The trouble I was up to this morning

It started with this post The meeting Monday at Moments cafe in Swannanoa on replacing the Black Mountain News will present the plans of Fred McCormick, for five years the news reporter for the paper, who took on feature writing when they let that staffer go, and then managing editor when they eliminated that position. The married father of a young child quit after not having a day off for 31 straight days and Gannett’s only response was to offer him a better title; no raise, no time off. The new owners of the Citizen Times and BMN have an even more draconian reputation. He is launching his own publication online. This will be the first of several public meetings from East Asheville to Black Mountain.

I Posted the above paragraphs on local politics groups, local exchange groups on fb. Subscribers and volunteers and a freedom of the press group have all launched this morning. I had the idea to start something, got people to agree to come to a meeting tomorrow, then discovered Thursday that someone younger was about to launch, met with him Friday, gave him some ways to make enough money fast to cover his first three months of operations (founding sponsors, sustaining founding subscribers, etc) and I am mobilizing things around him.

The point is not what I am doing, but the larger point: If you get behind people who are ready to do things, you can do a lot fast. If you want to get people to change their behavior, it takes a long time.

I am good at the former, suck at the latter. So I just help things tip into a new phase when they are ready.