Jeris JC Miller: The Compassionate Action Network’s Social Media Person

Posted by admin

May 18, 2009

Within Seattle, it seems more and more non-profits are adopting social media into their communications arsenal. One example of this is the Puget Sound Blood Center, who’s social media person, Sean DeButts, has been doing an excellent job of using the medium to raise awareness of issues surrounding blood donations, organizing it’s members, and communicating with the public. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit with another social media person doing great work for non-profit organizations in our community. Please let me introduce to you Jeris JC Miller of the Compassionate Action Network.

Thank you again, Jeris, for giving me the opportunity to come chat with you. I had a great time.

The Basics

1. What is your name?
Jeris JC Miller

2. E-mail?
dakini_3@hotmail.com or jerism@msn.com

3. What is your occupation/company?
Seattle Children’s Hospital, where I support the Chief Medical Information Officer and the Clinical Nurse Specialist Knowledge Holders in Clinical Care Guidelines and Clinical Policy web development effort.

4. Originally from? When and how did you end up in the Greater Seattle area? (if applicable)
A suburb 20 minutes south of Portland (Lake Oswego, OR).

5. How can people find you on the web?
LinkedIn, Heart of Matter Blog, Compassionate Action Network (CAN).

Social Media

6. Why do you like social media?
I honestly believe that Seattle is ground zero for a 21^st-century, humanistic, social media revolution. I believe that Seattle is poised to lead the way in a new kind of technology revolution based on sustainable business practices and commerce balanced with compassion.

7. How do you utilize social media?
At the moment, I am focused on digital storytelling in a variety of formats. I am also filming humanitarians and insightful scientific thinkers and podcasting their seminars.

8. What is one thing that mainstream population should know about social media?
That beneath the apparent noise, there is a subtle organization.

9. If people follow you on Twitter, what can they expect?
I tell the truth from the center of my heart… it’s the best I can do.

10. How would you describe the social media scene in Seattle?
Ripening into an explosive global force.

11. Do you remember your social media “wow” moment? What was it?
I was sitting in front of TweetDeck one night and experienced a “perceptual shift” or an “Aha” moment… I was sitting back watching all of these amazing, unique, and brilliant people connect and converse with one another in very simple clear statements. I perceived a subtle underlying organizing order beneath the apparent “chaos” of “Twitter noise.” ”What a repository of original thought!… It’s poetry in motion!” That was my “Aha” moment!

12. Are you currently working on any projects which involve the use of social media? If so, what are they?
Digital storytelling projects on behalf of CAN and filming and podcasting humanitarians and global thinkers.

13. Are there any social media events or conferences in the future you would like to let people know about?
#sxswi Austin, TX. Gnomedex.

Just For Fun

14. What are your hobbies?
Writing, photography, meditation, yoga, bicycling, wine (Pinot Noir).

15. Favorite vacation spot?
France, Dharamsala, India, and Bhutan.

16. Things to do there?
Barge trip through Burgundy while I bicycle between Chateaux!

17. Favorite restaurant in Seattle?
Dahlia Lounge (If I’m in the mood for art food).

18. What is your favorite food?
Salmon and crab.

19. Favorite things to do in Seattle in the summer?
Bike over to Discovery Park; listen to amazing music all over this city!

20. Most embarrassing CD you own?
Undoubtedly something by Sting… if my punk friends knew, they would confiscate my black nail polish….

21. Any hidden talents?
None that have manifested so far… but I’m a work in progress… you never know!

22. What would you like everyone to know about you? Other interesting facts?
Although I am a very ordinary person, I have an extraordinary gift of being at the “right place, at the right time, with the right skills.” As a result of this gift, I have worked with and been influenced by some of the most visionary thinkers of my generation:

His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama and His Holiness the XVII Karmapa
I have been very gifted to receive Chenrezi(g) Vows, whose root teaching is Compassion from the Dalai Lama (1993) and the 17th Karmapa (2008).
Lynn Margulis
Co-Author of the Gaia Hypothesis (with James E Lovelock). Margulis & Lovelock’s pioneering non-linear dynamical system research on the interconnection of the earth’s biosphere with the world’s oceans provides much of the scientific underpinning for Al Gore’s Earth In Balance and An Inconvenient Truth.
Riane Eisler
The Chalice & the Blade and The Real Wealth of Nation’s author provides a compelling look at re-thinking prehistory and the rise of dominator cultures to the present while challenging our existing notions of what an American Partnership System of Governance could look like.
Ellen J Langer
Renowned Harvard Social Psychology professor and Counter Clockwise author, whose groundbreaking research on aging determined that much of our culture’s aging process is dependent upon social cues!
Richard J Davidson: Pioneer of the field of Affective Neuroscience
I first saw Dr. Davidson present his breakthrough research results at MIT in 2003 at a Mind & Life Institute Conference with the Dalai Lama. Davidson’s research suggests that advanced meditation practitioners develop synaptic connections, which introduces the notion of brain neuroplacticity as well as highly stabilized cognitive brain states in advanced meditators.
Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins
I have been heavily influenced by DC hardcore’s dynamic duo MacKaye and Rollins. MacKaye left Teen Idles and went on to found Minor Threat, Fugazi, The Evens, and Discord Records, and Rollins went from the Idles-sometimes-roadie to SOA, Black Flag, Rollins Band, Spoken Word, and hosting The Henry Rollins Show on the Independent Film Channel. MacKaye and Rollins are founders of DC Hardcore Straight Edge DIY movement, which significantly influenced Noah Levine and Brad Warner’s Dharmapunks writing and my own dharmapunXX writing which also borrows heavily from Olympia, WA, RiotGrrrl.