Understand the difference between climate and weather

The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time, weather is in the short term and climate over the long term. It’s the same for your life in any form.

When traveling, when learning about a new community, knowing what is variable and what is constant is invaluable. That is, what is climate — the deep, long trend and narrative of a place — and what is weather — flighty, trivial and wildly variable?

It is challenging but absolutely imperative for understanding a new place or time. A late snow in May in Philadelphia would be a strange weather pattern, not indicative of its general climate. Likewise, when you are trying to learn something, you have to strive to now what is unusual and what is indicative of a trend.

Pen and Pencil Club board of governors

The Pen and Pencil Club, the country’s oldest surviving private press association, welcomed me onto its board of governors as one of its youngest members last February. This month, I am proud to say I was voted on to remain there.

Here is some background on the famous private club and my own goals for being part of its board again.

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The end of my couchsurfing days

Back in November, I hosted Ka Ho (who went by Leo), a couchsurfer from Hong Kong, in my home in Fishtown, Philadelphia.

Now my girlfriend is moving in, and, as she is somewhat less keen than I am to welcome strangers into our home, he’ll likely be my last couchsurfer. He was sweet and curious, a fine final guest to host.

Initially I mostly only couchsurfed myself, using the community to find free places to crash anywhere I traveled. My first experiences were part of a backpacking trip through western Europe in late 2008. (I wrote an Inquirer story about my first). Then when I bought my first home in 2009, I knew I’d have the chance to return the favor.

I welcomed people from Scotland and Germany, from Brazil and Japan, from France and China, from Nigeria and Spain, and many more. Most often, they’d quite literally get a couch, the pullout in my living room. My home isn’t particularly lavish, but it is a real place in Philadelphia, and I make up for the lack of amenities with eagerness and charm.

More recently, my girlfriend and I have used the Airbnb service to find paid opportunities, which tend to be somewhat nicer. We did that for the first time in Birmingham, Alabama back in 2012. Both services have a similar spirit: meet real people who live in that place you’re visiting for a chance at real insight.

I’ve loved my time on couchsurfing. I’ll miss it, and I’ll always be thankful for it.

Journalism DNA: Is Technical.ly a journalism outlet?

Acts of journalism are challenging and at times infrequent things for local news organizations. Pushing a community and seeking to find outcomes through difficult questions is the best of what media can do. Balancing that with the work tied to creating a sustainable news venture is a consuming one. Here’s where I am in my thinking about that process.

When we launched in 2009 what has since become Technical.ly, we always prepared for a content mixture that would include information and community journalism. We were trained in a newspaper worldview that put a type of ethical paradigm and professional standards that we embraced, even as we challenged its traditions.

Along the way, I found out that I want to build something that could have an impact. Pessimists are nothing but spectators and reporters are almost always pessimists.

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Here’s what I accomplished professionally in 2013

Setting aside personal resolutions, I also wanted to take a look at some of my professional accomplishments of the year. (Find my 2012 professional milestones here.)

I took a month-by-month look at 2013 to get a sense of my year, always striving for having a bigger impact than the year before.

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We need to deploy ‘Acts of Journalism’

The idea of ‘citizen journalism’ was always going to be short-lived.

It did its job to articulate that after generations of highly professionalized news-gathering we needed help. Now both professional and amateur journalists need a new understanding of the work we do.

I’ve been using a somewhat clunky and certainly pretentious-sounding phrase for some time now: producing “acts of journalism” to refer to the many outcomes that lead to honest dialogue about an idea and concept.

This could be data visualization and panel discussions and, yes, article writing, with a feature lead and a nut graf. So I was quite tickled to see Josh Stearns use this phase as the title of an important report he published for the Free Press Institute this fall [PDF].

As the Harvard Nieman Lab went on to point out: the report raises the crucial question of how Shied Laws should protect such acts.

This is a healthy reframing of journalism practitioners, and others who take on the work when relevant to their passions and interests.

In defense of perceived negativism in good community reporting

In our first few years of publishing Technically Philly, we’ve heard two pretty common criticisms. Some outside our community might say we’re too close and therefore too kind to those we report on. Some insider our community say we’re too critical.

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Don’t take that next photo you plan to

Though the web is growing as an extension of our own memories, digital technology is making media creation so easy that we’re burdening ourselves with internet clutter.

As using social networks and making photos and video become a new form of applause to interact with what’s around you, it becomes more challenging and so more important to think about experiencing the moment.

When I am seeing a new place or having a fun experience I’ll want to revisit, I try to limit how often I use my mobile device to supplement my real life. I was so impressed Jeffrey Stockbridge, and other photographers, describe their work as “making a photo,” rather than “taking” one. That difference may extend the point.

How civic engagement is changing in Philadelphia

The ways that civic engagement is changing in Philadelphia was the focus of a short keynote I gave to help kickoff the Penn Public Policy Challenge at the Fels Institute of Government on Friday.

I focused on the public-private efforts that have been a defining part of the civic-minded technology community I’ve covered in Philadelphia for the last years. I spoke to about 40 mostly Penn graduate students who will be participating in the competition over the next few months. Find my notes below.

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