brewery33

I’ve lost something

In the past few weeks I have noticed something happening. The subtle nuance of this wretched annoyance has been gaining momentum and advancing upon our community with the grace of an ogre pillaging a rural Swedish community. The white elephant in the room has taken its place on the stage and announced that he is present. Everyone at the party has been empowered to acknowledge the subject that we all spoke of indiscreetly.

University of the Pacific is an institution that is quite honestly one of the most immaculate grounds in the City of Stockton. A short stroll through the meticulously pruned rose garden to admire the art of maintaining these visually delicate yet astonishingly resilient plants allows escape. A saunter into the small forum of columns that is easily recognizable as you have seen the image in a coveted family portrait that takes proud residence in the living room of a beloved friend or family member. These and many more monuments of visual expression are valuable to the atmosphere of experimental and free thought, as well as the surrounding community.

Stockton Beautiful is an organization of concerned individuals that have a mission to beautify their community. The board and membership of the philanthropic group from the young and energetic to the wise and accomplished infuse each other with the notion of beauty. Beauty goes further than its superficial stereotype. Beauty creates a culture. Pride comes from beauty. Stockton Beautiful is no stranger to efforts of invigorating a community of individuals to accomplish unthinkable feats of excellence. We can see the fruits of their work in the collaborative spectacle made possible through driven community philanthropic exertion, in the Rose Garden that resides in Victory Park on the north side of the Haggin Museum.

Greg Bahr is a citizen of Stockton. If you have spent any time on the Miracle Mile enjoying a sunny walk on Sunday, or patronizing one of the loving merchants, you have probably come across Greg. He is responsible for community events in the district such as the wildly successful Miracle Mile Night through his interaction with a group of focused individuals that serve on the little known, highly experimental, yet overwhelmingly effective Neighborhood Renaissance Committee. This group is of the mind that if neighborhood events are present the fabric of the community will be strengthened. Communities with strong fabric tend to employ a lighter outlook on the grim offerings that life brings. My opinion of Greg is rather skewed, due to my respect for his efforts, but I am fairly confident that if you stop and listen to his pleas for a cohesive effort in the infinite quest for betterment, we will most definitely agree.

These three groups evidence the presence of positive movement in our City. People are working to create the nirvana of community. As we spoke of earlier, a white elephant that has come from the shadows of civic conversation in Stockton. His presence has been embraced. It is all too easy to make fun, stay cynical and ignore our emotions. The perception of mediocrity and ignorance is lavished upon us by our national media publications. Our local media has become snarky and arrogant to the population of new media consumers. I have found myself embroiled in passion fueled discourse that is not contributing to the solution but rather of symptom of the white elephant. This is the most troubling to me.

It is through my faith that I have weathered the stormy waters of loss. I am no person to preach and ladle my ideological rhetoric upon you. My only mention of this is to make apparent of my plans to regain my imagination and focus my efforts. In my loss of imagination I plan to embark upon a spiritual journey in search of the treasure that has befallen me.

The white elephant’s message is a dangerous path. His call to acceptance is my cue to reboot my operating system. With the Lenten season upon us and the coming of Ash Wednesday, I will be disconnecting from the matrix of chatter, and focus on real efforts. I will leave the acoustically challenged halls of Twitter to find the voice that I have lost. I plan to engage the philanthropy that is meaningful to me and shed the cynicism that has polluted my mind. I plan to detoxify my spirit in an effort to return with the child like wonder that I desire.

Words are not meaningful if not built upon action. My grand plans of success through philanthropy are on trial and it is my turn to stand in front of the judge and plea our case for freedom. I will not be participating in any form of social media other than blogging. I will not be Twitter alerting my blog. My reason for this is that the core of my answer lies in personal discovery. Vanity and narcissism are the foes in which I am at battle with. It is the constant quest for the laugh, that I have lost the ability to entertain myself.

Easter will be the day in which I emerge back to the scene with a hopefully fresh look and box of hustle. I will look to the people that are fixtures in my life for support and share the journey through this little piece of real estate on the internet I call brewery33 aka my stupid writing.

I leave you with a quote that hopefully bounces around your cranium and ferments for a while. I actually don’t know who said it, but it is in no way my work. I hope that works for citing purposes.

“In this media-drenched, data-rich, channel-surfing, computer-gaming age, we have lost the art of doing nothing, of shutting out the background noise and distractions, of slowing down and simply being alone with our thoughts.”

Stockton will win.

Where is the conversation?

First and foremost, a shout to my fellow blogging gang homey, @slickdiaz, who shouted out the brewery33 voice over on his turf. He fights the good fight of intellectualism while staying fresh with brevity. If I am giving props to one of the Stockton peeps then I can’t leave out the one and only @podcaststockton. Matt puts an actual voice to the plight of “most miserable” City in the United States and shows you that you can’t believe everything you read (especially anything here). If you are interested in either one of these guys I have placed some links over on the right hand side of the blog for you enlighten your Stockton mind. .

And now the news………..

Amongst all of the hubbub surrounding the latest uprising of the 6 people in Stockton that use social media, I have tried to find clarity within the questions of new media tactics implemented by our public sector. Of course, me being the geek that I am, I would love to see them make use of this brand new and shiny technology that currently is the object of my desire, besides my wife and daughter naturally. Just look at the success that I have realized within the space, I can now “talk” to 6 other techno-weenies just like myself and we can go on and on about the latest client application’s strengths and weaknesses.

I hope that my sarcasm present in the above text has jumped off the page and punched you out. I have been told to successfully use sarcasm in text form is the mark of a master. Since I am only a hack blogger, I must make you aware of my futile attempts at using the advanced literary tool.

I think that it is in the best interest of the establishment to at least attempt to create a conversation regarding the new media issue. That is all this whole thing we call the social web, or web 2.0, or new media, is, a conversation. We have evolved from the static web of the ‘90’s to the interactive web of today. Our browsing habits are changing as information is aggregated. Gone are the days of copy and pasting links to yourself in emails to read it later, now we can bookmark. Remember when you used to have check in on a site every day to see if your favorite portal posted any new nugget of information that you could then ravenously consume? Yep that is gone too with the advent of RSS.

The means of communication are in the midst of an awkward growth spurt that is akin the adolescent male battle with puberty. The change is discomfited. We are uneasy. We don’t understand why we are growing hair in strange spots. OK, except for that last descriptor, the similarities are uncanny. But think of this, the State of California thinks that the pubescent changes that your body experiences are so confusing that curriculum has been conceived to educate our grammar and middle school brood. So why do we shy away from the use or implementation of the uncomfortable yet inevitable change in transmission of information.

The implementation of this new dimension of discourse that is available to our communities can only heighten the awareness of our issues. This use of the shiny new technological toy can only be useful upon educating ourselves about the capabilities and limitations of the medium. In order to educate a community of people regarding the power of new conversation, is to do just that converse. Along with that conversation we should do a little experimentation.

I don’t claim to have the answer to the quandary, but I will say that I have at least recognized that there is opportunity to be realized. Another thing, if I decided that my way was right, wouldn’t that be the antithesis of my concern? I invite the critics. I want to hear the concerns surrounding this nary talked about issue.

So I invite all the Stockton Tweeps to blog, tweet, hell if you want to get out from in front that 22” widescreen monitor and talk to some actual people then have at it. Stockton has the potential to lead a informational revolution, as we are one of the most diverse cities in the good old US of A. What if we had an actual intelligent conversation regarding the use of new media?

Excuse the curt ending to this post, as my mind was just blown.