Elephants on Bicycles

Columbus continues to show its strength of online community with a few budding collaborations which have been producing significant relationships and increased visibility for what many detractors call “Cow Town”.

The Columbus Social Media Cafe held the April meeting at OCLC where we appropriate exchanged a good deal of knowledge and ideas. Jeff Johnson once again took the helm and hosted the event where he introduced Elise to give a really fantastic run down of some Flickr options many of us had never explored. Much of the evenings discussion focused around the upcoming Startup Weekend, (re)Branding our group, and Comfest collaboration. We also established a google group to help continue the discussion at http://groups.google.com/group/columbus-social-media-cafe?hl=en.

Ashley Roustin and Jameson Pack are heading up the (re)Branding efforts and I know a few other people (I believe Jim) stepped up and stated that they’d like to help out with that. Ashley and Tim Eby gave a good rundown of bringing Startup Weekend here to Columbus. I’ve got to get in on that! Basically it is an intense (EXTREMELY INTENSE) weekend where you go soup to nuts to create a startup company; TechColumbus will be hosting this and sponsors are needed. More information coming (hopefully a press release tomorrow).

A couple months ago the Social Media Cafe talked about how great it would be to provide a WiFi mesh network at Goodale for the Comfest event. After going round and round a bit with the Comfest organizers we finally found a faction already planning on making this happen but they were very keen on our organization working to provide workshop opportunities. Anyhow, so this loose group was meeting up at Sporeprint at 172 E 5th (I had no idea this place existed but it’s right next to 3rd Hand Bike Co-Op, check it). I cut out of the SMC meeting a bit early which was disappointing because of what a great meeting it was but I was equally excited about seeing how we could lend a hand at Comfest.

The meeting was very productive at Sporeprint and I think we’re headed in a good direction. It sounds like the WiFi mesh is going to be a test this year and not an official resource so we should be able to utilize it for our workshops and some other bits but it won’t be “published” for the general community. The shelterhouse will act as our tech center and Comfest will gladly give us some table space in return for volunteers and content (in this case workshops/presentations). Generally the idea is to staff the tech center from noon to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday which means we need atleast 4 people willing to work a 3 hour shift a piece. I think it would be better to get at least 8 people so that you aren’t working a shift alone and I don’t really think that will be an issue.

Some of the ideas tossed around included setting up some workstations where people could record direct to internet videos of what they think about Comfest, a place where indie media types could upload content either over WiFi connectivity or at one of the workstations, possibly project the uploaded videos on an outdoor screen using Nate’s bicycle operated generator, workshops explaining the general ideas and tools behind social media (vlog, blog, utterz, etc), presentation on citizen journalism and civil rights protection via social media. Each session should be no longer than 45 minutes which means we basically have time for 12 sessions. I don’t think there is any reason this can’t be accomplished just within our group but fortunately there are several other groups interested in stepping up as well. So for starters, if you want to get in on this then drop me a note here.

I went into the evening tired and worn out, I’ve been running at 100% for a few weeks now and that is just now wrapping down a bit this week. In fact today I find out the fate of my job which is a bit disconcerting but I’m sure it’ll all work out. Regardless of all that I walked out of the SMC meeting wishing I could stay because my energy had lifted so much, the talk about Startup Weekend has me salivating over working my ass off over a beautiful summer weekend even, and then, THEN, I went to this Comfest meeting and was blown away by the goodness. I could barely sleep that night and I’m still riding that energy as best as I can.