allaboutgeorge's unstorytime beta

The answer to the question is really simple. You ask.

Of course, you have to get there first. You have to figure out what you want, what it would take, contemplate the what-ifs. You have to hammer out what it would take to get it, and the contract about it is actually the tiniest part of it.

The more important issue is working with other folks to determine what they are willing to back you on, where you’re going to need to compromise, when to listen to the ideas that are good and the ones that are just you drunk on power (or the promise of it), just you getting high on your own supply.

The coffee is different this time. No, maybe it’s me. I haven’t been through a vacuum press, filtered and strained to yield whatever flavor notes the marketing department found they should offer. All I did was leave for a whirlwind of a weekend and come back, help put together a plan and put myself up to some others, file flight plans and ride out turbulence. No biggie. (Literally: that dude would’ve been 40 today.) Make it no venti, I guess. Less literally: how many days do you actually set foot in both a Starbucks and a Peet’s?

Even though it’s early, there’s not enough time in the morning to do much more than wake up and shower and collect one’s belongings and meet in the lobby and wait for the long black car that will take us out to Newark Liberty.

Once in the car and careening down Seventh Avenue, eyes take in storefronts chained up, marquees that were once good ideas and are now just good riddance, cabs in level flight alongside in formation like big yellow birds, until you veer right and down into the Holland Tunnel and forward like a bullet in its single barrel.

Bonus: today’s eclipse was amazing!

I tried not to come off like a chin-stroking grandee. I hoped I wouldn’t lay too heavy a trip on people who’d busted their humps getting into Manhattan on a Saturday morning after a long first day of sessions.

I think I said most of what I wanted to say in the two-plus hours I got to stand before them and hold forth about what drives me when it comes to bogging, journalism, mobile devices, social media and communities.

While I ran my mouth, Amy Gahran live-tweeted everything I had to say that was useful. I got to follow up later on with a half-hour or so of walking folks through how to sign up for Twitter.

It was an amazing group of folks: publishers, editors, writers with roots in China, Poland, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Mexico and the Philippines, not to mention Ghana, Haiti, Uganda and the African diaspora right here.

I could point to a trending hashtag on Twitter #soymarcha123 and get some context about its appearance from one person, hear about another’s use of steaming video service Bambuser for video chats or figure out a Tumblr theme’s (lack of) sharing options with a third person.

All of these folks were hungry and full of hustle, curious about their phones’ potential and keen to hear about money-making initiatives. When they didn’t know something or wanted to know, they raised their hands over and over. More inspiringly, they weren’t shy about helping each other through exercise steps.

I got to watch and join in with Amy Gahran, Arturo Duran, Vikki Porter and Garry Pierre-Pierre open the Knight Digital Media Center’s workshop today in partnership with the City University of New York.

It felt a little bit like singing together in a group, watching fellow instructors join in, listening attentively and answering questions, laying out approaches step by step and citing cases where they worked for other organizations, and adding on and chiming in to boost things along when necessary.

It’s sinking in that I’m really lucky to be able to be in the room. I could see doing this again, and not just tomorrow.

I woke up early and got on a plane this morning, and then another plane, a monorail and a train. Then I looked up and found myself in Manhattan, so I started walking. Then I was done traveling.

I’m joining a few other instructors to teach community media outlets about mobile approaches to making news, using social media to connect to readers and innovating products on behalf of local businesses. I feel the same tension and butterflies I always get ahead of presentations, no matter how much preparation I put into it. I just want these outlets’ representatives to be excited about the opportunties they have ahead of them.

I stopped over at Disco Volante on 14th Street in downtown Oakland this evening to see a soft-rock choir member’s band, Metal Mother, headline tonight. I didn’t get to stay long to see them perform, but I did get to see one opening act, Aja, and part of the other one, B. Hamilton.

Aja brought an impressive array of keyboards, pedals and cables to bear on a looped out, layered over abstract collection of tones and vocal murmurings. Most people didn’t seem to be paying close attention, but they might have heard some really interesting things if they had. I hope I’ll get out to see him play again.

I don’t have any poetry today. That’s all right, because today doesn’t deserve any.

I want to stop losing co-workers. I want to stop hearing about smart, experienced, tested and capable people who don’t get to come into a newsroom and continue to contribute to the all-too-critical mission of informing our communities.

It’s all too familiar. I know everyone is doing what they can, but somehow we keep grinding on, month after month, with stop-gap measures and arrangements barely coming together and only managing to defray days like today until, well, today. If we don’t figure out how to do things differently, we’re just kidding ourselves.

It’s actually kind of interesting to see the changes coming to Emeryville’s Public Market. The first time I ever went was to blow off steam with some fellow Chips Quinn Scholar interns at a little bar a few steps from the food court in the summer of 1994. It was karaoke night, so I guess that would make Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blue” the first karaoke song I ever sung. I think I closed the night out by backing another intern on the Stylistics’ “Stone In Love With You.”

I remember when I used to visit there regularly to eat at the food court and hang out at Borders Books. Now they’ve revamped the building some and it looks like new tenants are on the way in.