Author Archives: Michael
Crazy Brother Cycling 3,000 Miles in a Week
I’m blessed with an amazing extended family. So I hesitate to blog about any one member… but it’s simply amazing what my brother Dave is up to this week… biking from Oceanside, California to Annapolis, Maryland in 6.5 days. At this moment he must be passing from Indiana into Ohio… about 2,300 miles down, 700 to go. Go man, go!
This is all part of RAAM… Race Across America. Dave is on a four-man team… two in their 70s, one in his 50s and Dave in the mid-40s… the oldest bunch on the course… called PAC RATS. Here are his team results by stage.
So if you see a blur go by on the road between Ohio and Annapolis in the next 24 hours, holler a cheer for me! Wish I could be there.
UPDATE: Hey! Congratulations brother Dave and his fellow PAC RATS… they finished today (June 18) about 2:30 PM at Annapolis… averaged a little better than 18 MPH for 3,000! I’m looking forward to hearing some stories from him.
UPDATE 2: They did it… broke the record. Dave’s team averaged 18.21 MPH across the United States, beating the old record for “old men” (four-man team, 60-69 years avg) of 17.87 MPH. Here’s Dave on a steep ascent in Maryland, followed by a shot of the team after the finish…
The seventh 4-person team, the PAC Rats, finished just 16 minutes after Utah Neuro Sciences Research with a time of 6:21:30 to establish a new record speed of 18.21 mph in the 60+ division. They beat the old record of 17.87 mph set by Dave Tanner & Richard Rupp’s Team Hoosers last year. PAC RATS have the oldest rider in this years race – 75 year old Lew Meyer. Their crew chief was RAAM legend Lee “Fuzzy” Mitchell who told me Chris Stauffer (his health was too poor to allow him to be on the team) was the emotional leader of the crew. Also on the crew was Rob Kash and former Calvin’s 12 Hour Challenge organizers John & Ann McKinley. Rider Don Peters said that Lee’s rotation of 4 on and 4 off worked brilliantly.
Small Businesses Advertising Online put Eggs in One Basket
Palore says that most small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) that advertise online, advertise on only one site. Here’s a graph from Boston data…
NYC data from Palore is similar, as reported by the Kelsey Group.
New Friends and Snapping Turtles
Will just posted the following on his town’s Front Porch Forum…
Thanks to the Front Porch Forum for letting two would-be strangers recognize each other as a
result of being FPF members. Last Sunday, while driving to town I saw a baby snapping turtle crossing the road right by the auto place on rte 2 between Richmond and rte 89. I parked where I could, jumped out of the car, grabbed some tools from the back of my car and proceeded to flag people to slow down as I approached the dazed turtle. A woman slowed and asked if I needed help, and I immediately said, “Yes!”
Though it was a baby, it was still about 14″ long and weighed about 30 pounds. So as I lifted the turtle, the woman who stopped to help steadied it while we escorted him across the rest of rte 2 and way up and over the other side of the railroad tracks. We bid him farewell and told him to NOT turn around! The kind woman and I exchanged names only to find that we recognized each other from the FPF. We had engaged in conversation through the forum, and I found it humbling to have actually known this person, though we had not actually met face to face. Thank you FPF for being an avenue for me to make new friends through! Hi Enid!
Multiply this story by thousands of times and you get what’s happening all over our little metro-area. Thanks for sharing Will!
Google-hosted Boot Camp comes to Burlington, VT
Cool local success, Epik, is hosting an Online Marketing (OM) Boot Camp in Burlington, VT, June 17-20. These are good folks who do great work, so I recommend it. Google and Champlain College are also co-hosting. They’re even offering some grants to cut the cost for select Vermont businesses. I’d be there if I wasn’t already booked… I’ll be co-leading a workshop about building online community at the American Press Institute based on our work with Front Porch Forum.
[Disclosure: Epik is a sponsor of Front Porch Forum.]
How is Front Porch Forum like an iPhone?
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch wrote today about Steve Jobs latest unveiling… the new iPhone, etc. Here’s the part that stood out for me…
We had a grand debate today on the Gillmor Gang
about the iPhone and its place in history. The most interesting part of the discussion for me was the “closed v. open” question. That’s because ultimately I believe the iPhone isn’t competing with Windows Mobile or RIM as much as Google’s upcoming Android, a very open mobile platform.
The iPhone is a closed system, with locked down hardware and platform, and rigid rules for outside developers. Android is all about open. And open is always better, right?
As we’ve seen with Macs v. Windows, and then the iPod v. everyone, closed systems can work. Users will trade price and flexibility in exchange for simplicity and elegance. That’s hard to do when you’re building software that will work across a broad range of devices, technologies and software providers. It’s easy to do when you control both ends of the system, and everything in between.
Ultimately I concede that Android may have a much larger market share than the iPhone. But I’ll argue that the iPhone users will be much happier, even as Apple makes obscene profits off of that smaller user base.
I love the iPhone for the same reason I love technology in general, and loved Disneyland as a child – it drives my imagination and makes me wonder what kind of magic to expect next. Also, it just works.
This reminds me of a recent conversation I had with someone asking for a comparison of Front Porch Forum to other services, such as Yahoo Groups, Ning and iNeighbors.
We have very specific goals with Front Porch Forum, so it’s not a wide-open system. These other services offer a kind of blank slate on which group organizers can draw all sorts of great things for their individual members… or not. Front Porch Forum’s mission is not so much egocentric as it is neighborhood-centric. We’ve made our design decision to date to optimize neighbor connection and the sense of community within a neighborhood or town.
And while we’re light years away from a giant such as Apple, thousands of our subscribers in our pilot metro area are ga-ga over their FPF neighborhood forum. This would not be the case if we just offered an open-ended do-it-yourself kind of thing, like many other services. We get comments like the quote above all the time, praising FPF’s simplicity and ease of use.
Porch Parties a Good Start
The Detroit Free Press ran an article yesterday that caught my eye. It opens with…
Christiane Lenz has lived in her Farmington Hills subdivision for six years and knows only a handful of her neighbors.
But that could change, as Lenz plans to host a porch party, an initiative of the Farmington and Farmington Hills Multicultural Multiracial Community Council. The parties, organizers say, are a way for residents to revive the tradition of neighborly, informal gatherings and hopefully spark new friendships.
“You don’t see people together,” said Lenz, 49, who is planning a September party. “Everyone keeps to themselves.”
There should be several parties held throughout the community in the summer, and at least six are already in the works. The gatherings are intended to be casual, with potlucks or dessert-only events among the party ideas from the council. The council also will provide talking points or icebreaker activities. Karen Bolsen, executive director of the council, said attendees should shy away from controversial topics such as race, politics and religion.
Bolsen said the porch party idea came about after community members said they felt disconnected from neighbors. The parties are a way for residents in Farmington and Farmington Hills to better understand their ethnically and racially diverse neighbors…
Sounds great! I’d suggest to the organizers that while these porch parties will be a good start, they should use them as a starting point for something more… a monthly event, organizing a group to work on something (new playground, clean-up crew, stop unwanted development, traffic calming, etc.), or a service like Front Porch Forum.
Doing something once is good and relatively easy. Converting that good stuff into sometime sustainable over time is much more valuable and takes real work.
About Blog
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more
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