A few clicks later led me to Northfielder Anne Sabo who, it turns out, is a former St. Olaf prof who now maintains three active blogs.

Northfield has a lot of bloggers but not many with more than one so I knew I needed to know more.  We had coffee yesterday morning at GBM and we’re now exploring ways to collaborate.

Anne’s sites:

Anne Sabo home page

Quizzical mama

Love, Sex, and Family

New porn by women

Brenton’s tweets and blog posts are personable, often opinionated, and cover many different topics but nearly always linked somehow to Northfield and his life as a husband, dad, rink rat, store manager, part-time preacher, kids baseball coach, and many other roles. He’s an occasional commenter here on LoGro and his blog posts often appear on Northfield Patch.

I like it that Brenton isn’t shy about his opinions.  A recent favorite: What is More Offensive: Pornography or A Woman Breastfeeding in Public?

WCCO News recently aired a Good Question segment about breastfeeding in public as a result of a Texas woman’s nationwide call to for a "nurse-in" at Target stores after she said she was humiliated by Target employees.

The segment reminded me of a blog post I wrote in July 2006 (Pornography yes – Breastfeeding no – Are We Serious?) on the hypocrisy and idiocy of the fact that our nation accepts and promotes the normalcy and legitimacy of pornography, and yet demands nursing mothers sit in dirty bathrooms and closet spaces to feed their infants just so passerby’s aren’t exposed to the slightest embarrassment of having to see a sliver of a breast performing its most natural function.

But Jane McWilliams is teaching a Cannon Valley Elder Collegium course this spring titled The Future of Journalism (4 slots left as I write this) and local media moguls from KYMN, the Northfield News, Northfield Patch, Northfield.org, and yes, even Locally Grown are among the guests she’s having attend various class sessions.

1. Since Northfield Patch is the new kid on the block here in town, its time to scrutinize their effort, both locally and nationally.  What has been their impact on Northfield thus far? What do you like about what they’re doing? What’s disappointing or problematic?
2. Patch is a national chain of hyperlocal news sites owned by AOL. There have been many other high profile hyperlocal news projects launched, with many failures already. What’s being learned out there?
3. Journalism (local, state, national, international) continues to be in a state of extreme flux.  What do you like and not like about what you’re seeing?

If you come across interesting resources related to these issues, be sure to post them in a comment with a link and, if you’re up for it, an excerpt.

This spring, St. Dominic parish will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of their church. Nearly forgotten is the old church and the tumultuous debate that preceded its ultimate demolition in the Fall of 1985.  Tradition-minded parishioners joined with preservationists in the community to try to save the old church building. The contest attracted letters to the editor of the Northfield News from around the country, and newspaper articles in the Faribault Daily News and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

With the help of Hayes Scriven and the Northfield Historical Society, I have assembled a handful of photos that perhaps explain why so many were so attached to the lovely old red-brick building. More photos and analysis of the episode available on my blog.

[All photos courtesy of The Northfield Historical Society]

See the large slideshow or this small slideshow:

A couple of people have alerted me to an attractive new blog in town called Northfield Artists. 

This blog is dedicated to artists who are residents of Northfield, Minnesota and/or graduates of Northfield High School.

The blog doesn’t have an About page, the blog posts don’t have a person’s name attached, it’s not aggregated by the Northfield.org, and they don’t have a Facebook page. They are on Twitter, however.

Who’s doing this?

AOL has hired former Northfield News reporter Corey Butler Jr. to be its new editor of Northfield Patch (not yet open). The corporate Patch About page says that it’s "a community-specific news and information platform dedicated to providing comprehensive and trusted local coverage for individual towns and communities."

Patch is also soon launching in Eagan, Edina, Golden Valley, Richfield, and St. Louis Park. I was to meet with Minnesota Patch regional editor Don Wyatt today in Apple Valley but he had to cancel.

MinnPost’s David Brauer has blogged about Patch’s arrival in MN (see his posts: July, Aug, Sept, and Oct). There’s plenty more to read online about Patch, as it’s commonly seen as the most well-funded of the national hyperlocal community news ventures. AOL has deep pockets.

Since Patch goes after local advertising dollars, I see them as a competitor to the Northfield News, KYMN, and the Northfield Entertainment Guide.  Since Patch does community event info and seeks content from citizens, they’re also a competitor to Northfield.org.  Some of their sites have discussion threads on their stories so in that sense, they’re a competitor to Locally Grown.

Competition is good though, right?

   
At last Saturday’s Riverwalk Market Fair, I took the photo on the left of Carlson SEEDS interns Chelsea Wagner and Natasha Hegmann (housemate Julia in the center) selling their wares, including the fantastic basil (center) that Robbie purchased from them. What’s SEEDS about?  The St. Olaf Center for Experiential Learning has a page on it:

The Carlson SEEDS (Social Entrepreneurship, Environmental Design, & Stewardship) internship program, founded by Greg and Nancy Carlson ’82, is designed to engage students in experiential learning and discovery that fosters a deeper understanding and appreciation for environmental stewardship and sustainable agriculture.

Natasha’s July 19 blog post, Produce for Sale, chronicles their Saturday, including the game of "How many farmers does it take to set up a tent?" and a visit from a “professional blogging consultant.” Heh.

Chelsea and Natasha are natural born bloggers, telling interesting stories with fun photos on their Carlson SEEDS blog.

So as A) we head into the 2010 election season; and B) begin looking for a new Northfield City Administrator, I thought it might be helpful to point out some very important reasons on WHY someone in a leadership position should consider using social media tools like a blog and Twitter.

Michael Hyatt is CEO of the Christian publishing company Thomas Nelson Publishers and recently gave a speech titled “Social Media and Your Ministry.” A preview of that speech was captured in this video of an interview, blogged at How Can Christian Leaders Get Started with Social Media?

Hyatt says in the video that “Twitter may be greatest leadership tool ever invented” in part because it’s “a marvelous way to leverage your influence as a leader.”

(The title of the video makes one think it’s all about ‘how to get started’ but the most important pieces are related to why.)

The only other person I know of who’s written about blogs (and now Twitter which, after all, is a microblogging service) as tools for leveraging one’s influence as a leader is Seth Godin in his book, Small is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. (I blogged about this back in 2006, Leadership blogging and the leveraged effort curve.)

Godin originally wrote about this for his blog back in March of 2005: Godin’s Leveraged Effort Curve:

Knowledge workers get paid extra when they show insight or daring or do what others can’t. But packaging the knowledge is expensive, time consuming and not particularly enjoyable for most people. As you get better at what you do, it seems as though you spend more and more time on the packaging and less on the doing.

… The exception?

The intense conversations you can have with your customers and prospects, especially via a blog. Once you get the system and the structure set up, five minutes of effort can give you four minutes of high-leverage idea time in front of the people you’re trying to influence.

The book adds this to that last sentence: “This is pure, unadulterated leverage. The stuff you actually get paid for, with no overhead.”

Godin’s insight — “among highly-compensated workers, the percentage of the [knowledge] work you get paid to do goes down as you get paid more” and that “packaging the knowledge is expensive, time consuming and not particularly enjoyable” — was stunning to me and still is.

In the Why keep a blog? section of my 2005 Leadership Blogging Guide (currently under revision as a White Paper), my #1 reason to blog is to “Leverage your leadership interactions that otherwise disappear:”

In the course of any leader’s week, there are literally hundreds of interactions with colleagues, constituents, staff, media and other members of community. Whether these interactions are face-to-face, phone, electronic or paper-based, they comprise the bulk of how leaders exhibit their day-to-day influence. A phone call from a constituent, a conversation with a staff member at lunch, an email exchange with a colleague, an off-topic discussion at a team meeting – all likely evaporate into thin air, for all intents and purposes, as soon as they’re concluded. Even most paper documents such as memos and reports are quickly relegated to the trash, the shredder, or the filing cabinet, never to be seen again.

With a blog, leaders can select from among this never-ending parade of interactions the ones that they deem strategically significant, and give them a longer “shelf-life.” With a posting to their blog, the story of the interaction gains immediate wider audience while making it significantly easier for that audience to pass the story around to others who they think should know about it.

Prospective civic leader bloggers frequently ask, "How much time is blogging going to require?" It’s a fair question. Blogging feels like just another task when you first start out, and it does require some time commitment to work it into your week.

But once you experience feedback from your blogging, that not only are others reading your blog but that it’s starting to have influence, your attitude towards the task of blogging changes because it becomes strategic.

"I’m going to blog this because I know that she’ll read it and pass it on to…"

"When this group of people sees what I’ve blogged about this, then they’re more likely to…"

You start to realize that your blog leverages your leadership strategies in time-effective ways.

Among other reasons why a leader should blog/tweet is that the tools allow you to:

• Use a voice of authenticity to have a one-to-one conversation with an audience
• Extend your presence with a selective window into your day
• Provide another way for people to interact with you
• Convey your message directly to your audience instead depending on media institutions

More to come.

Let us know if there are others to add.

2 PM update: I mistakenly added Mike Piper’s blog, thinking that he was the Republican endorsed candidate for 25B.  Kelby Woodard is the endorsed candidate but he currently doesn’t have a blog or RSS feed. I’ve removed Mike Piper’s blog.

Earlier this week, Michele Merxbauer (AKA “Mitch”), Manager for the City of Northfield’s Housing & Redevelopment Division and Staff Liaison on the Housing & Redevelopment Authority, sent me an email alerting me to a Home Matters Greening Your Garden seminar on Saturday morning, May 15. That links to a blog post with more info but the short version is: “Three garden gurus get together to discuss the benefits of rain gardens, rain barrels, and planting native.”  The blogsite says:

The Home Matters Project is about stabilizing neighborhoods affected by foreclosure and creating healthy, affordable, and energy efficient housing opportunities.

And they’ve got a very well-done WordPress-based blog site, including photos of the rehabilitation process of a home at 311 Cherry Street.

We’re aggregating her blog’s RSS feed to our lower right sidebar.

Of course, no one approach fits all. Social media tools should be deployed in specific ways in order to achieve a specific outcome. But that generalization aside, I’m trying to determine what the issues are to consider for those who are wondering how Twitter and Facebook can be complementary to their blogs.

I started thinking about this in earnest a week ago when I read blog developer and WordPress consultant Kim Woodbridge’s post from June 2009 titled Twitter and Facebook Integration: Stop Making Every Tweet Your Facebook Status. Kim argues that “posting automatically takes some of the social out of social media” but concedes that time is a big consideration for some people. The commenters on that blog post seem split on the issue.

I’m always coaching leaders on the importance of using an ‘authentic voice’ with their blogs.  In the past, however, I’ve rarely used an authentic voice on my own Twitter account, and likewise for the Locally Grown Twitter account. It’s mostly been a manual Tweeting of blog post headlines. And on our Locally Grown Facebook fan page, the blog post headlines with excerpts are posted automatically to both the Wall and a special RSS tab.

So today I checked out some of the other Web 2.0-savvy people who I follow to see how they’re using these tools.

Chris Brogan has a blog, an all-purpose Twitter feed, and a more focused Twitter feed. He doesn’t publicize his personal Facebook account. He also has a company, New Marketing Labs, with a blog, Twitter feed and a Facebook fan page. The company blog auto-updates to its Facebook Wall.

Brian Clark has a blog, a Twitter feed, and a several other websites (eg, Teaching Sells) but no Facebook fan page. He doesn’t publicize his personal Facebook account.

Chris Garrett has a blog, a Twitter feed, and several other websites (eg, Authority Blogger) but apparently no Facebook fan page. He urges people to follow (friend) him on Facebook.

 
Seth Godin has a blog, a Twitter feed, and a Facebook fan page. His blog posts are automatically posted both to his Twitter feed (“This is a retweet of my blog”) and his Facebook fan page (“This is repost of Seth’s blog”). He follows no one on Twitter.

Kim Woodbridge has a blog, a Twitter feed, a company (Anti Social Development) Facebook fan page, and urges people to friend her on Facebook. She manually updates her company’s Facebook Wall with her blog posts but also has her blog auto-update to a separate RSS feed tab.

All these people, with the exception of Seth Godin, are very engaged with their Twitter followers, creating somewhat of an online-community feel to the feeds.  They’re master curators, as they nearly always add value (and in a personal way) to whatever they decide to retweet.  They use Twitter as an extension of their brands which they’ve already built elsewhere (blogs, books, speaking gigs, etc.). To me, this is somewhat similar to using content platforms like WordPress, Blogger, or Typepad to build a space for your online ‘presence.’  Twitter, however, is in a class by itself because its viral value rises as more people use it.

Facebook is less a content platform like WordPress and more a social platform, where conversations and interactions occur in a complex viral stew. But it’s not your ‘property’ like your blog or your Twitter feed. (I can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d advise someone to first start with a Facebook fan page before creating a blogsite or a Twitter feed.)

But because Facebook is so big, creating a presence there (beyond your personal account) has to be considered as 1) a way to drive traffic to your own properties (your blog, your Twitter feed); and 2) as a place to engage your audience, even if you’re creating content elsewhere.

So for me, my inclination is to:

• Continue my practice of not doing any automated posting of blog headlines to Twitter
• Use an authentic voice when manually posting blog headlines to Twitter and to our LG Facebook fan page’s Wall.
• Use my Twitter account for my consulting/contracting use (Wigley and Associates) and look for ways to engage more with my followers and those I follow
• Create a Facebook fan page for Wigley and Associates
• Look for ways to engage more with our Locally Grown Twitter followers
• Look for ways to engage more with our Locally Grown Facebook fan page followers
• Restrict my personal Facebook account to family and friend-related activities

I’m hoping that the smarter that I get in my own use of Twitter and Facebook, the more helpful I’ll be to my clients and maybe even to the greater blogosphere of Northfield.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. I’ve turned off comments for this post. Continue the discussion here.

You can also download the MP3 or subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes. Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Mondays at 6:00 PM and Sundays at 10 AM on KYMN 1080 AM.

He describes the blog as “… a tool for expressing opinions, sharing thoughts and reflecting on matters of the spirit.” I consider it an atheist-friendly blog, though he likely has to deny that.

Clay’s now living in exile in Cannon Falls but occasionally sneaks into Northfield on Saturday mornings for inspiration and mood-altering chemicals at the GBM. See our other Clay-related blog posts for more.

The classroom is operating as a newsroom with 22 students covering stories of interest in Northfield and Rice County, as well as Carleton stories that resonate beyond the campus into local, state, national and global communities. We are publishing daily through the term so please come back often or add Pressville.org to your bookmarks and RSS feeds.

We’re now aggregating Pressville’s RSS feed on our lower left sidebar.

See Doug McGill’s About page as well as Carleton’s English Dept. faculty page.

• Sam Estenson: One year in Japan
• Lauren Reed: To Finland!
• Rachael Stets: My blog
• Samantha Weaver: Espana

The latest is the NAG 50th Blog, "Celebrating 50 Years of the Northfield Arts Guild." Of course, they’ve also joined the twittersphere (twitter.com/nag50).

Sean Hayford O’Leary is the primary blogger thus far, with Neil Lutsky and Bill Ostrem chiming in with comments.

See a list of his favorite blogs, by topic (I like many of the same but dang, he doesn’t list LoGroNo) and of course, follow him on Twitter.

Northfield-based blogger Mary Schier has made some ‘signs of spring’ posts lately to her My Northern Garden blog, eg, Snow Blooms and An Early Spring? (BTW, kudos to Mary for winning a Garden Writers Association award for a recent blog post.)

Got some signs of spring to report? Photos? Let’s have ‘em.’

Update 8 PM: I’ve changed the sentence about ‘canned text/photos.’ See the comments below.

• Rob Hardy alerted me to his blog post Pasqueflowers for Holy Week: “Here you go, Griff!  The pasqueflowers are blooming, right on schedule.  (This photo was taken at approximately 2:45 pm today, Wednesday, April 8, 2009, at an undisclosed location owned by Carleton College.)” More about pasquelflowers here.
• Bright Spencer alerted me to the sugar maples that are popping buds in our Hidden Valley Park neighborhood.

The Northfield Blogosphere Roundup is a good way to see the latest information on many of the area’s blogs. The updates included here show blog posts added approximately within the previous 48 hours. See Northfield.org’s blogosphere aggregator page for an automated, comprehensive listing.

This is the title of an article at the Mankato Free Press article about the March 13th Regional Competitiveness Economic Development Summit. The Rural Enterprise Center’s agripreneurs development model was voted the second most important priority for the development of the Agriculture and Food Sector as it pertains to the incorporation and full utilization of skills, assets and visioning coming out from the Latino/Hispanic communities of the region.

We are currently developing the strategic plan for the large scale regional deployment of this model in the coming decade with a launch strategy focused in no more than 8 SE MN counties, but including strategic outreach to other highly promising targeted Hispanic/Latino entrepreneur in other areas of the region.

Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, Rural Enterprise Center

The Minnesota State Court website answers common questions about real estate (house, farm land, etc.) in divorce. Click here to go to the Minnesota State Court website. The site addresses questions like “Who gets the house?” “What about property purchased before the marriage?” and other topics.

Always Family Center

TUCSON, Ariz. – Pacific University (Ore.) held St. Olaf without a hit and defeated the Oles 21-0 on Sunday afternoon. The Boxers had 21 hits, including four homers, in the win.Saint Olaf College Athletics

We are delighted to share with you that some ARTech students are participating in a Pennies for Peace campaign from March 16th to May 15th. Pennies for Peace is a service-learning program designed to broaden our students’ cultural horizons while teaching them about their capacities as philanthropists – one penny at a time.

Pennies for Peace is a program of Central Asia Institute (CAI) founded by Greg Mortenson – author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Three Cups of Tea. CAI is a registered 501©3 nonprofit organization that promotes and provides community-based education and literacy programs, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of central Asia. Founded in 1996, CAI has built, to date, nearly 100 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which serve more than 28,00 students – over 14,000 of whom are girls.

Simon Tyler, ARTech

The young Norwegian skier Marthe Kristoffersen had a decent first year on the World Cup circuit, where she is mostly known for a very bad anchor leg in the relay at the World Championships and her penchant for skiing with her sleeves pushed up. Like Marthe, Genevieve has quite a bit of Norwegian blood flowing in her veins, has never won a medal at the Nordic World Ski Championships, and likes to have her sleeves rolled up. Olympics 2028?

Christopher Tassava, Blowing & Drifting

Professor of psychology and cognitive sciences Kathleen M. Galotti, senior lecturer in psychology Steven Kozberg, and visiting assistant professor of educational studies Mary Gustafson have published an article entitled “Goal Setting and Decision Making by At-Risk Youth”in the journal The Prevention Researcher, vol. 16, April 2009, pp. 17-20. The article reports on the results of a research project conducted at the Wisconsin Challenge Academy, investigating changes in at-risk older adolescents’ decision making as they experienced a 22-week intervention program designed to enhance life skills.

Carleton College News

The Chamber’s theory: When under siege without a valid argument, start tossing around labels!

Project No Project: The Story of NIMBY

It’s weird, they’re missing a lot, missing a lot of states, a lot of projects, and it’s odd the ones they’re picking.

Minnesota Projects: Wisconsin Projects, Delaware Projects – NONE, Maryland Projects – NONE, New Jersey Projects – NONE

When the Chamber stick their ham-handed hocks in, that tells me they’re worried they’re represented interests aren’t going to get their way!

The US Chamber sure has changed a lot since Bob Jacobsen worked for them…

Carol Overland, Legalectric

The new 2009 Froggy Times features the story of Northfield’s West Side business district, which was decimated in 1958 by a highway relocation. Maggie Lee, Dan Freeman and Dick Heibel share their memories of the way it used to be. Famed architect Harry Wild Jones is also featured. And, of course, check out our new menu!

Susan Hvistendal, Froggy Bottoms Pub

V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival (1987). Purchased used for $6.00 at Monkey See, Monkey Read in Northfield.

In the summer of 2007, we visited Stonehenge, then drove down to Salisbury to visit the great cathedral, which among other things is home to the world’s oldest mechanical clock (1386). Time was on my mind when we visited Salisbury. We had less than a month left of our year in England, and this was our last English holiday before returning home to Minnesota. In a short drive, from Stonehenge to Salisbury, we had traversed a distance of nearly four millennia, connected by modern highways and confusing roundabouts. On the lookout, as always, for literary associations, I found in Salisbury Cathedral a bust of the late nineteenth-century nature writer Richard Jefferies, whose native haunts were the Wiltshire downs.

Rob Hardy, Rough Draft

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — During Spring Break, five members of the Carleton men’s track and field team participated in the Walt Disney World Invitational. Tom Ballinger (Sr./Wenatchee, Wash.) recorded a NCAA provisional qualifier in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 53.83, which currently ranks second-fastest in Division III.

On Thursday, the Minnesota Senate set targets to resolve the budget deficit. Last week we received the final budget forecast which gives us the most accurate picture of the kind of revenue Minnesota can expect over the next several years. It may not come as a surprise to know that the news is not pretty. We are in one of the worst economic downturns in recent memory.

This was the week of highs and lows. I had a great bill up in the Commerce Committee on Tuesday that would have brought some badly needed oversight to the Payday Lending industry. So many good people worked on this bill since the last session, only to see it go down in flames on Tuesday. The bill would have allowed consumers to get three payday (short term) loans within a 6 month period. Inquiry into a fourth loan would have triggered a conventional loan allowing the consumer to pay off any debt in installments at much more reasonable interest rates. Payday loans are a booming industry where consumers find themselves caught in a debt trap that tends to spiral out of control.

Kevin Dahle for Senate District 25

Ronald James Griffith passed away on Thursday, March 12, 2009 from pancreatic cancer. Ron’s brilliant and inquiring intellect, commitment to family and community, outstanding professional leadership, and generous heart will be missed by the many people he touched in Northfield and around the world.

Shirley Ann Johnson Nelson was born May 21, 1923, in Red Wing, Minnesota, to Victor L. and Glee (Dibble) Johnson. She was raised in the Red Wing and Cannon Falls area and graduated from Red Wing High School in 1941. She took Nurses training at St. John’s Hospital in Red Wing and in 1944 became a Registered Nurse. On November 11, 1944, she married sailor Phillip Marvin Nelson at the Episcopal Church in Cannon Falls, becoming a Navy wife for the next 16 years. They traveled to Florida, Maryland, California, and Tennessee, with frequent stays in Red Wing while Phil was “out at sea.”

Northfield.org obituaries

Spring Skating Camp wrapped up a great season for NSS! Camp took place Saturday March 14th and Tuesday March 17 and involved skaters with a wide variety of abilities, background, and even geographic areas – skaters from Owatonna participated!

According to our campers, the biggest hits were the private lessons, exhibition, and synchronized skating workshop with guest coach Roni Maas. We finished camp with treats and a slideshow to celebrate a job well done.

Thanks to the extended Northfield ice season, we can look forward to more camps like this one in the future.

Northfield Skating Schoo

St. Olaf President David R. Anderson ’74 has announced that Congressman Erik Paulsen ’87 will speak to the Class of 2009 during the St. Olaf Commencement ceremony May 24. Paulsen represents Minnesota’s 3rd District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

MARCH 23, 2009 — Twin Cities NBC affiliate KARE 11 visited campus recently to find out how many steps it takes a unique team of St. Olaf students to change a light bulb. CNN also aired the story. Link to the KARE story, below, and view CNN’s version here. Watch an earlier story about the group at stolaf.edu.

Saint Olaf College News

Carleton Students Attend Midwest Real Food Challenge Summit March 23, 2009 at 10:17 am By Katie Blanchard

Two weekends ago 125 students (including 3 from Carleton) gathered at Maharishi University in Fairfield, Iowa for the Midwest Real Food Challenge Summit. We built coalitions and strengthened our voice as students working for bold changes to our food system, most specifically within our college and university dining services. When asked whether our campuses were at most 10 miles from an industrial agribusiness cornfield, if not within one, almost every student raised a hand. From a wide array of specific interests and backgrounds, we came together around a common goal: real food.

Carleton College sustainability blog

After a few schedule changes Cooking Class finally met again at Emmaus Church. On Thursday March 19th about 10 youth learned how to make crepes from youth chef extraordinaire Danny Dobrow. I wasn’t able to stay and make the food but the kids who went spoke very highly of Danny and the food.

Union of Youth

Gospel, John 3:14-21 During the Exodus the people complained about the food. So God led them into an area infested with a type of venomous snake whose bite caused a severe burning sensation and even death for some. The people realized there were worse things than bad food and asked God’s forgiveness for their complaining.

Father Denny Dempsey

Seldom do we have a chance to hear from one of our members who is both a musician and minister. But today we heard from Richard Collman, who gave us his classification talk, and left no doubt in our minds that he has been passionate about both careers, and from an early age.

Northfield Rotary Club

Most people go to the doctor because they think they have something they shouldn’t have and want to get rid of. But over the years, we chiropractors have come to understand that the problem when you aren’t feeling well is NOT that you have something you shouldn’t have and need to get rid of; the problem is really that you have LOST something you need to be healthy and happy. You see HEALTH (also called “EASE”) is your natural state! If you are experiencing anything other than ease, it is usually because you have simply LOST something that is necessary for you to maintain ease/health. Understanding this very simple truth will not only help you get the most out of your chiropractic care, it will also help you and your family to keep growing stronger and healthier for the rest of your lives!

CNC Chiropractic

The Annual Meeting was on Saturday and what a night it was! I have to first say a big THANK YOU to our sponsors’s, The First National Bank of Northfield and Carleton College, we would not have been able to put on this event without their support! The meeting went well and many people stayed to dance the night away! If any of you would like a copy of the Annual Report you can download it here or you can call us at 507-645-9268 to get your copy.

Northfield Historical Society

Seems like only a few days ago that I was announcing details about River City Books’ month-long going-out-of-business sale. That’s what happens when you want something to last — it goes by just so fast.

Now we’re down to the wire, the final week in the store’s history, and they’re pricing books, CDs, DVDs, gifts, clothing, yada, yada, so low because, well, they want to use as few moving boxes as possible. Which is the silver lining to this cloudy week — a savings rundown that’s otherwise hard to believe.

River City Books

“They all get the idea that if we’re transparent about what we’re bad at as well as what we’re good at, we’ll get better.” That’s a quote by Paul Levy, President and CEO ofBeth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, speaking about his staff. Levy maintains a leadership blog called Running a hospital where he regularly shares “thoughts about hospitals, medicine, and health care issues.” You can also follow Levy on Twitter.

I’ve been thinking about Northfield (my hometown) area public leadership, transparency, and social media tools this week for four reasons.

Wigley and Associates

Watchmen is a graphic novel about the real lives and struggles of super-heros. The story is about masked crusaders from the sixties that start to show up dead. The few that are still alive have to find and take down the killer while dealing with there own issues. I personally loved the end of the book, but I’m not going to ruin it. The book is not for kids because it deals with some tough moral issues, and there are many violent and bloody scenes. Watchmen has been recently made into a major motion picture. I haven’t seen it yet, but it looks pretty good. Of course, the movie is never as good as the book. If you want a sneak peek, here it is.

Monkey See, Monkey Read

We are often uncomfortable talking about sin, but if we don’t acknowledge all the ways we are not the people we want to be, we separate ourselves from God’s mercy and loving care. So, here’s a sermon about sin …

Healing in the Wilderness

Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10

This is a sermon about sin. If I am going to preach honestly about these texts, it has to be a sermon about sin, but that raises several problems.

First United Church of Christ

St. Olaf Sponsors National Day of Service in Northfield Saturday, April 18, 2009, 9 am to 1 pm

Participate locally in the National Day of Service! This year marks the first time St. Olaf has sponsored a volunteer project for Northfield. Join other Northfield-area Oles and friends to help clean up the parkway area from 5th Street Bridge and Bridge Square south to Riverside Park. Feel free to participate as singles, couples, families or groups. ID Insight of Northfield is using this opportunity as a company-wide service project. Thanks, ID! We encourage other local organizations to follow this community-spirited example.

5th Bridge

We’ve discussed this issue on LG (here, here, and here) so it’s time to craft something concrete for the Council and staff to react to. Here’s a first draft of what I plan to present to them tonight. Reactions welcomed. (continued)

Northfield City Council Blog (for example, at northfieldcitycouncil.org)

A. Online Open Mic

Councilor Erica Zwiefel has wondered what an ‘online open mic’ might look like as another tool for citizens to inform Councilors about their ideas and concerns. I drafted something back in late Jan.

What follows is a refinement of that, based on subsequent discussion there as well as my observations of one example currently in practice: the Open City Hall of Palo Alto, California, which uses the Open City Hall web service (“for governments”) offered by a company named Peak Democracy. I propose that:

• As the Mayor and City Administrator prepare the agenda for an upcoming Council meeting or work session, they decide the most important items that should be brought to the public’s attention via posting to the Council blog, one blog post for each item.
• A City staff person blogs these items and provides background information, including  links to documents on the City web site. (See the Palo Alto high speed rail discussion item as an example.)
• Citizens may then submit one comment per item/blog posts. These comments are written and may include links to other sources, including an audio or video comment that a citizen may have opted to create instead of a written comment.
• Citizens must identify themselves via first and last name, an email address, and a home address. Comments are reviewed by an independent, non-partisan contractor prior to posting. (Submission and privacy guidelines would be created.)
• Citizens are encouraged to read the comments of others before they comment, as they may want to respond with a simple “I agree/disagree with what John Doe wrote,” similar to what can happen at open mic. But no back and forth discussion is allowed.
• If the item lends itself to a straw poll (for example “yes, no, undecided” or “strongly support, somewhat support…” etc) staff can embed a straw poll in the blog post so that citizens who may not want to or have the time to craft a response can still weigh in.
• The Mayor and City Administrator can decide the deadline for comments on each issue. For example, some items might warrant a deadline of 2 hours prior to the start of a Council meeting, whereas others might extend for a month or more.
• Councilors and staff can read the online commentary at their leisure. Some items might be ‘packaged’ into a PDF and made available to Councilors. (All Councilors and staff should know how to use RSS feeds to make it easy to sort and read the comments without having them added to their email inboxes.)
• All comments are part of the public record. While online open mic comments would not be read at the face-to-face (F2F) open mic at a Council meeting, a staff person could summarize the input received, for example, “Thus far we’ve received 13 online comments on this agenda item, with 35 responses to the straw poll: 22 in favor, 10 opposed, and 3 undecided.”
• Each comment will have its own permalink (web address) so that media organizations and area bloggers can link to the comments, thereby spurring further discussion.

B. Blog posts by individual councilors

Councilor Erica Zwiefel has also wondered about “the other side of the issue,” i.e., what other tools might be available to Councilors for them to inform citizens about their ideas and concerns. I’ll only address the online tools.

While there are many advantages for a Councilor to have their own blog like Councilor Betsey Buckheit, others may prefer an option that doesn’t require that level of commitment.

The same blog used for ‘online open mic’ above can be used as a Group Blog in which individual councilors can post on any issue or concern. This would be analogous to the current process which allows an individual councilor to include a written statement in the Council packet which then becomes part of the public record that citizens can read.

Councilors posting to the blog could opt to allow comments from citizens to be attached to their blog post, much like the online open mic process above. Or they could opt to turn off comments and just have the blog post stand on its own.

The above-mentioned company, Peak Democracy, also has an Open Town Hall web service (“for elected officials”) that accomplishes something similar. See the two councilors participating from Trinidad, California as an example.

The Open Town Hall format is very restrictive (councilors apparently can only ask straw poll type questions) and that appears to be one reason why it’s not being used much. I’d advise Northfield Councilors to be more flexible and informal in their blog posts. The Council may want to craft some guidelines for the use of the group blog in order to prevent it from being overused by an individual councilor or for purposes not related to Council business.

C. Blog posts distributed via Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that’s increasingly being used by federal, state, and local governments to communicate with citizens. For example, Minnetonka City Manager John Gunyou has a sidebar link to the city’s Twitter account.

One of the advantages of using Twitter in conjunction with a City Council blog is that citizens can opt to receive updates via their cell phones. While many citizens don’t use email, especially the under-35 crowd, a large majority of citizens of every age has a cell phone. And with the use of smartphones (iPhone, Google phone, etc.) expected to explode over the next decade, citizens will increasingly expect engage with city hall via their mobile devices.

City Council blog post headlines can be automatically distributed via Twitter, no staff time needed at all.

5th Bridge salutes the hundreds of people who have made this production possible… directors, choreographers, set designers, set builders, hair dressers, costume sewers, costume helpers, program designers, local business sponsors, concession volunteers, ushers, ticket agents, sound and lighting crew members, band members, cast members, refreshment volunteers, parent and community volunteers, and many, many more! Amazing things happen when people share their gifts and talents. Visit www.5thbridge.org to learn about local service opportunities.

I met two of the volunteers last night: Margaret Colangelo and John Colangelo, who were staffing the concessions table. Margaret works at Carleton and in her copious amount of free time, maintains two blogs: 1) Happy to be from Iowa even though I live in Minnesota; and 2) Endurance Diva – thrive while you survive. John has his own construction services company, Foggia Incorporated.

I’ve been thinking about Northfield area public leadership, transparency, and social media tools this week for four reasons. (continued)

1. City Adminstrator Joel Walinski has invited me to speak about civic engagement technologies for 10 minutes to the Northfield City Council next Monday at their work session.  See previous blog posts about civic engagement here, here, and here.
2. Tonight I’m going to the School District’s Key Communicator Network meeting (I blogged about this here). The District has received some criticism lately for its handling of the proposed calendar changes and the SNL cancellation.
3. Tuesday, I blogged about (on my work blog) a new book titled The School Administrator’s Guide to Blogging by Mark Stock.  Yesterday, I loaned the book to Northfielder Charlie Kyte, and a blogger and podcaster (audio and video) in his role as Executive Director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators (MASA). Kyte’s blog is titled The VOICE of Minnesota Education.
4. Last Monday’s council meeting at which the lack of trust and respect were evidently issues. See the Northfield News article, City, townships don’t see eye-to-eye on annexation.

Lots can be learned by watching how Levy uses his blog and Twitter as a public leader. For example:

• Last summer, Levy blogged about how a surgical procedure was performed on the wrong body part. Notice 1) his detailed reflection in the post after he republished the email that was sent out to all employees and the local media about the incident; and 2) the positive reaction to the handling of the incident among many of the 54 comments attached to the blog post.
• A week or so ago, he blogged about a series of staff town meetings regarding the hospital’s financial problems and the unbelievable response he’s gotten to a radical suggestion. The media picked up on the story, too. On Tuesday, he used Twitter to alert people to his blog post update on the situation.
• Yesterday, he blogged about a single employee whose actions reflect one of their strategic initiatives.

There’s a continuing stream of both good and bad news stories like these at all our Northfield area institutions that serve the public in some capacity: the city, the townships, the county, the schools, the colleges, the hospital.  And yet we rarely hear about them.  The ‘bad news’ stories too often never see the light of day. And the ‘good news’ stories are too often spun in such a way that they’re either not believable or they’re ignored. Not always, just too often IMHO.

The increasing pervasiveness of social media tools means, in part, that local leaders have less ability to keep a lid on issues of public concern. (Employee ‘leaks’ travel far and fast. Citizens with blogs pry more effectively.) So ratcheting up the transparency (along with judicious amounts of authenticity and engagement) is a smart strategy. The end result, as Levy says, is the institutions get better at what they do. And that’s what we, the public, want to see. And when we do, we’ll applaud it, thereby encouraging the virtuous cycle to continue and spread.