The best "your order has been shipped" email EVER

Humor works!!! Below is the email I just received regarding two CDs I ordered on Sunday. (yes, I still get CDs--don't trust that new-fangled MP3 stuff.)
.......................

sheldon-

Thanks for your order with CD Baby!

(1) Pamyua: Caught In The Act
(1) Pamyua: Verses

• Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
• A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.
• Our world-renowned packing specialist lit a local artisan candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
• We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved "Bon Voyage!" to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, June 14, 2011.

We hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. In commemoration, we have placed your picture on our wall as "Customer of the Year." We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh...
We miss you already. We'll be right here at http://cdbaby.com/, patiently awaiting your return.
--
CD Baby
The little store with the best new independent music.

More VOTE FOR ME campaings

I really like when companies decide to make donations to nonprofit organizations in their communities. That happens a lot, especially in the holiday season. Thank you all.

But (you knew this was coming), I'm getting really tired of the "vote for your favorite charity/project and we'll give the winner some money" schemes (yes, this is my second rant on this topic)

1. This only rewards the organizations that can get a lot of people to vote for them by going to a web-site or sending a twitter message. Not the best way to decide which project or organization is best (or even good).
2. This rewards nonprofits for straying from their mission--the most fun, sexiest, most "creative" project gets the money. Not the one that best fulfills the organization's mission.
3. This distracts organizations from asking individuals for money (This is why I kind of liked the Give to the max day project of GiveMN.org--it rewarded organizations for actually getting individual monetary donations.)

(I promise my next post will be something positive--not another rant)

This Land is Your Land

While camping on the North Shore of Lake Superior this week, we went for a hike down Beaver River. Walking down the river to the shore of Lake Superior, we came upon a sign that reminded me of a verse of Guthrie's song This Land is Your Land:

This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking, now they tried to stop me.
They put up a sign that said private property.
On the back side, it didn't say nothing.
So it must be that sign was made for you and me.

Followers are Important

Nancy Lublin has another great column in Fast Company: "Let's Hear If for the Little Guys"

She notes that we are obsessed with leaders. But for every successful leader there are a bunch of followers who actually make the leader's vision a reality. We need to value the do-ers. We need to reward the do-ers.

Humor and the TSA

Maybe it has something to do with Milwaukee--A cold midwestern city in the shadow of Chicago. Maybe it has something to do with Milwaukee's favorite beverage. For whatever reason, the TSA staff at MKE seems to have a sense of humor. I only have two cases of something humorous to cite--but that is two more than I have ever experienced with TSA at any airport.

First case:

As you leave the security area, you are confronted with two large, official airport signs over the area where you tie your shoes, re-pack your laptop and put your belt back on:

"Recombobulation Area."

EVERYONE stops to take a picture of the signs. (Also, TSA staff suggests that they are going to start charging for pictures of the sign.)

Second case:

Siting waiting for our plane, we hear:

This is an official TSA announcment. Will the person whose pants are falling down please return to the Security area in Concourse C to retrieve his or her belt.

Twin Cities Media Alliance Fall Forum

Title: Networking And The New Media Landscape: Reporting News, Building Community, Making Money

Sponsor: Twin Cities Media Alliance/ Twin Cities Daily Planet

Location: Minneapolis Central Library

Attendance: about 85--from across the political/ideological landscape

Twitter tag: #TCMA09

Keynote: The Twin Cities Media Ecosystem by Matt Thompson of Knight Foundation:

Three stages of media in the Twin Cities:

• The Niche Media phase--lots of publications--from an early 20th century publication on grain milling that had correspondents in London and New York to a lot of papers written in the languages of the many new immigrants.
• The Mass Media--the multiple daily newspapers that were in the Twin Cities merge into just two--one on the East side (St. Paul) and one on the West side (Minneapolis). National news is concentrated in a few "voices" (e.g. Walter Cronkite)
• The Networked Media--Cross feeds--new curators--individuals select the sources we believe and share them, information is connected to other informations, sources connect to each other, news aggregation sites connect to each other, We have to talk about

Local media has to stop talking about the information we provide and start talking about the value we provide (this was really brought home to be during a site visit to TCMA by a local foundation last week).

First Panel (Reporting the News) Take Away:

Everyone is getting into news aggregation--from hyper local neighborhood sites to Minnesota Public Radio and WCCO TV (Local CBS). TC Daily Planet, while it was an early aggregator of community news (both ethnic and geographic communities), will be competing with more aggregators in the near future.

Keynote 2: Bruce Schneier, "Blogging, New Media and the Generation Gap"

Five key works for new media

• Be Interesting--every page, every sentence, every article
• Be Entertaining--it is no accident that many young people get their news from John Stewart. Rush Limbaugh knows he is an entertaining.
• Be Engaging--(I would say "Be Community") people want to talk to each other. Communities can be geographical, topical. Community can be more important than news
• Be available--there has to be an easy way to get to older content.
• Be agile--you don't know what the new device or new platform will be tomorrow or next week. You don't know how new generations will use the Internet How the young will use the Internet will not just be different, it will be incomprehensible.

Bruce recommends checking out book "Free" by Kris (Sp???) Anderson (I wonder if I can literally check it out since this is happening in a library.)

In response to a question: "Net Neutrality can not fail. If it fails legally, there will be enough work arounds that it will eventually succeed. It is an important fight. It if fails, we will see a major set-back with a bunch of old media companies using the law to hand on to an old model. People fighting it will have a lot of technical tools--they just won't have the law on their side."

Second Panel (Building Community) Take Aways:

• Building community is a lot of work (hey, it was actually acknowledged!)
• While a couple years ago, no one site will be the "one site" for any specific community.

Third Panel (the hardest to get speakers to fill) "Making Money" Take Aways

• www.bringmethenews.com is a for profit news site. (at least they hope to be profitable). No banner ads--rely on sponsored content. My question--Isn't sponsored content just another way to say "long form ad"
• L3C funding model for funding=Low Profit Limited Liability Corporation. Primary aim is to further a social purpose. They are designed to attract capital to benefit the community. Good source for information--Americans for Community Development.
• From the Uptake: "If anyone tells you they have funding and business models for media figured out--don't believe them."

Very different city website

The city of Westminster in the UK has unveiled a new website--"Google simple". Just a few tabs, a big search box, a mapping function, a calendar, and a short list of topics. Totally contrary to the Attention Deficit inducing website design that is now typical. Check it out at http://www.westminster.gov.uk/

Proposed High Voltage Transmission Line along a Greenway

Background
Our local electric utility, Xcel Energy, has proposed two new substations and a double-circuit high- voltage transmission line along the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis. Xcel claims that this is the best/only way to increase the system capacity to meet the power needs of the area. (In recent years there has been significant development in the area with expansion of the Wells Fargo mortgage service center, expansion of two hospitals and a major office/retail/residential mixed-use redevelopment of an old Sears regional distribution center and store.

In Minnesota, this line will need the approval of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. In fact, state law gives the City of Minneapolis no say in this project--only the PUC has any authority. Xcel has filed a request with the PUC and the public process started last week with a public meeting. This week, the first meeting of the Public Advisory Task Force for the project happens (I am the representative from my neighborhood on that task force.)


At last week's public meeting, I provided the following testimony (well, it was close to what is below, I presented from notes, not from a written document--so this is based on those notes:

My Public Comments

Introduction:
My name is Sheldon Mains, I have lived in the Seward Neighborhood for 30 years and am the Seward Neighborhood Group Representative on the Public Advisory Task Force. These comments however are only mine. They have not been approved by the SNG board.

Over twenty years ago, I worked in the transmission line routing program when it was housed in the old Minnesota Environmental Quality Board. However, the staff assigned to this project were not involved with this program when I worked there. I did work with Deborah Pile, the person who is the assigned Public Advisory when I was in a different job in a different agency.

Public Adviser:
I'm going to take this opportunity to introduce Deborah Pile. As Public Advisor, it is her job to help the public be involved in this process. This process involves a lot of rules and procedures so she can be of great help (but can not provide "legal advice.) In short, it is her job to help the public fight (or support) this project. Contact her at Deborah.Pile@state.mn.us or 651-297-2375.

First routing project in a dense urban area:
The law and the rules for this state function were written assuming routing mainly over agricultural, forest and undeveloped land. There are rules and parts of the law that specifically deal with agricultural land, mining land and tourism. There is nothing that specifically deals with densely developed urban land.

This is the first VERY urban route the power line routing program has dealt with. You are going to have to be creative in applying the rules.

You have already done so in setting up the advisory task force—the rules call for at least one town board member—no town boards in Mpls but there are City recognized neighborhood groups—which you did include—thank you.

A few other places where creativity will be required:
Under Minnesota Statutes Section 216E.03 DESIGNATING SITES AND ROUTES
(5) analysis of the direct and indirect economic impact of proposed sites and routes including, but not limited to, productive agricultural land lost or impaired;

There is no agricultural land on this route. However, you will need to consider the direct and indirect economic impact on potential development along this route.

Minnesota Rules 7849.5930 PROHIBITED ROUTES Subp. 2. Parks and natural areas.
No high voltage transmission line may be routed through state or national parks or state scientific and natural areas unless the transmission line would not materially damage or impair the purpose for which the area was designated and no feasible and prudent alternative exists. Economic considerations alone do not justify use of these areas for a high voltage transmission line.

There are no state parks in Minneapolis. But the Midtown Greenway is a recreational and open space that serves an area of the state where there is limited recreational and open space. In fact, I would guess that if you added up the public use of ten average state parks in Minnesota, it would not come close to equaling the use of the Midtown Greenway. In fact, with the limited open space in this area of Minneapolis the PUC should require that XCEL pay the full cost for the replacement of any open space it uses.

Consideration of Alternatives:
MN Rules 7849.5920 FACTORS EXCLUDED.
When the Public Utilities Commission has issued a Certificate of Need for a large electric power generating plant or a high voltage transmission line or placed a high voltage transmission line on the certified HVTL list maintained by the commission, questions of need, including size, type, and timing, questions of alternative system configurations, and questions of voltage shall not be factors considered by the commission in deciding whether to issue a permit for a proposed facility.

This rule is clearly to avoid re-hashing need and alternative ways of providing for that need when there has been a Certificate of Need issued since those issues are dealt with in that process. This rule clearly only applies "When the Public Utilities Commission has issued a Certificate of Need..." There has been no Certificate of Need and none is required. Therefore, this rule does not apply and you are allowed to consider alternative ways of providing for the need and to review what the need really is.

Because of the above rule, and since it appears that the alternative routes down residential streets are not real alternatives (Xcel has not been able to provide an example of where they have place high voltage transmission lines down residential streets), you need to consider more alternatives.

A need for transmission capacity or distribution capacity?
It is clear that the power supply system for this area of Minneapolis needs to be improved. One thing that should be considered is whether the need for improved power supply in the project area is due to a need for more transmission or a need for improved distribution and more substation capacity). Back when I was working for the Minnesota Environmental Quality Program, I remember NSP (Xcel's previous name) proposing a transmission line from Minnesota to Eau Claire Wisconsin to improve the power supply in Western Wisconsin. It turned out in that project that much of the problem was caused by inadequate distribution, not inadequate transmission. Xcel never built that line and there doesn't seem to be a power shortage currently in Western Wisconsin.

Besides considering the character of the need, I propose that one alternative that is considered is what I call the One Substation Alternative:

• One new substation along the existing HVTL.
• Improved distribution from that substation and other substations serving the area. Remember, much of the distribution in this area is over sixty years old
• Replace old equipment and add capacity in existing substations that serve this area.
  

Who pays for undergrounding:
In rural Minnesota, when transmission lines follow survey lines or existing rights of way, it can cost more than going straight across an agricultural area. This specifically benefits only the farmers whose property is crossed but all rate payers for that power company pay for that additional cost. When the Benton County to Milaca line (I think in the early 1980s) was routed around the developed core of Milaca, all rate payers paid for it.

If it is decided that undergroundiing the best option here, all rate payers in the state should pay for it, not just the rate payers in the local area (as Xcel has proposed).

Thank you for your time

Minneapolis Public Works Department: Blame the pedestrian and promote cars

Last week there was a small neighborhood meeting with staff from Minneapolis Public Works about pedestrian safety at one location in Seward Neighborhood in Minneapolis.

It seems that the Public Works department has the same analysis of any pedestrian safety situation:

1. We can't make cars wait too long at an intersection.
2. We don't mark crosswalks unless it is at an intersection where the cars are already forced to stop by a traffic light or stop sign because:

• Drivers ignore the crosswalks.
• Drivers ignore the state law that requires them to stop for pedestrians at marked (or unmarked) crosswalks.
• We don't want to give pedestrians a false sense of security.

In short, it seems they are saying that they don't care that the drivers are the ones causing the unsafe conditions and that pedestrians should only cross at traffic lights or stop signs (no matter how far out of the way they are.

Nonprofit Tech Conference Keynotes: Social Media, Failure and Intellectual Property

[This happened over a month ago but the videos were just put online]

The two keynotes at this year's Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco were great but very different. They were total different styles and tackled totally different topics. (Judge for yourself, the videos are at www.nten.org ( hard to find--here is the direct link: http://nten.org/blog/2009/05/27/theyre-finally-here-video-09ntc-plenaries )

Clay Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody, was a typical keynote speaker--well known, the author of a new and popular book, and very energetic. He also was the kind of speaker that works great for an opening keynote--he established some broad themes for the conference.

• The first half of his presentation was all about social media. (It was vaguely familiar from various videos of Shirky on the Web.) The basic premise was (paraphrased) "the world of organizing without organizations" and "don't worry about loosing control of your brand--you've already lost control." This overall topic was well covered in the conference.
  
• The second half of his talk was on failing inteligently. This is one of my favorate topics--that you can learn alot from trying something and failing at it if you are honest about the analysis. This wasn't discussed much at the conference. That is a shame since many foundations (the funding source of a lot of nonprofits) don't want to hear about failures--they want the final reports to be glowing--they want to pretend everything that they fund is a success. Very few foundations like receiving final reports that say: "The project didn't work; this is why it didn't work; this is what we learned." (The McKnight Foundation here in Minneapolis is one of the few that are interested in this type of report from grantees).

The Tuesday Keynote was by Eben Moglen. He is a Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center. He hasn't written a new and popular book, he isn't well known (even in the nonprofit technology community) and his speaking style was what you'd expect from a boring law professor. But he ended up forcing everyone to ask themselves really hard questions.

When he started talking i felt a general sigh in the room that seemed to say "this is going to put me to sleep." People kept talking, people were checking their email on their laptops, people were thumbing through the conference programs trying to figure out what breakout session to go to. As Moglen droned on, people started picking up on what he was saying:

• Proprietary software stifles innovation and the economy,
• The whole concept of "intellectual property rights" is wrong,
• We need new systems to compensate creativity.

About half way through his talk, the room was silent--everyone was paying attention. He attacked some sacred cows. He came into a conference that was sponsored primarily by large software companies and challenged their right to existence. The response to his ideas was mixed--some conference attendees loved them, some hated them--but everyone seemed to agree that he was forcing people to think about really hard questions.

The Obama Stimulus Package, Broadband, Minnesota and Leadership

The Blandin Foundation just hosted a gathering of people interested in making sure Minnesota gets it share of the Obama Stimulus Package money devoted to getting people broadband Internet service.(More detail on the broadband portion of the package here)

Six major take-aways from the meeting:

1. No one knows the exact process the federal governement will use to distribute the money but much of it (around $4 billion to $5 billion) will be by competitive grants.
2. These grant applications will be complex and will likely reward collaborations and partnerships.
3. To write an effective applications, organizations need to get started now--especially get started forming the colaborations and partnerships
4. Collaborations and partnerships take up-front resources. Because of the economy and state of Minnesota cuts in funding to cities, schools and health care, no one has the up-front money to devote to creating the partnerships.
5. Ideally, Minnesota state government should step up and be a leader in creating the partnerships.
6. With the current Minnesota Governor, don't expect any leadership. Minnesota's current governor really believes government can not do anything well and should do nothing. He has been actively making this true for the last six years.

More detail about the meeting on Blandin's Blandin on Broadband blog.

Stopped at security

When you are carrying six power supplies (for three cameras, two cell phones, an Ipod), an extension cord to plug them all in, a security cable and a network cable in the same bag you have all your sunscreen in, I guess you have to expect to have the baggage searched. Ours was the only bag that had a special had search in our group of 29 tourists at Luxor Airport. (I've noticed that the suitcase with all that stuff in tends to be searched by TSA about 50 % of the time.)

Facebook in Cairo

Picked up a copy of the Herald Tribune (NYT's global edition) at the hotel before leaving for Alexandria. In the second section (the local section for Egypt) two interesting articles:

• A new ancient tomb was found that is from the Old Kindom (thousands of years old)
• Dateline Cairo: A group of Arab bloggers is using Facebook to compose an open letter to Obama. Letter will go public on March 25. (Same article in Middle East Times)
  

Internet Access in Egypt

Interent access for tourists in Egypt can be summarized as expensive. The only exception was our first hotel in Cairo where I found an unsecured wifi that I could access from the hotel room.

The ship we cruised the Nile on for 4 days had access for about $11.00 for each 30 minutes. If the ship was moving the access was intermittent and rather slow. If the ship was docked, the access was rather slow but stable.

The Cairo hotel we stayed in when we were at the pyramids (it was less than a mile from the pyramids had wired Internet in the rooms. It cost about $ .90 per minute. It was a deal if you used a lot--only about $35 maximum for any one 24 hour period.

So, I'm getting my blog done at home.

Found out that only about 5% of Egyptians have Internet access of any kind (To help put this in persective, about 50% of the population live in rural areas.) I did see a couple Internet Cafes while we were driving.

Blogger in Egypt

Took a while to figure this out. When I went to my blogger website, the navigation at the top was all in Arabic. It took a while to figure out which link to click to log it. I don't read Arabic and since Arabic is read right to left, the links are in different places. Luckily, once I got to the dashboard, everything was in English.

Now having problems with the StarOffice "Send to Weblog" feature--freezing and crashing StarOffice.

Ice Shanties by Artists

I've uploaded a new slide show. Check the left sidebar. Ice fishing shanties created by artists. Medicine Lake, MN (just west of Minneapolis) in February, 2009.

Open Letter to Republicans

Dear Gov. Pawlenty, Republicans in the MN Legislature, and Republicans in the US Congress.

We've tried tax cuts to stimulate the economy.

Most recently, in the spring of 2008, we had the Bush tax rebate to stimulate the economy. It didn't work! Everyone agrees it didn't work. Please quite asking for more tax cuts in the Obama stimulous package. Your complaints are a distraction at best.

In Minnesota, we had the Ventura/Pawlenty tax cuts about eight years ago. It didn't work! Minnesota's economy has tanked since then. Once you could count on Minnesota's economy out performing the national average and all the other rust belt states. No more. Once we had great public schools. No more. Once we had a quality highway system. No more (try driving I-35 south of Owatonna for an example--or, remember that bridge?). Since that tax cut, we've had one state budget disaster after another. Governor Pawlenty, please fix the Minnesota tax system. restore those poorly considered tax cuts.

Sincerely,

a taxpayer

Really kewl technology

A 1.5 mega-pixel panoramic picture of the inauguration. By photographer David Bergman. You can zoom into President Bush to check his expression. You can check out the people looking out the windows of the Capitol. Have your kid try to find someone picking their nose.

• Full screen with controls at Gigapan here.
• Details on how David Bergman did it here.
• I found this thanks to David Brauer's blog on MinnPost.com

For-profit managers in the nonprofit world

We're in a recession--a really bad recession. That means there will be a bunch of managers from the for-profit world deciding to "make a life change" or "do something meaningful." They want to work for (in some cases only volunteer for) nonprofit organizations. They want to show nonprofits how to be highly efficient organizations. They want to fix the management of nonprofits. They want to fix our failing social infrastructure. (They want to pad their resume with what they expect to be an easy win.)

It is my prediction that we are going to see a number of very good nonprofit organizations run into the ground by these for-profit geniuses. The nonprofit world is different.

• Most employees work for the love of their jobs--not for high salaries (although getting paid what they are worth would be a welcome change).
• Try managing volunteers if you want a challenge.
• You think investors and banks are hard to deal with? Try working with corporate and family foundations as well as banks and large private donors (we do probably share the same horror stories about government contracts/funding).
  
• There are dual bottom lines--the financial side and the mission side.
• Financial accounting standards and tax laws are different (not better or worse--just different)
  
• You probably can't raise your fees--your clients usually have no money. (and in the case of theaters and museums--do you really want to price out the people who can't afford it?).
• We all work long hours for little pay (and no bonuses) (and no personal assistant or free gym memberships)
• We don't worship MBAs. We don't even worship people with masters degrees in nonprofit management--but they at least know something about the industry.
  

I'm not going to go on because I just saw a great article about this in main stream (well, sort of) business magazine--Fast Company. Nancy Lablin of Dress for Success and Do Something has a great column--"No Vacancy: Job-seeking refugees from the for-profit world shouldn't go running to the not-for-profit sector." (And she isn't quite as cynical as I am)

Obama's inauguration

There is way too much to say about Obama's inauguration and a lot of people have said it better than I can. So here are some links to analysis and commentary I found interesting:

One man's reaction to President Obama's speech By Eric Black, Published Tue, Jan 20 2009 2:13 pm, www.MinnPost.com

A couple excerpts:

....Mentioning Muslims and Hindus is a small act of courage. But what other recent president-elect or presidential candidate would have gone out of his way to acknowledge the agnostics and atheists?....

There wasn't a lot of trash talk about the mistakes of his predecessor. Obama thanks former President Bush for his service and his graciousness during the transition. But the digs were there, delivered with understatement. What else could it mean to restore science to its rightful place,...

Obama’s hard words by Scott Rosenberg's in Scott Rosenberg's wordyard

...In telling us to it was time to “put away childish things,” he may have been referring to the bitter divisions of the past decade, the political squabbling that has diverted so much precious energy and time...

Right now, I’m left with the picture of Malia, the president’s older daughter, pulling out her own digital camera to take a picture right as the TV camera was trained on her. It was a little pointer to the future, a gesture for a new generation that will be taking charge of its media in ways we can’t yet imagine....