Today is Media Democracy Day —- I was really looking forward to participating and making the case for what I think is important in establishing shared resources and common infrastructure for local, community and democratic media here in Chicago – and the social benefit sector as a whole — but alas, am on the road on a family matter. Best wishes to all.
Archive for the ‘strategic roadmapping’ Category
sustainability and the thriving commons, or “Divided We Fall short”
Sunday, February 8th, 2009Friends,
Together we can enumerate and provide links to an array of efforts that are disjointed, though worthy. They may have different levels of activity or may be at a relatively inactive state after prior peaks. Enumerating and evaluating these would be a useful task for us, too.
We’ve got an abundance of toolsets and tool providers as well … and so the special challenge to a sustainable effort and a thriving commons becomes more and more probable (it’s not just probable, it’s the situation we have tended towards, and the situation we’re in).
Consider each of these tools and possible community spaces as an attractor. People like us, are seeking community around the practice of community ICT, and if they don’t find it they rightly constitute it for themselves.
A somewhat active space functions as an attractor in these circumstances and from a certain perspective it makes a lot of sense to go with the tool that is present and functioning at some level versus duplicating efforts and dividing the field further.
The issue, as I see it is that the field has multiple attractors none of which are established quite with the field in mind. Someone who finally finds one of these attractors may be quite relieved and may embed themselves in the community (which may or may not satisfy them, or may have fallen into a trough of activity – and there is something valiant in seeking to fulfill the promise of our potential as a wider community in any of these contexts).
But we here, knowing of the many and disparate efforts are a bit weary at maintaining a presence in any number of such sites and communities. Here, even with this conversation we’re making choices where to post, and we have doubts about which is the most effective channel.
We also recognize that as new tools emerge, new community attractors will be constructed by those who either haven’t found the other attractors, or for whom the degree of community there was lacking.
As we make choices based on our history and preferences we’re going to keep fragmenting this field, and reacting to the fragmentation.
Since there are existing sites of community or potential community, which should serve as assets to our movement, we ought to reflect on the perspective of “Movement as Network” (a paper by Gideon Rosenblatt of ONE/NW) – a thought piece for the environmental movement that I read with our field of Community ICT in mind.
What do we do with these assets, these many sites of aggregation, these attractors? Should we establish higher expectations? Should we push them towards collaboration and coordination? Should we disrupt models that don’t align with our own vision of Community ICT? I’ve got my own answer to these, you may all guess.
I’m inviting you to a new mode of practice where we consciously reshape this network of communities and resources. We can take initial steps to get data and information flowing and where it should
not matter which of these sites you come to, you can get the full swath of information you need.
Think for a moment of the WISEREarth Index – could their organizational directory serve as an equivalent of an OpenSocial for the NGO/NPO sector? (Thinking more broadly here than Community ICT – any non-profit monitoring the online world and maintaining any sort of presence there – soon sees a multiple presence effect and has some very partial representation of themselves in many many places, some of their own initiative, and some a result of scraping and some as a result of friends propagating their presence. None of this is sustainable under the current regime of information flow.)
All of this sounds a bit extreme and ambitious … plenty of big ideas litter our sector and have diverted us from more humble work (and some have inspired us to achieve great things, no doubt).
Yet, we can start humbly in this, and we have. Enumerating these spaces, evaluating them and engaging them… starting this conversation is perhaps our own way of moving towards the movement as network attitude. It is for me.
MM
Poverty
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008As Blog Action Day – 2008 draws to a close I write in solidarity with all who took up the cause of Poverty, today. Blogging is powerful, and the freedom to blog is something we should not take lightly. We are exercising a significant privilege.
While thinking about poverty two points come immediately to mind. First, we live in a world of great abundance. Second, and not unrelated to the first – the impoverishment of our repertoire of ideas and options is something we must take seriously – our symbolic or cultural impoverishment.
We live in a world of great abundance. In the context of recent global financial news we’re prone to forget this. In the context of the many effects of poverty we are drawn in to the immensity of the gap we must surmount. I return again and again to the work of Amartya Sen – in questioning the distribution of resources. Hunger and want more often than not is about a breakdown in the distribution and exchange of needed resources and rarely a result of insufficient resources for populations. Greed gets in the way. People are unwilling to let their wealth flow. We have the wrong idea of what wealth is.
Material Impoverishment persists largely through a nefarious “Symbolic Impoverishment”. This does not mean that social justice (or injustice) is not an active factor. So much more is possible for us as individuals and collectively as a species than we generally recognize. We accept limited options in the face of difficult circumstances. We reinforce the imagery of limited options for others. We find ourselves goaded by urgency and compelled on tight time-frames. Sometimes we accept external limiting definitions of ourselves, our station, what we deserve. We are distracted from our connectedness and what we ow to each other. (Georg Simmel’s notion of the relative decline Subjective vs. Objective Culture is relevant to this question – and reframes the challenge as acutely modern.)
We must set the highest goals and pursue them diligently, steadily. So much human potential is squandered. Life is squandered. We’re more caught up in maintaining a status quo, or keeping up with the current than growing together.
We must ask what human dignity demands of us when we bear witness to poverty and human suffering.
My call to the world of social and civic entrepreneurs with whom I find myself in common cause: let us each pursuing the social good work ourselves one by one out of a job. That’s my vision for the not-for-profit and social entrepreneurs – successfully closing the books on as many causes as we can so we may turn to higher challenges with the full complement of human creative potential.
This is the great urgency I see. These are two compass points on the map I follow.
Got Data? 8 bright IDEAs for Chicago
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008Today I had the fortune of joining a group of civic entrepreneurs advancing data collaboration in Illinois. They introduced me to the 8 Principles of Open Government Data drafted in December 2007 at a California Summit. The Illinois effort – IDEA – Illinois Data Exchange Affiliates is concerned to promote civic engagement and better governance through collaborative data practices among non-profits/civic sector, research & planning efforts and all layers of government. This is where Digital Excellence meets eGovernment.
If Chicago is a world-class city in a leading region of the nation, what are we waiting for? If we are ready to embrace the information age I don’t know what could make us more globally competitive than to remove the artificial barriers to information exchange in city and county. I hear tell there is a committee on data sharing among departments of Chicago city government. I look forward to hearing what progress they have made thus far and how aggressive they intend to be with regard to unfolding a new era in accountability and transparency. Someone, ping Hardik.
Good data is about feedback. Feedback regulates an organism or process. Here it would inform individual choice and guide regional planning. We all know the Mayor loves to have city services on the ball when it comes to potholes and attention to the visible amenities. These eight principles would allow Chicago to set new benchmarks for service delivery and quality of life. You don’t have to be an XML geek to grok this.
Open Government Data Principles
Government data shall be considered open if it is made public in a way that complies with the principles below:
1. Complete
All public data is made available. Public data is data that is not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations.
2. Primary
Data is as collected at the source, with the highest possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms.
3. Timely
Data is made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.
4. Accessible
Data is available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.
5. Machine processable
Data is reasonably structured to allow automated processing.
6. Non-discriminatory
Data is available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.
7. Non-proprietary
Data is available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.
8. License-free
Data is not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be allowed.
Compliance must be reviewable.