It’s time for Rising Tide 6 bringing you two halls of programming at the University Center at Xavier University on Saturday, August 27, 2011.

[Disclosure- I am one of the organizers and the MC for this year's conference.]

Rising Tide NOLA, Inc. will present its 5^th annual new media conference centered on the recovery and future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on Saturday, August 28, 2010, 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., at The Howlin’ Wolf, 907 South Peters St., in New Orleans.

The one-day conference features speakers and panel discussions on the status and future of the culture, politics, criminal justice system, environment, and flood protection of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Past speakers have included actor and outspoken champion of New Orleans Harry Shearer, and authors Dave Zirin, John Barry, Christopher Cooper and Robert Block.

Rising Tide NOLA, Inc. is a non-profit organization formed by New Orleans bloggers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federally-built levees. After the disaster, the internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, and friends of the city and of the Gulf Coast region. A surge of new blogs erupted and, combined with those that were already online, a community of bloggers with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, to mark the anniversary of the flood, the bloggers of New Orleans organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the arts, the internet and social media and turning advocacy for the city into action.

Conference registration is open at www.risingtidenola.com and is only $20 until July 31.  Registration includes lunch. There will be pre-conference party hosted by the New Orleans bloggers on Friday evening August 27, also at the Howlin’ Wolf. More information is available at the Rising Tide5 Website: http://www.risingtidenola.com and at the Rising Tide blog: http://www.risingtideblog.blogspot.com

Rising Tide 5 is sponsored by The Canary Collective, a media publishing agency, and by Levees.org.

Rising Tide’s featured artwork, available as a poster and t-shirt, is once again produced by the award-wining editorial cartoonist and artist Greg Peters of Suspect Device.

The New Orleans bloggers will present the annual Ashley Award named for Ashley Morris—blogger and passionate advocate for New Orleans—who passed away in April, 2008. The Ashley Morris Award is given each year to an outstanding blogger writing about New Orleans and the challenges it faces.

Tables for booksellers and vendors are available at the Rising Tide 5 Conference by calling Tim Ruppert at 504-975-3591 or by e-mailing[email protected].

Those interested in sponsorship should e-mail [email protected].

Information about registration is available by emailing [email protected]. The telephone number to call for information about RisingTide 5 is 866-910-2055.

Connect with Rising Tide on your preferred platform:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RisingTideNOLA

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/RisingTide

George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC

Well, I’m late to the game on this one, having neglected twitter for a day or two I missed the announcement so hopefully I’m getting this out in time to be useful to some of you.

At 1pm today there will be a Tweet Up at Take The Cake Cafe on Hamilton Ave. in Cincinnati’s Northside neighborhood. For details and to RSVP go to the twtvite page for the event.

As of this writing the following people have confirmed that they will attend:

@adorkandhispork
@AlexShebar
@allisonjo1
@CincyNorthside
@geekjames
@katiberz
@moto62
@rainie1u
@shawnmummert
@simpleton001
@snixon
@socialgumbo [Me, that is]
@takethecakecafe
@this_monograph
@UrbanCincy

So come on out and meet others in the local twit-o-sphere, after all it is the face to face connections that are one of the best parts of social media! Give me a poke and say hello!

George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC

Keynote Speaker Harry Shearer

Rising Tide IV, the annual bloggers conference on the recovery and future of New Orleans, will be “Sinking to New Heights” on Aug. 22 at the Zeitgeist Multi Disciplinary Arts Center in New Orleans. Our featured speaker: the multi-talented Harry Shearer, a great champion of New Orleans on Huffington Post and elsewhere, along with panels on the status and future of New Orleans music, food and parading culture; the state of New Orleans health care, politics in the Last Year of the Reign of Nagin, and more.

Registration is open at www.risingtidenola.net and is only $25 until August 20th and includes lunch from Cafe Reconcile. There will be a social Friday evening Aug. 21 at The Avenue Pub upstairs..Additional details will be posted to the Rising Tide blog and the Rising Tide IV Facebook page.

Our annual featured artwork (seen in the right hand sidebar), available as a poster and t-shirt, is once again produced by the award-wining editorial cartoonist and artist Greg Peters of Suspect Device. Octavia Books will be on-site with books by featured panelists and other New Orleans interest books.

There will be four panel discussions along with the featured speaker and presentations will also be given by Jessica Rohloff of Net2NO and Ariella Cohen of the New Orleans Institute.

The New Orleans bloggers will also present the annual Ashley Award named for Ashley Morris—blogger and warrior for New Orleans—who passed away in April 2008. The Ashley Morris Award for Excellence in Blogging is given each year to an outstanding blogger writing about the New Orleans community and the challenges it faces.  The recipient of the award will receive a glass ingot sandblasted with a Greg Peters design on it that symbolizes our community rising from the waters and reminding us all why New Orleans matters.

There will be four panel discussions with audience questions. The first, on New Orleans Culture, will examine the “under the hood” state of critical aspects of NOLA culture four years after Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood. Panelists include Edward Buckner of The Porch Seventh Ward Culture Organization and the Original Big 7 Social Aid and Pleasure Club Our food panelist will be Susan Tucker, editor of New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories. Our music panelist will be Bruce Raeburn of the Hogan Jazz Archive and author of New Orleans Style and the Writing of American Jazz History

The Politics panel will feature  John Slade, cartoonist and WBOK radio talk show host, Clancy Dubos who has been the political voice of The Gambit fr many years now, Lamar White Jr. of CenLamar, and Ethan Brown. The panel will look at where we’ve been and  where we’re going in regard to local, state and national politics as we approach a pivotal 2010 election.

The Health Care panel will explore the current issues surrounding the care of our physical and mental needs in the greater New Orleans area four years after the storm, starting off from a recent study linking increased instances of heart attacks to the stresses encountered in the recovery process: Holly Scheib, moderator, working on PhD in public health (http://coldspaghetti.org/ blog); Cecile Tebo, crisis unit coordinator for the NOPD, featured in 10 Top Female Achievers issue of New Orleans magazine; Dr Elmore Rigamer, medical director of Catholic Charities;  Sean Fitzmorris, New Orleans EMT, administrator of New Orleans EMTs Sound Off!  (http://nolaemt.blogspot.com/)

The Sports panelists  Alejandro de los Rios (reporter/blogger for the Gambit), Leo McGovern (editor/publisher of ANTIGRAVITY Magazine) and Chris Wiseman ((http://worldclassneworleans.blogspot.com/ ) an enthusiastic member of the Black and Gold Patrol  talk about the Saints, the Hornets, sports and the state of sports fandom in New Orleans.

Yours truly will be the Master of Ceremonies.

Please share this, blog about it, or contact me with any further questions!

George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC

Next month marks the fourth anniversary of the failure of the New Orleans levees (a distinct and separate disaster from Katrina, although most outside the region do not know it).  It is also the fourth year of the Rising Tide Conference, a gathering spearheaded by the New Orleans blogger community to examine   and address the city’s ongoing concerns in the wake of what locals call “The Federal Flood.”

This year we will have noted comedian and longtime New Orleans proponent Harry Shearer as our keynote speaker. I can’t wait for that, especially as I have been invited to MC the event. There will be panels on New Orleans culture, the state of health care in the city, the political landscape and more.

Now I know a lot f my readers on this blog are from other parts of the country, which is why I encourage you to check out the event. Natural disasters and engineering failures can strike anywhere, and there is no better example of how poorly things can be handled at all levels than the Katrina response was. Living in Ohio now I have really had it illustrated to me how little people outside the disaster zone really know about the situation, mostly due to a simple lack of hard facts. This conference is a perfect vehicle for self education on the subject.

If you live near a levee or dam, if you live in an area where forest fires/tornadoes/earthquakes occur, or if you have a simple love of New Orleans and its history then this is important to you! Please check it out, attend, or donate to support the effort. As people across the Midwest discovered not long ago, you could be the next one lost in a morass of post disaster FEMA paperwork while you try to find a roof to put over your exiled family’s heads.

For more info please check out The Rising Tide Blog, Flickr Community, or follow us on Twitter. I will also happily answer any question posted to the comments here.

Thanks!

George “Loki” Williams is the owner of SocialGumbo, LLC

Well I’ve been in Cincinnati a little over two months now and I’m starting to get used to things. Thanks to my lovely wife I have realized that one huge element missing from my daily life since leaving New Orleans has been the lack of  non internet based social interaction.

Thus is was with great pleasure that I headed out to hit my first New Media Cincy meetup. I’ve been corresponding with the organizer, Daniel Johnson Jr., since before our arrival in Ohio and he’s be been great. This afternoon we finally met face to face when he was kind enough to give me a lift. (Thanks Daniel, you’re the best!)

All in all I would say that there were about 50 people there, and most of the afternoon was “networking.” In other words food, conversation and Guinness served at a proper temperature.  I was lucky enough to find some good conversations to join, a terrific thing since I would rather have a significant interaction with someone than run around pimping myself. Better to share a few (bad) jokes over a beer rather than give them the “Eric Stratton, rush chairman, damn glad to meet you!” handshake and bolt.

Some of the Ohio crowd that I had the pleasure of meeting today included the following:

First I ran into Vicki Sceifers from VS Productions, she and her colleague were setting up a live cam to transmit the gathering. Always one to dive in on a production I assisted a bit in fighting recalcitrant velcro into holding up the cam. In addition to production we also have Thesis in common. (Thesis is the theme this blog runs on.) Instant conversation!