Conceiving of an Expat Harem inspired streaming series

Stealth project, defunct. Revolved a return to the cultural thread, in international streaming, if the time is right. (It wasn’t, 2022 and 2023 earthquakes and bombings changed the landscape, in a heated election year.)

Pitchbook for streaming series concept, 2022-2023

Expat Harem-related projects won't quit. The book is still for sale, and people are finding it like an actress in London who discovered it in a bookshop in London and sent it to a TV producer in Istanbul.

In 2022, at the request of that TV producer in Istanbul, I co-developed a streaming series concept inspired by the book "Tales from the Expat Harem" and its associated blog.

Collaborating with another writer, Katherine Belliel, whose Haze appeared in the book, and who coedited the sequel book Expat Sofra, we crafted a unique series that reflected the themes and stories from the original literary work.

This involved extensive research into the rights landscape, and entertainment legal agreements. We then pitched the concept to an international streaming service, leveraging our creative vision and strategic communication skills to present a compelling case for the globally accessible series.

The project demonstrated our ability to adapt literary content for a new digital medium while managing complex logistical and legal aspects.

Cassandra Awards for our news and information mapmakers

“Our news & information landscape has changed. Our mapmakers have changed. ”

— Announcing The Cassandra Awards for civic participators/participatory media/Fifth Estate content creators, dot connectors, and sense makers in our networks

Image: Using AI voice generation for an audio script of numerous quotes from my curated KIP (“Knowledge is Power”) sources on Twitter/Xitter which begin to tell the larger story of this moment, all in 5 minutes. Read the whole transcript here.

Image: This is the conclusion. I announce The Cassandra Awards. You’ve just heard words from some of my nominees.

LISTEN TO THE BIGGER PICTURE

You can listen here or read the transcript with credits here

“You’ve just heard words from some of my nominees.”

— I invite you all to check their receipts.

With The Cassandra Awards and other information interfaces for you to engage with, my passion project KIP aims to re-educate the entire population in digital media literacy, information literacy, digital civic literacy, and help de-program those who have fallen victim to disinformation.

Education in digital civics literacy as a countermeasure to disinformation says Swedish psychological defense research

Take a look at the working paper by professors in Education in Uppsala University and the School of Psychological Science at University of Western Australia.

”The report addresses the critical role of the education system in empowering individuals with the knowledge, skills, and constructive attitudes necessary to navigate a complex and often misleading information landscape.”

Until we learn to be better information consumers, we'll keep falling for disinformation

The day after the 2024 US Election.

Related data points in my timeline:

A certain personality type is found to most readily fall for poor information.

Also, news- information- digital- and media-literacy are teachable and learnable.

We need to help people be better information citizens.

That fact has never been clearer. It’ll help people be better voters, better neighbors, and better able to collectively work on our biggest issues, all the way to the climate crisis. It’s why I keep looking for ways to bring KIP, my passion project of the past 9 years, to the world.

Click on any of the tags below to see my previous posts on these topics which millions are now waking up to today. Click on the headline of each post to open it and see continue clicking on the tags in each post to dive deeper.

The best part of mentorship is seeing what it catalyzes for all of you ❣️

Let's recap

I nominate Stephanie LB @LincolnsBible Black for a Cassandra Award.

Here’s the summer before. 2018.

“Treason is the reason for the season, someone said on Twitter.

I shared it on my Instagram along with contemporary Tweets from Louis Neufeld who was very early on many germane threads that drive our headlines today. Her 2017 threads deserve a receipts challenge. I nominate her for a Cassandra Award.

Information war victims come for the meteorologists

Now they’re coming for the meteorologists. The right wing radio chemtrail folklore spawns death threats.

Another civilian victim of a military grade information war: he threatens to hang a meteorologist for treason. After the election we'll need to rehabilitate the information space and all the people who say "treason" but don't know where to pin it just like all the January 6, 2021 Capitol Attack insurrection dupes that are going to prison.

KIP and projects like it that can rehabilitate consumers of disinformation are greatly needed.

Citywide drill commemorates the Loma Prieta Quake that started the NERT program

Yesterday’s citywide drill for neighborhood emergency response teams in San Francisco noted 35th anniversary of lomaprieta quake, earliest NERT members from Marina … & the Japanese consul general joined (several other countries want to learn from this fire department program!)

Biodiversity hot spot grows 150 native species each year for Golden Gate National Parks

Since 1981, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy has served as the nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, collaborating with the Presidio Trust, partners, donors, and the community to support the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). The GGNRA stretches across three Bay Area counties, north and south of the Golden Gate Bridge, and includes iconic places such as Muir Woods National Monument, Fort Point National Historic Site, Alcatraz Island, Crissy Field, Mori Point, Lands End, and the Presidio of San Francisco.

I volunteer with park staff at the nursery’s indigenous species greenhouses, shade houses and lab for seed processing and sowing.

Presidio Nursery is a cooperative program of Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, National Parks Service, and Presidio Trust.

Since September 2023, I have done transplanting, pruning, and pot washing and look forward to work in the seed lab during winter 🥼 🌱

These are some of the other tasks available for volunteers at the Presidio Nursery:

• seed collection

• seed cleaning

• transplanting

• pruning

• weeding

• composting

• pot washing

• nursery maintenance

• care of an educational garden

The Presidio is a haven for more rare species per acre than all national parks including Yosemite and Yellowstone.

This international biodiversity hot spot grows 150 plant species and 150,000 plants a year for habitat restoration and reforestation around the Presidio and other parks.

Among other places, you can enjoy their plants at the new Tunnel Tops park at Speaker Nancy Pelosi Plaza. Thanks to Pelosi’s initiative to save the Presidio for the people, the Presidio was designated a National Park 30 years ago.

Repopulating the Presidio with almost-extinct manzanita clones one afternoon.

One afternoon we handled newly discovered Franciscan manzanita that had been cloned for repopulating the Presidio with the species. We washed 100 pots for them to be repotted into later (after steaming, sterilizing, bleaching) these plants are the only ones that exist other than the mother plant.

Describing my passion project of 2016-2024

CHECK OUT KIP, IT’S FOR ALL OF US

I have an idea. It’s good for people and good for democracy in the social age. And it’s fun to play?

I noticed we lack the infrastructure to make sense of news and current affairs today, leading to dire real consequences for people and society.

I thought about how I build trust in the sources I follow and ‘play’ the news. I do this for myself every day, as an infovore it’s a calming and even fun way to process what I see out there on my feed… I realized we can do it together with what I’ve built and patterned.

What should journalism do to reveal the state of our democracy?

Here come the CONTENT CREATORS - 400 million impressions at the Democratic National Convention

I feel quite vindicated this month. The central contention of KIP, my passion project of the past decade, is hitting the mainstream. Everybody sees it!

A journalism society talked about feeling insulted this week. Meanwhile, journalists in the mainstream media had their lunch eaten last week by 200 ‘social media influencers’ invited to the Democratic National Convention who reached 400 million impressions (4x what cable news generated) for a media value of $800 million.

What a masterclass in disinter-media-tion. The Democrats went straight to the people.

The mainstream ‘journalism’ hits keep coming, with Dana Bash of CNN recycling racist Trump taunts as if it’s legitimate journalistic work in the first cable news mainstream media interview of the HARRIS WALZ team. Don’t waste our time!

I cannot help but notice these are the very same social media contributors I've been talking about as the non-traditional bridge media we need to connect to traditional journalism, and I conceived a framework to do that with my passion project KIP.

Journalists, it’s long past time for you to stop feeling insulted and get to work connecting with the people who are bringing news to us. They could use your rigor and training and experience, and we will all benefit from it. Democracy demands it.

By the way, I have a plan for that. Take a look at the KIP framework to connect journalists with content creators (I call them the Fifth Estate) and trusted independent parties to vet, frame, and generate discussion, games, research, education and commerce using current events.

My diversity is formative

This extracts the elements of my diversity from a first person essay I wrote on how my diversity was formed.

1. Cultural Background:

• Raised in a progressive hometown that was a Civil Rights hotbed, with a strong anti-Establishment and countercultural influence.

2. Racial and Ethnic Exposure:

• Grew up in an integrated school district, with diverse classmates and teachers from BIPOC and AAPI communities.

3. Gender and Feminism:

• Steeped in inclusive language and feminist instinct from an early age, navigating and challenging sexism throughout life and career.

4. International Experience:

• Lived and worked in numerous American cities and other countries like Italy, Malaysia, Turkey, gaining insights into different cultures and social norms.

5. Socio-Economic Background:

• Experienced the challenges of a lower socio-economic upbringing, providing a unique perspective on privilege and systemic inequality.

6. Religious and Spiritual Diversity:

• Studied transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the age of 9, embracing spiritual practices uncommon among peers.

7. LGBTQIA+ Community Involvement:

• Lived in an almost exclusively LGBTQIA+ environment for eight years, fostering deep connections and understanding of LGBTQIA+ issues.

8. Disability and Health Awareness:

• Inherited sensitivity towards disability and health challenges through familial experiences, notably a father with significant health and social obstacles.

Almost 2 decades of speaking to audiences far, wide, and totally niche!

I’ve enjoyed every minute connecting with the audience at entertainment and publishing industry conferences, universities, business accelerators, cultural organizations, and California’s oldest public affairs forum, The Commonwealth Club. I’ve talked about personal branding with social media, the worst entrepreneurship advice I’ve ever gotten, how to build community online and with content, foreign correspondence or writing from abroad, marketing for startups, the cultural exchange of the Expat Harem, among other specialty topics.

Crazy Rich Asians & the impact of my work: I helped save an architectural gem in Southeast Asia

Remembering the time when I conceived, pitched, wrote, sold, published a three page story in a top newsweekly magazine out of Hong Kong that highlighted a historical building at risk from nearby development to 93,000 elite members of government, business and the arts.

The article had impact.

The year after the article was published, the building won a newly created UNESCO Heritage Award.

To promote the conservation of the greatest diversity of the region’s built heritage, in the year 2000 UNESCO inaugurated the annual Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, a program designed to respond to the question: “Within the realities of contemporary, fast-track development, what of the built heritage do Asians value and want to preserve from the past to inform the region’s place in the global future?”

• quoted from TheSiamSociety.org Lessons from the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation: International Best Practices in Thailand

  Richard Engelhardt, Montira Horayangura Unakul and Julia Davies

In 2018 you saw this historic property in the film Crazy Rich Asians, which used it as a setting.

You know it from Crazy Rich Asians. I championed its story in 1998.