Collective Management

Lastnite at my new haus the members of Little Berlin Gallery gathered to sit and brainstorm about taking their collaborative efforts online.  The collective has seen great success in its first few years, and with the new members (myself being one of them) added to the mix there is a new inertia within the group.  It’s moving towards getting shit mad organized.

With a giant sketch pad hung on the wall, and some geeky ass monitor set-up, I began to introduce the concept of a project management tool to the collective members – none of them had ever seem or used such a tool, with the exception of one member, who used a case tracking tool in an academic setting when her department’s website was being rebuilt.  Obvious overlap occurs with communication tools like Facebook, so the idea was very accessible to everyone, they had just never been directly exposed to the idea of using a tool like this to help them do what they do so well – collaborate to create.

Much to my surprise, they were completely bought-in to taking the thus far completely organic, democratic, oftentimes chaotic collaboration process onto a more structured platform.  Read More »

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OMGWTFSXSWFTW

Yes, I am pretty excited to be boarding a plane tomorrow to participate in the mass-migration of the world of techne to the land of Texas.  For the past few years i’ve sat back and watched this from my Philly window.  Lucky for me they are only gone for a few days, always returning, bringing new ideas and energy, and the stink of a five-day binge back with them.

Ah yes, this time I go along.

I’ve some pretty low expectations for the content of the conference.  Miller Light is an official sponsor, really?  Many people have echoed the sentiment that it’s not really worth traveling for at all.  The content, that is.

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My Work.

Lately i’ve been thinking a lot about what it is I do.  I have a role that takes me from 9-5 that I quite enjoy, and have been rather successful in.  I work for good people, doing good work which is challenging and diverse.  This is a good thing.  After two years wearing many hats each day from 9-5, i’ve grown into a desire to narrow my focus.

I think this is called career development, and i’m OK with that.

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BarCamp Philly 2 + BeerCamp

About the time of my last post here, I had this gchat convo with Roz Duffy:

stellarfluff: kelani12:38 PM me: wuzzup?stellarfluff: are you still into barcamp this year or you all fired up on other projects?

12:39 PMme: um, I could be into it…I guess it depends on when, who’s involved, etc.
you doing it again?
with JP??

12:40 PM stellarfluff: as of now thats the plan
me: nice
i’d love to help you out again
it was pretty awesome

12:41 PM stellarfluff: ok cool
you were ACES
me: aw shucks
stellarfluff: topps
me: well let me know when you’re rolling on it
stellarfluff: we’re working with uarts to choose the date now
then its all in
me: awesome

That’s all it took to get a game-changing weekend’s culmination of awesomeness rolling for me.  The inaugural BarCamp Philly completely shifted my perception of the power of community, especially the one growing here in Philadelphia.  I didn’t hesitate for a second to get involved when Roz and JP approached me towards the end of the summer.  Working with them last year was a blast, and illuminated for me where my skills are strong(or not), where I work well on a team, and how damn good it feels to facilitate community-driven innovation. Read More »

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BarCampPhilly 2 + BeerCamp v2

(or what I did for the last four months)

This post was my first attempt to summarize the awesomeness that was BarCamp Philly 2 + BeerCamp.  It came out rote and logistical, writing it the day after both events my mind was still reeling, so I left it unpublished for awhile, mulling over everything.  Now that i’ve typed up the broader-view of the experience (v1 above), I thought it worthwhile to publish this one too incase anyone out there on the interwebs wants to know how shit went down:

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