Nathan P. Wallace's Blog – May 2010 Archive (9)

Jim Henson once said coming up with good ideas is “just a matter of figuring out how to receive the ideas waiting to be heard.” In my hometown of Buffalo, NY many good ideas are not being heard. Decisions that affect our city are being made with limited

information to draw upon for inspiration and strategic planning. Therefore, the goal of ReBuffalo.org is to revitalize Buffalo, NY…

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As I was reading through the "five secrets of crisis communication" I was struck by how hard it is to be a good journalist, especially in today's global information age. I have always respected good journalism, but I never really thought about the challenges of journalism until now.



With technological and cultural change happening so quickly it is difficult for any individual to get a handle on the complexity of global issues. Nevertheless, this is exactly what a reporter has to to… Continue

Crises are not always bad. One way to define the term "crisis" is "a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, esp. for better or for worse, is determined; turning point" (http://bit.ly/bd8PcP). My goal in the next year is to help my hometown of Buffalo, NY reach a turning point in addressing some longstanding problems.



I plan to do this by building a team that will design a unique website that will provide a collaborative… Continue

Having only read a tiny fraction of the posts on Evoke it is hard to make a judgement about the overall success of this initiative, but my personal experience with Evoke has been very enlightening. The structure of the game, with objectives sorted into "Learn, Act, and Imagine" categories is brilliant. The site successfully gave me the nudges I needed to do learn, do, and imagine things that I would not have learned, done, and imagined otherwise. Evoke successfully challenges agents to see how… Continue

It is the year 2079 and humanity has solved many of its most pressing problems. The world economy has made a huge transition from a focus on constant growth to a recognition that quality of life should be the measure for our wealth. Carbon emissions have been nearly eliminated and the most devastating consequences of climate change have been avoided. Hunger has become a thing of the past as scientists have collaborated with farmers to create safe genetically engineered crops that are grown… Continue

It is rare to find government officials and citizens working together collaboratively to solve problems. However, for this objective I read an article titled "Facilitating Collaborative Planning in Hawaii's Natural Area Reserves", by Cynthia Josayma (http://bit.ly/aJtW0R). It details a successful conflict resolution process that was undertaken by the Department of Fish and Wildlife (DOFAW)… Continue

Season one of Evoke has been a great experience. I learned about Evoke by watching Jane McGonigal's talk on TED.com during my lunch hour. I was so excited about playing Evoke that I got on the site immediately after putting the kids to bed that night.



I've been hooked on gaming since I picked up an Atari 2600 controller as a young child, but gaming has always been a guilty pleasure. After playing a great game for hours on end I would feel worse about myself. I would feel, no matter how… Continue

Once again Evoke has introduced me to a new way to do some good in the world. I just used Kiva.org to make a $50 loan to Arshak Harutyunyan (see picture below), who hails from Ijevan, Armenia. I learned about micro-lending when I was in college, but I didn't know until today that I could lend money online. It is very gratifying to know that my $50 loan was the final piece of funding that Mr. Harutyunyan needed to move his farm animals to the mountains and rent a plot of land. One of the great… Continue

Buffalo, NY is a great place to live and raise a family, but like many other cities that reside along the shores of the Great Lakes Buffalo is facing some serious problems. Buffalo has seen thousands of good jobs move to other regions of the country and to the suburbs, leaving parts of the city with problems such as poverty and vacant housing. As a proud Buffalonian I enjoy imagining ways to help my city reverse these trends. To complete this objective I have created a Google map that contains… Continue