At the End of the Schuylkill River

…is Rat Island. I want to go there.

(Photo by Mike Szilagyi)

The Ghost of Wireless Philadelphia

A few years ago under Mayor John Street the City of Philadelphia embarked on “Wireless Philadelphia,” an ambitious campaign to cover the metro area with affordable wireless internet access and cement wifi as a public-private hybrid utility.

As with so many of Philadelphia’s ambitions, the plan sputtered. Philadelphia is a paradox as a city simultaneously intoxicated with grandiosity and embittered by second class outcomes.

“Wireless Philadelphia” sought to put Philadelphia on the map as a national digital leader. It was exciting, but the scale and timing were major stumbling blocks. New York City, meanwhile, has today its own Chief Digital Officer and is the rising tech hub of the East.

The scale of Michael Bloomberg’s ambitions are great, but the execution of those ambitions is precise. In The Roadmap for the Digital City, Mayor Bloomberg’s CDO outlines a plan to provide free public wifi in every city park. Ambitious and also achievable. Big without losing the proportion and scale required for goals to translate into clear objectives.

Philadelphia’s own plan has been a bust. It was so big that in the wake of its collapse it can be tough to get wifi in even a transit hub like Suburban Station, let alone the parks.

I’m comfortable with Philadelphia striving for big things, but I wish there was at minimum better execution in the smaller things.

Preventive Public Policy

A reader wrote in to present another perspective on the pro life/pro choice topic:

I have never liked the label of pro-life for the whole abortion issue. After long thought, I view the issue of abortion as an issue of pro or anti marriage, and the crime or sin involved is against marriage or family, and not so much against a fetus or an individual. The pro life movement has concentrated on the issue of killing the fetus, as an issue of murder, as it were. However true in some sense that is, I think it detracts from the real thing that is “murdered” by abortion, which is the entirely new entity that comes into existence with marriage when two become one. Abortion is one method to avoid  that entity from coming into existence, or seen another way, to prevent that entity from becoming fruitful.

The decline of the nuclear family and the attendant decrease in fertility and children sync with this perspective. This can also be a helpful way to make sense of what Archbishop Charles Chaput spoke about in November in framing this debate.

Square One

Pete Schuster wrote about something I’ve been grappling with for a while now. Namely: what good is a great website without great content?

One of the first and most important steps in content strategy is defining needs. Defining the needs of the customer, user, etc should be at the forefront of every feature. Answering the questions “Who, What, Where, When, and How?” should constantly be brought into the conversation to help keep the project on track and on budget.

Okay, so the client wants a blog on their site, great! What is its purpose? What kind of content will be added? Will there be pictures? Will it need categorization? Who is going to update this content? Where on the site will it appear? Do they need a widget of recent posts? Do they want comments? Who will moderate the comments? When and how often do you plan to publish? How will this help the end user? Do your users even read blogs? …

Content Strategy is still a very new and “exciting” field. It is changing the way we all think about how websites are built. A website with a good content strategy is what separates a good site from a great site.

It seems like nearly everything relating to the digital space — social media, digital publishing, email newsletters, website design, or content strategy — is boiled down in our collective imagination as “New Media.” Which these things are, more or less, but this distillation is unhelpful in this instance.

We need clarity in approaching communication online in the same way we need clarity in approaching communication in traditional/legacy content channels.

What Pete talks about in regards to Content Strategy is a reminder that your message (and the community it’s directed toward) is what matters. It’s why “New Media” — from Facebook to Kindle to MailChimp — exists.

Crafting a digital strategy doesn’t mean “Do what we’ve always done, the way we’ve always done it. Plus Facebook.” It means an entirely new approach to communicating with your people based on the merits and demerits of our new media platforms.

Joe Paterno, and Seeking Truth in the Spaces Between Myth and Reality

As the reverberations in feeling and spirit since the death of Joe Paterno dissipate, the tributes and apologias continue. Michael Novak wrote two pieces on Coach Paterno in National Review Online in recent weeks, The Injustice Done to Joe Paterno followed by Why My Critics Are Wrong. The essence of his writing centered on the ideal Joe Paterno came to represent, what Michael Novak identifies as his “classic greatness:”

What is the Penn State way? Never quit, take on the task assigned, spend myself utterly, play as one team, don’t worry about what others think, stay true. This is what they have been taught that Penn State is. What they are. What the tradition of the West is, from Thermopylae and Troy until today.

Michael Novak is speaking of “classic greatness” in a civilizational sense, not in “classic” as a vague, misty-eyed nostalgia. In recent correspondence, meanwhile, Michael’s brother Ben Novak observed (while writing on an entirely different subject):

It is paradoxical that the ancients used to associate truth with the sun and light on mountaintops, while in the modern age we find truth by digging into the abysses, and and we look for light in the darkest places.

It’s impossible, in other words, to achieve greatness while engaging in pettiness, to be charitable and miserly, to seek truth through rage, to truly love while abiding hate.

Forgiveness is not an occasion but a continual approach to living. A refusal to forgive ourselves or others for failure can retard our emotional range — it can make us lesser beings. This is the Greco-Christian story. (Stay with me.) In the spaces between the myths of Greek gods and the reality of Christ a robust set of truths were developed to help nurture and guide good men.

Legends and stories, even when stretched or exaggerated, relayed truths. It’s why they endured. The black/white, binary approach to contemporary narratives is a corrosive characteristic of our time that ends up demanding we choose the stark and rarely humane attitudes of “Saint!” or “Villain!” to our public figures. The binary approach is the primitive approach. It is what the mob is to the notion of the Citizen.

Returning to Coach Paterno, an older contributor under the name “ShrinkRap” reflected earlier this month on Black Shoe Diaries:

I was introduced from afar to Happy Valley, no-frills uniforms, Nittany Lions (so cool), and Eastern (you ain’t good enough) football, all under the leadership of Joe the Grocer, or so it seemed to me. It was an era of radio and newspapers, a time when the imagination was as important as the broadcast. And there, in the playground of my mind, I found myself inspired by a team I never saw and a place I’ve never been.

To the extent that what I fancied as a youth was reality or myth is clouded by the recent cascade of scandal-laden news. But the truths I derived about modesty, excellence, perseverance, and how to slay Goliath (if not become one!) remain clear. They will reside forever untarnished in a little blue and white box in my head, and for that I owe a measure of thanks to JoePa and Penn State.

Why does Michael Novak attribute “classical greatness” to Joe Paterno? What importance is the observation that we used to identify sun and light and mountain peaks with truth? For ShrinkRap, why was imagination once as important as the real broadcast?

I’d suggest a unifying answer is the following: We make our own reality. In choosing to follow the light of both the life and the ideal of Joe Paterno we’re choosing to reject the abyss of conspiracy and gossip and an entire universe of undying self-doubt.

The enduring sun and light and mountain peak for Penn Staters and all those of the Nittany Valley is our damned lesson to the world: that through all the tumult, we’ve chosen the path of the Thousandth Man by sticking by Joseph Vincent Paterno. We’ve declared ourselves as of a stubborn stock. The harder the world casts the character of Joe Paterno with hate or malice or tearing we will respond with acts of honor and respect and affection.

We love Joe Paterno because we recognize the untarnished nature of all the points of character for which he came to be identified, idealized, and eventually mercilessly judged. Joe Paterno was a man, but he gave us an untarnished vision.

Joe Paterno will remain our icon, the world be damned. We will be measured by our love.

R.C. Churches

Have you ever walked or driven by a church with a sign outside explaining itself as “St. So-And-So R.C. Church”? I encounter this pretty frequently in my work. It’s grating.

It stands for “Roman Catholic,” of course. I wonder, in 2012, how many that’s obvious to outside of Catholicism.

And a primary reason for having a sign is to be attractive and welcoming to outsiders, right?

Every time I see an “R.C. Church” sign I think of RC racing toys.

Can’t we just call ourselves “Catholic?”

Chief Service Officers

Gavin Keirans and I met today with Catie Wolfgang, Philadelphia’s Chief Service Officer. We were there to talk about service partnerships for the growing Philadelphia Catholic League Alumni Corps and we’ve set the foundation for a promising relationship with the City of Philadelphia.

Catie’s role as Chief Service Officer is a great case study in an innovative field in the civic space. She works through Mayor Nutter’s Office of Civic Engagement and Volunteer Service. Her role is a first for the city and grew out of Cities of Service, a national campaign created a few years ago by Michael Bloomberg to integrate strategic planning for citizen service campaigns.

When Mayor Bloomberg created the Chief Service Officer position in New York City in 2009 it was the first instance of a city government instituting the position, and through Cities of Service Philadelphia is one of 22 other cities to have adopted the position.

Michael Bloomberg has done a lot to place New York City in a position of leadership, and this initiative has so far been a great example of a robust approach to city government innovation. Cities of Service demonstrates the difference between isolated and coordinated leadership. It has been a powerful signaling mechanism for what citizens should expect from their cities.

I wish something like this existed within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. If it did, there wouldn’t be a need for the Philadelphia Catholic League Alumni Corps.