Boardwalk Empire: five lessons to learn from season one of the hit HBO drama

The celebrated HBO historical drama Boardwalk Empire, set in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, is making its way through its second season, and I’m catching up, having recently finished watching the first season.

The well-funded period piece, with backing from Scorsese, Wahlberg and others, tracks the life and times of a character based on a real political boss of the time. It’s a compelling story, tinged with real happenings, heavily researched authenticity and complex characters. In short, it’s a great watch.

Having finished the first season, there are a few takeaways I found myself internalizing:

Continue reading Boardwalk Empire: five lessons to learn from season one of the hit HBO drama

Philly Tech Week April 22-28, 2012: seeking anchor organizers and sponsors for second annual festival

The second annual Philly Tech Week will take place April 22-28, 2011, as we announced on Technically Philly recently.

We unveiled our media kit, made impressively by my colleague Brian James Kirk, which you can see here.

The open calendar of events was first held this past April, attracting more than 4,000 people attended at least one of 65 events held throughout the city and surrounding counties during the inaugural celebration. See my roundup of the event series impact here.

Continue reading Philly Tech Week April 22-28, 2012: seeking anchor organizers and sponsors for second annual festival

Philly Daily News List of ‘Rising Power Players’ under 40; I’m on it

The Philadelphia Daily News today ran a cover story celebrating 10 of the city’s ‘rising power players,’ in celebrating the close of this year’s State of Young Philly, and I am proud to say I’ve been included.

Find the story online here, and my section here. Go buy a copy.

I was included for being one of three co-founders of local technology news site Technically Philly and being involved in the development of the city’s startup and hacker communities. I was perhaps most pleased that I have so far survived the Philly.com comments, mostly because I have helped build a small for-profit with three full-time employees.

The automatically-generated plaque that a company offered me by email after this news story ran. Though the $169 price tag was a little more than I thought worth it, I was interested in the process and how the newspaper itself didn't offer this.

While I am certainly proud to be included, I am humbled knowing that there are so many other young Philadelphians making great change. There is no way this list of 10 could do that justice. It’s just a highlight of some of us, and I’m proud to be part of it, but I am more than aware of how many others could have been on this list.

For the record, though, I am only 25, not 27. I should also say that I am certainly nervous about being included because of my relatively small contribution at such a young age. I look forward to being involved in much more in the future.

A PDF of the cover here and the article here.

I should also add that my colleague Sean Blanda was also recently included in a young up-incomers list.

Beware ‘filter bubbles’ online: TED talk from Eli Pariser

From this very compelling TED video from former MoveOn.org Executive Director Eli Pariser on ‘filter bubbles’ happening online due to personalized algorithms (i.e., in truth there is no one Google search, as nearly 60 filters dictate results)

“We may have the story of the internet wrong. This is how the founding mythology goes: in a broadcast society, there were these gatekeepers, the editors, and they controlled the flows of information. And along came the internet, and it swept them out of the way and allowed all of us to connect together and it was awesome. But that’s not actually what’s happening right now. What we’re seeing is more of a passing of the torch, from human gatekeepers to algorithmic ones. And the thing is, the algorithms don’t yet have the kind of embedded ethics that the editors did. So if algorithms are going to curate the world for us, if they’re going to decide what we get to see and what we don’t get to see, then we need to make sure that they’re not just keyed to relevance, but that they also show us things that are uncomfortable or challenging or important…”

American Association of Museums honored our work with a bronze award

I mentioned the work we at Technically Media are doing on publishing strategy for brand development of the National Constitution Center, with Constitution Daily.

Others seem to think it’s smart too.

That work just won the American Association of Museum bronze award for digital communities.

Macbook Pro: why this general consumer went the Apple route

After years of catching heat from colleagues, friends and sources in the technology world for tapping on my Dell laptop, I jumped in and bought a Macbook Pro, after reading, seeking advice and asking a lot of questions. Suddenly, the passing of Steve Jobs had a more timely, personal meaning.

Like most, I grew up a Windows user. I was comfortable with it. I liked it, even. So, when I bought laptops — three since 2004 — I stuck with what I knew: Dell, following their college media blitz from that time (remember that timely ad campaign, video below or here).

That ended up changing, and I have some thoughts on why.
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Quotable on WHYY: Temple University apps and maps studio funding could lead to ‘connective tissue’ of product pipeline

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A newly funded ‘apps and maps’ studio at Temple University could be another part of the ‘connective tissue’ between early stage ideas from novice entrepreneurs and sales worthy or impact-driven ideas, I told WHYY reporter Maiken Scott last week for her story on the news.

I reported on the funding for Technically Philly. Read her story here.

In the world of radio, there were a few versions, and I don’t have the full version with my audio included, but below hear two of the audio pieces: one from Maiken and my audio clip that was played following the host’s intro.

LISTEN HERE FOR FULL VERSION

LISTEN HERE FOR MY CLIP

Steve Jobs: ‘I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers’ [VIDEO]

In honor of the passing of Steve Jobs, I was trolling through videos of the Apple co-founder. I came across one that was very relevant to the news industry today.

More than a year ago, Steve Jobs spoke about the iPad and Apple’s broad role in touching publishing and journalism, during a broader interview at the D8 conference.

At 1:50 in the below video, watch highlights of Jobs talking about his relationship with news and follow the quote below.

“One of my beliefs, very strongly, is that any democracy depends on a free, healthy press…. Some of these papers — news and editorial gathering organizations — are really important. I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers myself. I think we need editorial more than ever right now. Anything that we can do to help the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other news gathering organizations find new ways of expression so they can afford to get paid, so they can afford to keep their news gathering editorial operations in tact, I’m all for. What we have to do is figure out a way to get people to start paying for this hard earned content. So [the tablet industry] provides us an opportunity to offer something more than just a web page and to start charging something for that. I’m trying to get these folks to take more aggressive postures than what they traditionally charged for print because they don’t have the expenses of printing, they don’t have the expenses of delivery and to charge a reasonable price and go for volume. I think people are willing to pay for content.”

Still Life with Woodpecker: my favorite passages from the Tom Robbins 1980 ‘post modern fairy tale’

Still Life with Woodpecker, the 1980 ‘post modern fairy tale’ from Tom Robbins that follows the affair of an environmentalist princess and an outlaw, has to be one of my favorite novels.

It was the first novel from the irreverent and celebrated Robbins, and I love his ability to intersperse his own philosophy into his characters and story arc. Below, I share some of my favorite passages from the book.

  • “The sky is more impersonal than the sea. Above the birdline, higher than the last referential cloud, at an altitude that oxygen will not voluntarily frequent, acrosss a zone where light drives the speed limit and never stops for coffee, crossing that deser in which gravity is the only sheik, a vehicle, owned and operated by Northwest Orient Airlines, whistled through its nostrils as it bucked the current of the Pacific jet stream.”  p. 26
  • “Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society had a cop problem.” p. 29
  • “The jetliner whistled to conceal its fear of gravity.” p. 30
  • “For all its fluent resonance, a bomb says only one word — ‘Surprise!’ — and then applauds itself. p. 64
  • “We all dream profusely every night, yet by morning we’ve forgotten ninety percent of what went on. That’s why poets are such important members of society. Poets remember our dreams for us.” p. 95
  • “Equality is not in regarding different things similarly, equality is in regarding different things differently.” p. 97
  • “There’s no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon.” p. 128
  • “Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone.” p. 161
  • “Niagara Falls have been looked at so much that they’ve become effete, sucked empty by too many stupid eyes.” p. 222
  • “The wedding was at dawn, and dawn had a nasty habit of showing up before breakfast.” p. 242

There are a number of longer passages I love that are just too long to transcribe, like the “neoteny” section on page 19 and ‘tunnel vision’ on page 86 and one on “intimacy” on page 150 and one on “hide and seek” on 244 one on what love is like on page 249

Will jobs ever come back?: maybe there is an answer to the employment bomb

Is our recession another blip in centuries of economic rises and falls or is something darker happening?

Part of me agrees with the recent post from media critic Jeff Jarvis, who voiced a concern I’ve been working through myself: efficiency-creating technology has continued to speed and, well, there are a lot of old people coming.

There is a real conversation happening that a new normal rate of unemployment should be expected, though there is counter to that — we’re just too close to the economic collapse to have any sense of what is normal.

But here’s one additional thought I keep gnawing over.

Continue reading Will jobs ever come back?: maybe there is an answer to the employment bomb