Wigley and Associates

I’m working on a project for the MN Sesquicentennial Commission related to its efforts to “… bear witness to the tragic side of Minnesota Statehood in 1858 and acknowledge the pain, loss and suffering of the Native American culture in Minnesota.”

Project activities are guided by the Sesquicentennial Advisory Committee for Native American Partnering (SACNAP) and I’ve set up a blog titled Native American Minnesota: A journey of learning and understanding (nativeamericanminn150.org).

I returned from the Trials Training Center (a client) in Tennessee yesterday, having spent 6 days taking photos, recording videos, and blogging the U.S. round of the World Trials Championship (USGP) , also known as the Wagner Cup. Yep, it’s all about motorcycle trials, a sport that’s been one of my hobbies for the past 30+ years.

I created the blog site for the event back in January  but it wasn’t until I arrived on site a few days prior to the event that things heated up. I posted 70 or so blog entries over the course of the week, focusing more on the staff, volunteers, and activities surrounding the competition than the competition itself.

This is the second time I’ve blogged an event over the course of several days. The first was the 2006 International e-Participation & Local Democracy Symposium in Budapest and Baltimore.

We’ve redone the website and weblog for Knecht’s Nurseries and Landscaping, converting it from a NetObjects Fusion / Blogger site to WordPress. Once again, Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary did the heavy lifting on the design and various technological tasks. I’ve been in charge of teaching Deb Knecht to use WordPress and Windows Live Writer.

A client, Upper Midwest Gourmet (UMG) , asked us to create three new ancillary blog sites for new product lines. Working closely with UMG’s Michael Applen and Jesse Grote, Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary created the designs and did most of the various technological tasks.

L to R: Quarry Coffee Microroasters, Right Roast, and Flamenco Organic Coffee.

I worked the past few months with Joel West, Senior Planner for Yaggy Colby Associates, to set up and maintain a blog for the Rushford, MN comprehensive plan.

The Representative Journalism (RepJ) team paid a visit to Minnesota yesterday. (See the initial RepJ blog post for details on the project.)

Left: At the offices of the Bush Foundation, L to R: Bill Densmore (RepJ collaborator, Director of the Media Giraffe Project, U of Mass, Amherst), Peter Hutchinson (President of the Bush Foundation), and Leonard Witt (RepJ founder, Communication Chair and Associate Professor, KSU, Atlanta, Georgia)
Left center: Len mugs for a MinnPost.com billboard in a downtown St. Paul skyway
Center: Afternoon coffee break: Len and Bill with Andrew Haeg, director of Minnesota Public Radio’s Public Insight Journalism Network.
Right center/right: Me, Bill and Len, relaxing in MPR’s listening pods

Left: Recording a Locally Grown radio show/podcast at KYMN studios: Bill and Len with (center) Chris Peck, RepJ collaborator and editor of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, TN. (Earlier in the afternoon, Len and Bill also paid a visit to John Schott, Chair of Cinema and Media Studies at Carleton.)
Left center: Present in spirit throughout the day: Ruth Ann Harnisch, President of the Harnisch Family Foundation, which has funded RepJ.
Center: Relaxing at the Contented Cow: Bill, Len, and Chris with Tracy Davis, LG co-host and head honcho of GuildCraft Carpets and Northfield Carpets International. We then dined at Chapati.
Right center/right: Late night RepJ strategy session in the lower level Archer House conference room: Ross Currier, LG co-host and Executive Director of the Northfield Downtown Development Corporation (NDDC) with Bill, Chris, Tracy and Len.

What is twitter?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Like my colleague Michael Fraase, I tried Twitter a few times when it was first introduced but it didn’t ‘take hold’ for me.

But after reading Howard Rheingold’s reasons for why he’s hooked on Twitter, I’m ready to give it another try, only with a local, Northfield twist. I plan to focus my Twitter posts on Northfield-related ’stuff’ - my whereabouts in my hometown, as well as miscellaneous other Northfield-related musings. I’d like to ‘follow’ (that’s a Twitter term) other Northfield-area citizens doing likewise with their Twitter accounts.

I’ve got my cell phone and Google Talk (IM) account hooked up to my Twitter account so that I can send and receive messages with both.

I’ve added the above Twitter badge to our Locally Grown (LoGroNo) sidebar, about halfway down the page, right after the comments section).

I’ll consider switching that badge to one like this (the above image is recent screenshot, not a live view) that tracks all the people I’m following who’ve likewise committed to focusing their Twitter posts on Northfield-related activities.

The community blog and podcast that I co-host in my hometown, Locally Grown, has been chosen to test an innovative project called Representative Journalism, led by Communication Chair and Associate Professor Leonard Witt and colleagues at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. See Len’s blog post for details, as well as this press release (PDF).

Over half of the $51,000 grant from the Harnisch Family Foundation will flow to Northfield. My co-hosts and I will be paid for our time on the project. The Representative Journalism (RepJ) project will contract with a professional journalist who will be based locally. And money’s allocated to experiment with different ways to make the project financially sustainable.

Project staff will be visiting Northfield in mid-March to conduct interviews and help us get launched.

I’m working with UK colleagues Shane McCracken and Andrew Brown on a project temporarily named Councillor 2.0.

Cllr2.0 is campaign to help inspire councillors and other civic leaders to use the internet to communicate with their constituents, stakeholders and the general public. We are filming a group of Norfolk County Councillors as they learn how to use social media, digital photography, email and blogs to achieve their aims of engaging more effectively with their constituents.

The project is being managed by Gallomanor. Norfolk County Council are providing support for their councillors and filming much of their journey. Training and blogging expertise is provided by Wigley and Associates and Andrew Brown. The film is being produced by Napoleon Creative. OpenEye Communications, ICELE and Involve are providing editorial and promotional support.

We’ve revamped the website and blog for Doug Hughes and Christine Rotthoff at Arise Group LLC (AKA Doug Hughes Properties).

We recently constructed a blogsite (web site with a blog) for Beth Closner and Randy Lutz at Construction Consulting Partners.

I teamed up with the folks from the Sitting Bull College Horizons Project to teach a community blogging class in Minot North Dakota yesterday. We had about a dozen people from both the Spirit Lake Nation and the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation communities (also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes).

That’s Deborah His Horse is Thunder, Wiya & Associates LLC, in the left photo, helping a participant. Lyman Bercier, SBC Horizons project staffer for North Dakota, is in the photo on the far right. Click photos to enlarge.

I teamed up with the folks (David Isham, Susan Beaulieu, Al Nygard, and Deborah His Horse is Thunder) from the Sitting Bull College Horizons Project to teach a community blogging class in Bemidji yesterday. It was my largest class to-date, 15, with people from Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake communities. With that large a group, it was hugely helpful to have collegial assistance!

I was a bit of a laggard on taking photos until the end when Horizons Project Director Al Nygard took over. Click photos to enlarge.

A tip-of-the-blogger-hat to the Information Technology Services staff at Bemidji State University for the use of the Mac computer lab.

We’ve redone the website and weblog for Ray Cox, converting it from a NetObjects Fusion / Blogger to WordPress. Northfield web designer Sean Hayford O’Leary did the heavy lifting on the design and various technological tasks. I’ve been in charge of teaching the ol’ dog Ray new tricks, since he’s been using Blogger since late 2002. I’ve introduced him to Windows Live Writer, my new favorite blogging client application.

Jessica Peterson and I teamed up for another Horizons community blogging class last night, this time in Wabasha, MN (”home of The National Eagle Center and Grumpy Old Men“).  We also had participants from Hokah. Click the photos to enlarge. Also joining us, like he did last week in Floodwood, was Martin Wera (upper left in the left photo, waving). Martin’s a new staffer with the Horizons Project at the U of MN Extension.

A tip-of-the-blogger-hat to the folks at the Wabasha Kellogg Elementary School for the use of the computer lab.