Unite! Inspire! Record!

All Blog Posts (72)

Documenting Good Works

We've been working on workshops for non-profits on digital storytelling / social media ... how to "document and celebrate" a for-good project. Representing projects through compelling stories makes your organization's "good work" easier to communicate to others and more memorable. Conventional approaches to project reporting often fail to capture the deeper and more authentic story. Standard forms or reports focus on quantitative data and general descriptions of activity, and don’t capture the… Continue

Added by Citizen Creator on August 2, 2009 at 10:16pm — No Comments

It's serious (global jobless)

The International Labour Organisation estimates global jobless tally will increase 21-50m this year ... http://bit.ly/17g4UF Continue

Added by John Reaves on August 2, 2009 at 5:41pm — No Comments

Narrative vs. Numerical Data

We've been working on a workshop on narrative media as a critical component of Gov2.0 reporting & transparency ... a counterpoint to numerical data. It's aligned with the "citizen creator" concept ... narrative structured social media for project PR, created by project participants and impacted members of the community. Ethnography and other "white space" discovery methods are becoming critical to social research, NPD, and other fields, why not the push towards transparency that's part of G… Continue

Added by John Reaves on August 2, 2009 at 5:38pm — No Comments

Mashable Announces Summer Of Social Good Charity Drive

I know we have recently mentioned Mashable here, especially in regard to their directions and assistance in making social media more potent on this side of the Iran election protests. While we were hitting Mashable for more ways to follow the flurry of activity going… Continue

Added by Michael Oberle on June 18, 2009 at 11:30am — No Comments

The Role of Art & Artists in the 1930s WPA and Today

A panel held at the Queens College Museum in May 2009 discussed the role of art and artists in the work done under the WPA, and the prospects for the arts in today's ecomonic climate. Panelists: Dr. Amy Winter, Director of the museum, Nick Taylor, author of "American Made," and Dr. Fran… Continue

Added by Paul Rosovsky on June 16, 2009 at 10:30am — No Comments

Putting People Back to Work

Author Nick Taylor describes how the programs of th… Continue

Added by Paul Rosovsky on June 15, 2009 at 6:00pm — No Comments

Open Government Dialogue

Open Government Dialogue asks the general public to respond to the question, "How can we strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness by making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative?" Users can post their thoughts, then vote on the value of others' posts. The site's admirable goal is to respond to the President's memo earlier this year on Transparency and Open Government, by collecting public opinion that wi… Continue

Added by Elizabeth Goldstein on June 15, 2009 at 5:13pm — No Comments

great minds think a....

This may have been noted already, and if so, kindly ignore the repetition. WPA 2.0, west coast version, is in business at UCLA, with an architectural/infrastructural focus and a very different look. I found the link at BLDG Blog. I guess the metastasis of the name, to use that ugly word in a good sense, is inevitable for being so apropos. Check it out at http://wpa2.aud.ucla.edu/index.php/ Continue

Added by Gerald Lombardi on June 12, 2009 at 6:26am — 1 Comment

Working Through the Great Depression: "Painting a National Portrait"

Excerpts from a lecture by Thomas Thurston at the Queens Colleg… Continue

Added by Paul Rosovsky on June 8, 2009 at 12:30pm — No Comments

Montgomery County: The First ARRA-Funded Project

Shovels hit the ground in Montgomery County, MD for a highway repair project in March through May 2009. A short documentary featuring the managers from American Infrastructure and shots of the work being done on New Hampshire Avenue Project 650.… Continue

Added by Paul Rosovsky on June 8, 2009 at 11:30am — No Comments

Materials For Department of Transportation Contacts

Liz Dreyer and I have been reaching out to various folks withing the U.S. Department of Transportation. Welcome to you, if that's how you got here. To make the emails we sent a little lighter and swifter, instead of attaching support documents, I've posted the PDFs here for easy download: Two-page overview of the WPA2.0 project, click here… Continue

Added by Tim Maner on June 5, 2009 at 3:00pm — No Comments

David Lynch's Interview Project

Ok, this post might be off the core topic, but I was intrigued by the interview concept (kinda related to the StoryCorps posting I did a while back). David Lynch has started an interview project., he calls it a “roadtrip where people are found and interviewed.” He says that it… Continue

Added by Tim Maner on June 2, 2009 at 11:30am — No Comments

Center for Innovation in College Media ... Journalism Contest

"The Center for Innovation in College Media is a non-profit think-tank that was created to help college student media adapt and flourish in the new media environment. We hope to do this by a number of efforts, including: * National hands-on training workshops and conferences. * Regional hands-on training workshops. * Open-Source technology development and testing. * Open-source research about college media and technology.… Continue

Added by John Reaves on June 1, 2009 at 4:00pm — 1 Comment

First Person America

Thought this might be of interest: http://www.hardtimes.firstpersonarts.org/ It's a national competition looking for videos, photographs and stories documenting how "individuals, families and communities are managing during these hard times." Continue

Added by Priscilla Watts on June 1, 2009 at 9:24am — No Comments

Making it easy to track ARRA projects

Recovery.org is a new site for tracking ARRA-funded projects. It features a great interactive map that shows allocated Recovery money by state, and allows you to drill down to county and city levels to see individual projects… Continue

Added by Elizabeth Goldstein on May 28, 2009 at 2:30pm — 1 Comment

ProPublica's stimulus blog

Here is an have an idea, ProPublica has a citizen reporter aproach including the adopt a stimulus project; so why not try and incorporate that reporting into projects WPA 2.0 covers. I really hope and expect that there won't be… Continue

Added by Hal Eagar on May 26, 2009 at 1:00pm — 2 Comments

We've started pilot WPA 2.0 projects ...

... we're covering local projects in Maryland (the first ARRA project announced, a highway project in Montgomery County); and in New York (a local economic development project). We're also talking about a fascinating possible project involving rural telemedicine. If anybody has suggestions, please let us know. We're particularly looking for innovative projects in underserved areas, or areas hard-hit by the economic crisis. And of course, now that we're lining up pilot projects, we're also hopin… Continue

Added by John Reaves on May 21, 2009 at 9:00pm — 2 Comments

More Stimulus Money Comes to NY

$11.3 M for transportation projects through federal ARRA Governor David A. Paterson today announced the certification of an additional $11.3 million for transportation projects in Central New York through the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Continue

Added by Carolina on May 21, 2009 at 5:52pm — 3 Comments

NPR StoryCorps

This is an obvious one to link to, and I know we have discussed NPR's StoryCorps project. But here is a link to their site. Continue

Added by Tim Maner on May 21, 2009 at 5:00pm — 2 Comments

Why there needs to be someone in charge

I am still trying to get a grasp of our concept of what WPA 2.0 is, or what we would like it to be. I know it represents the intersection of a number of things, which is one reason why it's important and compelling. At the same time, because of this multi-facetedness, I believe WPA2.0 runs the risk of becoming prohibitively complicated, chaotic, and unappealing for anyone to want to participate in. I recently read a study put out by the Voluntary Action Directoriate of Multiculturalism and Citi… Continue

Added by Zoe Woodworth on May 21, 2009 at 12:23pm — 3 Comments