My wife and I are in DC as tourists for a few days. Some notes…

We took a two-hour docent-led tour of The National Portrait Gallery. Tom Thompson, the docent, knows everything and can put it in perspective. I’m a sucker for portraits.

The three-paragraph write-ups pasted next to each presidential portrait are surprisingly frank and overall quite negative about our fearless leaders. Surprising and refreshing.

Almost forty years later, it still find it difficult to watch the videotape of Nixon appealing to the “silent majority” to support his secret plan to end the war in Vietnam.

The National Gallery of Art has a special exhibit of its Rembrandt sketches and etchings. The craft almost overwhelms the art. (Simon Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes is an amazing, eye-opening work.)

The Library of Congress is closed on Sundays. It makes for a brisk walk up Capitol hill, though. We’ll go today, if it’s open on Presidents’ Day.

The History Boys movie was quite enjoyable, although less substantial than I’d thought, less surprising, and less about the teacher it thinks it’s about than it is. (The “academic” lesson it teaches is the same as in David R. Williams’ little book of advice to students, Sin Boldly , [Tags: washington_dc dc travel rembrandt national_portrait_gallery]

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From an article about DonorsChoose.org by Jonathan Alter in Slate:

So for example, this week a teacher in Richton, Mo., posted a request for a $392 camcorder for her kids to act out stories they’re reading; a teacher in New York City asked for a rug on which to read stories to kindergarteners ($474); and a teacher in a 100 percent low-income school in Los Angeles wants a $414 telescope to teach astronomy to her students. Donors scroll through the hundreds of proposals (searchable by region, subject, level of school poverty, etc.) and fund them in whole or in part with a couple of clicks. If there’s no market for the proposal, it doesn’t get funded, though most eventually do. DonorsChoose handles all of the discounted purchasing from vendors, so no money goes directly to the teacher.

[Tags: charity web2.0 everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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It’s a little thing, but the headline in Friday’s USA Today about the head of Marriott hotels, Bill Marriott, Jr., starting a blog was “Send a note to Marriott.” Not read but talk. Yup. [Tags: blogs marriott hotels travel everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Washington Monument

Vietnam wall

A Yankee fan in President Lincoln’s court

Le art c’est moi – A work at the Hirshhorn

Steam on 17th St.

[Tags: washington_dc dc photos travel]

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My wife and I are in DC as tourists for a few days. Some notes…

If you’re going to visit the WWII memorial and the Vietnam memorial, do them in chronological order. The WWII is a big, open space with nothing to hang feelings or memories on. The Vietnam memorial — which, amazingly, I’d never been to before — is heart-breaking. No matter what we thought of that war, we all feel the full stop of those young lives.

The Hirshhorn is a truly enjoyable art museum. I usually conk out aesthetically after 45 minutes, but we did this museum from its opening hirsh to its final horn.

Because I am a mature individual, I refrained from yelling profanities at the White House.
I’ve never liked its palatial air.

We had a delicious Indian dinner at Nivana at 1810 K Street, NW. It’s completely vegetarian, and much of it is vegan. The owners are very friendly and will tell you anything you want to know about Jainism.

Disturbing fact: Some of the wines they serve are marked vegan because, the owners say, most wines are “filtered through fish.”

“Only Human” is a Spanish movie about a Jew who brings home a Palestinian fiance. We went because the Washington Post claimed it was laugh-out-loud funny. Eh. It had a couple of chuckles, but otherwise was just predictably silly. “My Big, Neurotic Jewish-Palestinian Engagement.”

[Tags: washington_dc dc vegetarian travel]

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In the comfortless elbow of the Vietnam Memorial in DC, I asked the veteran stationed there how the names were arranged. He explained that starting from the middle, where we were standing, the names are listed in the order in which they fell, stretching to the right, and then picking up again at the entry way to the wall.

But, I said, stretches are alphabetized, some so long that initially I thought the entire wall was arranged A-Z.

They’re listed alphabetically, replied the vet, when there were multiple deaths on one day.

[Tags: vietnam war alphabetization taxnomy washington_dc iraq everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Yesterday was a treat.

I spent the day at NPR with five other consultants — Zadi Diaz, Jeff Jarvis, Doc Searls, and Euan Semple, and Jay Rosen — brought in by Rob Paterson, who has been consulting to NPR for months. As Jeff Jarvis points out (in a post that covers the day well enough that I don’t feel a need to rehash it), many consultants would be too insecure and self-centered to bring in a bunch of others. So, thanks, Rob.

We’d spent Wednesday afternoon in a lively open discussion amongst ourselves, along with Maria Thomas , the head of NPR.org, with whom we all felt an immediate bond, and with Andy Carvin, the estimable blogger whom most of us already knew. (Andy’s been blogging the meetings.) Not surprisingly, the NPR folks we met were uniformly, well, wonderful. You don’t get to NPR without being good at what you do, and you don’t try to get to NPR unless you love what NPR does for us all.

Wednesday night we went to a red-checked tablecloth Italian place for a group dinner with NPR folks, which was one great conversation after another. Then, Thursday morning we met in a slightly larger group to hash out issues and to prepare for the two-hour panel discussion open to all NPR’ers. Jeff Jarvis was nominated to lead the morning discussion because he has an uncanny ability to do so. Quite remarkable. David Folkenflik led the afternoon panel, with only a few moments of hippy panelist rebellion.

So, that was the format. As to the substance, Jeff’s post covers it well. The discussions throughout the 24 hours pretty consistently progressed from full-time Web heads (Maria and Andy) to those less involved in the Web side of things. So, the focus of concern shifted over time from the long-term internal contradiction — NPR is a product of member stations, but as audio content gets “miscellanized” and available to anyone at any time, member stations are at risk of becoming just another play list — to shorter term hurdles such as the assumption that the growth of listener-created-content means lowering NPR’s standards.

To the standards point, I tried to respond that this isn’t a matter of posting listener’s content as if we’re all now as good at telling stories as NPR reporters are. Rather: (a) There are lots of ways that listeners can and will contribute, beyond posting their own NPR-ish reports; (b) Metadata saves the day. We humans are good at sensing the metadata that tells us that this is a comment someone dashed off, that is an audio piece NPR’s staff has picked out as meeting its professional standards, and everything in between.

For me a highlight was Jay Rosen‘s response to a question from Michel Martin , the host of a new program being developed in public at Rough Cuts, about objectivity. Jay gave a measured, thoughtful response that was a brilliant use of language. When controversies are particularly polarizing, Jay said, NPR inevitably is going to resort to strict objectivity in order to retain its innocence. But, he continued, that can be at the price of truth. Beautiful. I loved Jay’s Blake-ian use of the term “innocence.” (I followed up by asking him if NPR’s Web site gave it a way to blurt out the truth. Blurting is the opposite of objectivity?)

I also thought the various discussions about how and when to enable the users to filter content, rather than relying on an NPR editor to do so, were particularly illuminating.

Zadi Diaz, host and co-creator of JetSet, provided a series of highlights throughout the day. She told a story about a 14 year old who approached JetSet with an ambitious idea for a video series and received unbounded help from the community. It made me want to yell, “Jeez, I love the Web!”, but I managed to restrain myself.

So, it was a great 24 hours for me, and I hope it was at least worthwhile for NPR. What a treat to be allowed to participate.

I had a brainstorm-y idea I floated to NPR I will try out on you, too. Keep in mind that it’s an ill-formed, un-thought-through idea, which you should feel free to kick the bejeezus out of.

NPR values civil discourse. And, despite its reputation in some circles, it’s committed to being non-partisan. So, suppose on pages devoted to particular segments or topics, NPR listeners were explicitly charged with pulling together links that represent the spectrum of opinion and thought on that topic. If it were a page about, say, the Libby trial, users would be asked to find Web references from the left and right, from US and elsewhere, from the scholarly to the flippant. If this were to work, it would presumably be because some small cadre of users stepped up to the task. Getting the “social physics ” right would be crucial, of course.(This idea is spurred by Debatepedia, except it aims at a plurality of views, not a duopoly.)

Bad idea? Impractical? Undesirable? Too much coffee, not enough reality?

[Tags: npr radio everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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NPR Rough Cuts is a new NPR program, aimed at younger listeners, being developed in public. The site’s been up for five weeks. This is a new level of transparency for NPR. Lee Hill from the show is at the meeting I’m at and just said that the show’s staff keeps referring to the listeners as “users,” which I take as a good sign… [Tags: npr radio media roughcuts transparency ]

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I’m at NPR again today for a group discussion of the effect of the Web. I am very lucky.

There was discussion yesterday about whether NPR.org should become more of a news site. My gut reaction (which usually means “my wrong reaction” — bad guts! Bad bad guts!) was that it shouldn’t. I woke up this morning realizing why I reacted negatively.

NPR’s distinguishing strength in news isn’t coverage. Audio is hard to skim. Besides, there are already lots of news sites, and increasingly we’re pulling in the coverage we care about, rather than going to a source site. Why go to CNN.com when you can have CNN, The NY Times, Alternet, HuffingtonPost and Ethan Zuckerman come to you in a feed?

But NPR is fantastic at feature stories analyzing and contextualizing the news. Which means NPR.org faces the same problem every blogger does: Getting word out about the interesting features they generate. NPR has some facilities available to it that we ordinary bloggers don’t, of course, but the challenge is the same. So, I think NPR should think through how they can surface more of their excellent reportage. And I think it comes down to two basic, well-understand things.

First, let us subscribe to people (e.g., the Nina Totenberg feed), topics (e.g., Iraq coverage, book reviews), programs (e.g., “Fresh Air”), and stuff that other people recommend (e.g., a Digg-like facility?). NPR is already good about providing feeds within the limits of the law and the need to maintain a relationship with their member stations.

Second, let us add value to the NPR content by posting our own, posting reactions, engaging in conversation, etc.

So, should NPR.org become more of a news site? It depends what you mean by news. Coverage? Nah. Features and discussion? Sure.

Straightforward stuff, but hard to get right, and with plenty of room for innovation within these bromides. [Tags: news npr media everything_is_miscellaneous journalism ]

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Rageboy in an email passes along the following message from his in inbox:

We thought you might be interested in www.pptexchange.com . — We are now in the process of getting the word out about the site…

The site is focused on allowing its users to publish, trade and sell content in PowerPoint presentation format. A marketplace for presentations !

If you have any presentations (self-promotions are welcomed ) that are sitting on your hard disk getting dusty please bring them online… Publish hem… Decide on a price ($ or email), put them out for free, or make available for viewing online only – please sign up and upload it! — It is free…

Any help spreading the word would be most appreciated!

Regards,

pptExchangeTeam

Not a lot there at the moment that isn’t a sample or posted by the PPTexchange team. But doesn’t this have to be either: 1. A performance art piece or 2. The future home of Powerpoint parodies?

Not that either would be a bad thing… [Tags: powerpoint markets exchanges ]

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