Wigley and Associates

At the invitation of Bernadine Joselyn, Director of the Blandin Foundation’s Public Policy and Engagement Program, I spent the day at KAXE - Northern Community Radio’s headquarters in Grand Rapids, brainstorming on how to best foster the development of citizen journalism / community media in their bio-region. (Click photos to enlarge.)

In the conference room, L to R: Jeremy Iggers, Executive Director, Twin Cities Media Alliance; Bernadine Joselyn; Scott Hall, KAXE Community Access Coordinator; Louise Mengelkoch, Chair of the Mass Communication Department at Bemidji State University; Ross Williams, community volunteer; Heidi Holtan, KAXE Outreach Producer; Maggie Montgomery, KAXE General Manager; Dan Houg, KAXE engineer.

Jeremy told the group about his experience with the Twin Cities Daily Planet and I talked about my experiences in Northfield with Northfield.org, Locally Grown, and leadership blogging in our local civic blogosphere.

Later in the afternoon, I did a video interview of Scott and Maggie about their long history with KAXE for the Media Giraffe Project. (Click play to listen to the audio. 44 minutes.) However, I neglected to get the story on the community radio art work in the corner of the conference room (center). Hopefully, I can entice one of them to attach an enlightening comment here. Right photo: You know you’re in northern Minnesota when the external doors of the hotels have this sign on them.

I’ll be in Grand Rapids, Minnesota today and tomorrow for meetings at the Blandin Foundation where we’ll be discussing citizen journalism / community media initiatives in rural Minnesota.  Or to put it in my current favorite lingo:

How can online “weapons of mass collaboration” be used to
strengthen the fabric of local neighborhoods and communities?

I may do some mobile blogging via my cell phone – both photos and audio — so watch for some unattributed content as I’m not fond of thumbing explanatory text, prefer to do that via laptop once I’ve got an internet connection.

Update at 7:45 PM: Some photos of Blandin Foundation headquarters on the Mississippi River. Click to enlarge.

Stacy Becker is one of consultants I’m working with at the Citizens League on their MAP 150 project. (See her MAP 150 blog.)

At a meeting last week, she told me about this book: Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams.

I bought the book last night and read the intro and chapter 1 (PDF available on their site). Wow. I’d read two of Tapscott’s earlier books Growing Up Digital and The Naked Corporation but they didn’t grab me like this one already has after 33 pages. It’s probably because I’ve been so immersed doing the stuff they’re talking about (creating online communities, jump-starting a local blogosphere, developing leadership blogging and podcasting, teaching the use of web-based project collaboration tools) that I’ve not fully appreciated the pervasive implications.

Cool phrase: “weapons of mass collaboration.” I’ve incorporated this into my blog tagline:

Wigley and Associates: Leadership blogging, citizen media, and weapons of mass collaboration for organizations.

Here are some quotes from the book that stood out for me.

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I do a variety of consulting work for the Citizens League but I’ve also been a member since 1989. (They also were the fiscal agent for the grant that started the Utne Reader Neighborhood Salon Association that I headed for many years and it was a Northfield salon at my house in 1991 that gave birth to Northfield Citizens Online, the non-profit parent of Northfield.org. But I digress.)

The Citizens League has teamed up with MPR’s The Current to host a series of public policy events called Policy and a Pint. It’s hugely successful, in part because it makes policy stuff fun. Food! Liquor! Socializing! Music! Civic discussion! Yeah, baby!

Last week I attended their event called Health Care Handcuffs at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown. Citizen League staffers (click photos to enlarge and see their Staff page for more) in attendance included:

Left: Bob DeBoer, Victoria Ford, Ann Kirby McGill, Sean Kershaw
Right: Brian Bell, Annie Levenson-Falk

Sean Kershaw (see his ‘Sean’s Blog’) is featured in the Feb/Mar issue of Minnesota Law & Politics (not available on their site but see the PDF of the article on the League’s website.)

Yesterday, I spent an hour at the James Gang Hideaway visiting with Thor Henning Lerstad, News Director for the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK). He’s visiting Minnesota this week to “study best-practice examples of Consultative/Participatory/Public Journalism.”

(Last September, I spent an hour at the James Gang Hideaway visiting with a colleague of his, Jørgen Jensen, a journalist with Danmarks Radio (DR), Denmark’s national broadcasting corporation. He also wanted to learn about all the citizen journalism/community media/civic blogosphere stuff we’ve been doing here in Northfield for the past decade.)

Northfield.org’s Anne Bretts was kind enough to pick him up in the Twin Cities and bring him to Northfield for the day… and return him. How’s that for Minnesota hospitality? I brought him to lunch at Northfield Rotary (”Hey, everybody, a real live Norwegian named Thor!”).

I’ve included Thor’s email to me and Anne below in case others are interested in what he’s up to. Now we just need a similar visit from a journalist in Sweden to complete aScandinavia trifecta and maybe top it off with visits from journalists in the other Nordic countries of Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
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