wrythings

… 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!