Brad Rourke’s Blog
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I'm Just Not That Into "Theories Of Change"
An offhand question asked by a colleague the other day got me thinking. She asked me, “In five years, what would you like to be known for?” This is a slightly different version of the standard where-do-you-want-to-be-in-five-years query. The way it was framed drew me up short and made me think. My immediate answer was…
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My Taxonomy Of Community Participants: The 90-9-1 "Principle" In Person
Among people who work in, study, and manage online communities, there’s something called the “90-9-1 Principle.” The idea is that in most online communities, 90 percent of the users are audience members, passively reading posts and comments. Nine percent of the users are “editors” editing posts (in wiki-style communities) or adding comments (in blog-style or…
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Does Dialogue Always Require Trained Conversation Leaders?
The White House’s Office Of Science And Technology Policy last week invited comments on a number of blog posts that summarized citizen recommendations to enhance participation and transparency. (This is part of the administration’s “Open Government Initiative.”) One blog post was on “Enhancing Citizen Participation In Decision Making.” People shared a lot of good ideas.…
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How To Decide Where To Spend Advertising Money: Dominate Your Channel
It is trite to link to Seth Godin but his article last Friday had very useful ideas. “How big is your farm?” he asks. The idea is that you shouldn’t spread yourself around everywhere. The number of media channels available to you keeps growing. The number of places you can spend time and money is…
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The Morality-Free Zone: Wall Street and the New American Dilemma
Guest article by my friend Allison Addicott: In The Beginning Remember films such as Robin Hood or others that depict tax collectors for the landed gentry repeatedly riding into small villages demanding more money? In such films, often the final manifestation of unabashed moral corruption on the part of the landed oligarchy was the torching…
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Moving Beyond Margaret Mead
My friend Peter Levine starts a recent article with the famous Margaret Mead quotation that graces the walls and annual reports of a significant fraction of nonprofits: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead He goes on to…
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Whelan Apologizes For Publicizing Anonymous Blogger's Identity
I don’t ordinarily run “updates” to earlier stories, but this news shifted on of the the points made in Monday’s posting about the controversy between Ed Whelan and a pseudonymous blogger named “publius.” Whelan had discovered publius’ identity and revealed it. I used the occasion to make a broader point about being anonymous (which I…
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Our Civic Wedding
Having recently been to a wedding, I am thinking about my own wedding, back in 1992. We chose a decidedly nontraditional approach to our ceremony. It is a choice that has endured and I continue to be glad of it. My wife, Andrea Jarrell, and I met doing civic activities. These things were the center…
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Why I Am Not Anonymous
There’s a controversy right now over an exchange between two notable bloggers, each from opposite sides of the liberal/conservative divide. An author at the “moderate” liberal Obsidian Wings blog who writes under the pseudonym “publius” has long criticized conservative Ed Whelan, who writes at the National Review’s Bench Memos and is the president of the…
