital garden, a return to and evolution of blogging.
“The garden is farmland that delights the senses, designed for delight rather than commodity.” (quote source)
Movies
Movies that never get old, stay relevant over the years, uncover more depth each time you watch them, and that are notable in general.
Retrospective and Direction Setting
I think a lot about goals and life trajectory, specifically the correlation between the two. Some people seem to set their sights on a goal and achieve it; others set their sights on a goal and don't achieve it but find a path in the process of striving toward a goal;...
Shaping culture in online spaces
I'm often perplexed by the kind of commentary and conversation that proliferates online social spaces and mainstream media in general. There seems to be such a disconnect between people and ideas; vitriol abounds around just about any topic you can think of -...
Community Lessons from the Public Sector: Engagement Drives Innovation, Not Visa Versa
Originally on Community.is, this post is the third of a three-part series on lessons companies can learn on community-driven innovation from the civic innovation movement. The civic innovation movement, in which governments look to organizations across sectors and...
Community Lessons from the Public Sector: Culture is More Important Than Strategy
Originally on Community.is, this post is the second of a three-part series on lessons companies can learn on community-driven innovation from the civic innovation movement. When...
Community Lessons from the Public Sector: Collaboration, Not Competition
Originally posted on Community.is, this post is the first of a three-part series on lessons companies can learn from community-driven innovation in the civic innovation...
Never Again: Thoughts on the 70th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, it's easy to believe that 'never again' will we see this kind of mass systematic perversion of right and wrong and violation of human dignity on so many levels. It would look nothing like it looked, just as nobody back then...
Lost in translation. Idioms that can’t be translated literally.
I love languages, probably because they're one of the most fundamental explorations into a culture. You can learn so much about a culture by the way they say things, and idioms are no exception. The TED Blog recently posted 40 idioms that can't be translated...
Knockout and New Perspectives on Violence
*Note: This piece was originally written in Winter 2014, forgotten about, and published when rediscovered a year later. If you were assaulted on the street would empathy be your response? Here’s why it was mine. As I lift myself off of the concrete sidewalk, two women...
People, not brands, tell the best stories
When a brand says one thing, but does another, our authenticity radars beep wildly and we put up our defenses. Recognizing trust is essential in building relationships, many brands have worked to appear more authentic. But brands trying, rather than being, authentic,...
Astronauts for President!
“Astronauts who have seen the Earth from space have often described the ‘overview effect’ as an experience that has transformed their perspective of the planet and mankind’s place upon it, and enabled them to perceive it as our shared home, without boundaries between...
Visualizing multilingual societies
Twitter Tongues is a neon universe-like visualization of language supernovas tweeted in New York City and London - though, London is less supernova and more clusters of constellations. It's amazing to see how much more integration there appears to be in London, with...