The Meeting of the Minds Peer-to-Peer Publishing
Meeting of the Minds catalyzes the transition to sustainable, equitable cities through a unique peer-to-peer publishing platform at MeetingoftheMinds.org. Articles are written by urban practitioners and delivered to the inboxes of other urban practitioners — elected officials, CEOs, executive directors, heads of agencies, start-ups, academics, budget-holders, and decision makers.
Join our worldwide network by subscribing to our email list. And read on to learn how you can submit your own article for publication on MeetingoftheMinds.org.
Recent Articles
Middle-Mile Networks: The Middleman of Internet Connectivity
The development of public, open-access middle mile infrastructure can expand internet networks closer to unserved and underserved communities while offering equal opportunity for ISPs to link cost effectively to last mile infrastructure. This strategy would connect more Americans to high-speed internet while also driving down prices by increasing competition among local ISPs.
In addition to potentially helping narrow the digital divide, middle mile infrastructure would also provide backup options for networks if one connection pathway fails, and it would help support regional economic development by connecting businesses.
Wildfire Risk Reduction: Connecting the Dots
One of the most visceral manifestations of the combined problems of urbanization and climate change are the enormous wildfires that engulf areas of the American West. Fire behavior itself is now changing. Over 120 years of well-intentioned fire suppression have created huge reserves of fuel which, when combined with warmer temperatures and drought-dried landscapes, create unstoppable fires that spread with extreme speed, jump fire-breaks, level entire towns, take lives and destroy hundreds of thousands of acres, even in landscapes that are conditioned to employ fire as part of their reproductive cycle.
ARISE-US recently held a very successful symposium, “Wildfire Risk Reduction – Connecting the Dots” for wildfire stakeholders – insurers, US Forest Service, engineers, fire awareness NGOs and others – to discuss the issues and their possible solutions. This article sets out some of the major points to emerge.
Innovating Our Way Out of Crisis
Whether deep freezes in Texas, wildfires in California, hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, or any other calamity, our innovations today will build the reliable, resilient, equitable, and prosperous grid tomorrow. Innovation, in short, combines the dream of what’s possible with the pragmatism of what’s practical. That’s the big-idea, hard-reality approach that helped transform Texas into the world’s energy powerhouse — from oil and gas to zero-emissions wind, sun, and, soon, geothermal.
It’s time to make the production and consumption of energy faster, smarter, cleaner, more resilient, and more efficient. Business leaders, political leaders, the energy sector, and savvy citizens have the power to put investment and practices in place that support a robust energy innovation ecosystem. So, saddle up.
Preferred Types of Content
There are two kinds of content that we prefer to publish – thought leadership and blueprint sharing.
Thought Leadership
At Meeting of the Minds, thought leadership is defined as fact-based, authoritative opinion that presents novel, innovative ideas meant to inspire, challenge, and influence the reader toward positive change in the sustainability and equity of cities.
Blueprint Sharing
In this type of content, you discuss a successful project that you personally worked on. What was the problem? How did you solve it? What do others need to know to use the same solution? The emphasis here is on sharing scalable, replicable, transferrable solutions to our cities greatest challenges.
“The Six Rules” for Meeting of the Minds Publishing
In order to pass editorial review, your submission must adhere to all six of the following rules.
- Submissions must be greater than 800 words, but less than 2,000.
- Absolutely no advertising copy or press-releases.*
- Articles should be exclusive to MeetingoftheMinds.org and not previously published online.
- Articles should be written in a non-academic, conversational tone.
- Include, whenever possible, bullet-point lists, short paragraphs, and the judicious use of bold and italics.
- Images, videos and hyperlinks are encouraged.
*Note that #2 is the rule broken most frequently. We understand, of course, that writing an article for MeetingoftheMinds.org is likely part of a larger marketing strategy for your organization, but overt sales pitches are inappropriate for the platform. Find a way to tell your story without the advertising.
Why Write for Meeting of the Minds?
Our publishing platform is exclusively written by busy professionals working in a fast-paced industry. We know that you have a lot on your calendar, and that committing to write for Meeting of the Minds is a big ask.
So why should you spend time on this?
Reach Influential Decision Makers
Our audience is a lot like you — working professionals interested in wonky, detailed descriptions of ideas and projects happening in the urban sustainability and smart cities industry. They are executive and senior level leaders interested in staying up-to-date with the newest innovations in the industry, and looking for the “big picture.”
In fact, a recent survey of our website audience showed that 80% of our readers are either executive level, senior level, or CEOs at their organizations. And the majority of them stated that their preferred method of engagement with Meeting of the Minds was reading articles online. You can see more results of that survey at this link.
Third-party Validation
Meeting of the Minds is an independent, non-profit knowledge-sharing platform partnered with trailblazing organizations in the public, private, academic, non-profit and philanthropic sectors. Our mission is to connect people and ideas working at the leading edge of urban sustainability, in order to catalyze positive change in cities worldwide.
There is a community of people looking to us to find and spotlight the trends and innovations happening in this space, and our website is your opportunity to present your thoughts to this community — backed by the validation of our platform.
Editorial Assistance
When you sit down to write for Meeting of the Minds, the question you should be asking yourself is this: “What knowledge do I possess that can help advance the social, economic, and environmental sustainability of cities? What do I know that others don’t?”
The progress of environmental sustainability in cities is accelerated by the flow of information between people. And when you want to communicate this information to our audience, you are not alone. We have dedicated staff to help you craft your message. From basic things, like fixing typos, to larger issues of tone and substance, we are here to help.
Promotion
Your article will be emailed to more than 25,000+ people on our email list. It will be deployed on all of our social media channels, and re-deployed on our social media feeds at regular intervals for the next two years. Your article will be archived on all of the major search engines, and may even rank on the first page of search queries related to your topic.
We encourage you to amplify these efforts by sending your own social media posts, engaging in the article comments, and enlisting the help of your marketing team.
Ready to submit an article?
In order to submit your article to the Meeting of the Minds Editorial Team, you will need to use our Article Submission form. Click the “Submit an Article” button to begin.
Additional tips
The Meeting of the Minds audience is a smart and busy group of people. In order to get their attention the content you write has to be readable, valuable, and compelling.
What’s the best way to grab the attention of our audience? Here are some general tips.
Do not begin with an overview of urbanism
We know they world’s population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050. We know that the world’s population is moving to cities, and that, by 2050, over two-thirds (68%) of the world’s population is expected to live in cities. Our audience arrives with this knowledge. Please do not start your submission with these, or similar, statistics.
Write a good headline
This is something our editing team will help you with, but you should think about it, too. We share our content through social media, newsletters, RSS feeds, and any other way we can. Most of the people that we’re able to reach in this way only see the headline, then click to read more. That means we need to come up with a very compelling headline.
Note: please keep headlines to 60 characters or less.
Give away secrets
Not proprietary information, of course, but you have to give the audience something of value. They are giving you their time, and they hope to be rewarded with information they haven’t heard before and can’t get anywhere else. So tell them a secret. Give them an insight that only you know. Break a paradigm. Challenge their thinking.
Write for screens, not for paper
Studies have shown that people’s reading habits are different when they read from a screen than when they read from a piece of paper. We can expect that no one will print out your article to read it, so we can expect that your audience will see your content on a screen. You should, then, tailor your writing to what works best on a screen.
There was a great article in Slate magazine years ago that explains this in more detail, but here is the gist of it:
- Write smaller paragraphs – on a screen, even 1 sentence can be a paragraph. Eye-tracking tests show that most people skip over large blocks of text when reading on screens.
- Use bullet-point lists – we’re doing it right now. Doesn’t this make it easier to read?
- Use bold, links and italics to emphasize content – of course you don’t want people to skim your article…but they inevitably will. Help them find the important parts by emphasizing them with formatting and links.
- Break your article up with explanatory subheaders – Sectionalize your article with subheaders that explain what each section is about.
- Write less – as we said above, you should keep your articles over 600 words, but under 2,000. Studies show that readers start to get restless after 1,000 words or so.
That will get your started. Remember that you’re not on your own with this, our editing team will help you shape your article to fit our audience and our guidelines. We’ll work together to make sure your voice is heard in the Meeting of the Minds network.
Reposting your article
The copyright and ownership of your article remains with you when you publish on MeetingoftheMinds.org. That means that you are welcome to repost your article on your website or other websites. However, we ask that you wait 7 days before reposting, and include the following text at the top of the article:
This article originally appeared on MeetingoftheMinds.org.