On a Mission

August 26th, 2010

Here’s my personal mission statement:

remake fields with tools and provisioned spaces;
open the path to a more fluid, functional and open society;
design tools and services that integrate the field
- making us visible to each other in value and success.

Posted in blogospheric, civic entrepreneurship, commons, community, ethos, gift economy, grassroots, positive media, public, social justice, thoughts | No Comments »

The Wrong Fight

August 24th, 2010

Brough Turner says Network Neutrality is the wrong fight – I strongly agree – we should have been fighting for Common Carriage all along! This is a point I’ve been making for some time now.

However, the best way to fight is for communities to deploy their own networks and to interconnect them.

Posted in Internet, blogospheric, commons, excellence, media history, mythbusting, network, wireless | No Comments »

Free Geek Chicago “Statement on Funding”

August 20th, 2010

The folks at Free Geek Chicago have offered perhaps the most ethical, honest and authentic statement on funding in the non profit world.

Here’s an excerpt from their Community Funding Statement outlining their experience of funding relationships:

  • External funding means someone else decides your organization’s priorities: A funder’s priorities may or may not match the desires and needs of a community or help to fulfill an organization’s mission.
  • Fund-raising is work: Funding and fund-raising requires skill and creates organizational overhead to seek and manage money.
  • Funding obscures failure: Bad ideas can live on as long as they attract funding or make for good public relations.
  • Funding is an exchange, like any other: Funding has strings attached, whether organizations choose to discuss them or not.
  • Funders are often “trendy”: Especially in information technology, grants follow intellectual fads and forgo long-term perspective.

The entire document is certainly worth a read, and they are worthy of community support. If I had a chunk of cash on hand, I’d send it over no strings attached.

Posted in Chicago, GIO, Illinois, Internet, civic entrepreneurship, community, ethos, excellence, gift economy, grassroots, network, news, philanthropy, positive media, social justice | No Comments »

How do you keep tabs on Chicago?

January 31st, 2010

How do you keep tabs on Chicago? Sites, sources, strategies and tools welcome! Share here or at the Chicago Region Civic Forum or blog it!

Posted in Chicago, civic garden, commons, community, community informatics, grassroots, public, tools | No Comments »

Chicago Region Civic Forum

January 29th, 2010

What’s the next stage for the Digital Excellence movement? How can we better connect our respective efforts, and better serve the city and region in which we make our lives?

Recently, CityCamp was convened in Chicago. It brought people from all over the continent and from as far away as the UK. It also brought a lot of Chicagoans out of the woodwork. There are aspirations for a more locally focused event.

It’s time to advance a synoptic view of our efforts in Chicago …. we need to map our mutual efforts and when describing our separate efforts to each other and to others, to do it in a way that paints a picture of how we are connected.

Towards that end, I implore you to join with me in advancing Civic Discourse and Collaboration in the Chicago Region, utilizing the e-democracy.org platform and model.

There are several things that need to be done:

  1. Sign up here at the Chicago Region Civic Forum (CRCF) and post a self introduction http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/chicago
    Also, acquaint yourself with the general e-democracy.org model. Feel free to ask questions.
  2. Regularly share news, events and ideas pertinent to the issues of our fair City, and respond in a civic spirit to the unfolding conversation. Make this a part of your routine. Put your issues on the table!
  3. Actively invite others to participate. We need to take this to the streets.
  4. Entreat public office holders, candidates and their staff to join the forum. Our voices will be that much more likely to inform public policy.
  5. Help establish community and neighborhood level local issues forums for more locally focused topics. I’ll help any group that commits to this aim. If you are ready to take this one on… join the Chicago Team Coordinating Forum here: http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/chicago-team and let’s take a hold of our democracy.

Posted in Chicago, Illinois, civic entrepreneurship, commons, community, community informatics, excellence, grassroots, politics, positive media, process, public, social justice | No Comments »

Somewhere out there, in infinite play

January 29th, 2010

We don’t have to go very far (if at all) to connect Inquiry and Play.

Here’s something fun I invite you all to explore and join in with if you are so moved: http://ow.ly/11y6A

These short URLs tell you next to nothing so I’ll offer a little context.

There’s a group of people I know convened together in open space in the cause of the “metacurrency project (MCP)” … their cause is heavily shaped by the question of play. There are technical dimensions to their work, but their work is aimed at making new things possible for humanity. If I could, I’d be with them now. I’m with them in spirit.

One quick point of entry to their world view (and my own) is in the contrast between Scarcity and Abundance as dominant meme. This is about the attitude in which we engage each other more than about how many resources their are in the world at any given moment. (It’s also a question of not being dominated by this contrast of scarcity and abundance.)

Even accepting some finitude, or relative finitude: as human’s in the application of intelligence we are meant to conduct ourselves in a stewardly manner towards life… that is to say, our behavior should be generative.

So, even though this group is in part engaged in a technical question – building software and protocol under the MCP effort – the larger challenges are social and ideational: how we might live together… opening the space not to offer a final answer, but to situate us in generative spaces of inquiry and infinite play… where the burdensome quality of tasks slip away and joy comes to the fore and where we collectively and selectively form responses and rules with a freedom to mutually adapt ourselves and the rules.

On the voicethreads platform you can add your own voice and your own vision.

Posted in Internet, civic entrepreneurship, commons, community informatics, excellence, flow, fun, gift economy, mythbusting, open space, philanthropy, positive media, tech development | No Comments »

The Convenient Fiction of the Corporate Person

January 24th, 2010

The Corporate Person was created as a Convenient Fiction, useful for some particular purposes, a nicety of Law (with narrow charter and duration too!). Our Frankenstein’s monster has been accorded perpetual life. Time to pull the plug on the metaphor: we’ve since matured past the need for the legal fiction. Use them for narrow purpose and accept their rights are a subset of our own.

Posted in blogospheric, media history, mythbusting, news, politics, public, social justice, theory, thoughts | No Comments »

« Older Entries