RIP, dear Vic....

Today brought post-christmas dawn glow and wonder, and then sharp stop upon reading news of the death of Vic Chesnut. Ol' Thought Coach was blessed to know him and to admire his courage and riveting displays of the craft and sullen art, to reference Dylan Thomas. His brutally-rarified aesthetic raised the southern gothic context to a new and reinvigorated niche of bewonderment, bedazzlement in the fractal face of the sacred broken heart. Humanity, your dumbshow joy and roughness.

Few if any have ever fish-tailed on the head of the cosmological pin so provocatively, so adroitly with the bottom line there like a bitter cold true north. yet the victory of his language, of his vision rendered in the merciless grace we know adorns all unspooling dharma...ah vic.

many thanks to you in the always ever-present hereafter. much praise to all who have gone before.

OK go.

Praise for Univ. of Tenn. at Martin

The Olde Thought Coach (OTC) checks in on a chilly Thursday, fresh from a bracing workout over at the University of Tennessee-Martin. One marketing grad class and one marketing undergrad class each took a swing at marketing analysis for the ol' DMSC and its Governors Challenge. OTC is still amazed at what students can do when they are engaged.

Many gracias to DMSC's and UT Martin's Steve Holt, whose conference was a smash, as well. OTC is going to be back on their mailing list for sure.

OTC brings back 5 marketing plans and 5 powerpoints, along with terrific assets derived from the undergrad's work, including a flawless excel speadsheet of service learning contacts across the country.

We gave out a 100.00 prize to the winning team in the grad division and recruited a couple of solid prospects to move our team out into the marketing mainstream for GovChal 4.0.

More on all this later.

Stay warm and dig the season. '09 was not for sissies; now is when we roll it over like a swimmer's flip turn.

Remember to breathe deep and do the thought yoga.

watch the watcher.

take another breath for 8 counts, hold for 8, then exhale for 8.

do that again.

Now: begin to look across your matrix (third eye thing) and begin incrementally setting up your reports.

folders, first.

then single wins in each folder.

now you walk away.

and when you come back, you begin doing your reps.

cycling the portfolio,

circling the assets,

integrating their value into your breathing.

Now go.

Holiday Season Harvests: e.engagement, dmsc govchal and tsu 2.0: p.20 pathways

TSU 2.0: P.20 Pathways proposal is almost complete, ready for submission to TBR Access and Diversity Division. This proposal details build-out of digital university press model to facilitate individual, institutional and community portfolios of validated media (text, audio, video, image) and service-based "sweat" equity. Teaching to learn is the MO here and the only sure-fire way to guarantee knowledge transfer and sustainability.

The Olde Thought Coach (OTC) will be journeying west to assist DSMC's Steve Holt judge marketing plans for GovChal created by University of Tennessee at Martin's marketing service learning classes. Two classes will present student-created marketing plans for GovChal 4.0 Spring 2010. This is the real deal: inter-institutional, intra-state collaboration in social enterprise. After all, education is the business plan.

TSU's Engaged Technology Institute (ETI) is nearing the completion of its second semester and all signs point to a fantastic set of outcomes. This data set will create the Institute's baseline and support build-out of the afore-mentioned Tennessee Board of Regents Access and Diversity grant, "TSU 2.0: P.20 Pathways."

TSUVa ETI collaboration is also closing in on its undergraduate research project. More on that later.

Sandbox Network's e.engagement, a professional development collaboration between Tennessee State University and Nashville State Community College is ready for Phase 3.0 after a strong developmental semester. Again, more on that and you can follow at http://www.eengagement.org/wordpress/

DMSC GovChal: The Long Now....

Greetings!

End of October and first of November digital sandbox summits yielded fantastic meetings with ETSU, UVa, UNC and NCState. UVa continues to widen umbrella of support to Foundation resources. Collaboration on development received 50 possible targets for support for prototype for DMSC GovChal 4.0 during spring of 2010. Sibley Johns of Music Resource Center in Charlottesville is working with us to set up the DMSC GovChal 4.0 Music Network Challenge. Exciting design creates collaboration between Nashville and Charlottesville as Phase I pilot. More later on all this stuff cuz it's rocking the Old Thought Coach (OTC).

Collaborations with The Maxine Smith Fellows program of the Tennessee Board of Regents promise huge opps for increasing quantity and quality of access and diversity in Tennessee and across the nation. We need such leadership and TBR's MSF brings that kind of capacity. GovChal hopes to add value to their capacity-building mission.

Mid-November brings us harvest outcomes. These outcomes, paradoxically, inspire us to reflect on enhancing preparations for spring. A digital sandbox is a seasonal thing too. As the sun never really sets (that phenomenon is only a matter of perspective), the light of the earth never leaves. Each of us a fully-orbed node in a network that fires up this old thought coach's already active imagination. Whether old water on the moon or new stars in the sky, heart-felt tears of gratitude open up the days and nights, weeks and months: It's just one long Now.

What's the next call at this point in the season? A strong finish here is prelude to a solid foundation for spring's national push. Intramural tournaments! Each DMSC GovChal affiliate conducts its own intramural tournament. Bring your best stuff and upload it wherever you can. then embed the link for the ballot on that site and ask people to register and evaluate your asset(s). Take their time. Give honest feedback (this is also a research exercise in game theory/motivational systems measures), and click submit.

Each producer/artist receives a digital spreadsheet with all data from assessment for each digital asset. Assessment data is engaged to determine what suggested revisions- if any-- would improve the asset's quality or value. The producer/artist then revises and publishes the media asset, clearly stating what ideas they received for revision and how the producer incorported them in the asset. Subsequent analytics reveal asset's value to community. Etc.

Longitunidal stuff in perpetual assessment space. The assets become avatars, artificial digital, binary identities that evolve and orbit the virtual commons. Space and time are data forever. The long now. (for more on this: Google: Stewart Brand, TED talk, The Long Now).

In this way, lack of knowledge transfer between semesters (between fall and spring, between spring and fall) is eliminated through "bridge" platform of the intramural challenge. A virtual commons for those 'tween' times when you want to know if what you've made is any good. when a long distance collaboration could just keep on shaking, baking and incubating. Outside (but inside) school, the old thought coach sees a lot of open field to play toward goal. Play the ball to space. Let the teammate run on to it. Play the value to space, let the market run on to it and play on goal. Guided system: Many scores; Much data. Quality analysis: quality processes and products. Epic systems for the old thought coach.

Kick off: 12.18 (deadline for uploads)

Judge Registration begins: 12.1

Do your own thing.

Till next time,

OTC (Old Thought Coach)

PS: We're doing it big-time at Tennessee State University's Engaged Technology Instiute (ETI) in Nashville TN. Contact: rbradley@tnstate.edu if interested.

Perpetual

Pre-Labor Day...

As we approach the day called labor, the coach muses on the nature of work and how it's depicted in our culture. I've always been confused by the way work took you away from what you loved to do. Or at least that's the way it seemed to the coach.

I see it differently now, more holistically as it were. And part of this is better recognizing the power of design. Or maybe it's the power of the cognitive, generative motherlode of innovation of which the human mind is capable.

Maybe in this time of seemingly great risk, opportunities exist that balance the scale. And that we have the capacity to design our path through this best of all possible worlds. If not design outright, then perhaps co-design.

The curiosity about this possibility certainly feels better than its opposite notion, that a chaos of bad nasty endings are all we can expect on our way to the boneyard.

I like the curiosity; it feels fresh, new. The other notion is old and perpetual and boring.

So the issue answers itself.

Research. Data. Analytics.

Breakthrough.

What is Social ROI?

At yesterday's Tennessee State University's 4th Service Day, an engagement-based inquiry was begun to track data elicited by the question, "What is Social ROI?" Data derived from this project will in part support TSU's application for Carnegie Engaged Campus status.

The project is collaborative in nature and will identify resources and empower individuals to track their own personal data with regard to that question. We see a portfolio project that produces and publishes validated media from students and faculty who self-select into this study. Participants can then elect to participate in financial literacy to fluency seminars.

An IRB has been obtained for the DMSC Governor's Challenge project, which creates the virtual sandbox for this TSU Engaged Technology Institute (ETI) project. ETI was founded at TSU in Spring 09 and seeks affiliates (individual and institutional) to advance this inquiry.

Stay tuned for more as this story develops (hint: it dovetails with our last blog post).

Sincerely,

the coach.

Well now....a Techno-Social Think Tank....

Poised on the last week of august, we cast a glance back at the jewel of the southeast, East Tennessee State University, in Johnson City, TN. Convening thought leaders at ETSU in the inaugural TechnoSocial Think Tank model, DMSC and digiTenn christened the event, and this name will undoubtedly morph into a tweeted-out appellation. Same way the Governor's Challenge morphed into "govchal" through twitter research during this summer's Sandbox rolling summit. So we'll see how that turns out.

Think of it: Data management for e-bank equity. Calibrated using the online tool digiTenn brought to us for IKE measurement. 16 thought leaders signed on to quantify the quality of the engagement practice as professional development. Tennessee State University partnered with ETSU to stage the event. The TEDxNashville group also worked with the effort to embed innovation and sustainability in the p-16 initiative in TN.

Also announced was the DMSC National Governors Challenge Fall 09, Version 4.0. Results from Phase I available January 7 2010 and Phase II June 25 2010.

see www.sandboxnetwork.org for more....migrating slowly but surely into national calibration, ratcheting up the incentives for creative, responsible, measured collaboration.

2009 DMSC Governor's Challenge Digital Media Tournament

The DMSC Governor's Challenge Digital Media Tournament is in full swing! It's not too late to enter! If you are a student, staff or faculty member of any institution in higher education (undergraduate and graduate), you still have time to enter!

We are also looking for judges! It's okay to enter AND to judge as long as you recuse yourself from your own assessment. Judges can register here.

It's okay if the submission is not freshly produced; as long as it has never been published and you have full creative ownership of and rights to the podcast, you may submit in either audio or video format at ETSU's I-tunes U site. Write dmsandboxnetwork@gmail.com for more information!