[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

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

Most of my posts over the next several days will be audio reports from Rising Tide IV, a conference founded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the leveee failure that followed.  Here’s the short form:

After the flood that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, the internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, 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, after the success of the first Geek Dinner, and to mark the anniversary of the flood, the newly formed NOLA Bloggers organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the internet and social media and turning advocacy for the city into action.

Over the intervening years we have had guests ranging from the Wall Street Journal’s Chris Cooper and Robert Block, authors of Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security, to this year’s keynote Speaker, Harry Shearer.  I’m particularly happy that Mr. Shearer made the time to join us this year as his bloggin about the disparity between national news and the actual events in the disaster zone have been vitally important over the past four years. (I’m also a huge fan of The Simpsons…)

I’d like to invite anyone with questions about Katrina, New Orleans, or the conference to feel free to drop me a line or leave me a comment. I’ll answer as best I can and if I don’t know the answer I’ll find you someone who does.

Okay. Next stop, New Orleans!

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

Five years ago today Gmail debuted. Like many I viewed it as yet another web based email system and had little interest. Web mail had always been a clunky pain in the behind, useful when travelling but that was about it.

By the time July 2005 had arrived I was playing with it out of curiosity. To my surprise it was actually a good interface, not annoying at all. Then came that fateful August of 2005. Hurricane Katrina and the levee failure that followed forced my wife (then fiancee) and I to evacuate New Orleans, heading North with our five cats, a laptop and little else.

Just before leaving I blasted my entire contact list with a message to use the Gmail account until further notice. Little did I realize that further notice would never come. Over the next six weeks Gmail was our lifeline. As friends and family members turned up scattered across the US we were able to get back in touch. Three weeks after the storm I finally found out that my grandmother was alive and in Texas. Six weeks after the storm we returned to a mostly deserted New Orleans.The introduction of useful and efficient web-mail could not have come at a better time.

Gmail was the first large scale application of Ajax, and led directly to the evolution of a lot of the social media online today. Since it was opened up to the general public in February of 2007 it seems as though everyone has a Gmail address. It, like its parent search engine, seems to have become ubiquitous.

To me the significance will always be that in the days when social media was limited to blogs, Gmail was our lifeline.

Happy Birthday Gmail! And that’s no April Fools joke.

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

Essay by Daisy Pignetti, November 28, 2008 in response to Principles of a New Media Literacy, published by the Publius Project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

In 2006 I wrote a piece about the burgeoning New Orleans blogosphere for the launch of Placeblogger.com. The crux of that essay, and of the site itself, was to call attention to the value of local voices when representing the lived experience of a particular place. I argued that after witnessing the breakdown of communications on local, state, and federal government levels, not to mention the loss of composure on the part of the news anchors and talking heads, there was no better way to raise awareness of the reality of post-Katrina New Orleans than through alternative media genres. Now approaching the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the list of NOLA bloggers has grown to over 300, representing a myriad of neighborhoods and highlighting the voices of those who refuse to move elsewhere, thereby reaffirming these locals’ passion for their beloved Big Easy.

Dan Gillmor defines the principles of a new media literacy for journalists as skepticism, judgment, understanding, and reporting. NOLA bloggers embody these principles, quite transparently, with many of their entries, photos, and videos repeating the sentiment of being neglected, misunderstood, and misrepresented. They use their blogs to share their painful memories and their daily triumphs. Building on the trust quotient their virtual community has established, they use listservs and wikis to organize face-to-face efforts and to reach out and teach others how to access information.

The statistics collected by the Pew Internet and American Life Project document that since the tragedies of September 11th the number of networked citizens has increased, and those with access now have greater means to push the boundaries during a breaking story. As we create an infinite archive from which worldwide audiences can learn about crisis communications, we may eventually be able to prevent loss instead of only documenting it. For instance, I wonder how the Katrina response might have differed now that a number of New Orleanians are using services such as Twitter and Brightkite to broadcast their actions and locations. The established channels (Red Cross, FEMA, and news agencies) would obviously have to be aware of and monitor these sites when a disaster arises; otherwise, these utterances would continue to go unheard by the powers that be that control the necessary resources. The scenario is an intriguing one to consider.

I do think that every medium has its limits; e.g., documentary films and mass media coverage of national and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina can only expose so much because they often interview small populations of survivors, clip their responses into sound bites, and/or edit out the long pauses that come when victims try to speak of the trauma and loss they suffered. Blogs and other Web 2.0 hosting sites allow users to document both immediate and extended chronicles, but the same affordances that make these technologies valuable can also transform them into echo chambers. For example, NOLA bloggers are quick to reveal their biases when “writing the wrong” in the comments section of an uniformed outsider’s post on whether or not the city should receive federal assistance; however, their own individual blogs do not always reach an audience beyond the already interested and informed Gulf Coast.

Thanks to the aggregator at Placeblogger.com, I realize that New Orleans is not unique in being a city that uses technologies to define itself; however, I believe that these NOLA bloggers speak more freely and with greater urgency. Although they may not receive the national exposure they deserve, their writing exposes a range of opinions that might otherwise go unnoticed. Much of the importance of these permanently archived postings is that they can be read by those who actively search the Internet in order to better understand the rebuilding efforts. Indeed, these postings provide a deeper, truer reading of what is going on in New Orleans than what the nation is reminded of only every few months by celebrity remarks and anniversary specials.

As Dan Gillmor asserts, being skeptical and transparent are vital qualities of new media producers and consumers; however, I must contend with his point that we are starting from a deficit and that teachers who advance critical thinking are risking their jobs. As a member of the vibrant computers and composition community, I would be remiss if I didn’t call attention to the empirical research published on the topic of digital literacy, primarily in online journals such as Computers and Composition Online and Kairos.

Granted, those of us in higher education often face opposition from tenure and promotion boards when we integrate digital technologies into our scholarship, but more and more universities are assuming that their students enter the classroom technologically literate and willing to write in public spaces. As a result, writing programs across the nation are asking their first-year and upper-level undergraduates to analyze the content and design of webtexts and to reflect on how their ability to use computers to improve their learning has evolved. Microblogging tools and social networks allow those new to teaching with technology to learn—alongside their students—valuable lessons in hypertext linking, concise word choice, and active reading as well as the positive and negative consequences of public writing and collaboration. In addition, some faculty members utilize the many open source downloads available online and the applications that digital cameras and mobile devices come with in order to create with their students a wide range of multi-modal compositions.

As a teacher, blogger, and Internet researcher, my career is focused on engaging students and remaining relevant. By enacting these principles of a new media literacy—as the New Orleans bloggers continue to do—we have the ability to enhance our understanding of what it means to be part of a democratized media. As members of an open network, I encourage us all to enter into dialogues and take risks, for it is only by doing so that can cultivate the “trust meters” Gillmor describes.

Daisy Pignetti’s research consists of qualitative inquires into why people write online, particularly in the aftermath of disaster, and what psychological benefits “documenting the daily” through new media genres may have for both the producer and consumer. She shared interview data from her dissertation project on the post-Katrina blogosphere with the Berkman Center last year as part of the 2007 Oxford Internet Institute Summer Doctoral Programme.

Last fall she received her PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of South Florida and began as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

My jaw dropped when I saw an announcement that Carlos Mencia had been invited to ride as an honored guest in the Krewe of Orpheus, one of the bigger and more spectacular Mardi Gras Parades of the season. You see a mere month or so after Katrina devastated our city he came out with a six or seven minute long routine about the disaster, some of his most remembered jokes included the following:

• “Why are we rebuilding New Orleans? Whose idea was this, Aquaman?”
• “Hurricane Katrina was caused by political correctness. I said it!”
• “I’m glad Hurricane Katrina happened. It taught us an important lesson: black people can’t swim.”

As you may imagine our vibrant online communities immediately started to buzz. Now let’s be clear here, everything in the world gets joked about. Taste is a personal issue. However, if you are going to make statements like those a few mere weeks after the disaster, at a time when most of the population are displaced, is akin to cracking 9-11 jokes on 10-01. If you do intend to make jokes like this you should keep in mind that everything is archived and people are getting better at data mining on a daily basis.When people die in great numbers it is rarely time for derogatory humor.

While I was busy in an online discussion of the subject with other local bloggers the New Orleans LiveJournal Commnity exploded with commentary. One member of Orpheus made a comment on the subject and the comments are revealing. Please eep in mind that many of the links here are Not Safe For Work due to the profanity that is often found behind them, its a very pasionate subject for New Orleanians.  [Mencia Again - NOLA LJ] Emails were flying all over the place and Twitter was humming like a Tuvan Throat Singer.

Noted local author Poppy Z. Brite and her husband, Chef Chris DeBarr not only emailed the Krewe of Orpheus but also posted the letter on her rather high traffic blog. Here is a small sample posted under the NSFW title of  Hail Orpheus, F*ck Mencia:

By granting this hateful and bigoted person the honor of riding as a celebrity guest in your parade, you and the membership of Orpheus tacitly condone these remarks. Whether Mencia has apologized for them or not (we are not aware that he has), he does not deserve to be welcomed to our city, let alone honored at our most important celebration. If Orpheus cares about New Orleans, Mr. Mencia’s invitation will be revoked. If it is not revoked, we suggest you invest in some extra protection for Mencia’s float. We personally would not take part in violence against parade riders, but please be aware that a number of paradegoers are already targeting Mencia for verbal abuse and more. I cannot imagine that you want to see Orpheus’ history marred by an ugly incident that could have been avoided by selecting a more appropriate celebrity rider.

All in all the Internet capable portion of our opulation seemed to be extremely upset, to be honest I was. Mencias Katrina “humor” was one of the first things that came on when our cable service was returned right after returning from six weeks of exile while the city was under water.

The beauty of this, and an example f the power of the Internet, is that within 24 hours of hearing about this Orpheus un-invited Carlos and asked Joan Rivers instead. The digital ripple effect was prnounced enough for NOLA.com to write a column about the virtual backlash. I highly advise this article as it included excerpts from several of the local blogs (admitedly colleuages of mine). [Web Denizens Steamed Over Mencia's Orpheus Invite - NOLA.com]

The NOLA.com piece is a bit of a breakthrough for mainstream media here, it actually references a number of blogs and Twitters. The really important thing is the fact that the situation was brought to light and rectified within an amazingly short time due to social media. The web may be global, but somthing to keep in mind is that it can also have a hyperlocal aspect.

Meanwhile, back on LiveJournal the news was greeted with a comment stream almst as large as the original announcement. [Mencia Out!!! -NOLA LJ]

Kudos to the Krewe of Orpheus for rectifying this mistake, and more to everyone in New Orleans who used Web2.0 to let Mencia now that we do not forget getting kicked while we were down.  A local victory for Social Media in New Orleans. Now if we could just get that kind of universal momentum against the violence….

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