There’s really only one rule for community as far as I’m concerned, and it’s this - in order to call some gathering of people a “community”, it is a requirement that if you’re a member of the community, and one day you stop showing up, people will come looking for you to see where you went.
How many of you want to be involved in places that would miss your talents, input, thoughts when you departed? Adam addresses this question and goes to discuss the loose ties that bind a lot of us online. Like water, we all can flow into Flickr, participate, and then leave - not to come back for weeks or forever, for that matter. I can’t remember a social networking or any website for that matter, that has contacted me via email asking me where I’ve been or why I’ve been lax in my participation. That sure sounds creepy and everyone pretty much knows that would just be automated emails, but maybe there needs to be work done in this area and less done in the funny or cute Server Error messages. Twitter, looking at you on this one.
Hope you all can make it tonight. 7pm. Wieden+Kennedy. Portland is packed with mass transit, so I hope with the venue being downtown you can find a way to there. Make sure to RSVP for the event at our EventBrite page - it’s easy!
Marshall Kirkpatrick will be leading an excellent discussion on “Problems and Solutions in Social Media Production”. He’s commandeered four people to share their experience with creating or using social media and we hope everyone will take away something valuable from the discussion.
I’d say to arrive a few minutes early at W+K - it’s near Peet’s Coffee; I’d suggest you grab a cup of Peet’s, but that’s just me. Please “knock” on the large metal doors just outside of W+K if they are locked - knock real hard. Margaret or someone who works at W+K will hear you.
Tell them you are there are for the Social Media Workshop, and that we are meeting on the 3rd floor Nike space for the event.
AGAIN: We are meeting on the 3rd floor Nike space for the event.
This is Truth and Gauss from a new social media service called “Public Press”. Public Press is a digital newspaper where anybody can instantly publish, organize, and archive news and information about their neighborhood or community. Citizen reporters can upload hyperlocal content anytime from any device that can send email or access the web. Readers can subscribe to newspaper feeds and browse neighborhood news 24×7.
We’ve been working on Public Press for over 18 months. We’re ready to open our website to the world next week. To help us work out last minute bugs and create a smooth social media experience, we’re looking for users to help us finish beta testing the site. Please go to http://www.publicpress.org/alchemy/invitation.jsp to sign up for an account. The invitation code is “community”. Starting next week, you won’t need an invitation code or need to be logged in to see the site.
Our hope is to enrich local communities by improving communication between neighbors. Public Press is a Portland-based company. Please join us and help make Portland the epicenter for social media and citizen journalism.
By Tim