Sarasota Livin'

Surfing around this morning after my bike ride I found this video of Cory Booker the mayor of Newark being interviewed by "The New Yorker". It is well worth your time --- he is a true American hero.

From Wikipedia

Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969) is the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. He is a Democratic politician and former Newark Councilman and community activist who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2002 against longtime incumbent Sharpe James. Booker ran again in 2006 and won a sweeping victory against Ronald Rice to become the 36th mayor of Newark. Booker is a graduate of Stanford, Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), and Yale Law School.

Sarasota Livin' has been "featured" on Sarasota Speaks since that blog aggregator started a while back. I often forget to look at it and was surprised to find there must be 75 blogs linked there.

I found some pretty interesting blog names there. Many are for very focused topics such as "Save Riverview High School", "Black Republican" or "Homeless in Sarasota / Bradenton"

I checked out Black Republican which I had not seen before ..... I was impressed to see the bio (on the front page) of the blogger Frances Rice who lives in Sarasota and is the Chairman of the National Black Republican Association. Surfing there I found this radio ad MLK was a Republican

I am not much of a partisan voter (I think both Democrats and Republicans have lots of problems in their national platforms) but I like the spirit of the ad that focuses on not being taken for granted.

I enjoy my visits to the "My Florida History" blog, Lucy Jones really finds some interesting things here are just a few recent finds:

Using Sanborn Maps to Find History of Your House which took me to this awesome Florida Maps page

I also enjoyed thinking about ...
History is a Business Asset which points to some Florida businesses that have their history on the web... here is a quote from Tropicanna..

With this goal in mind, Mr. Rossi moved his packing operation from Palmetto to Bradenton and formed Fruit Industries, Inc.- the company that was to become Tropicana. At first, the Florida Citrus Commission denied the company a license to package and ship its products, convinced that the fruit and juice would spoil on its journey north. But through trial and error, Mr. Rossi and his employees developed a process of packaging orange and grapefruit sections aseptically in glass containers, and the license was granted.

The company began to ship jars of sectioned fruit and fresh juice to hotels and restaurants in specially-modified refrigerated trucks. Ingredients for the fresh fruit salads on the menu of New York's famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel were supplied by Fruit Industries; the hotel had a standing order for 1,000 gallons of juice and fruit jars each week.

Funny two related things happened today (along with my normal boring life) I got paid for my first "sponsored link" on one of my websites - I "sold" it about 2 weeks ago.

I don't know Gigi Silverberg at all. But someone representing her offered to buy a link on my Sarasota Neighborhoods site. She has a nice website and seems pretty good according to her bio.... So I did it.... I have even cleaned-up the site and updated its look after that..

I see that as an affirmation of the content I have out there ... so its a good thing.

Even Bigger..

My frequent readers know that I post lots of pictures and that is the subject of the second cool thing that happened to me today...

I just opened the box on a brand new Nikon D80 Outfit

My current camera is a Panasonic DMC-FZ7 I really like it especially the great 12x optical zoom... but I have the opportunity to try out this really nice camera as a participant in Nikon’s “Picture This” campaign

I was a little surprised to be picked for this - I actually thought it was spam at first. So now you know after today (the battery is changing now) I will be taking pictures with a really nice Nikon digital SLR camera that I get to use free (for six months)... I will let you know how the pictures / experience compares to the other digital cameras I have used.

So if you have some money or cool things for me to "test" I maybe can be had ....

Smart City Radio is still my favorite podcast. This weeks show is part of the reason why. Carol Coletta is a very good interviewer. Listen to Strategic Thinking for Cities

Why do great strategies fail? That's the question Michael Raynor asks in his new book, The Strategy Paradox. Michael says the job of leaders is to embrace the inherent uncertainty of strategy and recognize that the future can't be predicted. Instead of making choices, leaders create options.

Our second topic this week is a strategy critical to cities - how to leverage universities and other anchor institutions to contribute fully to urban success and, in turn, to their own. Dr. David Maurrasse of Marga is with us to talk about the challenges and rewards of these partnerships

As a web developer I am happy to see any new web site with interesting content come out. Only a very, very small percent of what goes on is documented on the web so more is better.

I really love the video service both City and County government websites are now offering. You can go to either site and watch commission meetings.

BUT when you title a site "Your Voice" and the only way for me to provide "my voice" is an email link that goes to the "webmaster" that is pretty lame.

The ex- city manager was able to have a blog and allowed comments and he was a non techy blogger. It got messy sometimes but I think overall it was a good forum. I have also seen the Sarasota Herald Tribune "discussion forums" so I understand that allowing public comments can be messy.

BUT this site is "county governments voice" not "my voice" ..

Also on a techy note:
Dear Sarasota County Government Webmaster... please view your site in Firefox - the "Links of Interest" list displays on top of the content ...

Philadelphia has started marketing itself as onebigcampus.com 19 colleges have banded together to promote Phila as a great place for college students. This single website gives info on all things related ... info on the schools and how to get around town and find what "you" want out of a great city.

I listened to an interview with Todd Hoffman on the Smart City Podcast he is president of the consulting firm working with the city. I also saw it on the CoolTown Studio blog.

OK Sarasota can New College, Ringling College of Art, USF, MCC and Ringling Museum / FSU and the folks at the "cultural district" work together to do something like this?

The work some of them started on the study of the North Trail is a beginning ... can "we" keep the ball rolling???

Who will be the leader ...