One of the ideas I’ve been toying with since last fall is cloud publishing. The idea in a nutshell: all the content you add to the web becomes your publishing catalogue. While a blog(s) is a likely homebase for such activity, the efforts we apply in commenting on the blogs of others, micro-blogging, posting photos and videos, heck, even sharing play lists…all this activity now becomes the body of ones work regardless of where it’s occurring.
My idea has run into some challenges along the way. When Twitter messed with their search limiting it’s capability last winter, it seemed a lot of content fell off the cloud. One of the important underpinnings of this concept is that through search all of your content will remain publicly accessible indefinitely. But over the last few months I’ve come to realize how friendfeed really captures the reality of cloud publishing and keeps all the content in play. This includes the search of the twitter stream that twitter search no longer keeps accessible. Friendfeed allows you to capture any and/or all of your stuff into one stream becoming the de facto catalogue of your cloud publishing efforts.
This post isn’t really about the tools though, it’s about the practice. I want to share an example of cloud publishing that’s occurring on this blog, but not authored by me. As I look through the many comments readers have left here, one name continues to reappear with a type of comment that goes beyond commenting convention. He’s clearly a positive deviant (a label I think he might enjoy). So I invite you to take a stroll through the comments of Matt Searles and notice how his body of work has emerged on this cloud. It’s rich stuff, full of insight and speculation. It deserves to be brought out into the light and shared. The easiest way is I know is to send you over to Matt’s comment stream on Backtype and have a look. Then notice how this content is different from the main thrust of his blog. It’s as though a separate and distinct “book” is emerging.
(Thanks to Jeb, whose fine comment yesterday over in the Garage reminded me of Matt’s efforts.)
While traveling, I try to become attuned to the various mannerisms and experiment with local foods. Clearly the sense of distance, the way people relate to the geography, is different then back East. An example; While seated in a cafe in Livingston, MT, I was struck hearing a woman great another that she hadn’t seen in awhile with “come around here much?” Unlike the time bound expression used back east, “I havent seen you lately,” the orientation in this commonplace exchange is spatial. It’s distance and location over duration; there, here and where before then,now and when…
Just outside of Missoula, MT, I needed to refuel. After pumping gas I went into the market to grab coffee. I was surprised by the display next to the cash register: Bison Jerky. Now that doesn’t appear in the gas stations in the Catskills. Grabbing the jalapeno variety, I got back into the highway began the long climb to Lookout Pass and Idaho. I’m not much of a jerky eater, but in this place preserving strips of meat as jerky finally made sense to me. Sustenance for the distances.
My host in Idaho, publisher Lon Woodbury, shared his process of feeding the sourdough he’s been working with since 1980. I’ll let you discover this sourdough mystery in his words.
Two poet’s I admire, Charles Olson and Ed Dorn, delved into the image of the West in there work. The more time I spend out West, and I think the word out is key, the more I’m able to attune with the reality they sensed and wrote about riding just beneath the commonplace.
Starting something new (taking the cue from Matt), and adding a gallery category to this blog. Click on the thumbnails to see larger format. For a year now I’ve been posting my Blackberry images to twitpic and flickr. While that life stream will continue, the images highlighted in these various portfolios will showcase images taken when I actually lug the camera out.
With an elevation of 10,921 feet, Emigrant Peak now tops the list of altitudes I’ve reached while hiking. During the ten hours on the trail yesterday, I dodged two thunder storms, the second with hail. I did not reach the top, but turned back about some 200ft below as I had no interest in experiencing the lightening of the second storm exposed on the rocky summit. It was a wise decision getting myself back down below the tree line.
The open alpine meadow hiking amongst the blanket of wildflowers (yarrow, columbine, sage and lupine to name a few) was unlike any hiking I’d done before. Ravens and eagles kept me company (along with some folks on twitter who responded to the photos I was posting).
I began daydreaming about a visit to Yellowstone back in the fifth grade. And till yesterday, that sense of anticipated awe remained on a list. But yesterday, the prospective translated into the actual, and my own definition of grandeur needed to expand to encompass the world I encountered.
The surprise moment was a subtle one, located [...]
I’m traveling out West and today made the Yellowstone loop. I’ve got a ton of stuff to share, but finding all sorts of challenges connecting my net book to the internet. So let this quick hello suffice…till I figure out this connection issue. One thing is for sure, on a [...]
I’m traveling out West and today made the Yellowstone loop. I’ve got a ton of stuff to share, but finding all sorts of challenges connecting my net book to the internet. So let this quick hello suffice…till I figure out this connection issue. One thing is for sure, on a day when [...]
Driving out of the hills at 3:30 am to catch my morning flight in Scranton, I was treated to AM radio at it’s strangest. Testimonies of werewolf and bigfoot sightings, and an interesting series of coincidental sightings in dining rooms of ghosts and even a red hatted dwarf. Dining [...]
It often seems that developing the questions is more important than finding the answers. In that spirit, a simple post as I head to Yellowstone and the Earth mystery manifest there:
Do we ever really know what we are looking at?
Mother and Daughter Play REACH from Richard Reeve on Vimeo.
Continuing on the theme of play, I was treated to this wonderful scene in the Harold Square subway station yesterday, where a mother and daughter played the interactive sound installation by Christopher Janney titled REACH : New York.
The Matter of Faith: Dreams Unfolding
I'm invited to a discussion on faith in the rectory of a Gothic church. All seem gathered when I take a seat in the circle of chairs. Then a priest, now dead, that I once worked wi...
It's clunky searching shared items:
Image by Andy Woo via Flickr
As my life gets absorbed into my studies at the Jung Institute, sharing items through Google Reader is becoming a bigger part of my social media practice. Using the ...
Denial:
Image by pixn8tr via Flickr
In many ways the concept of denial is a catch 22, for as I often hear explained when working at a therapeutic boarding school, it's kind of like this:
When you're in ...
Antique Car:
Image by Brain Toad Photography via Flickr
Dream:
I'm seated in an antique car from the 1940's, the kind that had a huge interior and a dome like roof. It has been restored to perfection. Wh...
The Matter of Faith
It's clunky searching shared items
Denial
Antique Car