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Storm Knocks Us Offline

The storm that recently knocked over a million homes and businesses offline, hit The Gilbert Center pretty hard. We went down Thursday night along with both of our ISPs. Our generator brought us up partially on Saturday, but our ISPs did not restore reliable service until today. They say this was a twenty-year storm and this is the worst outage we have had with our services and online presence in our history. My local colleague and I have managed to stay warm ourselves. We hope to be completely back in business tomorrow, with a few publications a bit behind schedule. Thanks for your good wishes and your patience. Posted: 12/18/06; 7:59:12 PM #

The Art of the Start Video

If you are not familiar with Guy Kawasaki's speech The Art of the Start (based on his book of the same title), then you are in for a treat if you watch it online. I recommend it to beginners and seasoned social entrepreneurs alike. At least, you will be humorously reminded of what you already know to be true about start-ups and sometimes that re-learning is exactly what we need. Posted: 12/18/06; 7:45:16 PM #

Creating Passionate Users: "Dignity is Deadly." - Paul Graham

Quoting Paul Graham, Kathy Sierra says that Dignity is Deadly. Damagingly serious demeanors are indeed a problem, in the nonprofit sector as much as anywhere. But I also see a fair number of tech oriented nonprofit efforts projecting a cool demeanor without nearly the substance that I would say is needed to back it up. I appreciate the spirit and character of openness that is communicated, but I don't like it when it's just hip. Posted: 12/18/06; 7:41:55 PM #

Hungry For a Month

During this period of high consumption in the rich north (of which I am, like many of you, a conflicted participant), we are often in need of a little extra consciousness raising. To that end, I recommend Hungry For a Month, in which Evan Stein, a young man of otherwise fairly common American privilege, documents his month of eating on one dollar a day in East Lansing, Michigan. Posted: 12/18/06; 2:01:55 PM #