Archive for the ‘excellence’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

OneWebDay 2010 Call to Action: Rebuild/Reboot

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

Today is One Web Day. I still celebrate it in solidarity with the grassroots web even tho the organization behind it has been merged into the #Drumbeat Initiative. The #Drumbeat initiative is a good thing – because defending and (more importantly) extending the open web is something we do daily.

In honor of One Web Day here’s a call to action addressed to all who feel the absence of the great peer networking organizations and online communities that addressed community technology and networking, and to those who joined the field since their zenith.

It is time to Rebuild and Reboot the Network!

Pierre Clark has been doing a great job publicizing DEXCON 2010 (October 29) — and as there has been interest in national/regional coordination and collaboration in the absence of major gatherings (such as the CTCNet Conferences) focused on Digital Inclusion/Digital Excellence and the traditional community tech center, community media and community network concerns, we’ve put together a quick survey to determine feasibility of a Saturday Session for the Chicago DEXCON event.

We’ve already got several affirmative replies, so it looks like it will very likely happen! (Very exciting and much appreciated)

If you have any interest in re-invigorating the field — please do fill out this survey, and do it soon – we need to plan accordingly, all on volunteer steam (feels like the good old days)!

Also, please share this call to action with anyone else you think may have missed the invitation to the survey or the event announcement. Even if you cannot attend, for whatever reason – please check in with us. We’ll be setting up tools to keep the work moving before and after the event and we want to make sure everyone is involved.

We’re looking forward to a new era of open stewardship for our sector!

Warmest Regards,

Michael Maranda
Co-Founder, CDAA

Posted in blogospheric, Chicago, civic entrepreneurship, commons, community, community informatics, excellence, friends, grassroots, Internet, media history, network, one web day, open source, open space, positive media, social justice, social source, strategic roadmapping | No Comments »

Open Stewardship Sessions

Saturday, September 11th, 2010

This has been a big week. On the very day Mayor Daley announced he would not seek another term, Tim Rayner and I issued the first public statement on Open Stewardship – the fruit of many years labor on my part. We collaborated on the document using real-time simultaneous edits from opposite ends of the globe. It was truly a pleasure working with another Philosopher and writer committed to action in the world, and I am tremendously grateful for Tim’s support and his embrace of the model in the Coalition’s work.

This first statement on Open Stewardship is crafted along the lines of an invitation – an invitation to Stewardship. It addresses the audience of the Coalition of the Willing film authored by Tim and produced in an innovative collaborative process led by Simon Robson, and released appropriately in waves.

Open Stewardship has been taken up enthusiastically by my colleagues in the Digital Excellence movement as an expression of the principles that have guided our work since the beginning of our early work towards a Community Benefits Agreement (never realized) and the architecting of the Principles for Digital Excellence. Together we look to the landscape in Chicago and out to the wider global community technology movement and see great opportunity for new models of cooperation and the development of commonly held resources that transform the information-action ecology.

At the Chicago COUNTs NetSquared Camp @IIT (Sept. 12) some friends and I will be facilitating an Open Stewardship Session in the afternoon (from 2-4pm), hoping to arrive at a comparable invitation to Stewardship and field-building in the Chicago Social Benefit Sector. Join us and together we will set the stage for a Chicago Revival.

Open Stewardship is my life’s work, and I invite you to engage me on this.

Posted in blogospheric, Chicago, civic entrepreneurship, commons, community, excellence, gift economy, grassroots, philanthropy, politics | No Comments »

Chicago COUNTs – Sunday, Sept. 12 @IIT

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Join us this Sunday for Chicago COUNTs – a NetSquared Camp! Great for non-profit and social benefit sector and for socially-minded technologists and media mavens.

In the afternoon I’ll be co-facilitating an Open Stewardship Session.

Chicago COUNTs - Sept 12, 2010 Event Flyer

Posted in blogospheric, Chicago, civic entrepreneurship, commons, community, community informatics, excellence, friends, gift economy, grassroots, Illinois, Internet, media history, network, one web day, open space, positive media, public, social justice, social source, strategic roadmapping | 1 Comment »

Practical, Pluralistic, Participatory, Provisional: Pragmatism

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

Chip Bruce reviews david H. Brendel’s book Healing Psychiatry: Bridging the Science/Humanism Divide.

Chip highlights Brendel’s “Four P’s of Pragmatism” – offering an useful explication of the terms and their relevance to Pragmatism:

The first p, practical, emphasizes pragmatism’s insistence on considering the consequences of any concept, to steer away from abstractions and idealizations that have no conceivable effects in our ordinary experience. The second p, pluralistic, reflects the fact that pragmatism is not so much one method or theory, but rather, an approach that considers any tools that may increase understanding, thereby achieving better practical consequences. It also reflects the assumption that interesting phenomena are unlikely to be captured within a simple category or single way of viewing. The third p, participatory, follows from the second in that multiple perspectives, Peirce’s community of inquiry, are needed to accommodate a pluralistic understanding. And the fourth p, provisional (cf. fallibilism), acknowledges that in a complex and ever-changing world, any understanding is subject to change as we learn more or as events occur.

Pragmatism is a major influence on my thought, and a strong influence on my community work. The four P’s work well for me, and are very appropriate to both the kind of science and the kind of civic life we need.

Posted in blogospheric, books, excellence, process, public, semiotic, social justice, theory | No Comments »

eleven enabling rules

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

I found this last week via Will Allen. It is from a presentation by Sharon Vanderkaay of Farrow Partnership. I am struck by how deeply it connects and resonates with Open Stewardship and with the Ten Principles for Digital Excellence (currently under revision – and soliciting input, btw). Emergence is everywhere.

  • Pursue agility and resilience (not predictability)
  • Consciously learn from daily experience
  • Allow solutions to emerge
  • Pull don’t push (or, invite don’t force)
  • Seek diversity
  • Rely on vision and boundaries rather than control
  • Appreciate messiness
  • Expect non-linear progress (ups and downs)
  • Cooperate (rather than compete) to create abundance
  • Promote grassroots initiative
  • Create fully human spaces

Posted in blogospheric, community informatics, excellence, process, theory, thoughts | No Comments »

The Wrong Fight

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

Free Geek Chicago “Statement on Funding”

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

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »