I’m interested in more public dialogue, so I only provide my reaction here, and leave the others in that email exchange to speak for themselves and to audiences of their choosing – but as I have something to get off my chest, here I go…

(Wow, well, glad interest has been sparked…) my read is that real (as opposed to who?) people are affected in so many cross-cutting ways by media policies that they can’t even see it (or if and to the extent they do they are seeing so many things at once, and potentially different things from each other, with different languages to interpret or speak about them).

We’re embedded in the results/effects of media policy. Another factor to consider is the manner in which policy obscures itself. To the extent that those shaping policy are often angling for particular perks, obscurity is a strategy and an advantage … to those passing legislation/policy and serving narrow interests. The contrast between narrow interest vs. general interest in any policy (media or other policy) is the big puzzle. We’ve tended to accept the exigency of acceding to the narrow interest to get things done, or to get the uncomfortable questions off the table. We tend to steer away from the real work that would build enduring, generative capacity.

None of this is terribly helpful, I am sure.

Thom Clark makes excellent points in that capacity is policy … i.e. local capacity is both a (variably effective) policy maker and the result of policy. If we are to collectively “grow ours” (in contrast with “get mine”) then we have to invest in meaningful capacity building that seeds the local and builds lateral connections over these localities (not necessarliy spatial/geographic nearness) – in multiple dimensions – capacity in fields of interest, of professions, of other “community” of various stripes.

That is, every sector of life is touched by this.

In our work on Digital Excellence this was perhaps our central point. (We blend the concepts of Digital Literacy and Media Literacy at this point, at a very deep level, so they maybe synonymous or united at a higher level.)

Every sector, every aspect of our individual and collective lives is touched by media/technology processes. It’s important to pair these terms – individual and collective – it’s not just individual lives here, it’s how we live together that is affected, and our own awareness of our role and freedom to shape this. So it’s groups and communities and families, and organizations that have to be part of the story, too. Each of these flavor and shape the quality of my individual life and I have to take time to care for these aspects of my/our selves.

My gut is to flip the question on it’s head… show me any story or any aspect of life not affected by media policy. I recognize that that’s probably not compelling for the audience.

FWIW, (and to state the banal) I’m an individual… I engage in media activism, and media policy, and I buy into the importance of “being the media”. I endeavored to get others to some state of awareness on several interrelated topics (and to build my own awareness and understanding thereby), not to mention awareness of their interrelatedness, and I employ multiple strategies to do so. I have perhaps a very different notion of “policy work” than what may be commonly understood, but there’s the rub — all sorts of work are being re-imagined and restructured. (That’s nothin’ new, but perhaps only more so now..)

“Be the media” as sentiment and strategy is an expression of this transformation of work and life, and a recognition that practice and policy are one. Policy may otherwise be regarded as something that happens above, or elsewhere, or happens to you … but in this model, policy is what we contest and what we make and how we practice. If you’ve the motivation and I haven’t worn out my welcome take a look at the entry for Grassroots Public Policy Development in the Public Sphere Pattern Language project spearheaded by Doug Schuler.

Getting to this practice of “being the media” and being with (and for) each other in community, talking about and reforming our practice and our communities at the same time gives us something fairly exciting to talk about. Trying to be clear: talking about or sharing any of the strategies we’ve employed feels like a success story to me in that we’ve been building community and community capacity.

I’m tempted to enumerate tools, devices, strategies – ranging from the pattern language process itself to open space and other civic focused gatherings to new models of philanthropic or educational/research engagement to positive media to open data commons models – but any list would be partial, and would not honor the plethora of ongoing efforts and approaches to living together in a new way. So many things tied together … we’re enmeshed in good and bad ways. And as the story goes – each interpretation of the moment is subject to revision. Perhaps.

Any of you are welcome to tell your story here – or anywhere. How does media policy affect you, personally, or the things you care about?

Here’s the description of the session, join us if you can!

Networks of Collaboration and Service: Redesigning Work and Partnership

Tools and Networks abound. Our challenge is in working together effectively. What is missing from the tools and practices of the social benefit sector? What are the opportunities for coordination among and across networks afforded by a shift in perspective towards building for the commons? Catalytic Communities, a pioneer in the solutions ecology will be the starting point for a collaborative design session — building the tools and culture we need to grow a plurality of commons.

That’s the idea. This could be the theme of a conference all it’s own. We’ll see how it goes. We’ve only got one hour, but this is one of the questions that drives me in my work., Even if we just foster a little seriousness on the opportunities this frame evokes, we’ll be taking a step.

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

This is one of Emily Barney’s many excellent tutorials. Diigo is an interesting tool, worth checking out!

Take naymz.com … a site I’ve recently been looking at. (I tend to compare these sites on policy, features, interface, etc.)

It’s a reputation site. It’s got a mechanism for inviting your contacts on various services, it sends the message.

Some of your contacts take the requested action and agree to be a reference, or go further and offer a comment as endorsement. You manage these responses – selecting which references to show … all sounds fine. However, upon taking such step the site sends a message on your behalf thanking your contact for what they have done.

Why do I have a problem with this?

In general, putting words in my mouth that I wouldn’t say or that I don’t know will be said for me (or transmitted) is wrong-headed! As I said, I am on a lot of sites. I’ve been guilty of inviting others, and I have likewise felt some obligation to respond to site add-request when others have joined a new site. But additional communications beyond the first approved (with opportunity for edit) invitational message implies deeper commitment to and endorsement of the site or application. I’d like to make that judgment call myself.

These writings provide a conceptual matrix for an interesting breed of Civic Entrepreneur- (it’s a partial list) … really a new model of Citizenship and Society/Polity. They aren’t new to a lot of you – and if you have other works that you think really need to be on the list, please let me know.

Movement as Network, by Gideon Rosenblatt, also: The three pillars of social source

David Isenberg’s Rise of the Stupid Network

Pushing Power to the Edges (pdf) by Jillaine Smith, Martin Kearns, Allison Fine

The Cluetrain Manifesto (Doc Searles, et al.)

Cory Doctorow’s Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom

Coase’s Penguin: (by Yochai Benkler … his book The Wealth of Networks is also recommended. There’s a wiki inviting discussion of his ideas.)

The list doesn’t represent any hierarchic ordering.

I like that it uses an open standard for managing my book collection: Z39.50.

I also like that I can export my data.

You can see a more extensive listing of my library here.

don’t treat yourself like a tool (a ku!). Take your life seriously. Do something that excites you. Something that you wake up wanting to do.

http://www.commoncraft.com/video-wikis-plain-english

Here’s a longer related article: Wiki and the Perfect Camping Trip | Common Craft – Explanations In Plain English

What’s critical here? Openness, yes, and sincere attention of Legislative staff or Legislators themselves.

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.

We see a place where developers are supported in doing what they do best – an online community with tools to support development, leadership, project management, decision making and conflict resolution. This community fosters in a context of creativity and openness.

Open source software is a geek’s gift to the world and giving is the very heart of community. We are building the tools to let these geeks enjoy the full benefits of a gift economy where full and free participation is acknowledged in your reputation, performance and feedback metrics. Our challenge is to create such a powerful culture of sharing and mutual reward that developers experience abundant connection and support.

Ideas beget ideas. If you watch the creative process, you can trace the evolutionary trees of concepts. Software development follows the same principle.

What if we tracked genealogies of code across projects? Projects could remain part of a family of software even when they fork to meet new needs. Each family could share modules in common which comply with their backbone API. Projects departing from the core standards then start new families with new standards. This approach allows for maximum reuse of code and prevents the duplication of effort.

Expanding our conception of a sourcetree beyond the code for a single project to the whole evolutionary tree of projects which it is related to allows us to see software from a whole new level. Each tree can have shared object repositories, clearer standards and APIs and better interoperability. We can encourage projects to branch into new directions, yet not lose the value of people’s work in another branch.

All of this is built on an open platform, which can be hosted and managed in a distributed manner, yet still provide searchable metadata across all projects. But it is more than a place to share code and manage projects, the social software also transforms it into a community of partnership and support.

Sustainability (financial) model:

• A thriving gift economy: Infrastructure is open source and its ongoing development and maintenance is supported via TreeHouse events (Code-a-thons with free food and lodging)
  Corporate sponsorship for Code-a-thon food & lodging
• Citizenship revenue: Anyone can post projects and download for free, but citizenship (which carries a reputation and allows you to participate in various rewards) requires a one-time validation of your identity through a verfyable financial transaction (membership fee + optionsl donation)
• Alternative currencies for acknowledging impact and rewarding participation
• Corporate sponsorship for hosting branches of the codebase & infrastructure
• Add-on services: project management tools, time-tracking, project currencies, Freelance project connections – charge for posting jobs to the community

Resource Needs:
• Technical Infrastructure – Servers & bandwidth
• Geeks – Development of Sourcetree Commons infrastructure and tools
• Organizational Development – Marketing, Community Development
• Sponsorship of SourceTreeHouse events – Lodging, food, travel

Some Milestones accomplished:

• Strategic planning sessions at Recent Changes Camp 2007
• Design and development of distributed data architecture (Congo-DB)
• Design and development of reputation and feedback currency tools to acknowledge and reward participation
• Created partnership with Open Source Guild
• Strategic planning sessions
• Acquired corporate sponsorship for lodging at first TreeHouse Code-a-thon

Project Summary:

Projects as Living Entities…

What if we recognized that OSS projects exist to fill niches in our technological ecosystem? Sometimes software “mates” with other software to produce offspring which solves different problems than the projects they grew out of. Some species of software can viably mix with others because they share certain core (genetic) patterns such as running on the same operating system, or speaking to the same databases, or complying with certain APIs.

What if we tracked and managed software in service to the niches it fills instead of serving our egos? What if projects could fork to meet new needs, but still remain a part of a family of software with the ability to share modules in common which comply with their backbone API? Projects departing from the core standards start new families with new standards. We track genealogies of code – Sourcetrees which span across projects and contain their evolutionary roots and relationships with other projects.

All of this inside of a community with collaborative decision-making tools, reputation ratings and feedback which build partnership and acknowledge contribution. The social software tools to support self-governing projects in a self-governing community.

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.