Hello, I'm Colin 👋🏼
I'm a civic entrepreneur, community builder and artist exploring how media and technology can strengthen our relationships with each other and the places we live.
For 25 years, my work has explored how people can have more agency over the stories, ideas and relationships that shape our communities - from participatory media and Creative Commons, to Louder and Change.org, to my current work in relational technology and place-based civic renewal.
I'm a proud father of two young kids, and my family lives in West Sonoma County, CA among the redwoods near where the river meets the ocean.
Deepening Relations
During this period of converging crises, my work has evolved to explore our ongoing relationships to each other, to our sense of place, and across time.
The River Remembers
Remembering as a Practice of Togethering
A community storytelling series bringing archival images and video to life alongside stories from longtime residents. The work has grown beyond the events into a wider practice of place-based storytelling and civic renewal - connecting community memory with gathering, belonging, and shaping the future of West Sonoma County communities. Learn more >>
Relational Futures
Technology for a more relational world
Exploring how we might strengthen our capacity to understand our communities, cultivate recriprocal relationships, and develop shared understandings of reality. As a steward and participant in communities of practice around civic media and the emerging field of relational technology, I'm exploring new tools for the civic information actors and community stewards who help connect people, knowledge, and possibility.
Powers of Time
Exploring the relative speed of existence
A creative project exploring how different animals and other beings experience time. The vision for this project is to produce immersive experiences that enable people to expand empathy and appreciate the relative speeds of life. Learn more >>
Internet Dreams
Coming of age in the early 2000s, I was an early believer in participatory media, and helped pioneer creative commons and crowdfunding as ways to give people more power over what gets promoted in culture.
Making Change Louder
Crowdfunded Reach for Artists and Activists
First launched in 2010 with crowdfunded billboards and TV ads, we had an audacious vision to build a world in which regular citizens have the power to choose which voices and stories get promoted. Our innovations and learnings in crowd promotion resulted in Louder being acquired in 2015 by Change.org, where I served as a senior product leader for nearly a decade. Learn more >>
Premixing the Commons
Exploring tensions in intellectual property
An early pioneer of Creative Commons highlighted by its founder Larry Lessig, my words and music have been used by 100s of digital artists, resulting in two collaboratively produced “Premixed” albums and a 10 city “Free Culture” tour to major conferences and universities throughout the US, with stops in Mexico, France, and Singapore. Learn more >>
Participatory Pop Culture
Live show in London with social integration
In the early days of Twitter, I led a project at R/GA London between Rihanna and my client at Nokia. A first of its kind - the event was a multi-channel experience that included online fan tweets that were screened and broadcast live on screens at the show, which was also livestreamed on the Nokia site. Case study video >>
Personal Expression
My songs and poetry have served as ways of digesting my experience and trying to listen for the wisdom in these complicated times.
The Benefits / Good Works Slow
An album written over two decades
An album of songs written over two decades that I recorded at Tiny Telephone after the birth of my first child in 2015. Listen on Spotify >>
Language of My Reality
We are a generation raised on media
Spoken word piece from 2005 that has been used in over 30 remixes. "I am speaking the language of my reality, images expressed, the distinctions between, the experience of moments of illegality, and the slanted views of what they mean." See the piece >>
Who Gets to Live in Peace?
Poetry + Photography in Durham, NC
In 1999, I drove around with a unit of the Durham police department as part of a class with the Center for Documentary Studies. This video includes my photographs along with words reflecting my experience with these communities at the edge of the law. Learn more >>
Idioteque 9/11
Video mashup from Brooklyn 2001
Mashup video made for a drag king performance in Nov 2001 that uses photography, archival and news footage, and ads to show a powerful interpretation of global events before and since 9/11. Watch the video >>
The Archive
Some additional projects, talks, songs, and videos from the past.
Social Good Tech Week talk exploring the high hopes and unfortunate truths about how social media and our relationship to advertising has evolved.
A presentation after two weeks in India with INSEAD business school a spoken word piece about my learnings that has been remixed into a song.
A TEDx talk and performance from 2010 the explores the creative possibilities and challenges in a world of shared content.
Affiliations
Many teachers, mentors, and communities and have helped educate me over the years. Below are some of them.
Institute for the Future
Social Good Fellow
THNK
Creative Leadership Program
Reforge
Product leadership courses
INSEAD
MBA inGlobal Business
Duke
BA in Public Policy StudiesLet's Collaborate
Say hello, I'd love to learn more about what you're working on.
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