Diving Into Diversity

I'm late to post! What a week. For the last few months I've been working on another magazine. It's called Spectrum: Celebrating Diversity in the Madison Area, and we'll publish it in January, along with the regular issue of Madison Magazine. We'll also overprint 70,000 of them for you to pick up at key spots around the city and region. Finally, the businesses sponsoring the publication will integrate it into their recruitment and retainment portfolios.

Initiated by an up-and-coming business collaboration called the Madison Area Diversity Roundtable, the magazine is the first of its kind in the community. Not only will it highlight the broad diversity we enjoy here in Madison, it will shine a more inclusive light on how we live, work and play together. All of us. Black and white. Young and old. Gay and straight. Walking and wheelchair-bound. Academics like Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class and Who's Your City?) and business consultants like Madison’s own Rebecca Ryan (Live First, Work Second) are showing us how and why it's to our economical advantage to place a high priority on diverse communities and workplaces. Now it's our turn to show what it could look like.

I'm excited that former Cap Times web editor Shauna Rhone has signed on to write and edit a large portion of it. Her resume is impressive, and she understands and appreciates Spectrum’s goals. Shauna and I have gotten to know each other over the last year or so as part of another cool project, Race & Media Forums. Coordinated by The Center for Democracy in Action, the program brings together members of the media with people and institutions of color for social and professional conversation and networking. We'll feature the forums in Spectrum, along with a lot of other exciting and innovative ways Madison is embracing diversity.

Lately Madison has also embraced the Brewers with a fervor I’ve never experienced in my fourteen years living in Wisconsin. That’s why I’m spending the weekend reading the recently released book, Brewers Essential: Everything You Need To Know To Be A Real Fan, by Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I need to play some serious catch up on the team and its history, plus I’m going to interview Tom for my next blog. This Virginia girl has her work cut out for her to earn her "real fan" stripes.