To Every Cow Her Calf

"as to every cow her calf, so to every book its offspring"

Having now taught, bought, begged for, and bartered copywriting, I enjoyed reading Intellectual Property, edited by Jennifer Peloso.

Jeff Beale reminded me of the 6th-century copyright decision above in Broken Links and Broken Laws: Copyright Confusion Online.

The most interesting article in the review was Plagiarism by Denise Hamilton, with its profile of the students most likely to copy their essays and why.

Ups and Downs

Up: I did not want to speak at the public meeting last night about the proposed development of Oakwood Park. I felt I did not know enough about the subject.

I recalled that I had to appear at planning board meetings in the past. For those meetings a friend (an attorney, a gifted public speaker and reluctant political advocate) had advised me at those times that all I needed to do at the meeting was to state my name and residence, and that I opposed the proposal. That was sure a lot easier than mustering arguments and putting them to the elected officials.

Up: decided to research. Called the NJ DEP and spoke to someone in the Green Acres program. In case he was mistaken, I omit his name here. He said that according to Green Acres regulations, the property holders needed to inform the DEP 30 days before any public discussion about a transfer of title. He said that the DEP had not been notified.

This, I thought, was real information that I could proudly bring to the mic. Democracy in action.

Up: Called the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. Because I was too busy writing down my interlocutor's suggestions, I omit her name here. She gave me some great information about the ROSI (open space inventory), and about how to ask about impervious surface coverage.

Up: Looked up the New Providence Master Plan online. It was a productive lunch hour.

Down: Called my friend the attorney. He said my recollection was poor. He said that I could just mention that I opposed the action, but that it would be far better to muster the arguments.

Up: Attended the meeting. Even though I was not perfectly prepared, it was definitely better to be there in person than to learn about it after the fact and grouse about it in private.

Down: Sounded dumb at the mic. They were about to close the meeting because there appeared to be no more speakers from the floor. It was then or never so I approached the microphone.

I asked my three questions.

"What kind of synthetic turf?" and "Have you consulted your impervious surface coverage requirements?" got the "We don't know but maybe they will answer that at next week's meeting."

"Have you notified the DEP?" got "Of course we did. We have been discussing with" (did not have pen handy at the mic to write down his name). In the end my questions sounded random and not very pointed.

Up: Maybe the fact that I did not sound like the brightest crayon in the box encouraged some of the speakers who came after me to air their questions. Democracy is not just for those accustomed to microphones. It's for everyone.

Down: Many of the people who spoke after me sounded much more intelligent. Good thing that this was a public hearing and not a competition...

Up: I felt very web 2.0 blogging about the meeting as it happened.

Up: the meeting petered out around 9:30. Other meetings I have attended have lasted till midnight.

The mayor's public letter said that the borough council had discussed this issue at its December 08 meeting, which was televised. There was an article in the local paper at the time. The minutes of the meeting are online.

I could have checked any of those sources, instead of being gobsmacked last week learning about last night's discussion in the Independent Press. (Kudos to Mike Neavill!)

I definitely should be following my local government more closely. On the other hand, there are only 24 hours in a day. How many of them do I need to devote to the government?

I want to be able to trust that my government is going to pretty much do what I think they should do. I want to be able to trust that if the government is planning to do something really radical, the press will let me know.

Too bad eternal vigilance is so darned time-consuming, and, at times, humbling.

Brian Flanigan's Bons Mots

Brian Flanigan, Planning Board Member, says that he is concerned about the park.

"The problem is that the public hasn't had a voice on this project....it's of a scope and of an intensity that may not be appropriate for this site.....This is really in the heart of a residential neighborhood.....The uses that I'm afraid that this intensity of development will preclude" are the passive uses, the spontaneous uses.

He is also concerned about turfing over the greensward. "If you're going to make that decision, it can't be made in a rush....If the only way out of this is to give Garwood the money, let's give it to Garwood.....Please, let's take more time with this and give more consideration to the intangible aspects of it."

Brian enjoyed two rounds of applause.

Chain Link Fence

Gee, the Mayor's glowing letter http://www.newprov.org/pdflibrary/OakwoodParkMayors%20Letter%20March2009.pdf

neglected to mention anything about 10-foot high fences around the park.

Someone Did His Homework

Whatever this guy's name is, he's asking good questions.

How long has the Union County Open Space Fund been in existence? 7 years
How much money is in the fund? 11.2 million

So there's a precedent where we could have received money and not have deeded it to the county, am I correct? No, said Devanney.
Should the renovation exceed the project 3.5 million, is there any liability on the part of the borough. No, said Devanney

He's from New Providence, but I couldn't hear his name. It's a shame that people here are allergic to microphones.

Oh, and the next guy asked another good one: why wouldn't the county use that money to acquire open space, instead of investing it in Oakwood Park which is clearly in no danger of development?

What Is Synthetic Turf?

Darn, I was really hoping that there would be hours of questions, that other people would ask all my questions and I would never have to go near the mike.

It is always a bad sign when people at these meetings profess ignorance of crucial details. Say the store next door is applying for a variance, including installing a dumpster. As them what time their garbage pickup will be. Their eyes will glaze over. "Oh, I don't know," as if such details were too petty for them to consider.

It makes a difference when the truck comes at 5 in the morning.

So I asked, "This synthetic turf. Is that the kind made out of ground up old rubber tires?"

"We, uh, don't know," was the response, but they were sure that that would be addressed in the April 2 meeting.

The future taxpayer sitting next to me was against rubber "turf," because coaches won't let athletes carry any foods on the turf. Unlike growing grass, the "turf" stains. Also unlike growing grass, "turf" can get up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit.

Maybe I'm a snob, but I don't like the stuff.

Not Surprisingly

Freeholder Scanlon claims that Union County will "rehabilitate" Oakwood Park.

Frankly it does not need rehabilitation. "New Providence has the land; the trust fund has the money," she adds.

The borough had already designed the park before it went to the county for the grant? The county says it was "disappointed" about that. Obviously, this has been in the works already.

After the meeting started 15 minutes late there were 45 minutes of laudatory speeches by the mayor and freeholders. Before any public comment, they announced that the discussion of the Oakwood Park resolution was done and have now opened the floor to the public.

First speaker, Tom Getzendanner of Summit, here to praise the county's cooperation with Glenside Park, and apparently using the opportunity to ask the freeholders not to take a pension holiday.

Next speaker I am not familiar with, asking a question about the Rutgers Cooperative Extension. What, did they convince people to come here and filibuster?

I'm sure they announced that they were opening up the floor for comments about the agenda items, didn't they?

Are we having fun yet?

300 People at Oakwood Park Council Meeting

Maybe some of these 300 people feel like me. I can't do anything about the fact that Geithner is a scofftax. I can't do anything about AIG spending its bailout money on bonuses.

But when the county and the borough council seem to decide unilaterally to redevelop a 15-acre park, that's when we decide to speak out.

So here we all are, ready to tell the mayor and the freeholders what we really think.

Here's what the mayor says:
"We don't want to have lights on those fields," which seems unlikely. Who would not want to draw out the number of available hours after someone spends $3.5 million to resurface?

He has already claimed that the New Providence Master Plan calls to develop this park. I read the Master Plan today, particularly the Recreation Plan Element, but it does not call for developing the park, only for upgrading playfields at schools.

Vis a vis park lands, the master plan does not call for development. It calls for monitoring the facilities. It calls for expanding open space/recreation inventory, but not for developing the park.

Today I called the Green Acres department of the NJ DEP. I learned that At least 30 days prior to any public hearing to be held on the proposed transfer of parkland, the local government is supposed to advise the DEP of the hearing. As of 12:30 today, the NJ DEP had not been notified.

"We did our due diligence," says Mayor Thoms.

Stay tuned for more info as it happens.

Fair Use/Abuse

As a content writer, I am very much interested in the issue of copyright abuse. With screen scraping, it's easy to do. (CNN might even accuse me of it for my posting on McCain and Fannie Mae.) And, what the heck? It's just words. I hear that a lot: "Just put in some content," as if no actual work was involved.

I had to work for that content. I had to gather and organize all the material, then try to inject some original thoughts. The stakeholders had to approve it, and then I had to get the legal department to sign off on it. It's not "just" content. It's work and you should respect it.

An article in the New York Times points out that publishers object to extensive quotes, even if the writer who appropriated them gives back links. The person reading the rehashed article may not follow the links, so the original publisher is not getting the eyeballs he or she needs to win advertising dollars. Another point the Times did not bring up is that Google takes points off PageRank for duplicated content. That's why everybody wants original content, both for their readers' pleasure, and for better search engine rankings. But, as I said before, conceiving and delivering original content is a lot of work. Which is why it is so much easier just to scrape someone else's off the screen.

Chris Crum of WebProNews invites us all to weigh in on this matter.

Marketing Communications Metrics

At two round table discussions today "Computing the PR-Sales Link: How Leading Brands Organize the Integration of Communications with Sales" and "Linking Your Communications Efforts to the Bottoms Line--Measuring How You're Being Perceived by Different Audiences and Where to Adjust Your Messaging to Make the Greatest Impact" I learned that other marketing communications professionals are as stymied as I am about how to prove the value of our work.

Every other PR professional I spoke to, including people who worked for agencies, international airlines and Ivy League universities, all felt frustrated by the lack of convincing benchmarks. And all this time I thought that it was just me. I thought that if I read the right book, took the right class, diligently studied the metrics in VOCUS, I could figure out how to demonstrate how my pickups resulted in sales.

Thanks to the Business Development Institute for the Communications, Reputation and Sales Driving the Top Line Conference today, for letting me know that I am not alone.