ypsi~dixit

Note: I did not create but only borrowed this Spitting Cat logo from Mark's site; I hope he doesn't mind.

Ypsidixit contributed nothing to this meeting. Her m.o. is to listen quietly to all the points of view and digest them, then post a response here later after she has a chance to mull things over.

I've mulled things over and have some suggestions as to how to reach the maximum number of people with the Spitting Cat.

1. Keep it technologically simple. The people we're trying to reach are not techies or bloggers or even wanna-bes deciphering Movable Type by the skin of their teeth, like Ypsidixit. They are people with AOL accounts. Nothing wrong with that. But you have to "start where the student is at," as we used to say in my teaching days. No pdfs. No profiles you have to click through. No extra steps. Make it a clean, simple, text-only page. No Bells. No Whistles. Keep it simple.

2. Develop a clear focus and mission before going online. One gentleman at the meeting was in favor of just starting now, now, now and working out bugs as you go. This is a bad idea. The Web is all about first impressions. How many crufty sites have you bookmarked, thinking, "oh, it might be better later"? Me neither. We have to work out the purpose and format and mission up front--that will take much work, but it must be done--and then wow 'em with an obviously thought-out, content-rich, heavy-hitting site.

3. Have an organized plan for providing local content that isn't available elsewhere. It's all about the content. We need to get organized and cover those city council meetings, &c. in a systematic, reliable way. If our readers know they can read about each and every City Council meeting every Wednesday morning, they will come to rely on us. If we're just a bunch of local loudmouths blahtering on about whatever Ypsi story comes down the pike, that is much less interesting. We must avoid the newsfilter curse of just linking to some lame mlive story & adding comments. We must mobilize to consistently cover local meetings so that we are a bedrock source of what's REALLY going on at those meetings. That's what people want. Not snarky comments about some lame mlive story. Who cares about that? We need to give readers the meat, so that means making a schedule of who covers what, with everyone contributing their time once a month to cover their designated meeting.

Ypsidixit volunteers to cover city council meetings on either the first or last meeting of the month (work schedule prohibits me from covering midmonth meetings--I was late to tonight's meeting due to working a bit late).

Those are my suggestions as to how to get this kite off the ground. In sum,

1. technologically simple.
2. focused.
3. consistent, reliable local-meetings coverage.

Incidentally, one of the best parts of tonight's meeting was seeing the faces behind the usernames and gleaning first impressions. I got to say hi to Lynne as she left. First impression: a serious thinker. I had the pleasure of shaking hands and chatting with George Hotelling. First impression: helpful and kind gentleman who is generous with his valuable technological knowledge. I met "the EMU library man with the indecipherable Elvish blogname." First impression: very nice person with a mull-it-over-I'll get-back-to-you personality akin to Ypsidixit's. And it was the first time I'd spent any length of time in East Cross Street's presence. First impression: passionate about making a concrete change; a man of integrity. It was a pleasure to spend time with these people and hear their ideas.

Yes, it was an interesting evening and lots of good ideas were shared.

I have to say that my vision of what this would be is a lot less formal than other people's. I guess I am in the 'lets just start it now' crowd, where we have a core group of regular contributers putting Ypsilanti focused content in one place.

Which isnt to say that I disagree with the idea of having a clear vision and covering city council meetngs or anything. I guess I am just worried that if we put too may requirements about what needs to be done before we start, people will lose interest and then it will never happen.

I agree. Too many strictures would stifle the project. But I think we have to approach this as we would a business. We also have a product to sell. And people put a lot of thought into a business before launching the thing...it wouldn't be successful if you just kinda start up a business & hope for the best.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got about writing is: nobody cares about your writing. They have no time to read it and a thousand other more interesting things pressing on their time. You have to actively CONVINCE them they need to read your work, otherwise they won't. I just think we need to think out and deliver a product that people will be wowed by & will read. Else, they won't.

Hah, I was next door in the Sidetrack! Funny you were all scheming away just yards away...

Incidentally, Brian's a (very) close neighbour of mine, but I don't believe I've actually met him...

That's funny that you were so close by. Yes, we were all huddled around a table up in the front there.

Brian is a good guy in my humble estimation. He had a lot of good points to make last night.

I'd say that the experience of ArborUpdate supports your three points (and I'm sure that Scott's input helped you form them?) For as long as I've been involved with AU (since September), it's been an ugly-as-cat-spit site that none of us really knew what we wanted to do with, but we couldn't take the time to stop and figure these things out, because we were too busy _posting_ things, _now_, have to post _more_, so that people don't _lose interest_. And so, of course, we're still, now, talking about getting around to fixing stuff now, 8 months later, because we never did them. Obviously, you could probably put off actually doing anything indefinitely without too much effort, but "do it now" is a dangerous route. You'll be more likely to attract new readers and new participants if their first experience is smooth.

I think that "linking to MLive stories" (or DetNews, or Freep, or Michigan Daily, etc.) is all right, though, as long as you provide (a) a good distillation of the linked piece, and (b) some sort of added insight. It's not hard to add insight to MLive stories. :) To some extent, I think that linking to the mainstream press is good for the fact that it allows discussion of the item - often producing better information than is actually in the original piece.

I think it's relatively clear who cares about snarky comments about MLive stories. That market's pretty well cornered. (Though it's amazing how much good information can be found, if you sift through the snark to find the comments from Larry K and Todd Leopold.)

Make it easy for people to submit one-off pieces. I think that if you have just "writer" and "reader/commenter" roles, it is hard to get people to join up on the writer side - the commitment is too intimidating. If you have a core group that handles the tech side and provides a solid amount of content (call yourselves the editors or publishers), and provide a clear mechanism for people to write up content and submit it (like an extra long comment box that goes to the main page once an editor has oked it) when they feel like it, it'll be easier to get people involved at that level. Oh, and some guidelines for submissions: people want to know what kinds of things to write about, what kind of voice to use, etc, to minimize the number of things they have to guess about.

That's my brain-dump for now. . .time for more coffee.

Poop. I forgot an "http" in my link.

Very helpful comment, Murph; thanks for giving an idea of your experience with ArborUpdate.

I never go to ArborUpdate, much less post there. Reasons?

1. Excuse me for saying so please but I find it unattractive visually. I like a good-lookin' site--simple, easy to read, colorful.

2. No focus. It's not "campus news" or "state news" or "ann arbor" or "ann arbor politics" or what have you. It's diffuse. I can find the same content on other sites, as more and more folks start blogging.

3. Loose format. It's not 50 words with the rest tucked away in a "read more." That would tidy up the page and make more topics visible at one time. It's kind of messy-looking.

So, with all due respect, if that's what you get by "just starting now," then I'd say we need to do careful planning before starting the Ypsi site. No offense please Murph. Please don't be offended. I'm just analyzing the site is all.

Laura, thanks for providing a thoughtful and nuanced review of the evening, which I failed to do. Don't worry about having stolen the image from mark, as he stole it from me, and i stole it from a community history booklet, and they stole it from the Ypsi historical society, who probably didn't pay much for it in the first place.

The only thing I could really add to what's already been said here is a photo of some biker chick I saw hanging around Depot Town last night.

:) thank you for your nice comment and for the link to the photo Brett. I like the foggy-blurry glow effect of the lights. Nice picture Brett; you flatter me by taking it; thank you.

I'm feeling guilty for dissing Arbor Update after Murph took the time out of his morning to send helpful advice, which I value.

I appreciate that, Murph. I'm sorry--my reply seems ungrateful but is not meant to be. Sometimes I get so caught up in analyzing something that I overstep politeness a bit. My mistake. Thanks again for your comment.

Don't forget, this could be a moneymaker. Soon as the Spitting Cat is launched--up goes the CafePress site with Spitting Cat baby Ts, Spitting Cat dog blankets, Spitting Cat child car seat covers, tea towels, doilies, wristlets, house flags, cat toys, stationary, etched glass beer mugs, ponytail holders, space pens, temporary tattoos, and baby bibs. We can just sit back and chuckle as the money rollllllllls in.

I love the name "spitting cat"

I wouldnt count on a blog being a big money maker but maybe we could make enough to pay for the web hosting and domain name :)

Brett, just as an aside...I love your photos.

thanks, lynne. Sorry i didn't get a photo of the whole group together; i was planning on it, but half the time i was waiting for everyone to arrive, and by that point people had already started leaving. maybe next time.

Heck, I would buy Spitting Cat merch, if only as out of admiration for Brett's creation of the logo. And to support a "local" business.

Besides, a few devotees wearing Spitting Cat tees around town is good advertising and makes the nascent blog seem like a well-established "thing."

In addition, the logo is a very cool old style graphic. Old is the new new. Or is new the new old? At any rate, it's very cool.

I also like Brett's photos, and Blackcustard's too.

In addition, a few devotees wearing (devo)tees while shopping around town is an excellent way to spread the word.

"What's your shirt say?"
"It' says Spitting Cat. It's a new newspaper in Ypsi."
"Never heard of it. That's a cool logo, though."
"The paper's pretty cool too. Hey, I got a copy in my bag here if you'd like to take a look at it."

Face-to-face advertising like that is golden.

That's true. I like the logo a lot too. I would buy some t-shirts from cafepress with that logo. Plus I just checked and spittingcats.com is free. Maybe I should register it for us?

Wow! I would grab it--but Brett and Mark are spearheading this movement, so in my case I'd check with them first just so they know. I just got some mail from Mark so I imagine he's home tonight.

Awfully nice of you, Lynne.

You know. It doesnt cost much so I have gone ahead and registered it. Just in case.

That is so nice of you, Lynne. I'm glad there's a spot for things once we get rolling. I think that is generous of you.

Perhaps the Spitting Cat is a cousin to Sabotabby from the old Wobblie graphic.

When I got home and looked at the clock on Friday, I couldn't believe that I had been at the meeting for three hours. Very interesting.

I would volunteer to go to a City Committee and secure information and write something. I'm interested in what happens at the Planning Commission but would relinquish that if something else needed doing.

Laura, no worries - dissing ArborUpdate doesn't irritate me like, say, dissing students does. :) And, even then, you're 99% correct, and I just get defensive about the last 1%.

And I agree 100% with your comments, and, really, so do the other AUers to an extent. None of us like the graphic design, but none of us has had the combination of time+taste needed to come up with something better, so there it stays. (Scott's working on something less hideous, though.)

Read more: high on my feature wish list. This little academic can't say anything in fewer than fifty words, especially when trying to sum up a few hours worth of City Council actions + related MLive stories. I'd love to have the ability to put a short abstract/teaser post on the front page with a "read more" to the comments.

Focus: sure we've got focus! Rob and Matt have a focus on campus, Brandon and I have a focus on Ann Arbor and regional planning, Mark's got a focus on labor, Ari's got a focus on inflammatory Israel/Palestine post, etc. What do you mean we don't have focus? Oh, you mean that all of those different foci make the overall kind of messy and disjointed? Why, yes, I suppose they do. I don't know how to fix that, except perhaps by breaking it up into separate, individually focused pages, creating "The ArborUpdate family of blogs."

So, with all due respect, if that's what you get by "just starting now," then I'd say we need to do careful planning before starting the Ypsi site. No offense please Murph.

That's pretty much exactly what I was trying to say. Don't make the same mistakes AU made, because you'll end up still living with those mistakes this time next year.

(Do I really come off as so volatile? I'm sorry. I'm actually very hard to offend/upset, and you really shouldn't worry about it. I write rather polemically, but have almost never actually been upset by anybody in blog-space.)

Murph: No, you come off as thoughtful and informative, actually; "polemical" is the last word I'd use to describe you--or, your online persona, anyways, since I've never had the pleasure of meeting you.

I see your point about the individualized foci. I imagine the Spitting Cat would be more tightly focused just by default: we are an older group of bloggers for whom campus issues are not as high a priority as they naturally would be to someone in the mix of things on campus. Plus EMU is much smaller, with fewer big, sweeping issues such as the Life Sciences debacle, &c. Although every time I bike past the ravaged site of the future to-be-underused EMU Student Center, being built on the fringe of campus unconveniently far from most classes, I do wonder.

Your advice is very helpful Murph, as words of caution and good advice from someone who's actually done what we are just setting out to do; thank you for contributing your ideas.

Ingrid: I had the same clock experience--it was 11 something by the time I got home.

I was fascinated to learn that the Spitting Cat's graphical cousin is the black cat logo of the IWW, used as a code in factories when some serious machinery sabotage was about to go down, as described here:

EXCERPT: "The word “sabotage” originates in “sabot,” a French word that referred to wooden shoes. A wooden shoe dropped into a piece of 19th-century machinery could bring about a slowdown in a big hurry. The little black cat and the stickers depicting it, which signaled big doin’s were about to come down in the workplace, was, and remains, the SaboTabby. That little feral cat has served generations of workers; let us continue to honor it."

Sabotabby: A semi-exhaustive search online did not come up with the elusive image of the Sabotabby, though it led me to the beautiful Labor Arts page, where you can search their exhaustive collection of artifacts.

(there are a few images floating around of the "celtibilly" band Sabotabby, but at any rate.)

Wow. That history makes me like the logo and name even more.

Try http://www. iww.org, top left hand corner.

I was mentioning to Mark M. by e-mail that I kind of envy Ypsi Sentinal / Spitting Cat for the fact that it actually seems to have focus before it starts. Y'all seem to be light years ahead on the organizational side of things, and you can expect me to be sitting over here cheering you on and eagerly soaking up info on what's going on in Ypsi, which I know much less about than I would like.

For more on the Wobblies' black cat, check out Wikipedia's anarchist symbols page.

I've also see the black cat used with the words "We never sleep, we never forget." underneath it, to emphasize vigilence and direct action. (Googling. . .) Here's an example on the cover of a book "of the theory and practice of monkeywrenching".

And now, back to trying to figure out how to add an "Excerpt-with-'Read more'-link" function for long posts on ArborUpdate...

Aha! There's the Sabotabby! Mean-lookin' critter. Thank you for kindly digging that up, Ingrid. I was fascinated to learn about it. I'm with Lynne: learning about this nugget of labor history makes me like the Spitting Cat logo even more.

Murph: Two great links--thanks for posting them. Darn, I had gone to Wikip. but was clearly looking in the wrong place. Fascinating to learn about this symbol.