I enthusiastically went to “party” at Next Door (a nightclub in Chinatown) with other profs, students, and alumni… and of course a whole lot of other people that I don’t know.  Highlight of the night was Pilipino rapper BAMBU whose message on his Hawaii tour is: “Hip Hop can be an Organizing Tool”.

Here are my Top 5 Observations about that message and my experiences over the weekend.

1.  Observe:  I went to a hip hop concert as a prof, with other profs — with students. What is wrong with this picture? Feels like a clash of worlds, like an oxymoron.  Most important, I had no idea what to wear.  LESSON: Clashing of worlds is good. It’s an interweaving of networks.

2.  Observe: Party people everywhere.  LESSON: It was actually raising awareness – community organizing happens everywhere – why not at a club? Grassroots is bottom-up… it doesn’t start with policy or companies with lots of money. It starts in the community and sometimes community starts at the clubs.

3. Observe: It’s just music. LESSON: It’s art with a purpose.  Music has the potential to unite people. And isn’t that the purpose of organizing??

4. Observe: We all looked like a buncha thugs throwing our hands up at a hip hop concert. LESSON:  Obviously, us thugs were a buncha business people, profs, lawyers, legislative aides, and college students.  Everyone there was part of a conversation…

5. Observe: People were just standing around drinking. LESSON: … yes but they were also talking and engaging one another. I met key people this weekend whom I wouldn’t have met through any other venue.

Point is: organizing is about making connections. And Hip Hop (done right!) has the potential to make connections when it pushes community issues into the spotlight. Then those who congregate around those issues become connected together… and the rest, as they say, becomes history.

Now back at my computer: I am in awe.

#hitsunami #hawaii #tsunami #hilobay —- all became trending topics today.

At first I thought that the whole world was talking about the probable tsunami. Then I realized something else…

Maybe the world was listening to us preparing for the probable tsunami.  Maybe those hashtags were us – we were talking to each other. We, as a community, were preparing for this probable tsunami. Everyone else was silent. We were tweeting and retweeting each other. We were trying to get information out. That’s how those twitter hashtags emerged. They emerged because we were the only ones talking for those few hours… it wasn’t sheer volume of tweets. It was because everyone else was watching in silence.

The rest of the world was watching us on skype. They were watching from our iphones streaming video of Waikiki or Hilo Bay. They were watching us BBQ on the Pali. They were listening to us self-organize via twitter. Friends and family from the mainland called to say they were watching livestreams via mobile devices or on the web.

Just realized this and I’m not saying it to just say it: gained almost 100 new followers today (and yes, I know they’ll probably unfollow me by Monday).  Shocked, I began following these folks back and saw that my new twitter friends were all over the world. ALL OVER THE WORLD.

Being the data nerd that I am, I also looked at retweets: they were retweets from ALL OVER THE WORLD. In languages that I can’t even visually decipher.  Even my Bon Jovi twitter friends had posted a couple of times about the probable tsunami.

My point is this. Some sort of community emerged this morning. And yes, it was a self-organizing system so to speak. That is, there were no official leaders or followers – except for whatever social capital may have been transferred via credentials.

If real world social capital were absolutely transferable to the twitter world, we should have seen most folks solely going to traditional mass media outlets, civic leaders, or scientific experts. But no, they were listening to regular folks like me – luckily perched at high dry ground, safely able to sit and chirp away from a computer for a couple of hours.

At the end of the day, some of the mass media news outlets were partnering and collaborating with twitter folks. And surely, twitter folks were twittering news they had heard from mass media sources. While mass media may have the credibility, twitter peeps on the ground had the real time content. And while twitter peeps understood the context of what was happening, mass media were able to check reliability.

Perhaps there is truly another way to think about how we collectively handled the information flow and knowledge management today. Not in terms of mass media versus social media…. not in terms of newspapers versus TV, or experts versus ordinary citizens.  But in terms of :::::: how we came together and learned to draw on one another’s strengths.  I know it sounds hokey pokey, but really – what is the strength of traditional media? What is the strength of social media? What is the strength of a veteran news reporter? What is the strength of a person on the ground with a cell phone?

Community emerges more quickly in times of crisis because we are forced to draw on one another’s strengths. We had diversity in resources… and that allowed us to be more creative, more innovative in our preparedness.

I still might not know some of their real names (only their twitter handles)… but I know who I can trust out there in the twitterverse.  Isn’t that weird? Some of the trust originates from offline interactions or credentials, but some of the trust also originates from online interactions. And seriously! I don’t know some of these people’s real names and I haven’t met them in real life.

But you know what? If a major disaster occurred today, I would have put my safety in their hands. All those superficial introductory remarks (what’s your email? business card?) can happen eventually.  But it’s as if I don’t need to know all that stuff…because I know they’ll always be there.  That is, I’ve got a feeling I’ll always be able to find them on twitter.

By uploading this blog and website, I believe I just committed to writing in this blog on a weekly basis. I believe I just made that commitment.

But I’m sort of beside myself on this one.

Life is busy and the last thing I need to do is add another thing to my to-do list. But having a blog presence is important for many reasons beyond the scope of this particular blog entry. And sometimes, things that are important are not always urgent. So… they are left unfinished.  And that’s not always good.

I believe that we make time for the people and experiences that are important in our lives. Otherwise, we’re really just responding to external stimuli – nothing more than computational algorithms really. It’s our values and our determination of what’s important that makes us tick. How often do we make time for what’s important – really important – in the midst of absolute crazy busy lives?

And on that note.  With this blog, I am making a commitment to get focused on writing.

Do you know this quote: “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”? Well, I kinda feel like the journey of publishing a thousand scholarly articles begins with a single blog post.  Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. ;)

I’m feeling a little like those first time twitterers right now. Let me explain…

There’s an ambivalence that comes with writing for public consumption. It’s more difficult because I’m cognizant of the fact that someone else will be reading my writing. And I feel embarrassed even before I’ve posted any content. I have no idea what this content is going to look like on the other side. I don’t really know how I measure up. And I feel like I’m swimming in a wide open vast ocean without a direction. It’s not that I’m drowning. Just kinda treading water. It’s not terribly traumatizing but it’s not pleasant either. And no one is giving me direct feedback either.  So it’s difficult for me to assess if I’m doing it correctly. Even if I were to receive credit for this on a weekly basis, I’d still struggle with it each time.  I’d wonder about which angle to take, which words to use, how to represent myself…

Oh, so this is what it feels like to twitter and write publicly for class? Yeah, I can understand why it’s difficult.

Well, students, if you keep on twittering and refining your public writing skills, then I’ll keep blogging. Blogging is a challenge for me.  I write professionally all the time. Scholarly and professional writing – that comes easy to me.

But, blogging is different because it’s my personal voice. In class and in scholarly writing, it’s my, uh, professorial voice. And I derive some security in taking on that social role. I try to live up to what’s expected of me.  In a way, there’s no need for creativity.

But for blogging, I’d really like to just write. And I feel like I could really use Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility right now.  I’d also like to disable the comments portion of this blog because I’m afraid to know what you all think of my personal voice. This is risky business! Very interesting stuff. Never knew that this is what it would feel like.  I’d imagine that my need for that cloak will go away over time though.  As long as I keep writing, it should come easier. At least I hope so.