WHAT'S SOCALMINDS ABOUT?

Intriguing stuff happens daily for tens of thousands of Southern Californians -- in classrooms, labs, libraries, galleries and concert and rehearsal halls -- as they go about their hectic lives and labors in one of the globe's intellectual capitals.

But how to keep tabs on all the interesting people, ideas, research and activities bubbling up in the region's booming colleges, universities, think tanks and other cultural and intellectual institutions?

Sure, you could set aside precious time to peruse the excellent web presences of any of these places. You'd find terrific material by sorting through the many tiered and layered presentations.

Or SoCalMinds can do this work for you.

We're pleased to give you a snapshot of the solid reporting, writing and multimedia postings of institutional information pros across the Southland -- all eager to ensure that important work gets the public attention it merits.

It's vital to note that what's earning the spotlight isn't conjecture, bloviating or rant. It is the product of careful, thoughtful, hard work, thinking and research -- often rigorous study that has been subjected to intense peer review and criticism before publication in serious places. Further, we're pointing you to reports that were produced by communications pros and vetted by the institutions and thinkers and scholars themselves.

We're not claiming to cover the material, people or places as traditional news and as a great newspaper or journalistic institution might report it; we're not going to give you excessive commentary or spin.

This report was launched by a Big 10-educated recovering journalist and a screen-writing Ivy alum; the posts are written by the former journo, who takes that credit and blame. We're not on the faculty or staff of any of the institutions we're writing about. We're hoping to be skeptics, not cynics; we're enthusiasts for smart folks doing interesting, important work with their brains. And because we've got a couple decades between us invested in this area, we care a lot about our community.

We hope you want to know more from or to discuss stuff with its originators. We won't inundate you with everything we see -- which is a lot -- and we want you to be tantalized sufficiently so you go to the places where we find stuff. We're making no claims on others' materials, especially by trying to copy it; we'll post photos or other stuff only with great care and credit. Let us know if we've goofed, gaffed or overstepped boundaries and we'll aim to correct it, asap.

We're looking for ways you can further organize and get fed the stuff we find across a spectrum of interests. And we're always eager to hear if you have stuff you think we should highlight or that we're missing and shouldn't.

The Editors

Contact us at: socalminds@gmail.com