Summarize your conversation using these questions or whatever…

Summarize your conversation using these questions, or whatever questions seem appropriate to you:

1. What meaning did you take from the conversation?

2. Share a standout story or quote for each of you.

3. What surprised, challenged, inspired, and/or delighted you about the conversation?

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About Norm Roulet

Hi Kaycie,

Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m almost 50 so way past
college… although I am considering getting a PhD. I studied fine
art, philosophy, computer science and economics at Tulane – Econ Major
– became a real estate broker and developed historic property in New
Orleans – helped organize the longest mixed marathon rally in the
world, twice – across South America – sold it to NHK Japan – produced
some videos – worked as a consultant for Utility Management Services
Group (utility industry competitive benchmarking) – started Spectrum
Telecom to provide IT and telecom benchmarking to global companies and
formed InT+IME – Information, Technology and Infrastructure Management
Exchange – have worked with the likes of Boeing, Cargill, Motorola,
Siemens, DEC, HP, AT&T, IBM – all CIO Global level – formed IntraCom
in 1996 to develop Intranets – formed ICEarth, upon which all my
social computing platforms are based –
http://realneo.us/content/icearth-information-community-earth-conceptual-framework-normalst-020701
– formed a social network in Cleveland called realneo.us for proof of
concept – Since Oct 2004 – it as owned by a non-profit cooperative of
the members of the site, who are the contributors of all content, and
donate the funds for operations… I believe it is unique in the world
– 10,000+ members (many spam and trolls) – over 1mil visits per year
and taking off – has shut down coal plants and driven crooked
politicians out of town – has been through hell and been taken over by
a troop of trolls but it is survivable… going through a major
showdown this week – many war stories – formed 7GEN for my planning
work – formed Star Neighborhood Development for redevelopment work in
Cleveland – formed the United Cannabis Exchange, which is the global
commodities exchange for industrial hemp and medical marijuana
feedstocks, which will exceed $1 trillion by 2025 or so.

So, this year I’m leading the battle to legalize cultivation of
industrial hemp in America, and am in charge of growing that industry
from scratch. I have a great board. Now that is a collaboration.

I do all of that regularly, except the car racing stuff – I got into
that as crisis management and got out as fast as possible.

Six kids from 1 – 23 – lived in New Orleans, San Francisco, Palm
Beach, Miami, Austin, Summit (NJ) and of course Cleveland.

My wife and three of the kids live in a 100+ year old mansion in the
ghetto of East Cleveland we renovated – stripped out all the lead
paint and went with milk paint and low VOC – green roof – gravel drive
– gray water system – chickens – organic garden – on a 60×120 urban
lot – our neighbors thinks we and our four mastiffs are crazy.

Through realNEO and the hardest core activism in the community I have
turned Cleveland upside down and I am just getting started.

Through realNEO, I have gained media access everywhere, including the
White House, where I was THE ONLY JOURNALIST WITH A CAMERA AND AN
INTEREST at a major White House environmental summit, showing you how
important citizen journalism really is –
http://realneo.us/backstage-white-house –
http://realneo.us/Top-Environmental-Development-of-2010

Covering KushCon2 was more fun –
http://realneo.us/nurturing-billions-in-new-GREEN-taxable-economic-opportunity-for-America

Most of my work involves bringing together diverse people, physically
or virtually or both – massive team and consensus builder but able to
keep control – for like 20 years I’ve been leading teams of super high
level executives analyzing all their performance data – dozens of
companies together looking at how each perform en mass – super
powerful collaborations.

Or, my work involves ripping people to shreds. Virtual community is
astoundingly powerful and dangerous. I am very interested in
reputation systems to address some of these issues.

In all that, I am highly interested in development of the ultimate
virtual world – which is a morph of realneo, ICEarth and IntraCom – so
all the pieces are in play and fit.

At this conference, I hope to find cool people who want to help with
that – any of it.

I’m all open source, in my software and development practices.

All I ever wanted to be was a photographer – but my parents forbade
that. I became one regardless. Once you grow up, you can be whatever
you like… so long as you are good.

Enough about me… so how are you?


Norm Roulet

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About Catalytic Conversations

About the pre-conference conversation process:

As part of conference preparation, we’ve paired participants to start the conversation. The idea is to be in touch with one other person, learn about their expertise, mission and intentions, and then write about it. This gives everyone a head start on the idea-generating process — and a reason to meet someone new.

Documenting & Posting Notes of your call

Summarize your conversation using these questions, or whatever questions seem appropriate to you:

1. What meaning did you take from the conversation?

2. Share a standout story or quote for each of you.

3. What surprised, challenged, inspired, and/or delighted you about the conversation?

What’s the point?

The purpose of the conversation is threefold:

  1. To arrive having established a new relationship;
  2. To begin to grasp both diverse and common perspectives; and
  3. To orient yourself to the meeting’s themes using an activity fundamental to journalism: storytelling.

How conversation partner assignments were made

There’s always a certain amount of randomness taking a group this size and pairing people. Here are some of the overall considerations we used:

  • We pair people from different disciplines and perspectives to stimulate an interesting exchange
  • We look for synergies based on responses to the registration questions
  • We avoid pairing individuals who might already be in the same professional orbit

Suggested Questions

Our main suggestion: to talk about who they are, what they’re doing, and what they hope to get out of the conference. The questions below are stimulus for the conversation.

1.    Tell me about your work and how it led to saying “yes” to attending this event?

2.    What outcomes would you like for yourself and your organization/work from this event?

3. Tell me about an experience you’ve had in which engaging a diverse mix of perspectives made a positive difference in a story that mattered.

  • a. What did the experience teach you about what it takes to involve diverse voices?
  • b. What difference did doing so make?
  • c. What do you believe is essential to the relationship between journalism and the public for meeting the news and information needs of all communities?

4. Without being humble, what do you value most about yourself? What do you see yourself bringing to this conference?

5.    The year is 2016 and a vibrant media landscape exists that engages all people and communities. What’s happening? What steps did we take at this event and immediately thereafter to bring this about?

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