Dr. Joe Soss' new book Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race was featured in commentary by Star Tribune journalist Lori Sturdevant. In the article, Soss states "Our notions about who's deserving of help and who isn't are rooted in the notions about individual effort and individual success or failure."
Disciplining the Poor, co-authored with Richard C. Fording, and Sanford F. Schram and published in November by the University of Chicago Press, already has been called "a landmark book." Soss discussed it in The Society Pages; click here to listen to the podcast.
Learn more about the book at www.discipliningthepoor.com.
An article online at The Christian Science Monitor is asking the question, "Does our love affair with mavericks--from Ronald Reagan to Steve Jobs--make sense?"
Dr. Jodi Sandfort, Chair of the Leadership & Management Area and PNLC Professor gets a chance to answer this question, stating that in the old days, "a heroic leader would come in with the vision and then run off into the sunset, and other people would figure out how to do it. That's another part of the myth that's deteriorating: If you have the vision, you need to be able to mobilize the resources, implement the vision, and understand the policy of it."
Read the entire article here!
Here at the PNLC, we are fortunate in many things, not the least of which is our exemplary advisory committee, which is populated with leaders from the public, nonprofit, philanthropy, and private sectors.
Lars Leafblad, Principal at Keystone Search, founder of Pollen, and intrepid networker not only serves on our committee, but has also been a guest speaker at events. Steve Rothschild, Founder & Chairman of Twin Cities Rise!, has a book coming out in February entitled The Non Nonprofit: For Profit Thinking for Nonprofit Success. (We will be having an event for its release here at the Humphrey School on February 21. Keep watching for details!)
Both Lars and Steve are highlighted in the December Twin Cities Business magazine article "200 Minnesotans You Should Know" (Pages 31 & 33).
Congratulations, Lars & Steve!
The coffee break became the conference at CityCampMN, held Saturday, November 12th, 2011 at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Center. Attended by more than 100 representatives from government, neighborhood organizations, nonprofits, and web development concerns, the event is one of many recent "unconferences" that have been held in Chicago, San Francisco, and Honolulu, as well as in the United Kingdom and Russia.
The role of event "convener" was filled by Steve Clift, Executive Director of E-Democracy.org. Clift, who also teaches "Social Media: Engaging Democracy in Communities Online," a graduate course at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Clift said the event was a grassroots effort to connect local governments with the open-source software development community and open-government advocates.
A Cure for Smugness?
He stressed that the unconference was sorely needed in Minnesota. "We suffer from progressive smugness here, and we rarely look around to see what others are doing, because we seem to think that Minnesotans create ideas and then sell them to the world. But other cities are importing our ideas and improving upon them. We need to start doing some importing of our own, because we have the capacity to leapfrog everyone else if we act now."
He believes that the timing was right for a multidisciplinary event of this sort. "There is a sea of interest that wasn't in the community even four years ago," he said. "People are ready now to take government to a 2.0 model," he continued. "We're getting everyone together to ask the question how our local communities can be bold, inclusive, open, accessible, wired, and innovative. We're hoping to connect bottom-up with top-down for collaboration, and if it all goes well, the next layer of creativity will have been unleashed.''
But Where's the Agenda?
The unique format of the conference, in which attendees determine the agenda collaboratively at the start of the day, created both curiosity and skepticism, Clift observed, adding with a laugh, "I've had people asking me for a speaker list and agenda all week long. I have to tell them that at an unconference, those things don't exist, that instead you go in with your knowledge and share it. It's the idea that 'we are the ones we were waiting for,' so instead of a bunch of people in a room being spoon-fed by a speaker, it's more like a massive coffee break with a little bit of structure."
The day started with each of the 100-plus participants standing up for an introduction, including three words to describe themselves, and the recorded words were used to create a real-time word cloud.
That a multitude of disciplines was represented became apparent during the introductions, and Clift was pleased with the crossing of lines dividing the worlds of government, social media, the web, the arts, and communities. "It's the dynamic mix that makes a CityCamp hum," he said. "We want to encourage fresh thinking and risk taking, and it helps to have everyday folks attending, not just digerati."
After introductions, there was a review of the unconference's four principles and one law:
The Four Principles:
Whoever comes are the right people
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened
When it starts is the right time
When it's over, it's over
The Law of Two Feet:If you find yourself in a room where you are not contributing or learning, go somewhere else.
"Igniting" the Crowd
The large-group time ended with five-minute, five-slide Ignite Sessions that were kicked off by Otto Doll, CIO of the City of Minneapolis. Peter Fleck, a community organizer and activist from the Seward neighborhood, spent his five minutes on a discussion of information networking within communities. Fleck, who attended the first CityCamp in Chicago two years ago, said the day before the event that he was hoping to generate movement from Minneapolis City Hall toward releasing more usable data, especially for crime statistics.
Fleck contends that the current information is available only block-by-block, and that the city has set up too many obstacles to allow for easy manipulation and analysis of the data. Toward the end of the day, as he was leaving a session called "Fighting Crime," Fleck was not optimistic that any major policy shifts would happen immediately, but expressed determination to keep fighting.
An Arts Advocate
While representatives from arts organizations had a lower level of participation, Sherilyn Howes, Managing Director of Youth Performance Company, a youth-centered, Minneapolis-based theater company, said she'd still received value from the day. Commenting on a session called "Organizing through Arts," she said that she had expected to be listening most of the time, but surprised herself by how much she spoke up. "I see the value in having no leader designated for the sessions," she said, adding with a laugh, "I'm finding out that I know more than I thought I did.
"It's a very organic way to make information sharing happen," she said, "and I appreciate talking with other people in the trenches, who do similar type of work as I do, but from a different angle."
In some sessions, the lack of a designated leader created a space for others to share their expertise. Tyler Olson, president of the social media consulting group SMCpros, stepped up to the whiteboard during "Social Media ROI" and offered for-profit expertise to the audience of government and nonprofit representatives. The youthful and energetic Olson provided a detailed primer on inexpensive and free listening and tracking tools, supported by comments from his social media contemporaries in attendance, then volunteered to tape a one-minute video summary of the session, which will be added to a "best of" video roundup.
A Paradigm for the Times
Clift, the convener, says that this sort of cross-discipline knowledge sharing is what's most needed in the current economic climate. "In an era of scarce resources, we have to think creatively about how our community comes together to take advantage of online resources. What we hope the unconference does is connect some talents to start getting pieces in place. An example is something like leveraging existing code, which the government usually undertakes in large projects. But it can also be small and elegant and creative, and that's the sort of thing that I hope comes out of the day."
The results of the unconference may not be immediately apparent, since thought-starting and networking are really the name of the game. But, after attending several of these sessions all over the world, Clift says, "We've seen projects emerge with people getting together to say, 'Let's do that!' or 'We could make an app for that!' Many projects have been ignited by software developers who have day jobs, and who are passionate about helping their community." Projects can be started and tracked through the CityCampMN online forum.
In addition to project-driven success, Clift says that another effect can be to create an authentic sense of demand for open government and social media in the electoral sphere. "It can give the people on the front lines a little cover by allowing them to say, 'People want this stuff; I heard about it at the unconference.'"
Clift sums up his impressions of the day by saying, "for most participants, it was a chance to connect with a room full of people they should have met years ago."
Kate has an extensive background in the creation of educational digital media and is currently the Technology Enhanced Learning Coordinator for the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. In her capacity she collaborates with faculty as they integrate academic technology into their curriculum.
This is unrelated to our work here at the PNLC, but it is related to the University of Minnesota. It just goes to show you how many ways our beloved "U" contributes to our lives.
From "The Writer's Almanac," a production Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media:
It's the birthday of cheerleading, which made its debut at the University of Minnesota on this date [November 2] in 1898. Pep clubs had been around for a couple of decades, especially at Princeton, where their all-male pep club led the crowd in unified chanting to motivate the football team. In 1884, Princeton alum Thomas Peebles moved to Minneapolis, and brought the pep club concept along to the University of Minnesota's football games. Two of the university's rugby players, John Adams and Win Sargent, came up with a "team yell" that same year to cheer on the rugby team: Ski-U-Mah, which neatly rhymes with "Rah, rah, rah!" But all of these chants and cheers were led from the stands.
In the fall of 1898, the U of M's football team had suffered three consecutive losses, and fans were desperate for a way to raise team spirit for the season's final game against Northwestern. The pep club brainstormed plans to further involve the spectators, and nominated a group of "yell leaders" to lead the crowd in the now-traditional chant, "Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-U-Mah! Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Minn-e-so-ta!" One of the yell leaders, Johnny Campbell, took the radical step of running out to the playing field with a megaphone. He faced the crowd, whipped them to a frenzy, and got much of the credit for Minnesota's victory.
Cheerleading was a male-only sport until 1923, when the first female cheerleaders took the field. This phenomenon didn't really take off until the 1940s, when the male student body was depleted by World War II. The '20s also saw the advent of acrobatics, human pyramids, and dance moves to accompany the fight songs and chants.
So, you find yourself in a crowd of about a thousand people, and you are heading down a long passage way with people and tables on either side of you as far as you can see. Suddenly, someone grabs your shoulder and spins you around and says, "Gary, it's great to see you!" And you hug. It's one of your students from way back.
Next, you are in this giant ballroom, and you are delayed in getting in a seat at a table because another student stopped to say hi. You find there are no spaces left to sit but you see people scrambling to set up tables. And up walks this giant of a man and says, "How are you?" and he means it. He wants to know how to get back into our mid career program at the Humphrey. He tells me that many, many people in his organization have been promoted recently and none are people of color, and I know it is an organization that serves people of color. And I nearly weep with him.
Then, I get invited to sit in open seat near the back of the room and the gentleman next to me tells me he's from the American Indian Family Center in St Paul and shakes my hand. I tell him, I am looking for a drum group at the Humphrey School. He says, "call me, we have a drum group. We will come to help celebrate Native American Heritage week at the Humphrey." Just like that!
The next day, there is plenty of room at the tables and 3 of our Humphrey International Fellows (one from Chad, another from So. Africa, and another from Azerbaijan, the last 2 are both founders of nonprofits in their homelands) join me. Before we eat, Pat Mellenthin, Executive Director of The ARC of Minnesota and my former farm neighbor from Lyon County, comes over to say hi and introduces me to her board chair. I introduce her and him to our table and minutes later, ARC is recognized for its outstanding leadership along with 5 other amazing Minnesota nonprofits that have changed the world.
That's what MCN is all about.
Gary DeCramer
Director, Master of Public Affairs Program
Humphrey School of Public Affairs
The Minnesota Council on Foundations has released its annual "Giving in Minnesota" report.
From MCF's website:
"Giving in Minnesota provides a comprehensive analysis of the trends and patterns of giving by organized philanthropy in the state.
The report is intended to present the scope of philanthropy in Minnesota to a diverse audience, including nonprofits, the news media, public officials and the general public, as well as to foundations and corporate giving programs."
You can download either a summary or the full report at MCF's website.
The Star Tribune published an article highlighting some of the findings.
The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs or the University of Minnesota. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota or the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.
