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).
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?
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Julia M. Stasch for her service to our city in chairing the Mayor’s Advisory Council and shepherding this visionary and historical document.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.
| You are invited to co-create the 4th Annual Chicago Conference for Good. PLEASE join us, bring friends and add spirit! Share this invitation with neighbors and colleagues, people you’d like to connect or reconnect with this July! | |||
|
“…cuz people |
|||
|
Localizing Global Change:
Issues and Opportunities |
|||
|
|
|||
What kind of stuff have we been doing?
|
The momentum of community is rising. Please join us! …for More and More. More and more people. More and more resources. More and more easy. More and more connected. More and more green. More and more power to do good things, in more and more local neighborhoods and organizations.Three years ago, some of us convened a small but national conference on the future of philanthropy, technology and community action. Two years ago, more of us joined in to create a second and international conference which was also the first-ever omidyar.net members conference. Last year we did it again, and along the way these conversations have sparked half a dozen more conferences and action on at least four continents.All the while, you’ve been busy doing all the things you do to try make the world a better place, and you’ve been noticing that more and more people are getting together for global community good. This year’s global gathering in Chicago is going to focus on “doingâ€. All good work. All kinds of local action. We welcome good people from everywhere to join with people we are actively inviting who are “doing†in Chicago neighborhoods. Bring your own local doing to share. We want to do more and more in all localities, and to do it more together.This year’s conference will follow the same simple and active format as all the previous conferences. We’ll gather for one big opening, create a working agenda that includes all of our most important issues and questions, meet with friends and colleagues to actively address everything on the agenda, document and publish our notes online, and head back out into all the things we are doing with more energy, more clarity and more connections.
The momentum of community is rising. Please join us! WHEN? July 19-22, 2007 …music and barbecue on Thursday night, conference all day Friday and Saturday, finishing by noon on Sunday, with airport drop-offs or excursions for out-of-towners on Sunday afternoon. WHERE? General Robert E. Wood Boys & Girls Club, 2950 W. 25th Street, Chicago IL 60623 WHO SHOULD COME? Anyone who wants to get more and more into community, technology, environment, and other social justice kinds of work and practice. Anyone who wants to make more and more connections between all these sorts of things. And anyone who wants to have more and more fun and friends in the process of community leadership. WHAT TO BRING? Food to eat/share, materials to show/share, ideas and questions, issues and projects that you care about and want to inform and be informed by others AND a total of $40 (scholarships may be available) to pay for basic costs of site and materials for all three days of meetings. NOW WHAT? Send an email to register@globalchicago.net (or any other address we like), make a payment at paypal (details forthcoming), forward this invitation to friends and colleagues, people you work with — and people you want to work with. we’ll send you details about places and times and be glad to answer any other questions. Stay tuned to www.GlobalChicago.net for more information. CO-CONVENERS? Ted Ernst, Christina Jordan, Michael Maranda, Hermilo Hinojosa, Kachina Katrina Zavalney, Pierre Clark, Julie Peterson, Jean Russell, Dave Chakrabarti, and You… |
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:Â http://nonprofiteer.typepad
.com/the_nonprofiteer/2007/06 /dear_nonprofite.html#comment -72142198 (thanks, Nonprofiteer, for the kind words).
The continuing debate lives here:Â http://www.tacticalphilanthropy
.com/2007/05/some_nonprofits .html#comment-71226258 and here:Â 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.Â
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.
Next up on my reading list is (Gore’s latest book) The Assault on Reason.
Gore has taken on the most important issues of the day: the environment, the politics of media, public life. These are grounded in the big questions of living together on this planet. His tone is measured. Had the Supreme Court handled the 2000 elections other than they did, would Gore be the Statesman he is now?
