wrythings

So much to say! I have been a fan of the Grass Commons vision (not to mention the team) for some time. So much so, I’ve recently joined their Board!

When I first learned of the vision to develop the Network of Integrated Consumer Knowledge - NICK I was stunned. It’s something we clearly need. I thought: how the heck are we going to get there? It takes some chutzpah to even dream this thing, but that is exactly what we need more of. And we do need NICK. Though it looks to be a long-range project, it may be better to think of NICK as establishing a standard and a technology for sharing consumer knowledge. That’s what I like about it. The Open API for Consumer Knowledge.

If that wasn’t cool enough, look at the underlying technology they have evolved in trying to bring this big vision to the world: WagN

They say Wiki + Tagg’n = WagN, and that’s a good mash-up style descriptor. But being a stickler for the evolution of our language and logic in these new worlds I wonder how we will describe it in the future when it is more natural to us…. when we are, let’s say, more fluent in WagN. And I do think we ought to think of these applications in terms of a grammar of what they make possible. We’ll leave that aside for now.

And then there is Hooze.

Hooze?

I don’t know.

Third base.

Abbott & Costello aside, Hooze will help us to know or remember who’s behind a product and that will help us mean what we pay as the Grass Commons saying goes.

Josh Breitbart of People’s Production House (NYC) emphasizes that having the right process is paramount to the public interest in planning communications networks and enumerates 5 key process points that would serve us well in just about any public project.

The most important thing I’ve learned about municipal broadband as I’ve observed and analyzed the processes in Philadelphia, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Boston, and elsewhere is that there is no cookie-cutter solution, no easy answer. The critical thing to finding the right solution is having the right process of working towards that solution.

Here are the keys, as I’ve come to understand them, to a healthy process, one that minimizes conflicts and leads to solid results:

• Sustain open participation beyond the initial public hearing stage, through the entire process and continuing even a solution is implemented.
• Promote horizontal relationships among stakeholders rather than hub-and-spoke relationships that all connect to this committee or to any one person or organization.
• Unite stakeholders around shared technology rather than dividing them into tiers.
• Incorporate existing human resources wherever possible to avoid redundancy and to build on existing relationships.
• Be open with whatever information you gather: publish documents, test results, and regular updates on an accessible website and make them readily available to people without Internet access.

This above is extracted from Josh’s written testimony for the NYC Broadband Advisory Committee.

We have had much talk of Guilds among the Emerging Futures Network (EFN): OGuild or the Open Guild, the emerging Network Weavers Guild and Network, and more.

I invite you to take share in a Vision, articulating Guild in (r)elation to Networking and Commons Perspectives which are among core values of the EFN.

Imagine a Guild as a Service-Leadership Collective, grounded in the ethical pursuit of a craft, and standing in relation to a Network of Practice.

Imagine a Concentric Commons: each Guild a Commons, encircled by a Network of Practice also as Commons, encircled at the widest level again by the greatest Commons for All of Us.

There is something striking in the relation amongst these Concentric Commons:

What is Good for All of Us is Good for each Network, and for each Guild.
What is Good for each Network is also Good for each Guild.
What is Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander (got you there!)
What is not Good for each Guild cannot be Good for Network nor for All of Us.
What is not Good for each Network cannot be Good for All of Us.

This sets a high bar, indeed.

As Guild is related to craft and practice… i.e. activities we find useful in this world, we see that within the widest Circle, within the All of Us there are Many Guilds, and Many Networks. (Network offers a Filter and Map.)

My friend Gerry Gleason recently commented:

Now that the peer-produced encyclopedia, Wikipedia, surpasses all but the premier commercial encyclopedia in completeness and quality, and it is arguably the equal to that one (Britannica), I see it as only a matter of time before peer-produced independent media surpasses all the commercial offerings (can anybody name one that might compete, ok maybe in print, the NY Times, but that’s it)?

Gerry’s comment brought forth an echo from my recent visit to the Pantheon (Paris) where there is a statue to Diderot to the effect that the Encyclopedia paved the way for the social revolution…

So, now, the revolution of the Internet and a wiki-mode of participating in knowledge.

I’ve had frequent enough occasion to encounter the idea of the illusion or delusion of love…

to which the insight…

respond with Corinthians most widely used as a reading for Weddings:

simply…

Love is patient…

What is this that undergirds patience if not love?

A special tradition outside the scriptures, No dependence on words, A direct pointing at man, Seeing into one’s own nature and the attainment of wisdom

… As for a dialogue on supporting those efforts we collectively value, I am looking forward to an ongoing collective exploration of sustaining the institutions and innovations in our field.

It is certainly a challenge to break frame and offer a new way of collaborating, and finding means of supporting the effort.

In our field we’re actually at the cutting edge of human organization, and we’d do well to recognize that and build on those strengths, as opposed to operating under a mindset of scarcity. We live in a world of plenty, yet despite that people and organizations go without and cannot meet their needs.

We are colleagues in a field, a field that is a movement and in movement. A living movement.

Among us are the paid and the unpaid, the highly degreed and those who’ve learned in the trenches (and both!).

We have the opportunity to consider a new paradigm, that many of us are already reaching toward, and operating within: the network paradigm.

There is a paper I’ve been extolling for some months that I will recommend once more: “Movement as Network” by Gideon Rosenblatt, of ONE/Northwest, an environmental movement meta organization, for want of a better description. This think piece and additional resources are available here: http://www.movementasnetwork.org. (Pay attention to “Three Pillars of Social Source”, also.)

In short, this think piece is a strategic vision paper for the environmental movement as a whole. This is critical. It isn’t simply about one organization or one cut back in staff. We need to take the wider vision that we each claim in our daily work and manifest it at the highest level.

In the case of the environmental movement, the paper opened the frame in this way (I paraphrase): the environmental movement is not an abstract concept, it is a real thing constituted by real relations and transactions between real persons and organizations. The point that follows clearly from this is that with the network perspective we realize that there are weak points in the network as a result of network configuration or structure… Bottlenecks, fragmentation of power, and dilution of effectiveness. This structure is something we can invest in and modify.

With conscious effort we can build the map of our field and come to a position where we can make recommendations that strengthen our movement as network. I don’t intend to suggest that this paper offers the solution to the problems of our field, but I do think it is an effective strategy for developing our own map and plan.

Many organizations are suffering under the current economic and funding climate, and many have had to cut staff or pull back on certain programs, but the need for our services could not be more pronounced. How we link together and support each other could not be more relevant to our capacity to respond to basic human need and to times of special crisis.

In our field we have tremendous assets and there is much wisdom in our networks. The DDN, Community Technology Review, CTCNet, CTC Vista project, Community Informatics Research Network, the many State and local organizations and networks, Somos Telecentres, PCNA, the RTC, the NTAP and Open Source Communities, Community and Independent Media and Media Reform organizations, and the Association For Community Networking. The list goes on!

Let us do something deep and lasting.

Consider this an open invitation to anyone that would like to join an open, working group to explore the ideas expressed in Movement as Network (and associated papers) and in conducting a comparable exercise that will result in an open collaborative vision for our field that nurtures and strengthens capacity of our field as a whole. This is something I’ve wanted to advance since Open Space Austin, and here I am attempting to live up to commitments made there.

Join me at: http://www.digitaldivide.net/community/movement

We’re in this together. And I’m glad you are with me.

Warmest regards, to all my friends and co-conspirators!