My friend Robert Scoble announced a new kind of blog channel this weekend st SXSW [1]- a geek and music conference in Austin, TX. It's called Bldg 43. [2]
Robert played the blogosphere like a fine violin [3]and launched this new 'sponsored' channel - with the help of TechCrunch [4], the Gillmor Gang (including yours truley) [5]and an expectant group of fans - who all love Robert's geek oriented content..
I'm telling you all this as there are many lessons to be learned from Bldg 43 for the Citizen Dashboard project I'm proposing for Cuyahoga County [6].
1. First off - it's an insider's game world - so we gotta do whatever it takes to get some cash, build some coolio software, setup bureaus, start content projects, put on live events - all the while offering this new kind of 'dashboard' to folks far and wide. Once we get enough 'churn' - all of a sudden they'll be jobs, knowledge and inter-connections which weren't there before.
2. Robert won't be committing to any one kind of technology and so too with the Citizen Dashboard [6]. We'll keep using this Drupal driven REALNEO site, we can mesh into any kind of RSS feed and they'll be huge usage of Skype, Zoho, SugarCRM and OpenX.
3. But the Citizen dashboard for Cuyahoga County isn't for geeks - so even this Drupal site is too complicated for typical citizens of Cleveland. We gotta produce an integrated environment which puts all the pieces together. We gotta aggregate from a whole slew of sources - and put it in one place. And we gotta provide a highly customizable environment - so folks can hone in on JUST what they're interested in.
4. Robert's channel is a coordinated effort of his sposnor (Rackspace), a production team, lots of live event appearances (around the world) and street cred. YES - that's what we need to do - as well - but just within Cuyahoga County!
5. Robert's project is all about content. So too will our Citizen Dashboard be about content. Local content. The story of the underground railroad, about Lake Erie, about the Rock and Roll musuem, and sports and health and Kent State. What we need to do is produce an interactive mymedia encyclopedia. Think wikipedia meets YouTube. Fully tagged like Flickr.