Content partnerships do not work, my colleague Sean Blanda posited last year.
From the very first conversations we’ve had that led to his post, I’ve wanted to prove this wrong. In truth, I do believe in the future, the expectations and roles will be sorted out, and content partnerships will be understood and successful.
But, for now, content partnerships still don’t work.
Continue reading When content partnerships (still) don’t work
Last year, on November 29, 2011, I was able to host a group of civic-minded creative class technologists and entrepreneurs for one of a dozen parlor sessions that Philadelphia civic leader Sam Katz led to garner feedback for USA250, an effort to begin planning for July 4, 2026.
The initiative publicly launched this summer.
Continue reading When a group of technologists got together to talk about July 4, 2026
I hit the final free throw to put my team up four points in the last few seconds of the final championship game of the inaugural Jimmy Quinn Memorial Basketball League in Fishtown.
Including a playoff game and a best of three championship series (we won in two games), our team went 7-2, through September, October and November (lost one game due to a week of bad weather as we played outside at the Fishtown Rec before the playoffs inside at Shissler).
The league featured an active Facebook group, on which one of the league coorganizer’s wrote weekly wrap ups of the first few games before the contributions slowed, though they were fun while they lasted. Naturally I plucked some of the wrap ups below:
Continue reading Jimmy Quinn Memorial Basketball League in Fishtown
Relationships are a currency.
They’re worth something — friendships, acquaintances, colleagues, sources. They enrich our lives and, yes, they are integral to any success. Things get done by people who have relationships, to help guide, support, advise and strengthen goals.
This goes for everyone, but there are surely some industries that need them more than others: construction and development, politics and government and, certainly, reporting and community building. So I think a lot about the connections and people who make up community in all of its forms.
If relationships are one of the most valuable resources we have, why do we so often ignore their impact and why do three types of people so often abuse the role of connection?
This was my October Story Shuffle contribution. Listen here.
There are ghost books and haunted places in old Philadelphia, but I am not here to tell a fiction. I am here to offer a warning. Scary stories have everything to do with patterns, of what is unfinished: loss, sorrow, missed opportunity and vengeance. It’s not really a haunting. It’s a sinking. Of knowing you do not have control over what is coming, of what is coming for us.
I am not here with a ghost story, but with a warning. Someone in this room is going to die before the month is over, and it’s because of me. I believe the only way to save ourselves is to recognize the patterns, and I have found a pattern. But it could also be our undoing.
Let me explain.
Continue reading Ghosts Story Shuffle 15: the wind chimes of Philadelphia
College newspapers are facing the same challenges of their commercial counterparts have had for decades but, despite their advantages, are struggling to fundamentally innovate.
Nearly 40 professional journalists, students and college administrators attended representing a half dozen universities and student newspapers attended Thursday the Future of College Media event I helped organize with Temple University Journalism Department Chair Andy Mendelson for our monthly local Online News Association get-together.
None of the newspapers represented had made any revenue outside of print and web advertising.
Continue reading Innovations (and shortcomings) in College Media: notes from latest ONA Philly event
Updated with more perspective on the job-crashing Internet here and more from Vox Media here. Also, though some think there is a mighty economic transition happening, many readers and friends have pointed that I didn’t properly address the ‘lump labor fallacy‘ here, in which I incorrectly assume there is a static number of jobs that are going away. I still think there is perspective worth sharing below. More comments welcome.
In the next 20 years, the United States and the broader global economy will either dramatically rethink its employment structure or a history-altering societal change will take place.
Of course, unemployment numbers are gamed by those who give up on looking for jobs, but the idea here is that it’s hard to understand why anyone seems to think that the overall unemployment numbers for our country will trend anywhere but upward.
Let me be clear, this is armchair commentary from someone with absolutely no background in economics or geopolitical, socioeconomic trends, so I am writing this hoping for outside insight because I can’t figure this out.
Below, I (a) outline the problem as I see it, (b) look at big economic drivers that seem to be chances for more problems, (c) list all the opportunities I understand that could reverse somewhat this trend and then (d) highlight some of the transformational changes that could lie in wait for the next generation, before offering some more reading and then waiting to get yelled at in the comments.
Continue reading Why 10 percent unemployment and worse is our future, unless we rethink our economy
A dense, 30-minute look at the past, present and future of education reform in the United States was the focus of a presentation by the celebrated University of Pennsylvania professor Ted Hershberg last week.
Though his lecture was part of a class I’m taking that is officially off-the-record, because I know Hershberg’s work through a friend of mine who is part of his research team and what he said follows what he often speaks on, I thought it was okay to share what I felt was a helpful top-level look at the problems and opportunities.
For context, Hershberg is an open left-of-center thinker, but he has a reputation for being an outspoken critic of the teacher’s unions. I share some easy-to-digest notes below.
The annual State of Young Philly event series from Young Involved Philadelphia featured two economy-focused events at which I spoke.
One was a series of lightning presentations last week and a second was a panel discussion Tuesday night that was followed by breakout groups.
Some takeaways below.
