Geographic information about the San Diego / Tijuana region

Here are data sources, some of which could be good to include in our map channels map.

Note that many of the map stubs I've already created point to the as yet un-KML-ified data source inspiring the stub.

2008-02-05

• San Diego County Plant and Bird Atlas in Google Earth
  

2008-02-04

• City of San Diego Community Profiles
• Community Health Atlas for the South Region, and other atlases for the region -- search for "atlas" or scroll down.
  

2008-02-02

An example of what could be done for SD:

• Cycling in Boulder
  
• Boulder Bike Paths
  
• Boulder Bike Path Composite Map

2008-01-31

• A tutorial on creating or maintaining a collection of geographic data using a spreadsheet. I found this by searching for kml+spreadsheet.

2008-01-30

• Calendars can be mapped to the area they are most relevant to. The same could be done for links to organizations. There could be a "blog of things to be mapped". Items could be tagged for the map they should appear on, and geocoded in some way--point, polygon, or line. The events calendar on the site could eventually become a map of calendars. As it is, the calendar focuses on east-central SD County.
• Conservation Regional Map and Members
• Wilderness4all ("Dedicated to education, exploration and advocacy for wild rivers and wild lands in the San Diego region": Maps of San Diego Region Proposals

2008-01-29

• Mid-City Community Health Atlas -- It has the motor vehicle fatalities and injuries for the county--(see part #2).
• Map of San Diego Public Libraries - All Branches Have Free WIFI
• Map of motor vehicle-free (usually pedestrian- and bicycle-only) transportation routes in San Diego. This includes the footbridges near Balboa Park as well as the short street-connecting staircases and walks in Rolando, and all the other trails. From reading the San Diego County Bicycle Map, it sounds like this data may already exist in a GIS system. Philip J. Erdelsky has a collection of these--his red routes. He also has a collection of other bicycle routes, as well as free topographic maps of San Diego County. Caution--each of these maps may be about 4MB. He even has a page containing maps of his hikes and San Diego Neighborhoods. He has a page on North Park.
• Reading Erdelsky's site reminded me of Christopher E. Brennen--whose Anza-Borrego canyoneering trips, at least, are in San Diego County.

I'll update this page in the same manner as I do my calendar and links pages, and mention in my future, less frequent posts if I've updated these pages.

Calendars of San Diego / Tijuana organizations which care for the commons

Calendars prefaced by an 'X' are not yet Google- or iCal-ified -- they cannot easily be imported and republished; we plan to help these sites iCalify.

To add to this list, post a comment, or if you are a contributor, create a post and label it "calendars".

Many calendars can be found using the Google calendar search.

2008-03-07

• San Diego Green Party (I haven't been able to get this to import to google calendar)
  
• SD Solar Cooking Club
  

2008-02-27

• Greeks Gone Green (GGG) events. And here's their main page.
• Greeks Gone Green (GGG) Calendar of UCSD Eco-Events.
• GGG External San Diego Eco-Events -- "Events all around San Diego that are sustainable!"
• X The Solana Center for Environmental Innovation Events & Composting Workshops
  

2008-02-15

• Friends Center Peace Garden / Gardeners4Peace
• X Tijuana Trips -- I've put the foundation4change trips in the sdtjdph calendar, but otherwise, this is an X.
• X UCSD Urban Studies and Planning Club
  

2008-02-05

• X SD Master Gardeners
• X SD Horticultural Society
• X Canyoneers Nature Walks
• X The Garden Compass (seems to be mostly Los Angeles -- gardencompass.com)
  

2008-02-02

• X WALKSanDiego
• X SD County Bicycle Coalition
• College Area Neighborhoods
  

2008-02-01

• X? SD Indymedia Calendar I'm not sure how easily the calendar can be subscribed to.
  

2008-01-30

• FoodCalendar.org
  

2008-01-29

Some of the following came from a google calendar search for "san diego garden", and "san diego food" I think.

• X SD Environmental Leadership Network
  
• San Diego City Repair
• X Activist San Diego
• X San Diego River Park Foundation
• X SD Foundation for Change -- this is an iCal calendar, I believe, but Google says it cannot be indexed.
• Marty's Southern California Events Calendar -- farmers' markets, Talmadge/Kensington community meetings, and he tipped me off to a great-sounding foundation for change event this Thursday. Here's where the calendar is displayed, and Marty Anthony Frank's art blog.
  
• X SD's chapter of the California Native Plant Society
• Revolutionary Events -- by Eric Bidwell of therevoltion.us (IneffableOne-- myspace, flickr). He's using iCalx, a non-google way to have a public iCal.
• Spring Break Forever! by Matthew Miranda. Has Food Not Bombs, Vegan Dinner, Che Cafe meetings. I have no idea how accurate these calendars are.
• Surfrider Foundation San Diego County Chapter
• X? US Green Building Council, San Diego Chapter. This appears to no longer be updated with the events at their website calendar.
• X? California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE)
• North Park Community Meetings & Events
• X The various Rotoract clubs have events calendars, but I don't see any one with a current iCal version. Mission Valley, Downtown, UCSD, North County. What caught my eye is that they have organized cross-border service projects.
  

2008-01-28

The following calendars had been added to the main sdtjdph events calendar prior to the creation of this post. Some may now have been removed.

• SD/TJ Design, Plant, Harvest - the catchall, 'any one can publish events here' calendar containing events mentioned in or related to the mission of this site.
  
• San Diego Food Not Lawns
• SD Food Not Lawns Related Events -- contains events republished by Mariah from some of the calendars listed below.
  
• SD Community Farms and Gardens Meetup Group (Community Farms and Gardens has a calendar which I added and then removed because I think CFG / Julie Osborne may publish events in this meetup calendar instead.)
  
• The San Diego Sustainable Development Meetup Group
• San Diegans Who Care about the Environment Meetup Group
• San Diego Ecovillage
• SD Cactus and Succulent Society Calendar
  
• Free Tuesdays at San Diego's Balboa Park Museums -- admission may be limited to San Diego City and County residents with photo identification (but I have not seen them check).
• Balboa Park Tours

About the name

The following is reprinted from a post on my personal blog. The name of this site is open to change-- "SD/TJ Design, Plant, Harvest" is not at all simple to tell to someone and have them remember. Below is some of my reasoning.

I think what is happening with the blog is

the creation of a public space. It is meant to be a page where people meet, collaborate, and are able to go their separate ways, but they are all benefited by sharing a space with many others with different foci, yet a similar underlying goal.

"Design, Plant, Harvest" references the three things I at least sometimes neglect. Am I just "planting" (doing, doing, quick intuition, mindless fiddling), neglecting to design? Am I just designing (thinking, dreaming, hesitating in indecision), neglecting to plant? And have I planted, but never harvest--?

"Design", influenced by permaculture's emphasis on design, was the title briefly.

And I do want the blog to have more than just gardening info, but value having consideration of all the rest (land, water, energy use) rooted in the organic gardening, permaculture design metaphor.

But maybe all that will be left behind and the site will go in directions I don't forsee.

Maybe it will be no more than a demo that inspires some other project.

So, now is a time to stop and design what I'm doing--the aesthetics of working with the computer--what kind of experience do I want to harvest here, to help our mind, body have?

Today I discovered SD Foundation for Change's "Plant, Water, Nurture" statement about what they do. That pushed me to get around to publishing this little statement about the name SDTJDPH, as I had been meaning to do.

Changelog

Technical and design changes to the site (at least some of them) are listed here. And also:

Unresolved Issues (though maybe we'll put this on its own page):

• The events calendar and the map channels involve editorial decisions about what content appears there. As mentioned in Operating Procedure, it could be best to keep the site itself fairly content-neutral (with only the check, "are they caring for the commons? Is there a way they could be seen as caring for the commons?"), while enabling contributors to share their different perspectives. As it is now, the calendar is focused on east-central San Diego. Map channels is less of a problem, it is just waiting for more content. In the future, the events calendar page could simply point to a list (or to a map) of calendars, and individual contributors can compile and share the calendars most of interest to them or to their neighborhoods.
  

Changelog

2008-02-29

• Made the mapchannels map default to slideshow & terrain view, and set the sidebar to be initially collapsed.
  

2008-02-07

• Made authors' names appear at the top of each of their posts, linked to their profiles. The name at the bottom also links to the profile now. If you change your display name, the link will be broken. Let me know if you change your name. If you haven't yet posted, the link will also be broken until I add you to the list in the script.
  

2008-01-28

• Modified the border images to correspond to changing the template's width.

2007-12-20

• Changed template width so that larger maps could be displayed. The relevant numbers are: 740 -> 950px & 485 -> 695 px

Welcome from the SD River Park

Hi everyone, just wanted to introduce myself and our efforts to create the San Diego River Park. Not only are we trying to create a healthy river system but a place that is also designed for people with a variety of different experiences and opportunities to learn about the river, our history, and have some healthy fun, too!

Included in the vision is to establish and support community gardens. We want native plant gardens, food producing gardens and gardens with non-invasive ornamental plants. We think gardens are a great way to introduce people to nature!

Anyways, that is a short introduction of our efforts to establish this 52 mile long park system. If you would like to know more, just let me know.

City Repair site map + links updated

I created a new map, San Diego City Repair Sites (see the related blog/email announcement list), added it to the map channels page, and updated my links.

Looking forward/looking back, for the week

On encouraging posting here

I'm uncertain whether to post here or to my personal garden blog.

We do need a group (representative of the kinds of organizations and individuals we'd like to post here) to establish some sort of example for those who would post here.

I'm concerned about at least two things here in my posts: (1) This could be seen as one guy's odd project unless we get some other posters; (2) By not posting, this site could be seen as dead or as too formal / unusual for new posters to post at.

To help overcome those barriers, I want to encourage anyone who reads this or who has already become a contributor to post to this blog or the free-for-all blog.

I will also be inviting new contributors from those who were at the meeting this Sunday:

• Ian Miller
• Debbie

About the future of this blog

Ian posted some of the notes from our meeting yesterday. Main outcomes of the meeting may be the following: a statement of guiding goals, and plans for two future meetings.

Guiding goals

Here, from the meeting notes:

• goals / purpose
  

• place where organizations go to get their events publicized
• individuals can find events in their community of the greatest interest to them

• ease of use is a priority
• offer multilingual ability
• seek to integrate diverse perspectives in the region

Here from what I wrote down:

• To become the place where organizations/individuals go to get their events publicized.
• To become the place where individuals can find events of most interest to them.
• To seek and cultivate contributors who can help the project present a more complete and helpful view of the region. (This was the wording I could not remember from an earlier post).
  

We were focusing primarily on calendar integration. We also addressed, blogging, mapping, and the use of Wikis to create knowledge base applications--such as tree-pruning tips or local gardening knowledge.

We also mentioned the possibility for publishing on paper: versions of the internet documents created collaboratively (e.g., and agenda view of the upcoming calendar); and to market the collaborative technology we create (e.g, cards in cafes, mentions in the SD Reader).

Upcoming meetings / in-person collaboration:

1. Ian planned to come up with a demonstration of some of the ideas he mentioned during the meeting. I think these include ideas about the wikis and about the calendaring.
2. Probably after that, we'll arrange a meeting to help contributors learn to use the mapping, blogging, calendaring, wiki, etc. features we decide will be a part of our collaborative project.

At both of these meetings we hope to have a projector so we can display the technology we're talking about.

More on the meeting

Some concerns:

• Should we try to dialogue with more existing organizations about what we hope to do? Activist San Diego, IndyMedia, etc., may be people to work more closely with.
• Do we have too wide a focus? Should our goals be more like the following: "to develop a protocol that like-minded groups can use to mutually publicize each other's events."

I sort of like that lower-key statement of goals.

I did appreciate that there was an interest expressed by at least Mariah and Ian to have better reporting about the permaculture/foodnotlawns type happenings--something this blog hopes to address.

Mariah recommended a simple archive of photos and videos, free of editorial content. I mentioned that like for streetsblog, we can have photos and videos on the various media-sharing sites tagged with identifying labels such as "sdfoodnotlawns" or "sdtjdph" and then aggregate these. Ian mentioned "tag clouds", which I'm not 100% familiar with, as a means of aggregating content by neighborhood or subregional location.

As an example, here are photos tagged with "sdtjdph", and "sdfoodnotlawns".

Other things addressed include:

• wanting not to be over-dependent on google (some, however, like me, don't mind this if it reduces time spent fiddling with technology)
  
• wanting to enable posting to the calendar without needing to register with some new system (google or otherwise)--anonymous posting, in other words
  

So anyway, what else happened last week?

The beginning of the week was a rest for me. Don found that World Market, not far from here, west on El Cajon & 53rd(?) (not in any online yellow pages I can find), is a budget source of seaweed and mushrooms and other foods used by the Asian community. And then he got to cooking up some fancy meals.

Five Gallons of Jerusalem Artichokes/Sunchokes + Amaranth

Don dug up these roots. He filled a five-gallon bucket to overflowing. I had been afraid to try more of them, thinking they had led to some bloating/ major gas due to the indigestibility of inulin. We've been slicing them and cooking them in a fryingpan with a bit of olive oil. So far no bad effects for me. We've eaten a lot.

We're both curious how sunchokes would serve us as an energy food for serious hiking or physical work--what is their actual nutritional value? Don also helped me prepare to harvest some amaranth grain.

Planning for the Garden

I rested and meditated on what to do with the garden. This will be reported later on the garden blog.

Rare Tree Walk, Balboa Park Walks, + Crash

On Saturday, Don went on a rare tree walk that begins every third Saturday at 10 am in Balboa Park at the visitor's center (in the main plaza-turned-parking lot). That's all the info I have.

I see in the Home Sunday fyi section of the Union Tribune there are other Balboa Park walks listed. . . maybe we can get these in our calendar to help us learn more about the plants.

Saturday evening I got hit by a car which was turning left without seeing me, but only had a minor bang to the knee, and the bike is fine, the driver was helpful. (There's a lot more that could be said about that, including about what I will no longer do).

Tule, Cattail, Sedge weaving workshop

The announcement, & some of the results:






I learned to make mats, bands, and cordage. And we hung out in a nice secret spot in Mission Valley for an afternoon. Now that we've done it, I realize there are tules and cattails closer to home as well. ( Laurie, the photographer, was also along for part of it.)

Taking the time to practice weaving using natural materials is potentially transformational in several ways. For one, I was made aware of how much time indigenous people had to do nourishing things in nature.

We passed Home Depot on the way back. I felt that the river with its reeds and river cane and my neighbor's bamboo forest was closer to being my Home Depot now.

A future project may be to use cordage I make to lash the bamboo & rivercane trellis and fence for the garden.

The week(s) ahead: an expedition; the garden

We've got an excellent start on restarting the garden here--I'm excited about that.

But first Don and I will be going camping somewhere, and then he's headed on to other adventures.

Thoughts about this post

In this post, written quickly, I strove for some balance between business, perhaps of wider regional interest, and personal reporting. If it were just a personal post, that might be best on a personal blog.

Reporting on food-not-lawns & permaculture-related events was also included.

This may be a good mix.

The hasty style I cannot avoid now if I'm going to post at all. Perhaps readers would prefer something more carefully thought out. Even so, this did take about two hours, and I've read it through to smooth rough spots.

Feel free to show us something different by example!

Also, I updated my links page.

looking forward / looking back (for the week)

A Meeting about Collaborative Technology such as this blog

Most important regarding the existence of this blog is the upcoming tech meeting on Sunday, the 20th. This meeting was made possible by collaborators at the SD Food Not Lawns Meeting this past Wednesday.

If you are interested in this blog or in similar technology that could help residents of SD/TJ who are dedicated to caring for the commons to collaborate, please be there.

We'll probably have another meeting to help people learn how to contribute to the maps, calendars, and blog later on, depending on what we discuss at the meeting.

In other news, activities related to "design, plant, harvest" have blossomed for me since the last post. In addition, I'm aware I need to be getting on to planting the real garden, not the Internet garden, so this site could be left somewhat fallow for a while--and I hope the seeds I've planted here may lead to some growth (contribute! post! volunteer to be an editor!) until I can tend to it again.

A visitor from Idaho

Don, a guy who has (in the past) grown all his food for one year and who has 1200 lbs of squash he grew (and gallons and gallons of dried fruit, and all sorts of other stored crops) in storage on his property in Idaho has come to visit. I wander around with him and we collect fruit and greens and I get to learn a bit from his curiosity about the plants that grow here--many unfamiliar to him.

A Popping Calendar

If you haven't taken a look at the event calendar for a while, do--see how overfull it has suddenly become. I think this is mostly due to Mariah's work on the SDFNL event calendar and foodcalendar.org, but it has also been dependent on Marc with the SD Sustainability Meetup, and JoAnn with the SD Community Farms and Gardens Meetup, and many others adding their various events.

Film Screenings

JoAnn Cofrancesco figured out how to be able to show films at the San Diego Public Libraries. I hope to get some films screened at the College/Rolando library soon. See Hopedance if you need ideas of films to screen.

Native Gardens

Saturday there was a class on growing native plant gardens. This was put on by Alrie Middlebrook of the California Native Garden Foundation. She gave a powerpoint lecture for the first half of the day and in the afternoon guided a tour around the North Park neighborhood. We visited a few houses with native plant gardens and a neglected native garden in Balboa Park at Albany and Morley Field Drive.

I wanted to attend this because of a video I hope to screen that was created by Joshua Byrne and Gardening Australia. Josh converts a suburban home in a climate somewhat similar to ours into a permaculture homestead. Among the elements he adds is a "native verge"-- he plants the strip between the sidewalk and the streets with plants native to Perth, Australia.

Adding to my interest, Don and I found a verge we can plant that is not far from City Farmer's Nursery. We may get to planting it on Friday. The woman whose verge it is was at City Farmer's asking about astroturf. . .

Tree Pruning

And on Sunday, Paul and Matt of SD Food Not Lawns led a tree pruning workshop at Candy Vanderhoff's house. Trees in this case were limited to stonefruit type trees: primarily peach, plum, apple--all trees that are dormant at this time of year.

Here's the finished product:


It was great fun! (we spent almost the whole time on one tree and had great food to eat.) I hope someone else who was there might want to write more.

Mission Trails and the Garden Plan

So, I've left Don at Mission Trails for the day and I'm headed home to meditate on the garden plan for the future.

City Repair

Marc and Candy and Julia D. and others are bringing City Repair to San Diego. This is wonderful. The first meeting is tomorrow evening. Tuesday, 1/15.

Where this may be headed

I want to reinvigorate the College/Rolando/El Cerrito-Area Gardeners, a group I helped start early last year. I hope to use what I learn at the workshops I have to travel to to share what I learn with the people in my neighborhood. Maybe I'll eventually work as a sort of ecological landscaper in the neighborhood.

Don and I have been doing a lot of biking around the past few days. It's time to stay put for a while.

Garden Goals

Don's arrival and his bringing of great food (squash he grew, onions he grew, cooked, and dried, grape juice concentrate--a paste--from grapes he grew--a tingly taste of vitality--, bread we baked, jujube's we found. . .) and Mariah's great mix of CSA vegetables she cooked up for the FNL meeting reminded me of how good it is to . . .

I'm not sure what I'm getting at. Something about good food and squash.

The goal is to grow 365 squashes. So I don't run out.

And to get some perennial pepper plants growing.

And to begin the planning from the in-your-dreams perspective of having total control and unlimited resources to modify the property. Then to scale it down. And to attempt to integrate more of the permaculture-type systems: rainwater collection, for one. I'm off to do that now!

Yes! Magazine

Don brought with him a copy of the most recent Yes! Magazine.

It is a wonderful thing.

(Maybe the kind of randomness that follows isn't good for this kind of blog--if we ever get some editors, we can re-consider this)

Here are some notes I took from that issue:

paecon.net
rprogress.org
unsubscribe-me.org

The Commons Rising -- Tomales Bay Institute (google) (onthecommons.org)

p 19. "The best antidote to the fear, helplessness, and isolation that drives people into apathy is community and joy." Gelder, Pibel.

"The leadership of ordinary people" is what is needed now.

The Start Now Farm in Bremerton, Washington. (google) (they grow food on their roof and city lot--enough for themselves and to sell at a farmers' market)

The Church of Stop Shopping (google)

WSF2008.net

vfp.org


squatting:
bussana.com & geocities.com/squattersguide & sftu.org/hnj.html & wikipedia.org/wiki/squatting

rockwoodleadership.org

"walk-out challenge" (google)

Girlsforachange.org

Pete Seeger, Clearwater (wikipedia)

Newfarm.org

--
and I've updated my links page.


If I run out of non-computer things to do, I'll come back here and look at them.

Addressing the neglect of TJ on this blog; looking for two SD & two TJ editors

Here are a few ideas.

• Have two editors per region (two for SD, two for TJ) who invite contributors for each area.
• We can find TJ bloggers/ organizers partly by doing a blogger profile search on Tijuana. Here is a recycling blog and a dynamic individual's profile and list of blogs I found by doing that. We can also talk with south county organizers to get their suggestions. I plan to invite Daniel (San Diego Tijuana Border Blog) for that reason.
  
• Start a version of this blog in Spanish. We could have both Spanish and English posts in the existing blog, but a separate blog may be better, and there could be occasional posting of translations of certain posts on one blog to the other.
• Encourage posts to the maps in any language, and then add translations.
• There are cultures in both regions we'd like to have contribute whose preferred language may not be English or Spanish. Seek and cultivate contributors who can help the blog present a more complete and helpful view of the region.
  

Editors Needed

I'm currently looking for two people to be San Diego editors and two to be Tijuana editors. You would handle the tasks of inviting contributors and of updating the invited contributors page. You would be helping make decisions about the direction and design of the blog and about who would contribute, and you'd encourage contributors to post.

Too Broad?

It wouldn't hurt to question whether SD/TJ is too broad a focus for this blog. My feeling has been that there are many regional resource use issues that will be of interest, and that there are many who live on one side of the border who are interested in what happens on the other for various reasons. Also, beginning with such a broad focus may support the creation of neighborhood and sub-regional groups dedicated to caring for the commons.

announcement and invitation of contributors

This is an announcement of a collaborative blog for the San Diego / Tijuana region.

SD/TJ Design, Plant, Harvest

Nourishing our shared space, caring for the commons. Proposals, Op-Eds, events, & news about food, water, air, energy, culture, and land use in the San Diego / Tijuana region.

All aspects of the blog are open to being changed, but here is one statement of my vision for it:

To create a quality source of content devoted to caring for the commons in the San Diego / Tijuana region. We want posting here and reading here to help us grow in our understanding of the space we share and how to care for it.

I see this blog as potentially filling the niche in the region that is similar to the niche filled further north by HopeDance Magazine and here is only partly filled by Activist San Diego, San Diego Indymedia, Vision Magazine, The Light Connection, and a combination of other media, the communications of various listservs, and the announcements and newsletters of local organizations.

The main features of this collaborative blog include posting, mapping, and event-sharing. There is:

• a main blog where selected contributors can post, and a "free-for-all" blog where anyone can post;
• a Map Channels page where google maps of canyons, permaculture sites, community farms and gardens, nurseries , event locations/meeting venues, and story locations, could all be displayed and/or turned on or off;
• a shared calendar to which anyone with a google calendar can post events.

The next step, I think, may be to encourage individuals and organizations to start adding their content to the maps, calendar, and blog.

This announcement is an initial attempt at that. To be more effective than this mass email, we may need to meet in person with the people who would be doing the posting to demonstrate the technology.

If you see value in this collaborative project, contact me, and we can organize a meeting (a pot-luck?) where we can step people through adding to the maps, posting to the blogs, and adding events to the calendar.

I expect the beginning of this to be a bit chaotic--I'll be letting almost whoever wants to to be a contributor to post to the main blog. When some people are posting and reading, with their help we can refine things.

Two new maps: Nurseries, Meeting Venues

Please edit these maps:

• Nurseries - to make it easier to find plants
  
• Meeting Venues - to make it easier to organize meetings

To edit them, you'll need a google account and maybe Firefox or Internet Explorer (I'm not sure about Safari).

Contributor Guidelines and Vision

Here is a list of those who have been invited to contribute.

Our overall goal is to create a quality source of content devoted to caring for the commons in the San Diego / Tijuana region. We want posting here and reading here to help us grow in our understanding of the space we share and how to care for it. Any posting guidelines will be secondary to that underlying goal, so don't adhere too narrowly to the following.

• Frequency: Try to post at least once a month, even if you think you have nothing to say--we want to hear from you. Try not to post more than once per week, but if you need to add some supporting posts (links, calendars, maps), then you do.
• Links: This blog does not have a list of links to other sites on its main page. Instead, each contributor can create a page of links. Create a post with the links you want to share and link to this page in your profile (if you'd like help doing this, let me know). Tag this post 'links'. Then it will appear on our links page.
• Vision: Perhaps write a statement of vision, either as a post (this could be your introductory post), or put it in your profile. You could tag this post 'vision' and 'introduction'.
• Titles: Perhaps use a unique title (one others probably will not use) for your posts. For example, instead of "Links", write "LocalpowerSD's Links".
• Turn-taking: consider taking turns posting among people who come from different viewpoints. I'm not sure how to make this work in practice, but if we have only women posting, we should take time to encourage men to post. If we have only San Diego residents posting, let's encourage Tijuana residents to post (and perhaps correspondents about good things happening in other cities). Homeowners only? Find renters, homeless. A brainstorm of some other categories not to get stuck in follows. I'm sure you can add to the list: Age groups (under 20, over 50), suburban/urban, native/not, monolingual/multilingual, children/child-free, professions, incomes, institutional education level.
• A feed of your own: To help your readers to subscribe to your posts only, follow the feed customization How-To. You can also use the feed you create that way to display your posts on another website. In other words, you can post to this blog and then resyndicate your posts to your own website--displaying there only your own content while also showing you are connected to this forum.
• Comment notification: Currently, contributors do not receive notification when someone comments on their posts! Unless the contributor (1) clicks on the title of her post to go to the single-page view, and (2) scrolls to the bottom of the page and clicks on the last link on the left: "Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)". That may be too much of a hassle, so I'll email contributors who receive comments to their posts unless they don't want me to. Ask Blogger to allow contributors to receive email when people comment on their posts.

In general, if you're unsure what to do here, consider whether your post or your action contributes to caring for the commons. Should this blog succeed, what that means will probably be questioned at some point!

Operating Procedure

On Sunday 12/29 2007, Julie Osborn, Colin Leath, & Michael Brennan met partly to discuss the future of this blog.

Here are my thoughts. First, there is a bit of tension between wanting to be careful about creating a quality, well-respected and well-worth-reading blog on one hand and (my own) wanting to create a place that is easy to use and open to many and working as soon as possible.

Influenced by holacracy, and agile programming, I'm focusing more on the latter at this point.

So, my aim is to get the blog and its features out to the SD/TJ community quickly.

If it fails and no one uses it, it can at least serve as the base for new blogs or other collaborative projects, having affected in some way all those who participated or became aware of the project.

So now about the operating procedure.

• One basic procedure. In posting as "Colin Leath", I will be posting as a member of the Editor's group, and as a Contributor. In posting as "Administrator", I will address technical concerns about the site. Eventually there could be posts authored by an "Editors" alias, meaning that the content there was approved by the three people currently serving as Editors.

Since I'm pressed for time, I will paste in a rough brainstorm I wrote up before the meeting.

Let me highlight this: If you'd like to be in the Editor's group for this blog (a group of three, intended to add solidity and permanence and more thoughtfulness to what would otherwise be a project led by one person), or if you'd like to help with the technical administration of the site (Admin of geolocation/mapping, Admin of site/post formatting, Admin of feed customization, or ??) please contact me.

I intend to make this collaborative project not dependent upon my own energy for its existence!

Here are the brainstorm notes:

2007-12-30-0811
on the proposal again.

--We can have two blogs: events, and all the rest.
sdtjdphevents-- anyone can post to, just by sending an email.

Roles we need:

Editors board--three people--selecting who is contributor, who is not, making other basic decisions about blog. -- so blog is not just one person's creation--

Contributors' board of some kind. ..

Reader's rep.

Admin of events

Admin of blog appearance

Admin of geolocation

Admin of feeds

"who do we most want to hear from?
"what do we most want to hear?

Goal: for reading and writing for the blog to help us grow:

See Hopedance mag as a model--

Have themes of month or of posting cycle--e.g. every third post, on this theme, this subculture, this part of our region.

Key features of blog:

(1) Filtering of content, based on what you are most interested in---

[perhaps not reasonable--]

(2) Geolocation of content--make it easy to see on a map where a post refers to--auto mapping of posts with, say [lat,lang] tag in post body.

(3) Relocalization-- finding content, events near a place could become simple.

(4) Ease of posting

(5) Content focus on resource use/creation (?)

(6) Quality of content (?)

-------------------------

(10!) Being useful to the people who are organizing people--

(11) but also/and also helping educate ourselves in certain areas--such as the nature of the local water system,

But if we focus mostly on helping set up permaculture systems?? Working independently of govt's??



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Yield-- is money needed?

What kinds of yield to look for??

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Possible statements of vision:

--to help region become self-aware

--to help regional organizations, individuals collaborate

--support the relocalization of resource generation and use

--support the creation of great public space

--for the blog(s) to become a great public space itself

--to help create great neighborhoods

--to support caring for the global commons

--to help people live without needing or wanting to travel great distances/ reduce resource use

--Method: to create a virtual public square where many can present themselves and a few can be focused on-- (already the state of internet--e.g., san diego blog search?)

--to increase individuals' focus on the creation of public good over the creation of private estates.

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Measurable goals:

Are we sharing peace?

Do we love?

Do we look forward to each day?

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Governance: Organizational sustainability, growth
--decision-making
-decision implementation
-continuity
-celebration
-roles, accountabilities---
-"decision-making by integrative emergence" / holacracy / presencing / integral leadership / theory U. / Spirit / feeling the spirit, intention of the collective entity, or of the space, ground.