NurtureGirl

Chicago Net Tuesday on March 11 February 27, 2008

Join Us as Community Advocates & Web Innovators

Social change makers and web innovators have come together in cities across the nation to share ideas, network, and build community web resources and network. Now join us, so Chicago can grow more technology savvy social change organizations that benefit our local communities.

Staff and volunteers of non-profits, web innovators, and any individuals pushing for change are encouraged to attend. Our first meeting offers opportunity to share about your work and learn about others in the area. Come tell us about your effort, your concerns, and what you need and want from a collective of like-minded individuals and organizations. Future meetings will also provide presentations on web tools that better enable communities and organizations to mobilize for change.

Similar coalitions currently exist in Atlanta, Houston, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Washington DC and Guayaquil, Ecuador. These “Net Tuesday” meetings are a program of NetSquared, (http://www.netsquared.org), whose mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations. NetSquared is a project of TechSoup (http://www.techsoup.org) the technology place for nonprofits.
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Meeting Details:

Date: Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

Time: 6pm-7:30pm

Location: The Point
600 W. Chicago Ave, Suite 830
(entrance is North on Larabee)
Chicago, IL 60610

RSVP to Aaron With at The Point, please, so we can be sure to have adequate refreshments for your enjoyment: aaron@thepoint.com or call 312.676.4535.

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Public Transportation: 600 W. Chicago is a 4 block walk west from the Chicago stop on the Brown Line. The Chicago Avenue (#66) bus drops you off directly in front of the building at Larabee.

Parking Information: There is some limited free parking 1-2 blocks North on Larabee. Metered parking on Chicago 1-3 blocks East, though this is often taken. Paid parking across the street from our building costs $6 for under 2 hours and $8 for 2-4 hours.

Getting in the building: The Point’s offices are in Suite 830. The entrance is off of Larabee. Enter the main doors just North of “Kitsch’n” & “David Barton Gym” and go to the security desk. Tell them who you are and that you should be on the guest list for “The Point.” They’ll give you a visitor’s pass. Walk through the turnstyles to the elevators. Go to the 8th floor. Follow the green circular plastic signs leading you to The Point. That’ll take you down a long hall & through glass doors & you’ll see The Point’s logo. Ask the receptionist there where The Point’s office is & she’ll point you our way. If its not clear, call Aaron at 312.676.4535

Sponsor: The first meeting will be hosted and sponsored by The Point (www.thepoint.com), a new group action network that helps people congregate around the issues they care about and combine forces to make things happen. Campaigns (group actions) on The Point are all based on the “tipping point” model – participants take action to solve their problem, but only once a critical mass of people have committed such that the collective action will “tip” the issue and force a change.

Organizers:

MacArthur announces Digital Media and Learning awardees February 21, 2008

Great to see the list of winners. I helped several friends with their application. Unfortunately they are not on the list. However, the projects listed appear to be strong and valuable.

Projects like Fractor are both innovative and potentially powerful. Fractor links news stories to opportunities to take action. Don’t just read the news, do something about it. Hypercities would be wise to connect to Global Lives (who applied but didn’t win). Global Lives has the digital storytelling that Hypercities needs to be successful.

Networking Grassroots Knowledge Globally would do well to connect up with the existing Catalytic Communities (of which I am a board member) to get a headstart on collecting successful community-led initiatives.

Social Media Virtual Classroom. Go Howard! I continue to be pleased with the initiatives and ideas he puts out there.

And YouthActionNet Marketplace looks interesting, especially for all my friends interested in empowering young people to get into social entrepreneurship. I do wonder how something like this can connect with the new expanding Catalytic Communities community solutions database.

Yeah! Great to see all these projects full of good intention. I look forward to seeing the progress of each.

Gratitude and Net Neutrality September 22, 2007

How appropriate for One Web Day! Gratitude for the internet we have and concern for the freedom we enjoy.

Lucy posted a terrific post on why net neutrality matters, with help from one of my favorite mags (which is so good at visuals) GOOD. Copied below. Keep an eye on Savetheinternet for ways to help!

And yes, foundations and philanthropists better care or their other causes will suffer dramatically! We all need to care or we will give up our freedom and ability to make social change and profit from good capitalism!

Friday, September 21, 2007
Why foundations should care about an open internet

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve easily posted 1000 words about internet access, the media, and patents as philanthropic issues. So here is the photo that better states the case:

If those in philanthropy care about job creation, education, health, children’s rights, elderly involvement, civic engagement, environmental awareness, sustainable communities, economic development, or anything else that involves issues of equity and access to information then “Net Neutrality” matters. Take action here.

Shout out to GOOD Magazine for the photo.

One Web Day! September 21, 2007

I love a good celebration, especially for things we so easily take for granted because they surround our life so completely.

What will you do to celebrate?

I plan to email and blog my gratitude for the internet. And then spend the following day fasting from the internet to remind me how lucky I am to have it. (And I will then, finally, get my place clean too!)

OneWebDay

The Web is worth celebrating.

OneWebDay is one day a year when we all - everyone around the physical globe - can celebrate the Web and what it means to us as individuals, organizations, and communities.

As with Earth Day - an inspiration and model for OneWebDay - it’s up to the celebrants to decide how to celebrate. We encourage all celebrations! Collaboration, connection, creativity, freedom.

By the end of the day, the Web should be just a little bit better than it was before, and we’ll be able to see our connection to it more clearly.

OneWebDay is September 22 every year, starting in 2006.

She’s Geeky! September 20, 2007

She’s Geeky
A Women’s Tech (un)conference
October 22-23 in Mountain View, CA.

This event is designed to bring together women from a range of technology-focused disciplines who self identify as geeky. Our goal is to support skill exchange and learning between women working in diverse fields and to create a space for networking and to talk about issues faced by women in technology.
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See Kaliya’s hopes and motivations!

Please pass on information about the (un)conference to any other women who would enjoy attending, and contributing to, the event.

If you are planning on attending now is a great time to register before prices go up at the end of September; there is a two step process registering on the wiki & paying via paypal.

We are still looking for sponsors. If you or your company would like to contributor if you have ideas about who we might invite to contribute, please contact us at shesgeeky@gmail.com

Field Building? What is that? September 10, 2007

Social network analysis reveals the nodes and their connections. Yes. “The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes.” Great. What about the things that support the nodes and their ability to make connections. This is the field of the network, and it functions as an energetic even magnetic space that impacts the network in profound ways. We are defined not only by the positive space of our presence and the relationships we bear to each other, but also the space between us, the “negative space” referred to in art class.

If you want to change the configuration of the social network map, changing behavior is one avenue, but it is often difficult to encourage and enforce. Another option is to change the environment. It can be easier, perhaps, to find levers for change in this layer.

So when I talk about field-building, I am talking about that space–the environment of the network. Created by convening events, participating in dialogs, creating avenues to disperse messages, refining the language and frames of the network and its purpose.

World We Want revisited

Over at the World We Want blog last year, I responded to a post with an essay on the World I Want. It received feedback.

I want to revisit that. Draft 2.

What is your vision of a better world?

Many revolutions converging to create a world with more honor, respect, and ecological/systems awareness.

What converges?

Convergence of improvements for global health. The eradication of major diseases. Small Pox down, Polio close, Measles next, then each one or even many simultaneously. And more and more of this being achieved by organizations working together as a global health community using more and more complex and responsive information tools. More safe drinking water made available through coordinated efforts using community-labor and resources along with global data tracking and local/global teams which share and transfer expertise. We begin to take care of the bottom of the Maslow pyramid for all people. Put a bottom under it so all people do really and truly have a chance to have dignity and health.

Increased transparency of our resources above and beyond money to “grow ours” rather than “grow mine” including:

What are the conditions needed to realize it?

That the converging efforts find support and common cause and so unite and reinforce each other bringing together multiple upward spirals to change the overall flow of our culture.

What are the obstacles?

Based on your experience, what parts of the vision are realistic and what ideas, strategies and plans can make it so?

My vision is not only realistic; it is already in motion. The main question is about timing. How soon will we change? How many of us need to have an awakening in order to tip the change?

I partner, as I can, with those who are doing everything they can to enable the dawning of a new age of thrivability, respect, honor, and ecological/systemic awareness. I spread the word to you, and you pass it on. If it is a message people are ready for, it will spread virally far and wide. If not, we re-work the message, lay more groundwork, develop more tools, share more information, and reach out to more hearts.

I believe…
I have a dream…
I hope….
that we believe
and we have a shared dream…

Friend Wheel September 3, 2007

This friend wheel thing is pretty fun on Facebook. How connected are your friends? To each other. Keep in mind this is only as good as the data and the condition that your friends be on the social network.

Being Web 2.0 August 31, 2007

It is not about the tools! It is about being organic, distributed, and discerning. It is about emergence and collaboration.

Organic not controlling. Web 2.0 is not about controlling. Organic and Emerging, yes. Directing possibly. Controlling, no. Anything that hopes to limit, contain, own, restrict, or control is not, at its essence, web 2.0 regardless of the technology it uses.

Distributed not centralized. Much like controlling, is centralizing. Power at the edges baby! Network theory. Distributed systems. Not only is this a more powerful way of structuring information, it builds trust in participants. I mean mashups and widgets rather than facebook apps, people.

Discerning not divisive. Web 2.0 is not about creating us and them dichotomies. It is not divisive distinctions: men v women. White::black. The global north::The global south. It is about commonality. And that can require us to discern differences, but the focus is on finding what do we have in common rather than what we are different. How can we connect and share with others? What can we share with? How can we create trusting relationships for sharing in a global conversation space? Who am I and who are we?

Being Web 2.0 is facilitated by tools. Definitely. But it isn’t merely using the tools. It is much more. It is part of our evolution toward collective consciousness.

CatComm Badge August 24, 2007

I have long been a supporter of Catcomm, whether that has meant contributing funds, volunteering on the development advisory board, or discussing how to scale out the work.

I think Catalytic Communities is a vital part of how communities can share the solutions that they themselves generate with others in other communities worldwide. Peer to peer network of self-development solutions.

See Catalytic Communities to discover for yourself how the community solutions database can serve you, explore to uncover stories of community success, and find out who is involved.

Catalytic Communities (CatComm) develops, inspires and empowers communities worldwide to generate and share their own local solutions. Imagine a world where community-generated solutions are just a mouse-click away, where anyone, anywhere, confronting a local problem, can find the inspiration and tools they need to implement the solution, learning from their peers.

In the News

Catalytic Communities Awarded Prestigious Tech Museum Award

“Catalytic Communities represents the ‘best of the best’ technologists whose innovations benefit humanity, and we are thrilled to welcome them into our community of Tech Laureates,” said Amanda Reilly from The Tech Museum of Innovation. “We aim to raise public awareness on how technology can significantly alleviate many of the critical issues facing our planet and champion those innovators who are leveraging technology to provide resolution to both local and global problems.”

To learn more visit http://www.techawards.org

Catalytic Communities (CatComm) is a 501[c][3] not-for-profit organization with an affiliate office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.