Posts by Carol Ross
Tourist in My Own Town
My sons have tired of summer vacations consisting of long road trips. We’ve seen most of the interesting sights within a day’s drive over the last ten years. And having taken a true vacation to paradise in February, a more extravagant summer vacation didn’t seem called for. Instead we’ve decided to create "Family Friday," days…
Read MoreThe Secret Sauce for All Successful Communities
An interview with boundary crosser, Karen Stephenson, reminds me that all the technology, networking, marketing, and wisdom in the world is useless in building a community if one thing is lacking: Trust. Stephenson calls herself a corporate anthropologist (she has graduate degrees in anthropology) and writes about creating trust in the online world. A few…
Read MoreThe Gut is Right After All
A Wall Street Journal article points to how our brains make up our minds long before we are conscious of the choice. Some might say that this negates free will. I would argue that it means that our gut instinct knows first and that our heads then try to make the logical case to support.
Read MoreCrossing Boundaries is Worth the Risk
I’m convinced that our most pressing problems as a society will be solved by boundary crossers, because it takes multiple perspectives and approaches to understand complex issues. An announcement about David Yarnold’s appointment as Executive Director of the Environmental Defense Action Fund, speaks to this point. Yarnold, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist turned environmental activist,…
Read MoreUsing Social Media to Influence Public Policy
One of the questions that I’ve heard from people interested in A Bigger Voice is, "How can I influence public policy?" This is an interesting question. I think it requires BOTH top-down (interacting with individuals at the top of an organization or institution) and bottom-up (interacting with the users/consumers/customers) approaches. The mistake I see people…
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