Month: July 2017

Here are a bunch of ways to build a personal network with less time

Involved people face pretty common time constraints: you want to be present in more places than your calendar allows.

This is true of beat reporters and community organizers and advocates and activists alike. Recently I was talking about just that topic with a friend, and we found ourselves exchanging a few tricks we each had for accomplishing our goals: expanding a network while maintaining relationships with others.

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Mission and money should mix so impact can thrive

There’s this strange and perhaps dated idea that mission and money don’t mix.

I suppose it comes from a time of less transparency, of very black and white lines between nonprofits and for profits. But I find it altogether puzzling today.

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Growing Greater Philadelphia: I was on this NBC 10 documentary series

Technology isn’t an industry. It’s an approach.

That was something I offered in an episode of this NBC 10 series called “Growing Greater Philadelphia” on the region’s economic development. I also noted that the city is no longer suffering a brain drain problem — it’s more about mid-career professionals. Watch a clip below or the whole episode here, and other pieces in the series.

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Journalism is the process of helping a community near its truth

You might confuse journalism with some reported article or radio report or TV segment. That’s because these are among the most common units that make up the process of deploying journalism.

But when pressed to define journalism, as many do for the trade and the practitioners, it’s important to recognize that even the process of providing news and information to a community might not be goal enough. And there are lots more ways to deploy journalism.

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Why it took 8 years for me to become CEO of my own company

I’m a first time entrepreneur, having cofounded a niche publishing company. For more than eight years, I have been among those most responsible for the organization’s longterm strategy. For most of those years, I played the role of public face, among the first to serve very nearly all the roles we now have. We have a team of more than 20 and invoiced for nearly $1.7 million in 2016, all of which I feel responsible for supporting and growing.

But only today did I take on the title of CEO.

No one had ever held the title at our organization before. In an era championing entrepreneurship and fetishizing the young and the innovative, we are quick to anoint untested first time founders as chief executives. How many one person or four person companies do you know with a first-time CEO? It’s meant to offer clarity and it’s a great resume line. I am going to tell you why I think that’s a mistake. It’s also why it took me eight years to feel comfortable calling myself an organization’s CEO.

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