Open source software is a geek’s gift to the world.
As members of Sourcetree Commons, we pledge to:
We stand for generosity, freedom and responsibility. Join with us or judge us by our code.
| 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! | |||
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“…cuz people |
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Localizing Global Change:
Issues and Opportunities |
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What kind of stuff have we been doing?
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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… |
We’re still re-learning how to work according to our values.Â
This is as it should be.
Following is the project description for Sourcetree Commons, as posted at the Net2 challenge 2007.
Sourcetree Commons: Geeking our way to a better world
To develop better social software, we must use these very tools in the communities that are building them. We leverage social software to amplify the creative power of geeks and provide increased resources, efficiency, feedback and support.
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
Our goal is to leverage social software to amplify the creative power of geeks.
Geeks are a force to be reckoned with. They are creating the tools to strengthen communities, share ideas and shape information flow in an information age. Yet we still struggle with old ways of competing, collaborating and decision making. If we are to develop better social software, we must incorporate the very principles of collaboration and collective intelligence into the communities that are building them.
Internet Policy matters. Regulation of “Top Level Domains” (TLDs) is but one aspect of Internet Policy. Oversight of the “market” in domains falls to ICANN and to each of the entities sponsoring and operating their respective TLDs. In the case of .ORG it is the Public Interest Registry (PIR.org).
.ORG needs to go further in differentiating itself.
This is a big topic… as one of the early TLDs .ORG did not establish any strict requirements for registration of a .ORG domain (like .COM and .NET). Consequently, it is understood that new requirements or restrictions will not be added (and domains cannot be taken back). I don’t accept that this must necessarily follow, but I won’t argue that case here. As is obviously the intent for the .ORG TLD the space is decidedly non commercial and non-governmental as is clear in the name “Public Interest Registry”. While recognized status as a non-profit or a community group/voluntary association is not a requirement for a .org domain, my concern is for the interests of such entities.
There is another dimension to this: what is done as standard business practice in the servicing and managing of domains is an important aspect of the policy regime. Our choices as registrants are constrained by the business logic and interests of the registrars.
The business of domain registrars is business. These are the entities you go to for the purchase and renewal of rights to use your domain. Which registrar do you use and why? Does the climate and culture of this field line up with your values or those of your organization? Do you question the ethics of this field? What meaningful choice do you have?
If the Registry (as operator of the TLD) won’t (or can’t) take actions to differentiate itself, perhaps a Registrar can be established with principles of service and ethical standards appropriate to the public sector. While performing a transactional function it need not fall under the framework of a commercially oriented entity.
Aside from those registrars handling ccTLD (cc = country code) and therefore operating in a non-profit or public interest manner are there any registrars organized with a not-for-profit status? Here’s a list of ICANN-Accredited Registrars.
I’m sure that many in the Voluntary and Not-for-Profit sector would prefer to do business with an entity that reflects their commitment to civil society.
Who is ready to take up the banner and establish a non-profit domain registrar for .org? If there is no shining knight ready to save the day, what can we do for ourselves?
Can we not establish a Trust whose purpose is to serve NPOs domain needs?
Grassroots, and .org! Two of my favorite things. And GR is led by one of my favorite people… blah, blah, blah - I have lots of favorites. Don’t even ask about colors. I’m all about spectrum!
I’m very happy that the Grassroots.org Toolkit was selected along with 20 other projects in the recent NetSquared community vote. Here’s the Grassroots.org pitch for the Toolkit:
The Grassroots.org Toolbox will empower nonprofit organizations by granting free access to a suite of fully configured & hosted online tools, including content management, online event registration software, and CRM.
The whole GR team is great - I know several of them very well, including my former CTC Vista, Dave Chakrabarti. In fact that seems part of the management secret - hire alumni of the CTC Vista Project!
The Toolkit project is still in beta, and I am following on closely as a “Toolkit Advisor”…
They have some other developments in the works that are really cool (at least to me)… but we’ll have to wait a bit before exploring those.
Tonight (Thursday April 19) they’re hosting Malaria Bites - a fundraiser, in Columbus, Ohio.
Reggae, bednets and all.
The results of the NetSquared vote are due today. Without needing to know the outcome… I want to give a big thank you to CompuMentor, TechSoup and the NetSquared team … they really brought excitement to the field of socially conscious developers! Or at least they opened a space, invited us in, and made that space warm and productive and safe, and we brought the excitement together.
I personally needed that positive networking. I have felt it often in open space, but haven’t felt it to this extent online - not with so many groups and individuals. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Why don’t these things work together more easily?
If (for instance) I want to have a wiki and some other CMS on my site, let’s say drupal or wordpress… in terms of site/user experience what functionality might I want? True unified sign-on system with unified session control and maybe unified search on content over the entire site. This seems a reasonable if rigorous set of requirements, and if it were simple to use prominent open source applications together this way we’d see a greatly increased uptake: think social source. (Do check out Peiser’s paper. We’ll take the question of social source further another day.)
What other tools would you like to see able to play together well? If you dig down to the innards of what that means - what do you find? What elements of each application would need to be more modularized?
That’s part of the process I’m calling find the missing APIs.
It would require a different way of looking at your own project, and would ennable a new way of looking at how projects work or could work together, perhaps evolving a practice of strategic roadmapping where we identify and invest in the development of these missing APIs.
Arthur Brock of The Geek Gene, has proposed Sourcetree Commons as an object registry that might make this more likely. It’s still in the early conceptual stage but what is at stake is whether our tools reflect our values and make the work easier.
