Scott Heiferman's Notes

Brooks: "20% of the mall storefronts could soon be empty... cocooning is more likely to be a perilous psychological spiral"
Reader YW: "We don't buy things simply because they are on sale, or because we are bored... We interact more with people... not all downsizing will be a deprivation. Simplify, and you will be happier. Learn to make your own coffee."

Rushkoff: "Brands strive be cults, while religions strive to become brands... there are products and professionals to fill in where family and community have failed us... Sometimes it feels as if there’s just not enough air in the room. People who used to know better now condemn Wikipedia for refusing to accept ads on their site - as if there were no justifiable reason to do anything if not for the money... how we can reconnect with the real and get ourselves out of this mess"

Rev Billy: "Real progress will be local. A Vision of the Local now appears before us. Local-lujah! We don't defer to celebrities, to suits in skyscrapers, to the theater of power in the glamorous distance. What do we have right here? ...This is the first year in fifty that no super malls are opening in the continental United States... The environment of pavement and ads and cars broke up our human connections, our talking to each other, the unhurried richness of neighborhood life. And the prosperity? Our money went back to corporate headquarters. And where is that? Often, we had no idea. We find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Stop and trade names with a neighbor, touching hands, not hurrying away from the eyes... This is the basic healing that we need now across our country. Do you hear my preaching? It's clear now - We were forced into isolation. We were taken from each other - that's what we allowed them to do to us. We are getting to know each other again. This is the stuff of our new economy. It will grow and we won't let it go this time. Local-lujah!"

"the crash of wall street is such a wonderful blessing... now's the chance to convert from consumer confidence to community confidence... we're gonna walk out our doors... and meet our neighbors" -revbilly [ignore the douche interviewers & watch @1:30 in:]

While SV tackles how to "Make It Even Easier To Avoid Awkward Human Interaction" we work on increasing actual human interaction!!!! Go Meetup Organizers! Save the world!

Goleman: "he viewed his passengers, too, as a 'flock' whose needs he tended"

techPres/Koo: "MyBO, the video game"

NYC: "Debt stress? You're not alone. We can help you take control."

If it feels good to know you're not alone, Find The Others.
If you want to take control, take control with The Others.
If you use what The City is offering here, you might get valuable help (yes!), but will you feel less alone?
I'm sure it's a good, vital service the city is providing, but is The City the only "We" that people turn to? Can there also be a true We? We means The People. There's a "Yes We Can" [Help Each Other Get Through Debt Stress] that involves people taking control, self-organizing themselves for support.
See "Financial Wisom in Groups"

Prop 8 Meetups

NYT: Obama's Blackberry emails are "generally crisp, properly spelled and free of symbols or emoticons.... Mr. Obama has, for at least brief moments, been forced offline: to prepare for debates, one rule was quickly established: No BlackBerrys. Mr. Axelrod ordered everyone to put their devices in the center of a table during work sessions."

Localmouth: "more communication between local people can be a very positive thing"

SH: I've noticed that the UK has the most vibrant discussion & activity happening around the future of neighbourhood community, social capital, and civil society. More live experiments & background discussion (David Wilcox) than the US.

NYT: "A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort."

Effort sometimes pays.

"The bottleneck is at the top of the bottle" - someone at the ny tech meetup

Szeto via Bekman: "democracy itself needs to be a really kick-ass app"
Obama: "most importantly, I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in your own democracy again.”

brad burnham: "proof points that decentralized innovation trumps centralized innovation" (via betaworks)

"shake the hand that feeds you" -michael pollen in "in defense of food"

see the people you serve, see the people who serve you. then, there'd be less nastiness. anonymity leads to problems.
(chelsea market, nyc)
[industrialization, everything isn't media, screens]

NYT Arvin: "voting alone... vote without seeing anyone at all... drivers on their cellphones while they held ballots out the window, as if buying burgers at a McDonald’s drive-thru"
[screens]

Beppe: "Obama has delivered a low blow... Tonight Italy has suddenly got old... We no longer smell our own smells... I feel a stench of arteriosclerosis in the streets... via the Internet, without let up"

Come celebrate Sunday 1PM at church with Reverend Billy

More info

Obama: "I'll be in touch soon about what comes next"
Don't wait, Organize now.

Douglas Rushkoff: "the opportunity is not to create the next great website for modeling bottom-up community activity, but to go and actually do the stuff... if everyone wants to do the 'meta' job of creating a brand or utility through which activism happens, then there will be no one left to do the actual organizing.... we must take Obama at his word: the moment is now, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. The election of Obama is itself a cue... participate the public school, work towards alternative energy possibilities, design and install bicycle lanes, argue at work for equal pay for women, assist local agriculture projects, develop complementary currencies and non-profit credit unions... Obama’s going to be busy for while... Just go out the door and look around. There’s opportunities literally everywhere. If we do get fooled again, it will only be because we have fooled ourselves."

Change.gov: Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
Tell us your ideas (who's us?)
Tell us your story (who's us?)
+ From Huffpo:
 

Umair Haque: "Obama's Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators"
* "We're used to thinking about organizations in 20th century terms... built for an industrial era... Obama's organization blew past these orthodoxies... by tapping the game-changing power of self-organization"
* "strategy, too often, kills a deeply-lived sense of purpose, destroys credibility, and corrupts meaning...  Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things"
* "The power many corporations wield is thin power: the power to instill fear and inculcate greed. True power is what Obama has learned wield: the power to inspire, lead, and engender belief... forget about a short-lived, often meaningless 'competitive advantage'. It's a concept built for the 20th century. In the 21st century, there is nothing more asymmetrical - more disruptive, more revolutionary, or more innovative -- than the world-changing power of an ideal."
---> "start building 21st century institutions"

The 21st century starts now. It's up to us now.

via Micah Sifry: "form a network of networks aimed at empowering local grassroots efforts for systemic change"

Trippi: “They were Apollo 11, and we were the Wright Brothers"

Rev Billy: "We shop too much because we are afraid of death... Everyone gorging and no-one working, only managing information?... Children wandering from screen to screen? Parents lost in traffic jams, deep in techno-loneliness? With the unshakable feeling of - permanent out-of-sight wars? Oh its hard to imagine the Shopocalypse's completeness. The air we breathe is changing. The sea... Oh America! Turn! Walk sideways! Leave the product there and walk sideways! Leave the car on the shoulder. Leave the celebrity on the label. Leave the logo on the interstate. Let's walk into that field, over to those trees. And sit down, and wait in silence for the life after shopping. THE SHOPOCALYPSE IS AT HAND!"

Casaleggio: "2043: Grassroots movements emerge all over the world to manage local problems related to energy, food, environment, health. The planet is split into thousands of communities linked by the Net"

Right or wrong, conspiracy-laden or not, gotta love predictions about how the world will go. Congrats Davide & Co!

NYT: "one part Debtors Anonymous and one part Weight Watchers... someone to congratulate you... How much better off would the world be right now if people had their own personal finance committee to consult before making big money decisions? I've long lamented the fact that there aren't as many money clubs as there are book clubs" (via jesse richards)

Lazer: "What happens to the Obama "network" after the election?... the architecture is built to optimize for the short run coordination of efforts and extraction of resources... if the network is to be institutionalized (excuse the apparent oxymoron). [SH: THE GOAL OF THE NETWORK SHOULD BE TO YIELD EFFECTIVE SELF-ORGANIZED INSTITUTIONS)... This may be a realigning election - not (necessarily) in the usual terms that political scientists mean, but in terms of the re-organizing of American politics...  while the campaign has been historic, the decisions that are made after the campaign, I think, may fundamentally restructure American politics for the 21st century." (thx karina)

SH q's:
Will there be a mega federal platform for networked local groups? A giant walled garden? There's a value to a centralized network (like facebook or my.bo)... What's best & most effective for short-term? Long-term?
Will government bureaucrats (sorry) be the best platform-makers?
How is a campaign different than a government to enable self-orgaizing?
If MyBO evolves to be the federal Community Organizing system, will that invite cross/non-partisan participation? Will that be a continuation of the campaign (not inviting to McCain voters)?

NYT: "Oprah is the magic word for [Saudi] women here who want to scream out loud, who want to be heard"

Rudayday: "As a washed-up New Economy Thought Leader, I must say I am fascinated when I come upon (what I consider to be) the analog ancestors of the weblog."

Seth Godin: "we're on the verge of some exponential increases in productivity... as we allow the network to do more than let us watch stupid YouTube videos at work."

Oprah Hugs, Abe Hugs.

Raul: "And then he hugs me and I think, 'Abe Lincoln hugged me. He smells like Old Spice... I saw him. I smelled him, he felt real. His jacket was scratchy." (via Jen Bekman)

Tina: "Hugging Oprah is everything you want it to be... You feel you're becoming a better person, she smells lovely. It's like going to a spa for a week.

Jeff Jarvis: "my blood is boiling. Now we have GM trying to remake itself into a bank to get a piece of the bailout bonanza... If you’re going to socialize something, don’t let it be the banks. Let it be the common good of..."

Dear Mr. Glaser,
The Chinese food joint did some testing. Love isn't obvious anymore, so we had to make some changes.

"How does your Meetup help its members save money, make money, or cope in tough times?"

via Kottke: "just asking people whether they are going to vote is a good way to get them to actually vote"

Dear Ad-Media Biz,
You're dying because you think in phrases like "captive audience". It's time we all do work that puts the people first. Please reconsider how you're helping. You can start by not holding people captive. Yeah, it's just a phrase, but language matters. At their core, YouTube & Facebook & Google aren't thinking about holding people captive. They're not even thinking of people as an audience. We need the best & brightest -- people like you -- to help out with giving the people more power. Make something people want. There's a lot to do.

Does this election mean the 60s are over? Democrats aren't hippies? Baby boomers passing the baton.

Giving a speech in SF at 5pm today at a conference. Ping if u want to come

Steven Levy: "when u improve things by an order of magnitude, you haven't made something better -- you've made something new." Bak: "as soon as developers get the taste for this kind of speed, they'll start doing more amazing new web apps and be more creative in doing them." Levy: "goog hopes to kick-start a new gen of..."

~~As soon as [organizers] get the taste for this kind of X, they'll start doing more amazing Y and be more creative in doing them. Z hopes to kick-start a new gen of...

If you're an Obama supporter in NY, I've got 2 friends organizing ways to help on Saturday. Contact me

Fortune: "Terry Semel is on the verge of creating the 21st century's first media giant."

Came upon this via my blogpost at the time "right. teens want to interact with pepsi and interact with eachother under the pepsi umbrella... it's very difficult for marketers to realize that they're not at the center of people's worlds."

Pre-Facebook. Only 3 years ago, folks.

Zakaria [Must Read]: "wake-up call from hell. If we can respond and change our behavior markedly, this might actually be a blessing in disguise... keep the party going artificially... investments, not consumption... enormous investments to consume... The financial industry itself is likely to shrink... 30% of S&P 500 profits last year were earned by financial firms... top math Ph.D.s were being pulled into nonproductive financial engineering instead of biotech research and fuel technology. Capital expenditures went into retail construction instead of critical infrastructure. The crisis will stop the misallocation of human and financial resources and redirect them in more-productive ways. If some of the smart people now on Wall Street end up building better models of energy usage and efficiency, that would be a net gain for the economy.... Washington arrogant, lazy and careless. Its decision making has resembled General Motors' business strategy in the 1970s and 1980s"

As I wrote in 2006 and 2007, There's a lot to do. Let's spend our work-time on what people need.

Georgian Times: "the public has to self-organize and defend their rights. Otherwise, it is impossible to change the situation."

Larry David: "This is like waiting for the results of a biopsy... Bachmann got through my radar this week, right before bedtime. That's not supposed to happen. That was a lapse in security... I was more fidgety than a ten-year-old at temple."

THE BROKERS WITH HANDS ON THEIR FACES BLOG

Kevin Kelly: "Our first meet[up] last month exceeded our expectations... self-tracking in any way - biometrics, mood monitoring, life-logging, DNA sequencing, etc. etc. - please come and considering sharing... the Quantified Self Meetup"

White Whine - A New White Person Complaint Daily.

Obama Photos (via Kottke)