Yes a video intense course should have a vernacular video description. I’ll be building the whole syllabus in this same way. Here’s hoping my vernacular video skills pick up a bit as I get further into the course.
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When I teach about social capital theory — thanks to Nan Lin –, I always talk about the action of social capital is what makes it real. Thousands of friends mean little until they are successfully called into action for some cause. I prefer good causes.
This past weekend, I got to see and to be a part of a successful social capital call when Carrboro neighbor, Ioana Sherman won the Intuit Small Business Grant Competition and received $25,000 to help start her music business.
Here’s what happened:
I stopped over at our local 3rd Place, The Weave, for a tweetup with pals @boraz and @mistersugar to welcome (and meet) @cogscilibrarian who had just moved to our area to become the librarian for the J-school. Already several layers of social networks and social capital situated there.
On my way to look for a table, I noticed a woman talking to people and handing out small flyers. She was explaining why people should go online (yes there is free wifi in this 3rd place) and vote for her friend. I heard someone say, “You don’t need these flyers; you just need to talk to Paul Jones.”
Like Satan, I appeared at the mention of my name.
The tale told is an international one, one best told by Ioana Sherman herself here in her not quite 4 minute video entry to the contest. Briefly, Ioaona was born in Romania and became an accomplished musician. She also has a gift for teaching. She started a small business teaching kids traveling to their homes. She needed an investment to convert her house, at least part of it, into a studio/classroom. She had a great plan, a good background, a proven market, a good startup success record, but no funds. She learned, not sure how, about the Intuit Small Business Grant contest. She made her inspiring video and was getting great feedback online.
While the judging counted for a lot in the contest, community ratings account for 40% of the judging criteria!
Her neighbors were out drumming up votes.
@mistersugar, @boraz and perhaps @cogscilibrarian and I all tweeted:
Ioana Sherman is running for an Intuit grant to start a music studio. Http://tinyurl.com/ioanavideo Please vote for her project & retweet.
and
Ioana Sherman needs your vote in the Intuit Contest Look here http://tinyurl.com/ioanavideo View, vote (all 3 buttons)
Our tweets are automatically repeated as our FaceBook status, our FriendFeed, on our blogs and so forth. Soon there were a lot more people viewing the video and casting votes for Ioana. She had already attracted a strong and dedicated following through her own social network (as the comments on the video show), but we did add some votes.
Ioana’s final count was: Inspiring (1422) Useful (1389) Funny (1363). By far the largest response among rated contestants.
Today I got this tweet from @intuit:
Intuit @SmallJones @PaulTimmers Your votes helped Ioana Sherman win $25K in Intuit’s Small Business United grant comntest http://bitly.com/SBUWin
BTW @intuit uses Tweetdeck
Was great to be a part of Ioana’s story and to see social capital in action.
I was at the Global Health Council meeting in Washington last week and was lucky enough to be on hand for the meeting of the OPEN Council and to get to dance a little that night when IntraHealth OPEN announced Indaba Global Remix Contest Winner – STUDIO MALI (see below) Afrissippi, Toubab Krewe, DJ Equal and Umar Bin Hassan were all there to play and lead some serious dancing for a very good cause — open source software for public health efforts in Senegal. Learn more about the project at http://www.intrahealth.org/open
Thx @ruby: Paul Jones icon from Episcopal Peace Fellowship

From the Episcopal Peace Fellowship - Saint Bishop Paul Jones
One giant step closer to a Data-driven Journalism for Democratic Discourse with the announcement of data.gov
Jones’ Model for Data-driven Journalism for Democratic Discourse
White House video on Data.gov
Paul’s Honeysuckle Mint Julep
Prepare liquids for Bill Smith’s Honeysuckle Sorbet (also in Bill’s great book Seasoned in the South)
Fill ice trays with the liquids and freeze at least overnight
chill tall julep glasses
Pick fresh mint and clean
Crush the mint in the bottoms of the glasses.
Pour 1 shot of Bourbon in to each glass
Remove ice cubes and crush to a rough consistency
Add crushed ice ot the glasses
Garnish with mint
Drink by sipping very slowly while holding the bottom of the glass so as to slowly melt the ice into the bourbon.
A simple sterling sliver julep stirrer that has been in the family for several generations is the preferred sipping and stirring (used only sparingly for stirring) instrument.
Wear a semiformal hat
Homage (for Richard Krawiec on a later birthday)
In age, we age out? An outrage!
We’re not aging or aged,
but do dote on us in our dotage.
Count age as contagious:
Our peer age is our peerage;
We are counts and countesses;
we count more as we count up.
Our old age adage isn’t from a page
in Ad Age; it’s age old: Overage,
not over age! Excess is best
when blessed by time. Oh!
clockturnage, Oh creakage,
Oh leakage near peak age,
need we act our age?
As age ramps up. let’s rampage
against the damage. Damn age!
The trick here is slow cooking tagine-style so don’t be in a hurry. After the initial setup and blending, the whole mess will need to simmer for about 2 hours.
Mix the Mixed Spices in a bowl large enough to hold all the lamb, then dredge the lamb cubes in the spices.
Heat oil for browning the lamb and once hot brown the lamb scraping the spices and other good stuff as you go.
Remove the lamb and add the onion and garlic (and a little more oil if needed). Cook until the onion is transparent.
Add the roots and fruits stirring frequently until all are well mixed.
Add the lamb and any spices in the bowl to the mix.
Add the zest and cinnamon sticks.
Add the broth or water (enough to cover) and bring the whole thing to a boil.
Reduce to a simmer and let it slow cook for 2 hours. The roots and fruits will begin to make a glaze and a kind of delicious mush.
Serve alone or over couscous.
Garnish with fresh herbs.
Also known in our house as “Lamb with Roots and Fruits.”
Ingredients:
1 pound of lamb in cubes
olive oil (as needed)
Mixed spices:
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons coriander
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
3 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon of fennel seeds
1 onion*
3 garlic cloves
Diced Roots:
2 medium golden beets*
6 small turnips*
1 medium sweet potato*
1 or 2 carrots
2 or more Tablespoons of fresh ginger
2/3 cups each of Diced Fruits:
dried apricots
dried prunes
dried papaya
dried cranberries
2 – 4 cups of broth or water
2 cinnamon sticks
2 teaspoons of freshly grated lemon zest
Garnish:
fresh mint+
fresh fennel (bronze)+
*From local farmer’s market
+From my herb garden
I’ve been tweeting now for well over two years and have had my Tweets sent to my Facebook status and my IM status and to my blog for some time. This makes it look as if I were very active everywhere on the Net. Really it’s just me and my phone out taking notes. No big deal. Unless you are one of this year’s new Facebook user (and you know who you are) who feel like they have to read every status of every friend (I’m flattered but it’s nothing vital or I would have written you directly or started a chat session).
Thing really revved up when I started live-tweeting events. “What is with this # thing, Jones?” Well, this # thing, called hash tagging, is a way to let tweet on the same subject be read and discovered by anyone interested in that subject or event. http://hashtags.org or http://search.twitter.com let you and others follow along or catch up or read about an event you had to miss or a subject that interest you.
My live tweets of Oliver Smithies’ talk with Tony Waldrop at the Health Sciences Library was hash tagged with #uncnobel (here I used a nice service called tweetag.com).
Twitter folks liked that but Facebook friends were confused by the # and by the frequency of my tweets.
On Thursday Night, I was a judge at the UNC YouTube Tournament. Of course I tweeted that live as #yttour as the list of the videos and the results weren’t being posted til the end of the night. My tweeple were mostly appreciative (or stopped following me ;->), but Facebook friends were again confused. Several did start comment threads on the statuses though.
Today at a panel on social media for the Triangle Association of Black Journalists, we had pretty savvy crowd in the audience and on the panel. Live tweeting on the panel were @waynesutton and @communityMRG — aka Wayne Sutton and James Wong respectively — and myself. Several audience members tweeted questions and comments. All of the tweets tagged #tabj were projected behind the panel on a very large screen using TweetGrid (written by Raleigh’s own @jazzychad). This really facilitated discussion and helped keep the audience and panelists involved. Still one friend had to post “dude… your twitter is boiling over :)” Err, we were all rocking there, pal. In fact, Wayne was live streaming the event on UStreamTV too so we had our full Tweet+Video operation going.
Those who were worried that Facebook feeds would replace Twitter can relax. Twittering behavior on Facebook is not well-groked.
Clips from the opening reception/party for the April 2009 show of Jane Filer‘s work at Tyndall Galleries in Chapel Hill. Strange visitors with large heads (created by Filer) dance with the guests.

Dan Gillmor on the State of Citizen Media
We the Media Report from the Center for Citizen Media
06 April 2009
15:30 – 16:30
Freedom Forum Conference Center
Carroll Hall – UNC
Facebook Event Here
Dan Gillmor is director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication. The project aims to help students appreciate the startup culture of risk-taking, and to foster new media products and services.
Dan is also director of the Center for Citizen Media, a project to enhance and expand grassroots media and its reach. The center is an affiliate of ASI and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He is author of “We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People” (O’Reilly Media, 2004), a book that explains the rise of citizens’ media and why it matters.
From 1994 until early 2005 Dan was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley’s daily newspaper, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. During 2005 he worked on media projects at Grassroots Media Inc.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, Gillmor received a Herbert Davenport fellowship in 1982 for economics and business reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. During the 1986-87 academic year he was a journalism fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he studied history, political theory and economics. He has won or shared in several regional and national journalism awards. Before becoming a journalist he played music professionally for seven years.
Two quick bits of Jones-mania:
I’m acknowledged as a genius in Carrboro (if not in France – pace Weird Al) in a Carrboro Commons article featuring Jeremy the anti-Barney.
I take on Brit Twits in a row over Open Source and Repositories in ASIST Bulletin. Truth prevails

I’ll be tweeting a conversation between UNC’s Vice Chancellor for Research, Tony Waldrop and UNC’s Nobelist Oliver Smithies Monday at 4 pm EDT http://www.hsl.unc.edu/smithies/ for details and background
#uncnobel will be the tag
Send me ideas and questions!
UPDATE: I was the twitting twit in tweed. See the #uncnobel tweetstream here.
I whipped this up tonight and added rice noodles (pad thai) at the end cooking them as in a stirfry. This recipe is for Elizabeth C who requested it and from several Thai sources online.
You need:
Olive oil for sauteing
1 red onion chopped
3 or 4 garlic cloves minced
at least a tablespoon of fresh ginger root minced. I use more
A selection of chopped veggies – I used peas, bok choi, and broccoli
1 can of low fat coconut milk
2 tablespoons of Taste of Thai or Tommy Tang red curry paste
1.5 tablespoons of Thai fish sauce
maybe half a cup water as and if needed
Lime juice and zest from half a lime
Pad Thai (rice noodles)
Basil leaves for garnishing
Green onions for garnish
Serve with the other lime half sliced as you choose.
Prepare the Pad Thai noodles for stirfry (most boxes or bags will have directions) usually by soaking in hot water
In a deep pot, heat the oil then stirfry the garlic and onion until the onion is transparent.
Then add ginger then veggies and stirfry until cooked yet crunchy.
Now add the coconut milk, red curry paste, fish sauce and some of the chopped basil leaves
Bring to a light boil and stir well then add the Pad Thai noodles
Cook for about 2 or 3 minutes stirring well.
Serve with green onion and basil garnish and lime sections.
and remember to delete this later
Took red beans and rice to Ohio tonight when I added Cincinnati chili sauce to the mix. It was a great taste and a big success with my family.
For the N’rleans portion, I took a large cut trinity (1 red onion, 1 large green pepper and 4 stalks of celery) along with garlic and sauted them in olive oil until the onion was transparent. Then I added the Cincinnati spices:
1.5 tablespoon of unsweet cocoa
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
(some recipes also add 1 teaspoon of ground cloves)
After they were mixed in well, I added 2 cans of drained and washed red beans, some tomato paste and about 1.5 cups of broth. All of this simmered while the rice cooked. The result was a wonderful spicy mole with still crunchy green pepper and celery. Yum. Thank you Skyline Chili and the sainted Lambrinides family for the inspiration.

Anyone who can write a sentence like this one:
No one who has ever savored a Corona Extra and a grilled cheese sandwich hastily cooked on a well-crusted one-burner hotplate and served at sundown from the not-all-that-sanitary hands of besandled sprites in tie-dye apparel, which wandering amidst the jumbled array of gaily painted one-time school buses and VW Micros (ideally the model with opera windows, like the one Arlo Guthrie drove to the dump in Alice’s Restaurant), in a pleasant haze of body odor, burning grease, and patchouli, is likely to forget the experience, or what it meant to one’s understanding of transcendence.
and manages to get it woven into a book from Stanford University Law School Press under the title of No Law: Intellectual Property in the Image of an Absolute First Amendment deserves a party if not a respectable gathering of legal scholars and a free lunch. Personally I would, if able, give much more. Unable to give more, I give my proper respect and my attendance at the conference.
Tomorrow (Saturday March 21) will not only be the first day of Spring but the Conference to Honor the Publication of No Law: Intellectual Property in the Image of an Absolute First Amendment honoring not only the book but the authors — David Lange, who surely wrote the sentence quoted, and H. Jefferson Powell.
Sally and others were on WUNC’s State of Things today talking about the “Our Stories, In Focus Project” with Laura Leslie (who was sitting in for Frank Stacio). You can hear that interview here.
Our Stories, In Focus is a public arts and history collaboration that invites residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro to look more closely at their personal and community histories by participating in workshops that explore two questions: What brought you or your family to this place? and What is the legacy you want to leave in your community?
Workshops sessions feature opportunities to add an image of your memento to the public art project, tell your story for an oral history, participate in journal writing and more:
Saturday, March 21
University Mall, Chapel Hill
10:00 am to 2:00 pm: Art Project, Oral Histories, The New York Times reprint
11:00 am to 1:00 pm: Journal Writing and Story Circle
1:00 to 2:00 pm: GenealogySaturday, March 28
Century Center, Carrboro
Noon to 4:00 pm: Art Project, Oral Histories, The New York Times reprint
1:00 to 3:00 pm: Journal Writing and Story Circle
3:00 to 4:00 pm: Genealogy
From: Paul Jones [mailto:pjconsultinc@googlemail.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2009 11:45 AM
Subject: Enquiry Request.Hello Sir/Ma.
My name is Paul Jones, Owner of PJ Consult Inc, Based in Japan.
I will like to Make an Enquiry about your company if your Company Ship Overseas, to Japan, aslo if you accept Credit card Payment as Payment Terms, (Visa/Master International cards).
Thats the Payment Our Company offers, Please get back with Answers to the aboved metion questions.
I await to read a Quick Response From Soon.
Many Thanks.
Paul Jones.
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The Invisible is a band that plays and programs instruments made from consumer and industrial junk. Most of the sound comes from drumming devices activated by the Wheel That Gives Life (my name for it), a three foot in diameter metal wheel with peg holes in it. The wheel slowly turns and the pegs which are inserted and withdrawn by the operator activate switches which in turn activate electro-magnets that then activate hammers (mostly) that tap variously constructed drums, blocks, clappers, etc. Add in video played on old Commodore monitors — some pulled from the Museum’s security cameras, plus some distorted recomposed keyboards and you have a band. Surprisingly great music for museum going or sitting or dancing.
Still don’t know if The Invisible took their name from the DJ Spooky collection by the same name.

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