Sarah Schacht
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From Graffiti to Gallery
May 26, 2010
There’s an I-5 support wall at the end of my block in Seattle. Despite some greenery nicely maintained by WSDOT (Washington State Department of Transportation), the wall, and its surrounding small strip of land, attract transients, crime, and gang graffiti. Less than a year ago, a body was found in the brush.
The wall is not exactly a neighborhood jewel.
After living on the block for 8 years, I’d come up with an idea to transform this little space into something, well, fun. So, I wrote to a friend at WSDOT, this letter below:
…(I’d like to submit a) proposal & get permission
for a small art project on a piece of WSDOT property in my
neighborhood… I live almost immediately adjacent to I-5. At the end
my my block, there’s a small green space with a large, concrete
support wall for I-5 Northbound, next to the 65th street park & ride,
in Seattle’s Roosevelt Neighborhood. It attracts graffiti and
transients, and is an area that WSDOT employees frequently repaint or clean up.
With a few community volunteers and community dollars, I’d like to
install an art project on the wall. It’s pretty simple:
I’d like to use 2/3rds of the large wall, paint a large frame on it,
and fill the frame with chalkboard paint. A link to a Flicker page
for the “Roosevelt Gallery” would be posted, along with a hashtag
#RGallery. Artists, community members, graffiti artists, etc. could
use chalk to create whatever message or art within the frame, take a
photo of it, and post it to Flickr, tweet it, etc. The art would
live on, after the rain comes, after the next artist wipes the art
away, online and public. It would add character to the neighborhood
and, perhaps with the regular foot traffic, keep transient use at
bay, and reduce the amount of paint graffiti that WSDOT has to spend
money removing. It seems that our local graffiti artists respect
public art, but not blank, public walls. I’m pretty confident they
wouldn’t vandalize the wall. And even if they did, community members
would just spread some chalkboard paint on it.”
I got a response back today! WSDOT has approved my proposal and wants to work with me on the project! I’m waiting to hear back on the permit for it, but should be able to start the project soon. If you’ve got ideas on how we could promote the Roosevelt Gallery and help the chalk art live on, online, let me know! I’d love to involve others in brainstorming in planning in the project!
I try to throw a good party.
April 1, 2010 — 3 Comments
20100326-DSC_4813.jpg
Originally uploaded by LawrenceSeattle
So, I, um, ran a conference last week.
And from most reports, people liked it.
It was a little odd, as the conference organizer/conference idea originator, to get people walking up to me with this slightly bewildered look in their eyes. They’d turn to me and say something like, “I just wanted you to know that this is a great event. I mean, the food is great, there’s a diversity of people, the speakers are interesting, the venue is great… It’s really cool.” And they’d say it like they expected Open Gov West to be like every boring, corporate, feed-you-crap-food-and-herd-you-from-room-to-room conference they’d ever been to. Shocked realization that they stumbled upon a genuine, diverse, quality, open government event for the low cost of a $75 ticket? Priceless.
If I sound cocky on this blog post, I’m actually not. But I am really proud of what our team accomplished with Open Gov West and the outcomes in the pipeline for the event. What we accomplished, though, wasn’t an accident. It was the result of being flexible when needed and hard-nosed when necessary, when it came to choices for the conference. Here’s the ingredients to the Open Gov West secret sauce. Pass it around to other conference organizers—I’d love to attend more conferences where people love their event experience.
- Don’t serve crappy food. This includes heavily processed, simple-carb foods (pizza, white-wheat bagles, iceberg salads, muffins, cookies, bottled water). You know what crappy food does to your conference attendees? Sends them into either a) carb comas 1 hour after a meal or b) gives them preservative and artificial coloring caused ADD. Neither are good for real conversations and sustained intellectual stimulation. Yes, coffee is good, but it cannot be used for self-medication against food comas. Try buying organics, too. And don’t give me the line that they’re more expensive. I bought enough organic salad at Costco for a small army and it only cost me $55. Finally, serve food for the vegans, vegetarians, and gluten-free folks. They’re growing in numbers and they’re hungry at conferences. Feed them protein, not just carbs or salad. Show me a Q&A session that went horribly awry, and I’ll show you a ravenous vegetarian who asked an instigating question.
(more…)
Canada, Eh?
January 23, 2010
Oh, Canada, my almost-home and almost-native land. If the 48th parallel had been ditched for the 47th, I’d likely be a Canadian citizen right now. Instead, I grew up American and watched a lot of Canadian TV as a kid. I can do a fairly good Canadian accent when pressed, and appreciate a good dill pickle-flavored potato chip. I can sing the Canadian national anthem because all my extra-curricular activities as a kid involved teams from Canada.
That said, I’m decidedly American. I have what the Canadians consider an unusually ballsy approach to citizen engagement; I’m more a fan of becoming the government than protesting it. I think, if you’re smart, passionate, and skilled—run for public office and replace someone who isn’t. This isn’t normal in Canada.
Fine with me. I really respect the work that my Canadian peers are doing lately. From Web of Change’s world-rocking network, led by Canadians, to David Eaves, to the David Suzuki Foundation, to David Hume’s work in the BC government on civic engagement. (If you’re noticing a trend, yes, many open government leaders in Canada are named David.) Canadians are taking real steps towards opening up their government towards civic inclusion and transparency.
Some of my American colleagues from the other Washington think I’m refering to them whenever I mention BC. Conversations will go on for 20 minutes when they think I’m referencing their city, only to be shocked when I clarify, “No, I’m talking about British Columbia, not the District of Columbia. Not everything is about the Beltway.”
And so, here I am, in Canada again, fresh of a great concert at the Orphium Theater in Vancouver, and great conversations with my Canadian colleagues. I’m determined to make Canada’s voice a strong one at Open Gov West because I believe their voices are crucial to creating real open government standards and policies that are flexible enough to adapt to various governmental configurations. It’s also necessary because we need collaboration across boundaries, like the 48th, because many of the challenges we face as governments cross our borders. —From pine beetles taking down our forests, to being able to mobilize in a regional disaster, to CO2 emissions, the issues we face don’t care about what side of the border you’re on.
So, it’s incredibly important that we work together on open government initiatives and open data standards—that work serves as the basis for our governments and our citizens to work together against our common challenges.
…And this is why I’m so excited to have the likes of Eli van der Giessen and Campbell McDonald, and David Hume, and David Eaves on Open Gov West’s convener team. I’m thrilled to have my Canadian counterparts on board with OGW—what they’ll bring to the conversation will be so important.
Meaning
December 16, 2009
Tim: “What is meaning?”
Me: “Meaning is a catalyst and a goal.”
I was sitting in Tim’s gorgeous, light-filled home, with Tim and Donald Summers, working through Shift Alliance’s process of business analysis—a process that helps companies and organizations establish meaning in their practices and products. While it might sound a little “woo-woo,” Tim’s company, Shift Alliance, has really pioneered methodologies for helping organizations be conscientious about their values, the type of relationships they want to have, and what kind of results they want to get from their products and relationships.
It’s not an easy process—at one point, I found myself feeling a lot of resistance to this discovery phase. I mean, here I was trying to imbibe Knowledge As Power’s work with meaning while I felt a simmering resentment towards a few people who had betrayed my trust and done harm to Knowledge As Power’s work or my reputation. That resentment had led to plenty of sleepless nights and evenings spent pounding my gym’s boxing bag. It’d also led me to unconsciously pushing people away—I was afraid to be taken advantage of again.
Tim pulled me out of that state, saying, “What percentage of your year has been spent on people who do you harm?”
Me: “40%.”
Tim: “What would you consider success for Knowledge As Power?”
I answered my heartfelt wish for KAP—-a goal that I think really is possible for the organization in the next five years. It was a vision full of meaning, for myself and those KAP will serve.
Tim: “If you could have that for KAP, for yourself, but it meant accepting 10% of your work life would have people taking credit for your work, working ot undermine you, or defrauding you, would you accept that?”
Me: “I wouldn’t like it, I’d fight it, but yes, I’d accept it.”
Tim: “Great, so let’s find ways to make that 90% happen.”
With his help, I could move on and focus on what kind of organization Knowledge As Power is capable of being. Meaning, I found out, is not only a catalyst and a goal, but also freedom from resentment.
Open Gov West
December 12, 2009 — 3 Comments
The more I traveled this year and talked with IT staff within different governments, the more I realized that they weren’t talking to each other.
It seemed like everyone working within government was wrestling with variations of the same problem: opening data despite their legacy software, funding improvements in a budget crisis, creating public policy support for transparency practices, implementing social media practices without violating public records and meetings laws.
These aren’t easy issues to fix, but I think they’re compounded by the relative isolation that government IT offices work within. Policymakers don’t understand the financial or staffing restraints of IT offices; IT offices don’t feel like they can ask for retraining, resources, or realistic policies. And sometimes, IT offices hide their inadequacies, refusing to look outside themselves for solutions.
–These aren’t all governments or IT offices, but this was a trend.
A trend, frankly, that needs to stop. There’s too many good resources and talented people out there for government IT offices and policymakers to be working in a vacuum. I knew a bunch of smart people and I wanted them to start helping each other meet shared goals. An idea I had for a small gathering grew to a big vision for a larger gathering called Open Gov West.
Now hosted by the City of Seattle, and with the support of incoming mayor Mike McGinn, Council Member Bruce Harrell’s office, Comcast, and a growing team of 25 conveners, Open Gov West is quickly shaping up to become a conference of over 500 participants, two days, and a fair amount of work.
Every day, I’m talking to more governments that are excited about the idea that we could come together and share challenges, solutions, resources, and standards—moving all of our governments towards transparency and greater civic engagement.
It’s pretty exciting, and I’m thankful to have so many great people working on this project with me.
