At the end of last year, as I started Dave Atkins Media!, I made a conscious decision to limit my "organizational activities" to avoid being sidetracked into non-productive activity. I spent about 2 hours making a website and elected to operate as a sole proprietorship with an excel spreadsheet as my general ledger. I used Freshbooks online invoicing to track my hours and bill my clients. Then, I landed the contract job at Mass.Gov and dove into that...

I'm going down to Needham Bank this morning to open a business account. Then I will turn in my d/b/a certificate at town hall, apply for an occupancy permit from the building department, apply for a sign permit to go on the front of my office space at 291 Washington Street, then get to work drawing up my articles of incorporation. What's different?

I will provide more details here, but basically, I'm more serious about this now. I have less time to talk about it and more time to do.

And yes...that website needs some work. I know where it needs to go now though...

Last Friday night, I attended an unconventional book-signing/networking party in Boston that brought together Gary Vaynerchuk, Jeff Cutler, and Mike Langford along with the usual suspects of the Boston social media scene. I picked up a copy of Gary's book and then--because I missed the earlier train home, had an hour and a half to read it while waiting for the next commuter rail.

Gary is a "rock star" in the social media space because he used Twitter and Facebook to take his video blog, Wine Library TV, to stratospheric levels of popularity. He's an inspirational phenomena of optimism, energy, and attitude whose contagious enthusiasm motivates and inspires.

I have a skeptical streak...and I will not to waste time here critiquing but instead focus on my takeaways. Like so many sources out there...you take what you need; you find the parts that challenge you to think.

People like Gary have aligned their passion with a platform that essentially makes sharing and self-promotion one and the same. The more he talks, the more people want to listen. Are his ideas revolutionary? No. Is there some deep insight in this book that will change your life? No. Is there a plan you can apply to your business idea to make a fortune and replicate Gary's success, including a 7-figure book deal? No. So what is the point?

The point is that social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, and blogging give every person the power to both publish their own experiences AND, more importantly, CONNECT with others who share and amplify those passions. Find what you love to do and "Crush it!" Every person can become an enthusiastic authority about something and then, as they draw attention to their passion, perhaps they can "monetize" it. It's not even all about money though really--if you could just afford to live your dreams, would it matter to make $60 million or $60 thousand a year?

But on this path, you really need to "Crush it." To do that, you need to love what you are doing. A hobby blog about something you are kind of interested in is not going to do it. Starting a blog at your company and following the steps to promote it...is not going to do it. It's not that Gary Vaynerchuck has a great video blog about wine. It's that Gary Vaynerchuck is the Wine Library TV guy.

It's not about expert opinions. I don't know if Gary is an expert on wine. It doesn't seem to matter. If you want a professional wine evaluation, I'm sure you can get that from people who are much less famous and making a lot less money. But they are boring. Gary is fun. You can complain that it's not fair (if you are one of those people, for example) or you can realize, hey, it doesn't freakin matter. Maybe if I find the thing I love and share it with everyone, they will love me enough that I can just do that and be happy.

But you've got to Crush it. Can you think of 100 or 500 blog posts you could write about the thing you are excited about? Do you want to scour the internet for information on that topic, commenting on everone else's blog and engaging with everyone you can find? Are you motivated to hustle in this way? If not, don't bother because there can be only one.

You need to find that passion...the thing that keeps you awake at night and is the burning fuel that will sustain you through what others would see as a lot of hard, tedious work. The good news is that social media gives you another tool that has the potential to hit the ball out of the park.

But you also have to pay the rent. That statement is the dream-killing, self-defeating reality check on so many aspirations for so many people. Fine, so pay the rent. Get a job and work 8 hours a day or whatever. But that leaves 16 hours for other things. After family and eating...ok, I guess you need to give up sleep. That's the deal, really.

If you want to turn a dream into reality, you need to "Crush it." You go "all in" on it and when you see an opportunity, you throw everything you have at it. Sunday, the Patriots beat the Titans 59-0 in 3 quarters of football. That sucks for the Titans, but it's what happens when one team gives up against a team that doesn't have a concept of "dialing things back a bit." It does not mean you have a license/excuse to neglect other priorities...but when you are doing the thing you love--you need to give it all you have.

The passion is hard to find.

I found it hard, it's hard to find, oh well, whatever, nevermind.

I don't really know what Curt Cobain was thinking when he wrote that, but for me it symbolizes the fleeting nature of dreams for so many...especially those of us in Generation X who allow our cynicism to truncate promising optimism.

I do not write from the platform of a $60 million wine busines. I'm excited I found a project to do some consulting work this week that could turn into a longer term project. But what keeps me awake at night is thinking about how I can take this topic of active transporation, apply it to my town, and pull together my love of cycling and running, my desire to be a part of civic life, and my analytical and techincal skills to not only support my family, but make my world a better place.

Our decision to sell our 4-bedroom house and move to a 2-bedroom rental probably perplexes many people, but I'm finding there are many who do understand. Right now, I cannot say that we are truly simplifying our lives--as the stress of a new job and moving, along with our tantrum-happy toddler makes life anything but less complicated. But we are finding ourselves re-examining some key values and liking what we are finding.

Much of what some people describe as voluntary simplicity calls to me and my family. Unfortunately, it is a topic risky with implicit comparison and judgement against those who have and spend more money. But I'm not saying we are "better," it's just that we have found our priorities shifting and the stark contrast around us makes us more aware of how much we used to take for granted.

Behind the house we sold, our would-have-been-new neighbors tore down a tiny old house and have built a two-story that is the largest house on the street. They cut down the trees (the trees were dying anyway) and suddenly one day, we looked out and where there had been only green, there was now a two story house looking down into our back yard.

It is a nice house. And I can totally remember a time when I would have dreamed of something like that. But I don't anymore. I don't want that. I'd rather have more time to do things I want and more freedom from mortgage and debt to spend money on other things.

As I was searching for information on bunk beds, I ran across Internet discussions of parents inquiring whether it was "legal" to allow two kids of different gender to sleep in the same room. We actually have reached a point where people think it might be illegal to not buy one bedroom per child! Well, folks, we're going to put all three in one room; don't call DSS on us!

I love the location where we live now. We are only a block away from Islington Center and a 5 minute walk from the train to Boston. The other morning I walked down to the Barber Shop at 730am, sat in a room full of men waiting to get haircuts, then caught the train to the city. I felt like I was in an episode of "Mad Men" or something, but the haircut turned out OK. Yesterday, the neighbors across the street showed up with homemade cookies to welcome us to the neighborhood!

It's a small house...but it fits. The kids bedroom magically fit a twin bed, toddler bed, and crib, with room for 2 dressers and a changing table...all in a 12x11 room. Our kitchen is just the right size for our kitchen table to fit against the window and seat 5. The living room and dining room merge together in an open floor plan that allows us to have all our living space in essentially one big room. Our bedroom...OK, an 8.5x10 room is pretty small, but so far so good. And our front porch is closed and usable as a playroom. I figure we are living in about 800 square feet now--vs. the 1900+ we left.

How long can we "stand it?" I don't know...I'm thinking we're going to like this. We sold a lot of stuff we'd had for 10 years or more and moved around with us--some of it hadn't been unpacked since California. There are so many things...you realize, "why do I have 6 pairs of jeans when I wear the same ones over and over?" I'm sure I'll have more observations as living small becomes more routine, but so far, I like the feeling of efficiency and sustainability.

This blog started not long after I read Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class and blogged about how we chose to live in the Boston area. I followed that up with a post about how we further narrowed our search and moved from Needham to Westwood in 2006.

We like Westwood and I feel like I'm really becoming part of the community. But especially during my recent layoff, we realized how much money it takes to just be here. Lately, we've felt like we didn't go far enough when we sold the expensive Needham house and found this great house in Westwood. What do we need vs. what do we want?

We don't need a home office. My laptop is all I need; it's finding the time to write that is the real challenge. We don't need a big yard; I could care less about a lawn--my view is, "I cut the grass last week; problem solved. But then it came back." We do need a place to ride bikes or walk to a park. We need 3 bedrooms...I can't see "tripling up" the kids, but I do think bunk beds will be fun. So we started to seriously consider "downsizing" to reduce our mortgage further and focus on things that matter to us.

We're not alone in wanting to downsize. Increasingly, people are discovering the virtues of living closer together and realizing space wasn't what they wanted or needed after all.

One thing we REALLY want and need to avoid is the situation when we last moved and spend about 5 months with two mortgages. So we'll sell first and then the fun will begin. We will be looking for a 3 bedroom, one bath, probably around 1200 square foot ranch or cape in Islington or the maze (neighborhood near Westwood High School) at the low end of the housing market here in Westwood. If we need to do work on the house, that's fine as long as we can live in it while we renovate, but it's all part of our calculation.

This weekend is our open house. Come check it out if you are in the market for a great house in a great town.

I recently reviewed the mission statement of this blog and was struck by how it sums up my own "mission."

The purpose of this blog is to connect topics in economic development, community development, and new media technology and identify practical actions readers can take to make a difference in improving our society.

I want this to be more than a writing project. I wrote a series of posts about a business plan, a sort of thematic arrangement of content topics I would write about to create a popular blog. That's not really a business plan--the business plan was just to get more traffic and use google adwords to make some money off clicks. But for that to work, I need hundreds of thousands of visitors...I need the blog to be an end unto itself...and that is not what this is about.

The blog is a tool, a communication medium that has connected me with people who share ideals and passions about improving society. I think there are many of us who are engaged in what Ed Morrison of the I-Open Institute describes as "Strategic Doing." Some of the things I'm "doing" strategically are to:

• create a blog in Westwood to encourage greater participation of residents in our community
• form a Pedestrian/Bicycle Safetey Committee in Westwood to look for opportunities to make the town more walkable
• get a Community Access Television station up and running in Westwood

Now what does any of this have to do with economic development?

The older, traditional ideas about economic development were about attracting business to locate in town. It was about creating a regulatory climate friendly for business and identifying opportunities--then clearing obstacles. I'm not a practitioner and I cannot claim expertise about the work that continues in that conception of economic development. But I think there is a "New Innovation" growing based on an increasingly engaged and creative Citizen 2.0.

If we can find ways to connect the people who are innovating--problem-solving individuals who care passionately about issues of sustainability and growth--I believe people will be begin to see opportunities to invest. This will become "Enterprise Collaboration."

Again, what does it mean?

To revitalize a town, you need people, not just business. You need the people who will shop there and the people who will open stores. You need people who live there and care about the community and who choose to make their stake in town, rather than hopping in a car and driving to a job in the city where they can collect a paycheck and go home to sleep and watch TV. You don't need EVERYONE to do this, but you need a critical mass of a few people who are no longer fighting the good fight alone, but who network with each other, draw strength from each other, and see opportunities they would not have seen alone.

It is the same principle in schools--to make them better, we don't need more money alone, we need parents to be involved. We need that elusive and powerful force of responsibility and activism that is more evident in its absense in the anonymous suburbs and isolated communities of regions in decline.

What next? What do I do?

That's the $100,000 question, really. I need to find a way to take these ideas and passions and not only accomplish things, but generate income for me and my family. My website describes one approach of the type of consultative advice I believe I could deliver. But talk is cheap...or, more realistically, just sitting around talking about theory is not something cash strapped town can afford to bankroll.

I could create a non-profit, an association not unlike a chamber of commerce, but more of a business facilitator...then choose projects to tackle and start delivering value to the members of the organization. Perhaps opportunities come out of more of these discussions...perhaps it is as basic as helping civic organizations set up blogs and facebook pages. But I think fundamentally, I need to identify some real, specific needs of the community and find how money is currently being spent towards that need--then propose a less expensive alternative.

I'm tired of hearing people complain that so many don't read newspapers or vote or participate in their communities. The belief that Americans have become apathetic, complacent conformists is accepted as conventional wisdom, when, in fact, I believe it is about to reverse and correct in a dramatic fashion. I would go so far as to say the death of newspapers and disengagement of traditional forms of participation is more a recognition that those forms are irrelevant to people today and that the impulse to participate drives people to more effective channels. We're mourning the death of the irrelevant while new forms are flourishing.

But first, let's look at the real symptoms of change.

Robert Putnam considered the decline of community in his book Bowling Alone and concluded that generational change and television were largely responsible for a decline in civic engagement, colorfully metaphorized by the decline of bowling leagues. The key "surprise" in his book was the illustration that decline in civic participation was only slighty due to the usual supects of work/sprawl/lifestyle--my own assessment that the reason I was not more involved in my community was that the schedule of commuting and working in Boston left me no time to be "present" in my community...but I was wrong. The biggest factor in the decline of "involvement" was simply the passing of generations...the fact that a large group of people--boomers--replaced the "greatest generation" as they moved through life stages, and these boomers had different lifestyles.

My law professor, David Skover, taught a media seminar while writing a book, the Death of Discourse, where he expanded on the media theories of Marshal McLuhan, and more recently Neil Postman, to illustrate that our consumption of passive media, like television, was fundamentally changing the way we think. Al Gore picked up on this thread in his book The Assault on Reason where he bemoaned the decline of civility in conversation and the increasing impossibility of rational argument in a culturally-politicized world.

Doom and gloom. We're all going stupid and irrational. How many more seasons of Survivor could there be?

But other things are happening that change the world.

• Our work lives have broken down traditional models of compartmentalization...we live and work in a "bursty, always on" style that is frustrating to navigate, but "better" in many ways once we figure out how to manage the transitions. Richard Florida developed a whole economic development worldview around the idea that the changing nature of work--the fact that more and more of us are engaged in "creative class" type work activities is changing the way we live.
• A massive cohort of collaborative, optimistic young people is entering the workforce. Generation Y, the NetGen, whatever you want to call them, represent a massive generational change that, consistent with Putnam's theories, has to exert a big impact on our society.
• The medium is changing. Television was the medium that was diagnosed as having changed us so profoundly. Not even 10 years ago, we sat and stared and watched the drivel that was beamed to us from mass media producers and we consumed a steady diet of mind-numbing idiocy that anesthetized us to our dissatisfaction. But it began to fade...and the volume was turned up until we are now served an unbelievable diet of violent obscenity that is necessary to waken our dulled senses. But increasingly, we are tuning out. In a time of transition, it is hard to see the edge of change, but instead of wondering how far they can go, we should be wondering why they have had to go so far to hold our attention. The answer is that it is failing because we need something better.

The new medium is collaborative and participatory. The new medium is expressed in terms of "social media" and a society of publishers...where people turn off their televisions to go write a blog. In a time of transition, some things seem ridiculous...how can updating my Facebook status be more socially-responsible than sitting down to read the New York Times? But it WILL be this and more...and it will change us all...but that is a post for another day...

I have a "big idea," but it is a challenge to write it simply so I don't get lost in thousands of words. I see a connection between media, politics, community, and economic developoment that, in a nutshell, is this:

A combination of factors: the large generational cohort of millenials, the changing nature of work that is reflected in the bursty, creative style of what Richard Florida describes as the "creative class," and the technological advancement of participatory media--e.g. web 2.0--is creating a moment of social change. This change is epic--it reflects the emergence of a new medium of communication that will alter the way we think...which alters our perception of the world...which alters us.

Citizen 2.0 is the participatory response that is coming...it is the re-awakening of community--not a global village, but a re-invigorated local village as our work becomes global while our lives remain local and tied even more substantially to place. And in the midst of all this theory, I believe this is also a fundamental and necessary component of a renewed sense of sustainability...of shared responsibility. The world is changing in many ways, all at once...there will be no gradual evolution here--the revolution has begun and within our generation we will look back on the time we grew up as though the lens of a time machine, unable to even comprehend how much changed so fast.

It is a bright future and a difficult present. But we live in exciting times.

Today is the last day in the world I'd ride my bike because it was -3 degrees when I woke up. But exciting things are happening in Massachusetts and Boston related to cycling:

Bicyclist Safety Bill

Governor Patrick signed the Bicyclist Safety Bill into law. This legislation has been underway for 8 years. MassBike has a detailed review of what the law means to cyclists and drivers, but some key items include:

• Motorists can be ticketed and fined $100 for "dooring" cyclists. That's what happens when someone kicks their car door open in front of you and you crash into the door.
• The "right hook" is outlawed. That's when a car passes you quickly so they can make a right turn in front of you. You die.
• Motorists must yield when making left turns in front of bikes. This is to avoid "T-boning" accidents where motorists don't realize how fast bikes go and turn in front of them.
• Bikes CAN legally ride to the right of traffic and motorists turning left must yield. This is what happened to me a few months ago when I crashed my bike in Dedham. Under the law now, that motorist is absolutely at fault for hitting me.

I wish I could claim credit for helping pass this law, but the credit belongs with the cycling community and MassBike in particular.

Boston Bikes Update

The city of Boston has been making great progress towards its goal of becoming bike friendly. On Thursday, January 29, at 7pm, at the main branch of the Boston Public Library, LivableStreets Alliance will host the 1st annual "Boston Bikes Report" by the city's Director of Bicycle Programs, Nicole Freedman.

This event is free and open to the public. The focus of the meeting will be on future steps needed to create the "world class bicycling city" that Mayor Menino has promised. There will be additional discussion about what could be done to significantly expand the cycling population -- and its political influence -- by attracting "traffic intolerant" bicyclists.

"Traffic intolerant bicyclists" means ordinary people who are not insane like me...who rides his bike 13 miles into Boston through conditions that prompt my wife's friends to say "how can you let him do that?" The dream is that Boston will transform, during our lifetime, into a city where cycling and walking are pleasant, preferred activities that everyone does without fear.

My primary bike is still bent out of shape and frozen in the garage, but I'm looking forward to warmer days (and a job in the city!) so I can resume my bike commuting. In the meantime, I encourage everyone who can to check out the progress being made here in Boston.

Update:
You can now view:

• Dave Atkins interview with Tory Johnson on ABC NOW
• Susan Kang Nam talks about Salty Legs Job Club with Tory Johnson
• Madeline Laurano talks about finding her new job

Staring into a television camera for a remote interview was a surreal experience. I felt spontaneity and improvisation that is challenging to describe. I suspect, for celebrities, the feeling changes, and it becomes like just another conversation. Those who have never done it probably think it sounds terrifying. There is fear, but not terror. For me, I felt the sensation of being completely and utterly "on," with no safety net, no ability to control or plan, and an almost detached sense of hearing myself respond in the moment.

In that moment, I found my instinct and preparation ruled the day. There is not time to consider 5 seconds ago and no time to plan the next 5 seconds. There is faith that who I am will show and hope that what I've told myself is truth will reveal. But there is no analysis, there is only the moment...a moment that goes on for several minutes and then is gone.

Read more »