Jen McClure's Ruminations

Wishing You a Peaceful New Year and Happy iPeace Day

Today is iPeace Day, and according to the folks at the iPeace social network (which I just accepted an invitation to join last week), you can make a difference in the world by just:

• Being peaceful
• Dedicate yourself to sharing your peace with those around you 
• Write a poem for peace
• Make a video. Post a video
• Organize a concert
• Play music in the streets for peace
• Plant a tree
• Organize a gathering
• Pray
• Light a candle
• Teach peace
• Meditate
• Run or walk for peace
• Organize a game or a match for peace
• Have dinner with friends
• Anything that will express peace – for you.
• Blog or write an article
• Live without fear

Not bad suggestions for today or any day, really. Check out and/or join iPeace at www.ipeace.me

Wishing you a peaceful new year.

The American Dream ... Revisited

Pollster John Zogby has released some interesting stats lately. He recently wrote, "Even in these uncertain economic times, my polling shows the American Dream is still alive and well, but is undergoing an historic transformation."

In his book, The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, Zogby splits American Dreamers into two distinct groups: "Traditional Materialists" and "Secular Spiritualists."

Zogby defines Secular Spiritualists as Americans who are more satisfied with fewer material assets and less wealth.

"Secular Spiritualists are clearly the ascendant group, and in a June 2008 Zogby Interactive poll, they surpassed the Traditional Materialists," reports Zogby. (See more details on the poll here.)

But with this new-found "spirituality," we're not necessarily more optimistic.

In a separate Zogby poll, dubbed the New Year's Eve poll:

• 75% think the current year was worse for the world than the previous year, compared to only 39% who said that a year ago.
• Last year 59% said the current year was better for them personally than the previous year; this year only 32% said it was better.
• Only 43 % of respondents think next year will be better for them personally, compared to 59% who said that a year ago.
• Young people are more optimistic, with 57.9% expecting 2009 to be better
• Lower income respondents ($25K or less) are the least optimistic about the New Year
• Only 40% of respondents expect those born in 2009 to have a better quality of life than the generations before them

New Year, New Gig: New Media Company

When I finally finished my master's thesis and graduated from Stanford this past June, I vowed I would start blogging again. Well, here it is more than six months later, and this is my first blog post. Ugh - talk about writer's block!

But I now feel inspired write here again as I begin to embark on some new personal and professional projects. Professionally, I am branching out. Nearly five years after co-founding New Communications Forum, and later the Society for New Communications Research, our organization has grown and matured to the point where we will be bringing on an association management professional to help manage the day-to-day operations of SNCR. This is a very important and exciting development, as it will allow me to focus on supporting our Fellows' research, education, and publications initiatives. Look for some exciting new announcements and great new programs from SNCR in the coming weeks -- not to mention the 5th Annual NewComm Forum! Date and venue to be announced soon!

Now that I will have some extra help with SNCR and don't have to focus on writing my thesis anymore (yippee!), I've started to consult again just a bit -- and am very excited about my first project.

A few weeks ago, I helped an old friend and colleague, Ron Muns and his son, Andrew Muns to launch a new media company. Redwood Collaborative Media is a new B2B media company that creates highly interactive, integrated, and dynamic platforms for sharing knowledge, insights, and resources, and is dedicated to building deep relationships for professional communities. The company’s mission is to empower these communities through high quality information, education and training, and targeted online and face-to-face networking opportunities. The first such professional community is the Software Test & Performance Collaborative -- the result of an acquisition from BZ Media.

It will be fun and interesting to help develop this new company, and I'll share my learnings as we continue to grow and evolve the Redwood Collaborative Media concept. I also plan to use this blog to muse on other thoughts, questions, and ideas about new developments in media and communications, business, culture and other topics, so stay tuned. I hope you find it of interest and get involved in the conversation.

I wish everyone a very happy new year. To be sure, the current economic climate will be challenging for us all. But this challenge also presents us with exciting opportunities to tap into our creativity and spirit of innovation -- to be more flexible, more giving, more caring, more cooperative, and to take a new look at our old way of doing things and re-evaluate our priorities. So, here's to shaking things up in 2009! Best wishes to all!