wrythings

Josh Breitbart blogs a warning to all who seek digital inclusion or more (perhaps excellence) for their community, here: Horizontal vs. Hub-and-Spoke Relations, or The Emperor has no Invisible Thread. The bottom line: unless your city has character and backbone, and cares for the people, the people will be ill-served by the network they get.

There are no tangents in holistic approaches to technology and community, so please bear with me as I tug that thread metaphor in another important direction.

Robust networks/redundancy; generosity/capacity.

Consider this image (evoked by Breitbart’s commentary on the as-yet missing (but promised) invisible thread): Sidney J. Mussberger (the character in the Hudsucker Proxy played by Paul Newman) dangling upside down at the ledge of a skyscraper reflecting on the need for the robust redundancy of a double stitch as the seam at his waist begins to give.

Mussberger (Newman) reflects on his (stingy/cynical) scoffing at his tailor’s suggestion of the double-stitch for his hand-tailored trousers. When a single-stitch will do, why spend more? He regards the tailor’s suggestion as an unnecessary expense and worse, an attempt to rip him off.

(Warning: Minor spoiler!) Mussberger’s pants don’t give way at the moment he needs them to hold together most. The Tailor generously gave him the double-stitch anyway.

What lessons to draw?

Along with tying our communities together in many horizontal relations (Neff and Philadephia’s “invisible thread”), and assurances of digital inclusion and economic development benefits there are public safety needs related to these networks. (We should explore how horizontality in planning and design would strengthen those purposes.) Robust, redundant networks are critical to public safety. Or, consider the demonstrated value of a small cadre of community wireless networkers post Katrina. (The lesson there being, volunteer knowledge and technical capacity, and the freedom to act in the deployment of networks is just as critical.)

We are being promised a lot of things in the selling of broadband and wireless networks. We had best make sure we are getting what we pay for and that we are prepared to pay enough. I wouldn’t bank my hopes on the generosity of the network vendors. Get what you need and get it in writing, then get it verified. You don’t want to be left in regret or wonder when hanging by a thread.

Peter gave us the heads up on the first fruits from the Minneapolis Wireless Community Benefits Agreement. The Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Fund, supported by wireless network revenues and vendor contributions has put out a first request for proposals for innovative digital inclusion and access activities. Meanwhile Chicagoans await word on a city-driven grant process initiated early this year (and indefinitely stalled).

(Minneapolis) Digital Inclusion Fund RFP

Kaliya asks: When the 9/11 of the net happens what will we do?

We’ve been living with the politics of fear for a long time. It’s a ham-handed strategy for social control. This politics of fear is a misdirection… we all know that we need to be wary of those claiming to protect us. I certainly agree with the call to Organize, and to Organize now… but my doubt in this is whether we can truly rally sufficient support to defend the character of the Internet and all our beloved ‘Net freedoms when our society has been willing to let go of our basic but hard fought civil rights.

Nothing happening in the Midwest?

http://www.joinliveearth.org/

The long awaited report from the Mayor’s Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide was released Friday June 15th at the Community Media Summit convened by the Benton Foundation and the Community Media Workshop under the title The City that NetWorks: Transforming Society and Economy Through Digital Excellence.

Digital Excellence is both means and end for Chicago as the City of Excellence. The Chicago Digital Access Alliance (CDAA) had a large hand in bringing this vision into the public sphere. We’ll turn a critical eye to the details of the report, as is our duty, but for now we celebrate it’s release and the vision that has been established, and we offer our deepest gratitude to Julia M. Stasch for her service to our city in chairing the Mayor’s Advisory Council and shepherding this visionary and historical document.

Stay tuned for analysis and response.

While at NetSquared Y2 there was a tension between certain perspectives around profit, narrow-sense sustainability and the non-profit sector. Dave C. shared some links with his fellows in the grassroots and philanthropic sectors, asking for us to get to work on our language and conceptual schema to defend what is in fact different about what we do.

At the NetSquared conference recently, there was a comment made by a venture capitalist that “Some nonprofits just suck”.  This was partially attached to a discussion of nonprofit sustainability models, with a very large portion of participants taking it for granted that “sustainability” meant charging for services. There is an entrenched view that foundation grant funding and other donations can never be “sustainable”, and that there must be a return on services offered that eventually sustains the organization financially.

I responded to much of this. There’s a synopsis on the Nonprofiteer: http://nonprofiteer.typepad.com/the_nonprofiteer/2007/06/dear_nonprofite.html#comment-72142198

(thanks, Nonprofiteer, for the kind words).

The continuing debate lives here: http://www.tacticalphilanthropy.com/2007/05/some_nonprofits.html#comment-71226258

and here: http://www.tacticalphilanthropy.com/2007/06/philanthropic_c.html#comment-72140764

…and other comment threads on the Tactical Philanthropy site and elsewhere.

Coming under fire for offering services for free, by nonprofit funders who do not seem to understand the difference between “mission-driven” and “profit-driven”, forces me to suggest that we, as a sector, need to develop stronger language regarding these issues. Most of all, we need to work towards a different model of sustainability, so that we can pose alternate definitions when a potential funder equates “sustainability” with a system based on marginal returns for services offered. 

So my question is: “How do we measure sustainability if we’re mission-focused (nonprofit) instead of profit-focused (for profit)?”.

And related: “How do we communicate the difference to the venture capitalist, foundation, and other donor communities who we’re hoping will support our work?”.

In both cases, by “we” I mean all of us mailing list denizens, not our organization in particular.

Responses appreciated. Backup on Tactical Phil would be awesome (I think I’m outnumbered).

Dave.

Phil C. took up that flag long ago, but here’s a current link in response to this: Gift Hub: Something Here Certainly Does Suck

The key for me in the framing of these questions is whether one limits one’s view to the organizational boundary as one views each exchange or transmission of value, or whether one holds an ecological perspective on the flows and is able to see a variety of significant flows.