February 2013
1 post
WDWOT Member Update 1
Reposted from the WDWOT blog:
Dear WDWOT Members,
Thanks for taking the red pill and becoming the very first paid members of the service! You can see the little Pet Blocks starting to fill in at http://whydontweownthis.com/membership :-)
We’ll try to refrain from over-communicating via email but you can always follow what we’re up to and reach out to us any time through...
January 2013
1 post
The Dead Dishwasher Dilemma & Other Analogies:...
This is a hopefully more eloquent summary of a short talk I gave at the recent Model D IdeaLab session at the Detroit Revitalization and Business conference at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. The analogies are some of the things that went through my mind as we worked on the new release of WDWOT.com.
It’s not an especially comprehensive list, but I think...
December 2012
1 post
"Excuse me, human! Which Way To The Detroit Dog...
Nothing motivates like a deadline, and there are 2 weeks to raise $10,000 for the creation of Detroit’s first off-leash dog park.
Here’s what I’m asking from you, dear reader:
Check out the Detroit Dog Park project on Kickstarter and watch the video: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/370893558/detroit-dog-park
Look inside yourself and think for a second: Would you like...
October 2012
1 post
All WDWOT and Auction All The Time
For the past while it’s been all Why Don’t We Own This? and blogging with Alex on the WDWOT blog. Back here soon, but in the meantime…
20,000 detroit properties are being auctioned for $500 from october 19-26. see something and say something at http://whydontweownthis.com
it’s like x-ray glasses for the city (•_•) ,
( •_•)>⌐□-□ (⌐□_□) also on the twit circuit with...
September 2012
3 posts
Techonomy Detroit Presents "I See Tech People"...
Yesterday there was a pretty big technology conference in town called Techonomy. Tickets were $500 so I didn’t really think hard about going (after all you can buy a house for that price around here, which is primarily what’s on our mind with the county auction now in progress and being tracked at whydontweownthis.com ;-)).
Still, it crossed my mind that this is the sort of event that...
No Property Left Behind Invitation: Who, What,...
The Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction touches every neighborhood in Detroit with more than 20,000 properties being auctioned citywide in September and October. In recent years more than 1/2 have not sold and been left behind even at $500:
This is an invitation for neighborhood groups, block clubs, motivated locals, and etc, who would like to take ownership of tax foreclosure auction...
Why Don't We Own This? Updates!
For those playing the home game, check out what’s new with Why Don’t We Own This?
As you may already know, Wayne County, Michigan is about to auction off another 22,506 tax foreclosure properties, with more than 20,000 of them in Detroit. Dang. (Round 1 is September 14 - 20 where bids open at the cost of back taxes. Round 2 is October 19 - 25 where bids open at $500. For official...
August 2012
6 posts
Detroit Vacant Property Coalition -- Area...
Detroit has the measles. In the black box are 290 tax foreclosed properties coming up for auction within the Warren Avenue Community Organization boundaries:
Last week Janai Gilmore from Michigan Community Resources reached out and asked if I’d meet with and present to a group called the Detroit Vacant Property Coalition at 6:30 on September 11. Sure, sounds like something I’d do!...
Google Streetview + Physical & Data Decay
I’ve been driving around taking pictures of vacant Detroit properties coming up at the Wayne County Tax Foreclosure Auction to post on Why Don’t We Own This. We include an image from Google Streetview on all the property pages with a link to the google map, but check out how off they can be.
These are 3 typical auction properties in North Corktown that have changed a lot since Google...
An Afternoon at the Belle Isle Zoo
Yesterday my friend Peter and I went for a bike ride to Belle Isle. The fence into the old zoo was open so we took a look around. Oh my god. Of many mind-blowingly unmaintained ruins and vacancies in Detroit, this has got to be up near the top. I had no idea it was so vast, and it’s right next to the swimming beach (here’s the satellite map, the walkway you see here is the long loop...
A Light, Open Letter To Bill McMachen In Macomb...
A couple days ago news came out that Macomb County, Michigan canceled it’s public tax foreclosure auction at the last minute and sold all 650 properties to private resident Bill McMachen for approximately $4.8 million — the cost of the total back taxes owed on all the properties. You can read about it here (first story on Fox 2), here (Fox 2 follow-up with video interview), and here...
June 2012
1 post
No Property Left Behind (Update In Progress)
What to do with a property like this? No one bought this 2 acre property in Detroit when it was first auctioned for $500:
In March I first wrote about an idea for a campaign called No Property Left Behind, which would crowdfund the purchase of $500 properties that go unsold at the annual Detroit/Wayne County Foreclosure Auction, and then crowdsource what to do with them.
When I was at MIT for...
May 2012
4 posts
One Day In Detroit: Devils & Details Brainstorm 1:...
The devil lives in the details, maybe doubly so in software and web design. When you’re trying to keep things simple, you’d be amazed at the tiny games of whack-a-mole that get played as you change one tiny thing that affects something else, and how one seemingly small decision to put something in or leave something out creates a legacy that takes things in a different direction,...
One Day In Detroit: User-Generated Tour App Beta
Check it out! We just softly rolled the One Day In Detroit beta app onto the open internets. Over the past 6 weeks or so we’ve been working in a fun little collaboration with our friends at Dandelion Detroit and Skidmore Studio to think and design through the possibilities.
Here’s the skinny on where it’s at right now. On the homepage, if you press the circle it pulls up nearby...
Fun With Texting: DetroitSoccer.us
Larry’s been gaining mastery over the world of group text messaging for some upcoming projects, and we just put up a simple text subscription service for people who want to follow neighborhood teams in the Detroit City Futbol League, and the minor league Detroit City Futbol Club, Le Rouge.
Check it out at detroitsoccer.us.
The way it works is you text “Follow <team #>”...
Techno Viking Says Sorry For The Radio Silence
Been working hard in the lab on new releases. Reminded of this internet classic from across the ages while attending the Movement festival over Memorial Day weekend:
April 2012
4 posts
Microhoods: Small, Cheap, & Under Control?
Too long, didn’t read: LOVELAND’s working on a system that divides Detroit into many small sections that people with local knowledge can easily explore and update information about. Put the many small sections (AKA Microhoods) together, hold your face a foot away, stare into the distance, and a city comes into focus.
Surprise surprise. LOVELAND Technologies has cleared off some desk...
One Day In Detroit Progress
The One Day In Detroit user-generated tour guide app is starting to look pretty slick. Still a ways to go, but it’s functional and simple. We’ve grown our little group of alpha testers and udate-getters to around 30 and have a narrow stream of sweet tours trickling in. If you want to join the group, hit me at jerry@makeloveland.com. Here’s a screenshot of the current look on an...
The Motor City Mark Zuckerberg?
Details magazine recently ran a piece on some interesting projects in Detroit, including LOVELAND. In it they call me “The Motor City Mark Zuckerberg.” As I’ve sheepishly told my friends, better than “known idiot.” :-) I’ll take it, though we’re nothing without Larry the Shadow Zuckerberg:
Knight Grant
I’m happy and honored to say that LOVELAND received a modest but awesome $7,500 grant from the Knight Foundation to work with our friend James Feagin for making some new realtime collective action tools and organizing some city events.
We’re part of a line up of other awesome Knight grant projects in Detroit. Checkemout.
The description of our grant is:
Organization: LOVELAND...
March 2012
27 posts
Thank You For The Love And The Ride
I posted this on the LOVELAND Facebook page today, seems right to share here, too:
i want to pause and express infinite gratitude to all the loveland teammates and collaborators and inchvestors and angels and clients and friends and fans and backers and constructive critics and everyone who’s helped and supported us in anyway along our bootstrapped adventure so far and into the future. amen....
Convenient Narratives
The Cambrian Crowd Explosion
Not totally done writing this, but want to post the teaser to prompt myself to finish. :-)
...
…
LOVELAND Email Update, March '12: Last Day For...
Just sent this out over the proverbial wire:
Hello friends! Greetings from sunny Detroit!
Tomorrow/Friday evening is the final day of WDET’s Call To Action campaign. If you want to pledge your volunteer time to an organization or project in Detroit and then figure out exactly how to spend it, now’s the time to do so right here athttp://action.wdet.org. It doesn’t look like the...
Looking For A Few Good Tours
Open development of the One Day In Detroit user-generated tour guide app will continue until the flogging improves. We’ve made some updates that make it a lot more interesting, namely auto-mapping all locations in a tour and attaching images, like so:
I’ve started working on 2 tours that I’m having a lot of fun designing: the “Weird & Wonderful Walking Tour”...
Crowdfunding Down The Rabbit Hole
Today Mary sent me a link to a Kickstarter project with a $19,000,000 fundraising goal called “I Would Like to Buy Kickstarter” (the project has since been closed down but you can still see it).
The description is thus:
Hi, my name is Eric Moneypenny. I would like to raise money to buy Kickstarter. WorthOfWeb.com estimates Kickstarter’s worth at 18.6 million dollars....
My First Hockey Game
Detroit Red Wings Vs Washington Capitals. Red Wings lose 5-3 in a game that came down to the last seconds (Detroit pulled their goalie to try and tie the game). Thanks so much to Zak for inviting me along.
Busy Watching The Walking Dead Season Finale
Over at Nancy Whiskey:
Afterwards I was looking around on YouTube for the trailer and found this random fan talk-through of the whole episode. If you want to see someone geeking out about the show, here you go! (spoilers if you haven’t seen the show, but who really cares :-))
yesterday i was with a gaggle of notable detroit internerds plotting a mission when detroit mayor bing walked into the bar. here is my comic book retelling of the scenario as i recall it:
Web Apps Meet Grant Apps (Please Show Some Love!)
If you’re a supporter of LOVELAND’s work and/or Detroit, please see and click the ♥ button on this mercifully brief grant application for the Knight News Challenge: http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/19413388522/detroit-lifemap
“Detroit LifeMap is a multi-layered data map/ tool that connects parents, caregivers and advocates to essential life information (school...
Scenes From A Day / Picking Up Atoms
One Day In Detroit: Day 3 (Signing In & Draggin...
Checking back in the One Day In Detroit user-generated tour app we’ve been hacking on the last couple days (Day 1 and Day 2).
WE GOT ONE!
Well we got a couple ones. A few people giving some early feedback on the concept and use-cases and our friend David Anderson signed up to help Larry with some of the coding. Turns out he’d started designing a similar concept back when he was...
One Day In Detroit: Day 2
Yesterday I wrote about an app we’re making called One Day In Detroit. The nutshell pitch: One Day In Detroit is a simple mobile service for creating and taking tours of Detroit that can be easily done in a day.
If you’d like to participate in the design and testing process, just drop me a line at jerry@makeloveland.com. This is a fun indy app that we’re opening up the design...
Let's Make An App Together! Live-ish Blogging The...
Hokay, so. We’re going over our list of desired and proposed LOVELAND projects for 2012. Here’s a simple currently un-funded app we’ve decided to work on semi-publicly and invite you to follow along and participate in its development via ideas and testing and feedbackerfication.
Introducing…[drum roll…drum roll…vuvuzela…kazoo…] One Day In Detroit!...
Thought Experiment: The Hypothetical Power of...
hy·po·thet·i·cal (hp-tht-kl) also hy·po·thet·ic (-thtk)
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or based on a hypothesis: a hypothetical situation. See Synonyms at theoretical.
2.
a. Suppositional; uncertain. See Synonyms at supposed.
b. Conditional; contingent.
The WDET Call To Action program has me inspired on a couple levels. If you haven’t seen it, the idea is to try and encourage 10,000 new...
Bring On Spring: Corktown St Patrick's Day Parade...
Random pictures I posted during the Corktown St Patrick’s Parade. Beautiful weather, the unofficial slightly early kickoff to spring. If this is an alternative form of groundhog day, it’s gonna be a good year.
Grabbing The Dragon's Tail: An Example Of Ambition...
Paul Graham from Y Combinator has an awesome new essay called Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas. In it he simply articulates the natural fear of having and executing big ideas.
Quoth he:
One of the more surprising things I’ve noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are. In this essay I’m going to demonstrate this phenomenon by...
Unicorn Diet Credit Union: Money In, Magic Out
[^ Note on the image above: This is one of those rare occasions where the internet has let me down. I searched for an image of “unicorn eating money” but this is the best I could do: a unicorn eating a cheese sandwich.]
So, I really want to find some more collaborators who will sign on to help form a new credit union built for the internets. We’ve got a small troop of...
Micro Job Creation: Makers, We Will Pay You To...
Today my friend Zak Pashak and I headed to the Mt Elliott Makerspace to meetup with director Jeff Sturges. Here’s Jeff on the left doing the awkward turtle as Zak throws a business stare:
I really like what Jeff and crew have going on, and for some of my Call To Action volunteer hours I’ve decided I’m going to write up a plan and do some designs for a program and simple web...
Sleep By Sleep West (SXSW): Checking In From My...
All of a sudden my communication channels are blowing up with SXSW (South By South West) activity in Austin, TX. I’m not going this year, but I got invited to speak at NXNE in Toronto, so I’ll be heading up there to share stories.
Until I moved to Detroit in 2009 I’d been to the previous 5.5 SXSWs (2005 - 2009, with a quick sneak-in during 2003, when I drove from school in...
One Does Not Simply Dive Into Roosevelt Park
It’s gonna take a little bit to get this post right. Until then:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.
Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus.
Johnny Will Code *Something* This Summer Or Give...
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for...
Ideas & Realities (Blogging On A Time Budget)
I was knee deep in a pile of ideas…
…when reality kicked in.
I had to run help Mary tow her car from down the street:
Our friend and neighbor Rollo kindly came out with his truck and all is now well. It was a case of the injured carrying the dead, in car form:
Until then I was with friends brainstorming ideas for a new-fangled credit union:
and epic multi-million-dollar...
Easy (And Free) Neighborhood Text Alert Systems...
Today I set up a neighborhood crime watch text alert system with Groupme. If you’re in Corktown and want to join just lemme know, and if you want to try setting one up for your street or neighborhood, it’s super easy. Just go to the website and sign up with your name, email, and phone number. You’ll be able to start a group, name it, and add people to it in just a couple...
Perfect World: Things Never Change Until They Do
“First, they dropped the bomb Then came the disease Then death This our world Your world, my world I like this world!”
- Method Man, Perfect World, Tical 2000 (1998)
I remember taking the drive from New Jersey through the ruins of northeastern agriculture over the Delaware River into Pennsylvania to buy this album at the only good music store within 20 miles when I was 17.
The...
Is It *Really* True That Half Of Adult Detroiters...
UPDATE: A couple people have linked to this Forbes article calling the stat into question as old (’90s) and arrived at by questionable methodology. Thanks for the tips, guys! I tried calling Pro-Literacy Detroit to see if they have any updates on firmer, current numbers. No answer yet but I’ll post it if I find anything new.
—-
Here’s a really tough one.
If you google...
New Proud Member of The Cloud Appreciation Society
This is what the sky looked like all dang Leap Year Day in Detroit:
Not super inspiring, pretty downer vibe. But! Yesterday I randomly learned about The Cloud Appreciation Society while surfing around Reddit (should be at the top of the comments on here). Hang a click over this:
Their manifesto:
WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without...
