But I’m also practicing the art of skepticism and am getting better at not being polarized to a particular view or overtaken by the lust of hype.

The internet is exciting!! There’s so much to do and learn. Heck, I’m typing some thoughts to like -minded peeps right now! On the other hand there is a sense of alienation and frustration if I stare at the computer screen for too long…

I try to remind myself that the web is a tool. And I’m learning to use it along with millions of others. I’m also grateful that my spouse is supportive of my music “career.”

For myself the most exciting thing about this whole thing is being able to realize my artistic vision in my home project studio! As an artist I feel more satisfied than ever! I love writing and recording music — I’m feeling more and more like my own producer

Marketing can be frustrating, but that’s Life… “one damned thing after another!” (Churchill?)
I’ve conditioned myself to remember to feel gratitude for having ears to hear the beauty of music and hands and mind to create it with. Seeing things from this point of view takes practice — like learning an instrument — but it really goes a long way to creating some immunity to frustration. And therefore making one lighter in order to take action.
Best to all!

http://www.youtube.com/user/socialreporter

In this context I noticed you’d picked up on a village broadband solution today and thought you might be interested to know that one of my aims is similar. In this case local wimax as a social enterprise with surplus revenue funding a skills development and business incubator location. That function I discover from the ongoing Unltd survey I read today is regarded as most needed by social enterprises who’ve participated.

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/news/Jeff-s-community-centre-vision-village-eyesore/article-1482123-detail/article.html

You asked in your tweet whether it could be replicated. I can answer most definitely having produced a business plan to replicate across Europe in 2004 and for surplus revenue to be invested in CDFIs and other microeconomic development activity against poverty.

Based on technology available at the time, while BT were still prevaricating over rural exchanges, it could do with some updating.

http://www.box.net/shared/y3tpik8eg6

The community investment business model on which this is based was conceived by P-CED in 1996, nearly a decade before the arrival of the CIC.

We were perhaps ahead of our time, finding no interest at all from social funders, such as ICOF and Triodos.

We’ve persevered however, transferring mssion activities to Ukraine where 4 years ago we delivered a microeconomic strategy paper to government which included national scale rollout of affordable broadband and social enterprise.

From Stanford University I’m given an opportunity that has not existed over the last 6 years in the UK, to describe the impact of our efforts in the context of leveraging liberation technologies. This is ‘soft power’ advocacy, with the aim of encouraging support from the US on the same scale as then being spent weekly in Iraq.

https://www.stanford.edu/group/sdg/cgi-bin/dev/liber/?q=node/239

This for us in the final analysis is about changing the lives of those most disenfranchised and what we do in our area of operation requires some tenacity, not least when we are threatened and libelled for our efforts.

We’ve made a clear case for placing children in the protection of a family to break the vicious cycle of poverty and that’s now endorsed by major childcare organisations.

It is why we now turn around on Big Society and ask for a demonstration of commitment . Being marginalised as a pioneering social enterprise has taken a toll on income, family and health but that pales into irrelevance when measured against our cause.

http://www.change.org/petitions/view/the_abandoned_children_of_ukraine

Has anyone captured Nick’s “Noggin the Nog” presentation on video? I have heard so many different accounts of it that I really want to see it for myself.

While it may be true, at the moment, that only a view voices are articulating the Big Society vision, the Big Society in the North event that we ran on Tuesday is proof that it really is open to anyone to take the initiative to start to define it for themselves.

Of course, the articulate, the organised, the connected, the online, and the middle class, will be at the front of the queue to put their stamp on it all. My chief hope about the Big Society in the North is that it will create a cohort of people who can jointly work out what it is all about, and cascade that messages out to communities they work with.

If you’re a worker in a local community or with a community of interest group, organise a discussion about what the Big Society means for them. If you’re not, get your neighbours together and work it out between you.