Moving Ahead with The Columbus Social Media Cafe

Jeff from Urban In-Fill and several others have already made some great comments about Monday night’s 2nd session of the Columbus Social Media Cafe at WOSU@COSI. Jeff writes:

During the post-discussion gathering, the concept of “sustenance”, came to light. While sustainability often echoes the need to conserve, sustenance refers to the need to nourish, and the nourishment of our city, its places and its citizens, is truly the concept with which we’re working. When we nourish one another we create a community of richness. This is the desire of everyone who participated.

Daniel Fox of SKREENED suggested that the identity of Columbus is derived from everyone here, and not in how we compare ourselves against other cities. Walker Evans and Andrew Miller talked about why this young city is attractive and Lisa from Restaurant Widow maintains that living in Columbus offers her, as well as others, a chance to be heard and be involved, whereas in larger cities, doing so is much more difficult.

Columbus offers a higher degree of citizen participation because we are who we are, and this too, makes the city like no other. It too, nourishes our soul.

Lisa The Waitress, who writes The Restaurant Widow had some thoughts on the conversations from Monday:

One of the discussions that this blogger took part discussed further the idea of how bloggers (i.e. citizen journalists) can work with traditional media like WOSU in a more inviting and open manner. The discussion tilted in a number of directions but seemed to really revolve around the idea of sustainability. It was a positive discussion that left me with the commitment to open the door and bring the blogging talent into WOSU.

Our first step will be to get together with the Columbus Foodies to talk about beginning a Columbus Food Podcast. Another group also talked about this idea of food while yet another had an excellent session on how we (WOSU, COSI, and the Blog Community) can help educate underserved populations about the power of Social Media.

Daniel Fox with a little help from Michael Reed offered some additional closing thoughts on the evening.

We’re looking at reconvening the Cafe on Thursday, January 28th. Stay tuned…