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A Network of Purpose
Hosted by Charles Cameron (November 2006 - Closed)
Charles "Hipbone" Cameron says that this place is already a terrific resource. When we need information, we come here to find it. When we have a question, we leave it here because we know that a bunch of others will read it. It’s like the reference desk at a library, informative, rich, detailed.
But it’s not yet a rich tapestry of people, we don’t know each other much better than any two patrons in the same large library. Oh, we may recognize the gentleman over there with the Fedora hat as a regular, perhaps we overheard him talking to the librarian once and liked his voice – but we haven’t sat down for coffee together, haven’t seen the photos of each others’ kids.
This place, in other words, hasn’t yet built much in the way of bonds of connection and community between individuals. And so we don’t come here to be in our virtual home, so much as we come here to ask questions or retrieve information. We are not yet a “full-service” library: thus far, we are more of a resource than a community, more of a place to visit than a family to connect with.
How can we get to know one another better?
How can we maximize our group potential?
Recognizing one another, feeling kinship, coming back often enough to notice the odd request for help or mention of a solution and, yes, make the connection that’s more than just words, or ideas even -- it’s a network in action, a college of the inspirational and the inspired, meeting, questioning, responding, acting, collaborating, thanking. A network of purpose?
A network of purpose -- for which the Web is a trial run and launching pad. A Web extending not just into our needs but into our lives and hearts.
How do we manage that?
Charles volunteers: "I’ll throw in the bright thoughts and even brighter questions that my networks propose, if you’ll throw in yours. Let's talk."
Let’s rock the box, the boat, the world.
Pamela McLean - Nov 20, 2006 5:39 pm (# Total: 66) Count me in too please.
One of the ways I describe myself is "Cawdnet convenor" - where Cawdnet is the network of people I exchange ideas with and collaborate with in various ways. The name comes from CAWD - which originally stood for the Committee for African Welfare and Development. It now stands for a registered charity.
CAWD was started by my friend the late Peter Adetunji Oyawale. I "got into all this" in the first place by helping him to write letters, make phone calls and such like - regarding the community development project that he wanted to start back home. He needed help because here in the UK his "African English" was a bit of a communication barrier.
Subsequently I've tackled all kinds of communication barriers (cultural, ICT, infrastructure challenges, etc) as I have continued working on CAWD related projects in rural Nigeria. I want to bring together the networks on the Internet and the networks in rural Nigeria, for purposes of education, friendship, understanding, collaboration, philanthropy, investment, and all aspects of development.
Another network that is important to me is one started by Andrius Kulikauskas. To oversimplify - Andrius has set up a network of networks on the Internet which he weaves together in interesting ways. (If I am lucky then someone else in his network will see this mention and add details before I have time to return to write more.).
Pam
Jeff.Mowatt - Nov 21, 2006 5:05 pm (# Total: 66) P-CED
Charles, Pamela, this comes at a moment when I as another Brit have just been reflecting on how much better this socially enabling kind of network is done in the US. To be specific it comes at the moment that I'd just read the recently published Action Plan for Social Enterprise, which although it documents many interesting developments, only serves to highlight how distanced we are, with a plethora of subscription based networks offering no major vehicle for discussion. To speak plainly, to me what I've read today seems more a promotional manifesto for a change of leadership in UK government. To some extent, I feel used by it, knowing much of what it prescribes is based upon the voluntary efforts many of us have pioneered and promoted at no personal gain.
Here then, as you say Charles, we have begun and I apologise Pamela for not knowing anything about CAWD, but I have to say that what I see and engage with on Omidyar.net has the edge for several reasons.
First it's unscripted, allowing free flow and expression of ideas and to some degree provides the facility for collaborative decision making in small funding exercises and what it doesn't do, is route discussions away to disconnected blogs. As a result there are in the order of 16,000 members able to express themselves freely and cross reference conversations easily. It isn't perfect, the hierachy of topics is a disordered mess and the peculiar formatting language it uses it plain awful.
A network of networks then? If it's at all possible to achieve this kind of connectivity with so many different formats in play.
In the wider context,there's the question of language and accessibilty, knowing as I do that content rich web forums can often exclude those that might well wish to contribute in the developing world but are excluded from doing so, if not by language, by the limits of bandwidth and cost if indeed they have access at all.
Jeff
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tutormentor - Nov 21, 2006 7:28 pm (# Total: 66) Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection
In May I hosted a discussion on Social Edge titled Creating a Network of Purpose. The link to that discussion is at tutormentor, "Creating Networks Of Purpose" #16, 9 May 2006 10:45 am
Charles I'm glad you've started this again. Since hosting the discussion in May I've continued to work toward creating a network that would help create the resources that volunteer based tutor/mentor programs need to operate. I'm please to say that last week we had a major breakthrough when the Chicago Sun Times donated $2 million to the Lend A Hand Program at the Chicago Bar Association, which will use this money to make grants over the next 3-5 years to tutor/mentor programs in Chicago.
I've participated in Social Edge, Omidyar.net and many other forums with a goal of recruiting others who would take a role in building a network of purpose focused on tutor/mentor programs in many cities, or who would see they work as a contribution toward borrowing the process of the T/MC to create a network of purpose focused on other social issues, in Chicago, or elsewhere in the world.
I encourage everyone to review the May discussion, and I look forward to what new ideas can come forward now. I encourage everyone to think of this as a step on a journey. It took us 13 years to get the first major donation toward Chicago tutor/mentor programs. I hope it does not take as long to get a second, or a third.
Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Nov 21, 2006 8:26 pm (# Total: 66) HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates
I'm still mulling the three fine messages we've received so far. Pam, yours was posted before I'd even completed the final draft of my intro post! Jeff, you've lots to say and I'll need a morning to tink it through and respond even a bit... and Dan, you already know you're an inspiration, and I borrowed your title shamelessly. Thank you on both accounts, and I'm happy you came by already.
Tomorrow I want to post (a) some references to resources and (b) fuller responses to the three of you.
And a warm welcome to all who follow.
surya prakash.Vinjamuri - Nov 21, 2006 8:28 pm (# Total: 66) Life-Health Reinforcement Group
Here in our our city of hyderabad what is happening is we are working towards forgetting that we are human beings.
We were a peaceful city & say large happy family till 1980's - systematically life is now is understood holding a cell phone,riding bikes & cars on a busy road with few flyovers built to ease the traffic & few on the way of completion - roads widened or getting widened by destroying memories of - particular tea stall or paper store or vegetable points.
In the midst of all these lands are taken over ( which otherwise fertile) replaced by concrete structures for a price - where the vegetables growing or rice/wheat will not yield the price what they got - a life time yield.
Friends, life is no more understood as an opportunity given to survive & serve & to see that generation ahead enjoys what we are able to, today.
Lot's of insecure acts causing the damage and needed intervention today is withhold what is good, reinforce habits & lifestyle which would protect tomorrow.
Values we uphold which we imbibed by our elders & the family we represent & the teachers & books, will be the foundation for better tomorrow.
I just want to end the opening note of my this posting with this observation: "the colors we see, when we look up at the sky are never harsh - all pleasant colors, no harshness at all".
I wish we take the inspiration from nature to be natural,gentle & human.
Laurinda - Nov 21, 2006 8:30 pm (# Total: 66) Hi to you all.
It is interesting that this topic has come up again! ... at Empowerment Gateway we are currently looking how can we facilitate access to netwoks and knowledge resources in South Africa. It is one of the projects that has been tabled for development in the new year.
Like Jeff, I use Social Edge and Omydiar as two of my many networking platforms. ... but recently we have been evaluating how could a network of networks be created? ... and we are seriously evaluating if an IT platform like ManyOne could be the answer for us with the creation of an Empowerment Gateway portal in South Africa linking to the rest of Africa.
Additionally our membership in numerous CUG's on Yahoo has also enabled us to broaden our own network. Today all the groups that we are networked to provides instant access to over 200 000 individuals worldwide. I have an advantage over most english speakers as english is my 3rd language ... with portuguese and french as principal languages.
The pronblem is mainly financial resources to support a more effective communication platform. In South Africa the cost of broadband is prohibitive in comparasion to the cost in the USA for example ... we are paying 50c a meg versus 50c a gig. ... and I am not mentioning the rest of Africa ...
As we evaluate and research this topic in the months ahead if you are interested I'll give feedback on what is happening. Regarding ideas on how to improve this process ... I am afraid that I don't have answers YET! ....
Laurinda
Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Nov 22, 2006 12:00 am (# Total: 66) HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates
There are two keys here, I think. One has to do with software choice, and is far subtler and more important than management in general expects. The other has to do with patterns of visiting and posting on a website.
But that's just dipping my big toe in, much more to explore... What's your idea? What's your pratice?
Jeff.Mowatt - Nov 22, 2006 2:02 am (# Total: 66) P-CED
Charles, With regard to your last question and the general subject of social purpose connectivity. A decade ago, an ordinary man outside the mainstream establishment pitched an idea to a President. He'd asserted that the new class of information impoverished would replace those currently impoverished as the result of the Industrial Age and that there was a way this could be avoided, by changing the way we look at business. He didn't write a book about it, but seized an opportunity to put it into practice, drawing on the tools pioneered by M.Yunus to deliver proof of concept starting with $6m to empower several thousand families, paid back in full over 5 years.
Hopefully, before the end of this year members your Senate Foreign Relations Committee will take delivery of another document descibing how the same approach can be scaled up to a whole nation at a net cost of zero. Among other things, it will detail how 5 million new subscribers can be delivered affordable access. The message remains unchanged, in order for new enterprise to flourish it must have access to an affordable source of information to gather intelligence on locally available resources and access its target markets.
In all this time, he's remained in relative obscurity, experiencing periods of homelessness and exclusion, and yet in recent times, these ideas have bounced back. Unsurprisingly, I don't need a UK Chancellor to tell me he wants us to think about new ways of doing business, though I might now want him to think about new ways of doing politics.
For all the networking we may muster and all the ideas we may brainstorm, it counts for little if government remains unapproachable. I have no access to the cross-party parliamentary groups on Microfinance and Social Enterprise, nor any constructive response from a government department on Social Enterprise. I am in fact at odds with one of the supporting government departments who've enabled a competitor to drive me out of business.
This I know is straying from the topic, but what I fear most is that what we've striven for will be served back at us as a watered down placebo, serving only the career interests of the new opportunists.
That being said, I'd certainly like to explore the feasibility of expanding dialogue to be more inclusive. feeling that we need to speak in plainer language and languages to get across the social purpose message. In essence, very simple, to ensure personal survival think less about climbing to the top of the pile and more about how those we clamber over in the process determine what we must face in our future.
edward - Nov 22, 2006 4:21 am (# Total: 66) self
Charles it’s excellent that this topic has been revived. My starting suggestion is that we be precise and sure about the possibilities and limitations of a virtual community such as we have in Social Edge. This would then enable us to identify how and when to extend or draw out related ideas and activities to be developed in other ways. This could even be through other virtual communities subordinate to a central one on Social Edge.
One possibility is that we have a segmented series or hierarchy of ‘spaces’ within Social Edge. This would mean that a general discussion could be kicked off at the broadest level. Then those posters most interested (and with most to offer!) could ‘commit’ themselves to a more intensive and interactive series of exchanges and collateral dealings by joining or forming a sub-forum specific to the topic in hand. Posters would be expected to demonstrate some sort of commitment – perhaps by submitting more detail of themselves and/or their organisation or accepting the need to re-register for the sub-forum. It would be important for posters to the sub-forum to be able to demonstrate what their practical interest in the topic is, and what they specifically need to learn or can offer.
A significant drawback with web-based forums is that they tend to be (rightly) open-access and very generic, at least to start with. This can mean they tend to become much taken up by folks who have only a very generalised interest in a topic, but who nevertheless are prone to join in any discussion on any topic. This tendency can reduce the value and effectiveness of the forum for those who have a real ‘need-to-know’ or who have practical knowledge or experience to usefully exchange with other like-minded people.
In my own work in delivering real-life Open Forums on Community Regeneration around Scotland, I find that the personal or individual touch is essential. Even in these real-life situations where ‘real’ people gather together there need to be some encouragement or facilitation for person-to-person interaction to get going. It can be something as simple as going up and welcoming someone you see standing on their own and introducing them to someone else.
As you see I’m a pragmatist in these things. To work effectively, forums and networks need to offer a practical purpose, ideally with the furtherance of learning and development. We do not yet have the technology to bring about meaningful personal interaction through websites. So we need to recognise this limitation in order that we can work on the positives and develop the benefits.
The major problems with what I’m suggesting is that it might simply reduce the number of participants to any discussion – and Social Edge users might worry that it smacks of a lessening of accessibility?
One other practical suggestion then; we could make even more use Social Edge to better involve ourselves as to what ‘real-time’ events will be taking place in the medium to longer term future around the world and that involve our own organisations and communities. This would offer possibilities of Social edge posters being able to link up with one another and realising scope for meeting up ‘real-time’ at these events. Each of us could even undertake to let Social Edge have early-knowledge of any events of activities in the longer-term future that our organisations or communities will be engaged on.
tutormentor - Nov 22, 2006 5:48 am (# Total: 66) Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection
In a huge world with many important issues, and many locations where these problems persist, I think it's unrealistic to try to create any single portal to create networks of purpose focused at doing significant work and collaboration in any of these issue areas. I feel that portals like Social Edge and Omidyar should be entry points and connectors, pointing people to other locations where more intense discussions can take place.
I've often pointed to the Boston Innovation Hub as an ideal model of an entry point. Here's the link: http://www.tbf.org/indicatorsproject/hubofinnovation/innovation.asp
The hub is a pie chart and each slice represents an issue important to Boston. When you click a slice, you go to another page where the information relates just to that issue.
In the model I recommend, a pie chart like this on Social Edge would enable people interested in the environment to click that slice of the pie, and they'd go to another chart, which would be a map of the world, showing where environmental issues are most severe, along with another pie chart, that would segment environmental issues into sub sections, such as water, global warming, etc. A click into one of these would take you deeper into that topic, and again you'd be able to choose what part of the world you want to go to join the discussion.
Each of these different clicks might take the visitor to a new web site hosted by a different group of people. For instance, while I focus on Tutoring/Mentoring in Chicago, our friend from South Africa might host a parallel portal, focusing on Tutoring/Mentoring in Africa, and someone else might host one focused on London or Sydney.
We each could meet and share ideas in the "global" portal for tutor/mentor, or could go into the sub sections hosted by each partner, just as we come into Social Edge to share ideas.
The theory behind what I'm saying is that I believe the glue that brings people together is the passion of a few people to solve a clearly defined problem. I've been leading tutoring/mentoring in Chicago for more than 30 years. Thus, I've a clear vision and a strong commitment. That enables me to stay involved, even when I have to pay the bills from my own bank account.
I don't think any high level gathering at Social Edge has that type of commitment, or that type of depth of experience, toward any single goal. Yet, Social Edge has huge visibility that could draw new blood, and new resources to the portal, and then point them to a cause that is being led by someone else who has introduced themselves, just as I do.
By giving recognition at high levels to the work done on on the local community level, Social Edge can encourage people to get involved. If it leads to higher visibility and more traffic at Social Edge, we may finally get some donors, business leaders, celebrities and even elected people to come into this portal, and then on to specific issue areas where they can learn and become personally involved.
While I share these ideas in Social Edge and Omidyar.net and other places, I also try to make them a reality from my own site. Thus, as you visit http://www.tutormentorconnection.org from time to time you'll see progress toward a goal of connecting Chicago with major cities around the world in a network of purpose.
I think that as others at the local level work from their base to create this world wide network, we can innovate ideas that help each other, and that feed into larger connecting points like Social Edge. In this way we will learn from each other's innovations, and learn to help each other to find the resources needed to put innovation into action.
Pamela McLean - Nov 22, 2006 2:37 pm (# Total: 66) Charles wrote "There are two keys here, I think. One has to do with software choice, and is far subtler and more important than management in general expects. The other has to do with patterns of visiting and posting on a website."
A reply to mention some relevant points. Can't explain fully now.
Appropriate delivery mechanisms are so important - and can make the difference between inclusion/exclusion in the group. Careful analysis of what information should be pushed and what pulled is one of the issues that need consideration, especially if people have little Internet access.
In Cawdnet we use the descriptions "bandwidth rich" "bandwidth challenged" "bandwidth poor" as shorthand to describe our current situation regarding Internet access. It helps people within the network to appreciate each other’s circumstances. At home I'm bandwidth rich, When I visit my friends in Nigeria I am either "bandwidth challenged" or "bandwidth poor" - depending who I am with (and sometimes it is more like "bandwidth starved")
In the Cawdnet community, as we work together, we try to understand each other and be considerate. This is quite a challenge sometimes given our varied cultural backgrounds. Part of this consideration is to pace our information communication expectations appropriately. For instance, one of our group members can only travel to the city once a month to access her email. Others expect rapid exchange of info. Amongst the bandwidth rich there is usually a preference to be kept in the loop. For the bandwidth poor being "kept in the loop" can be counter-productive - too many emails makes it impossible to find the ones that really matter.
When the bandwidth poor come online they need to be able to grab essential information quickly and easily. We sometimes describe this as the bandwidth rich having access to an info supermarket 24/7 while the bandwidth poor can only dash in when they are really hungry and quickly grab whatever is on the nearest shelf.
Since I got involved with CAWD most of my effort has been directed to exploring how people like me (bandwidth rich) can be helpful to people like my bandwidth challenged and bandwidth poor friends and wider network in Nigeria and beyond. I want to find the best ways to ensure that when they do get to the Internet they find what they need, ready waiting on the nearest shelf of their personal information cupboards. I also want them, as far as possible, to be included in any relevant discussions that the bandwidth rich are having. This provides all kinds of information communication and management challenges - and has defined the development of my personal "network of purpose" - a network which I hope will be networking with the SocialEdge "network of purpose" wherever there are overlapping interests.
chrismacrae - Nov 22, 2006 5:09 pm (# Total: 66) our network aims to make travel guides to world change as popular as a local publications as hotel guides or sports leagues were in the 20th century
for 23 years now we have forecast that certain sustainability crises will be irreversible by about 2015 unless entrepreneurial citizen networks get connected up from the grassroots in ways that neither global corporations nor national governments can by themselves
some ideas on how to do this are here a b c d but the fun is seeing which city group will take the lead on which crisis and how we can vote around the world for those change projects we trust most for their practicality, replicability, urgency
if at a time when the UK government publishes the Stern report that we are so far down the vicious spiral of climate that we need to invest 1% of GDP to save 20% people all around the net cannot take another look at other spirals that have not been addressed locally with urgent worldwide attention ,then we may well have missed the last call to use social networks to value sustainability.
Sustainability crises are rooted in compound future consequences and it is clear that the maths that values corporations and governments still (6 years after Brookings and Georgetown first released unseen wealth research) systematically excludes compound future integrity, which is why the people will have to take the lead in reorgansing systematically
chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk
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surya prakash.Vinjamuri - Nov 22, 2006 7:42 pm (# Total: 66) Life-Health Reinforcement Group
In my previuos post I just posted what is happening in my city & my expectation how we should keep getting inspired by nature.
I eagerly waited for response & then I see people crossing my post & continue dialogue with charles - I said to myself, surya you are no ghost - Iam with my all sweat & blood physically present while posting - then I checked again what charles said in his openeing remark -
" How can we get to know one another better?
How can we maximize our group potential?
Recognizing one another, feeling kinship, coming back often enough to notice the odd request for help or mention of a solution and, yes, make the connection that’s more than just words, or ideas even -- it’s a network in action, a college of the inspirational and the inspired, meeting, questioning, responding, acting, collaborating, thanking. A network of purpose?????????????????":
I would have just appreciated my limitation of understanding this event or give me space to warm up - I see lot's of seniors with tons & tons of knowledge or keying their knowkedge, while a person with limited knowledge like me is trying to understand and trying to explain the context I am representing.
If network of purpose has to evolve into be more human or say we like to bring in life to beautiful world of connectivity for promotion of larger good, we need to be higly inclusive & process oriented.
My words if they are making any 'sense' do respond beforing jumping over my post.
-surya.
Jeff.Mowatt - Nov 22, 2006 11:13 pm (# Total: 66) P-CED
Surya,
Let me apologise for not being social. It reminds me of my first and only encounter with an nntp newsgroup called Social Enterprise, where I introduced myself enthusiastically and have waited since,
A lot of what I read goes right over my head, it is far too learned and complex for me, or for me to relate to others.
Inspired by nature, certainly. Reminding ne that long before our time two poets collaborated in a kind of opensource way by publishing a collection which omitted their names from the title page. Wordsworth and Coleridge wanted to promote a new kind of poetry understandable by all.
From within, Here is part of something you may enjoy:
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
From 'Tintern Abbey' by William Wordsworth
chrismacrae - Nov 23, 2006 4:34 am (# Total: 66) First, Charles' thread says: "I’ll throw in the bright thoughts and even brighter questions that my networks propose, if you’ll throw in yours." A thread cannot do multiple things without getting lost. Until people who design virtual communities recognise this pattern rule of open space, we will never get anywhere.
What Charles or thread designers could do (because they have powrer to create new threads) to develop this threads convergent invitation is to list at the top of this thread those purposes that people brought that they are prepared to give their own threads and continual awareness to. Of course this should involve a relationship commitment on all sides which might include:
the purpose network proposer agrees she or he will always come back and answer on purpose conversations; that the purpose stated is indeed the deepest one of their network of conversation for many years to come; there are also other criteria which could be developed over time like in Surya's case if another city comes with the same problem, how will he make that citizen group as much as a part of the we are losing human being initiative as the hyderabad
I have met social edge's virtual community failure to develop around core missions over time in about 50 virtual comunities over the last 12 years including several that Charles also knows. I am interested in solutions that experience of such multiple failure to support doing of systematic chnage brings. My friends and I do have also 2 prototypes in test
First is clubofcity which now includes clubofhyderabad . For 3 years I moderated the section of the European Union knowledgeboard.com on emotional intelligence. I found that naturally enough people wanted to talk about crises (and actionable learnings) in their own locality as well as communally whether people worldwide in other localities had similar experiences or collaboration soultions. I started threads within knowledgeboard by country, and every time anyone in my inbox mentioned a local crisis or emergent project/solution network, I pasted it into the country concerened. I did all of this as a volunteer. I invited local people to add comments. Most lurked even though the country threads became some of the best browsed. I was then accused by the administrators of knowledgeboard of creating too many threads that were more like "newsletters from me" because I was the main one putting content in ver months or even years in spite of this being pasted through what local observers from many communities had sent me. So I started collaboration knowledge city blogs around http://clubofcity.blogspot.com/ of which there are now over 100. Ideally local people take control of editing the whole sity blog once they see it has momentum. Surya is welcome to be main editor of http://clubofhyderabad.blogspot.com/ if he sends me an external email to chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk because blogger needs an external mail to invite moderators
Youth Guides needed to community tools like linkedin, BBCactionNet, yahoogroups, Zaadz -
a ClubofCity ad
However as I track citizen problems, which future historian networks have been learning how to do worldwide and locally deep for 23 years, we see sustainability clusters crises like climate, wars, poverty compounding such urgency all around the world that (as our senior economics editor first forecast in a death of distnace history of 1984) we have in all likelihood less than 9 years left to turn them round before it wil be impossible to turn round sustainability. Climate is only the first of many which we have finally got national governments confessing to: UK HM treasury invest 15 of the UK's whole exconomy in a opposite way to save 20% of the whole economy( to have any collaboration permission to save 100% of world). So at a macro (local to global systematic level of integrity) I am now most energetically interested in mapping what sustainability crisis issues do peoples recognise as need world changers travel guides to because if we don't turn systems around at every micro, inter and macro level by 2015 we never will.
A change world travel guide has these features be it a printed brochure, a pdf, a thread within a social community,...:
It agrees a deadline for "turning round" the world change- which all involved with the emergiung world citizen network will have cooperatively failed if start of sytsem turn round is not achived
It votes for projects or other leaders who anyone who supports the guide's local to change world vision need to know of first both because there is an entrepreneurially proven project and it is replicable and whomever coordinates the project wants to open source wherever interlocally relevant. Several thousand Londoners are committed to making change world guides more and more popular until we become an olympic city in 2012 and have the stage to hand out whatever best world citizen travel guides have cooperatively been banked by then. So are there other cities anywhere that want to cooperate around making change world travel gudies as popular as guides to hotels or spectaor sports. Sustainability or not of the human race is ultilmately a media and learing crisis. As Gandhi said when he founded the univestity of ahmedabad in 1920 : knolwedge is that which liberates us. Problem is those who make a business case for knowledge management are propagating exactly the opposite knowledge (Soros' age of fallibility if you wish). What a leading knowledge guru in Japan calls learning slavery. For this reason, the first print world changers guide I am microfinacing is on learning and the core world chnagers featured have lifeteime experiences of Gandhi and Montessori. We're looking for others to feature particulary a practitioner of Brazilian Freire would be nice
Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Nov 23, 2006 12:46 pm (# Total: 66) HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates
The response to this item may be the most intense and challenging I’ve yet seen to a SocialEdge event of this sort, and it’s taking me a while to figure out how to respond as moderator without disturbing any of the various flows that have emerged.
Pamela, it’s a pleasure as always to read you here, and you open up the issue of bandwidth in a way that’s so to speak “prior” to the first of my two keys, the choice of software. I was taking a certain amount of bandwidth for granted, thinking of how some conferencing software is simpler / more intuitive / more helpful than others, and how the choice of software is often made by people who aren’t thinking in terms of facilitating conversation and conviviality.
And that’s important because, counter-intuitively perhaps, conviviality – and a sense of belonging – is the environment in which networking thrives. In Knowledge Management terms, it’s the tacit knowledge shared at the water cooler rather than the overt knowledge available in job descriptions and manuals that’s most important to an organization’s flow -- Etienne Wenger, I think, would call it a matter of “conversation”. It’s when we’re informal and friendly that we convey our most significant knowledge, and we only convey it to those with whom we feel a sense of kinship, of community, of trust.
Etienne Wenger on Communities of Practice:
http://www.ewenger.com/theory/
Paradoxically, that’s what Surya Prakash was calling for when he noted that his post had been “skipped” by following posters – he was basically expressing the wish that we who read and post should do so “as if” this were a conversation rather than a series of vaguely related monologues.
Surya, I’d suggest we all need to know that in online conversations such as this one, the fact that someone follows a particular post with another post that doesn’t relate to it doesn’t mean the first post hasn’t been read or appreciated – sometimes a post is simply too rich for an easy reply to be possible, sometimes the reader who would most like to reply has an important task to perform, and bu the time she returns to your post the conversation has already moved on…
But we’d all also do well to note SP’s point too, I suggest, and to try to acknowledge each other even when diverging from recently raised topics. One of the functions of this kind of software seems to be to allow the braiding of several distinct but related conversations into one rich, polyphonic thread.
And the acknowledgments are the aspects of our messages which build, little by little, the sense of kinship and trust that in turn builds a resource into a vibrant community…
In which the networking is richer and more enduring.
Chris Macrae calls us to action. I’m a wordsmith myself by trade, that is (somewhat paradoxically) my action, but his point is well taken.
Chris, I don’t actually have the capacity to start threads here. I get invited to suggest topics for events fairly frequently, but that’s a bit different. My focus here in initiating this particular event was on what can be done to turn a resource into a community, but you take it further in the direction of action points, just as Pam brings up the brandwidth issue, Dan points to a wider network of networks with his post entitled Social Edge as a connector, not the main meeting place, and Jeff points us to the need for a certain context within government for success to be possible. And then there is Edward, who wrote:
- We do not yet have the technology to bring about meaningful personal interaction through websites.
Each of these directions in turn could be the jumping off point for a single event of this kind, and the presence of all of them in this one thread suggests that our topic is a very live wire indeed, with far more “in” it than I originally hoped or imagined. I trust we will do our best to develop each strand in turn, while also weaving the beginnings of that net of regard and trust that’s my own “key” to this business.
Enough for now,
My regards to each of you, more to follow as your various and significant suggestions continue to bubble in the rich brew of this item…
Charles
Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Nov 23, 2006 12:57 pm (# Total: 66) HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates
Thanks for that breath of Wordsworth!
tutormentor - Nov 23, 2006 3:16 pm (# Total: 66) Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection
The fact that we're each in the same on line forum may mean were achieving the purpose Charles had in starting this thread. We're getting to know each other better.
However, I'm not sure that's a "network of purpose". From reading every message, I'm not clear what Surya's purpose is. I've a sense that Chris is setting up some sort of city to city collaboration, for a purpose that is important, but I'm not clear on what the path is to achiveing it. In Pam's post I sense that her purpose is to create greater access for those who cannot even get in this discussion.
And I've stated my own pupose, which may be as unclear to others as yours is to me.
I'm not sure about everyone else who post messages in forums like this or Omidyar, or everyone who write blogs, but I lead a small non profit and spend most of my waking hours trying to find a way to keep it funded, and achiveing its purpose. Finding extra time to spend digging through the deep thoughts posted on some of these forums is almost impossible.
Thus, I respond to people who I think I can help, or who might help me because they understand and value what I do. In many ways I'm advertising. Hopefully I'm also sharing and contributing to the work others do.
If I don't understand your purpose, or if it does not relate to my own purpose, I'm not likely to have enough time to spend in your space to figure it out.
In the end, if we each have a different purpose, we're not going to spend hours in the same discussion, let alone years, no matter how important we think our own purpose is.
I don't think Social Edge has more than a generic purpose, of supporting social entrepreneurs who do good for themselves by doing good for others. That's not the same as Social Edge to end Aids, or Social Edge to support Chris's purpose, or Dan's purpose.
I heard a wealthy Indian speak a few months ago. He talked about all the people who came to his office asking for help. He had one rule. He said "Don't tell me of the problems. I know them. Tell me your solution."
I think that's a recipe for building a network a purpose.
Jeff.Mowatt - Nov 24, 2006 1:05 am (# Total: 66) P-CED
This is true, TM. We spend a lot of time sifting through what may or may not be relevant to our own purpose, sometimes overwhelmed by the task, at others finding and engaging with those on a parallel path and the ideas generated in the informal groups we create might be passed from one network to another gaining momentum through our human ability to deduce association.
Quite often though, it doesn't work out this way and with very large networks we may observe several groups, oblivious of each other, treading the same path. Our intelligent networking software might detect this and draw our attention to it, hopefully without homogenising us forcible.
Laurinda - Nov 24, 2006 10:32 am (# Total: 66) I have spent the past 20 years looking and trying various network platforms. Going back to the days of BBS's. Have run various projects as a means to establish a virtual community.
One of the things that I have learn is that you need to integrate a human interface if you are going to have sustainable impact. You need to provide access to the "connectivity poor" through affordable portals .
There is a need for multiple entry points into the network and multiple knowledge resources portals. The system needs to be intelligent enough to be able to automatically link "same topic" discussions even if they are happening across various discussion groups ... you need a network of netowrks intelligently linked but with an human interface at grass route level to support and assist information and knowledge dissemination, encourage debates and innovative though processes ...
... and I can go on and on ...
This is part of the final research that we are in the process of conducting at present.
tutormentor - Nov 24, 2006 2:05 pm (# Total: 66) Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection
Laurinda, I agree that there needs to be human facilitation and a way to connect many platforms. Since I'm a small non profit, the only way I'll have access to the type of human facilitation that is needed is to find volunteers who will take this role. I've succeeded in a small way, but keep looking for partners at universities, where students who are learning these concepts, could be facilitators in the way I think you describe.
In the same way, I'm looking for business and university partners who are developing new applications, who would look on me and what I'm doing as a way to test and demonstrate the applications in a real world purpose.
Without finding volunteers, partners, and even a few financial supporters to make these advances in technology and needed manpower available, I'm like a kid staring in the window of a candy store, who has no money to buy what he wants so badly.
I think there are many who might have an important vision, but don't have the tools and manpower, to create and lead networks of purpose.
surya prakash.Vinjamuri - Nov 24, 2006 3:33 pm (# Total: 66) Life-Health Reinforcement Group
I like to share these initial thoughts -
When you want a topic of this nature & intent to be infused with energy, then you need to have lot's of patience, in one word we need to underline the word PURPOSE & thus accept the fact it's highly process oriented.
I keep looking at the process of deciding to bear a child to bringinging up the child to be responsible & purposeful.
As huge responsibility lies in every couple who decide to have an unprotective sex that their lies a possibility of becoming pregnant & one should own the responsibility of continuing & giving life and add purpose to it.
Here I am quoting this example of Life - because I see lot's of gap in understanding this that " when you have ability to create then you have the responsibility of giving appropriate direction".
Please see my earlier posts in the social edge where I mentioned from the inception of social edge that " How I see life", at times I did share my personal tragedies & dilemma's.
Social edge is home for me & at times I become demanding, please accept that, child in me is who prompts me to demand - I miss each one of you who feel for the society and I feel social edge is all about being HUMAN & that's the purpose.
-surya.
chrismacrae - Nov 25, 2006 3:55 pm (# Total: 66) If this virtual community box has no way that its moderators can create league tables of all time contributions (urgent projects, deep questions, whatever) across conversations either in dedicated threads or a community-wide newsletter -then I don't believe this has been designed as a powerful resource for activating community
I find it odd that we seldom see the people who actualy designed the toolbox answering this sort of usability question
(Incidentally, there are ways eg a weblog dedicated to cataloguing - to patch the missing facilities but these still require moderators agreeing to repeatedly publicise eg the external bookmark that is used to catalogue projects ) or a link designed into the top page
chrismacrae - Nov 25, 2006 4:19 pm (# Total: 66) I strongly believe that people who are spending substantial amounts of time in virtual community spaces with the intent of connecting social projects/needs should start to pool/syndicated no-cost ads. These ads could look very much like the google box ads you see for example in weblogs. However people can agree to insert them appropiately wherever html access includes simple tables.
Its important that the social advertiser has a bookmark to click to and is intent to greet any serious people who are drawn by the ad for a similar project or conversation. A few mock-up ads are here I agree the topic Surya is talking about is important and a crisis in many places. Does he wish to moderate a conversation on this over the coming months? If so we can co-create an ad once where know where his discussion group is bookmarked. I believe one of my all time social heroes lives in his vicinity so there is quite a lot of related social gravity. In principle I am prepared to take one ad per person who wants to try this around socila crisis issues. I am working in various networeks concerned with travel guides to world change in any virtual and print media. Having a catalogue of ads people want displayed because they represent a long-term entrepreneurial make a difference focus is a natural resource for our genres to help promote.
chris macrae info@worldcitizen.tv
Jeff.Mowatt - Nov 27, 2006 4:12 am (# Total: 66) P-CED
I agree Chris, and can cite one example where you and I live. http://www.nearbuyou.co.uk/ for those trading for social purpose. It also raises once more, the question of whether search engines like Google work against social endeavour. I offer the example of "human trafficking" as a search term, returning ads for a band by that name promoted on Ebay. Hence one must bid against Ebay itself to draw attention to efforts to counter trafficking.
Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Nov 27, 2006 8:26 am (# Total: 66) HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates
FWIW, I just googled "human trafficking" and the top sponsored link was for Ashoka, the top unsponsored return for www.humantrafficking.org/ -- a web resource for combating human trafficking. But you're right, the Google algorithms can be frustrating on occasion.
Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Nov 27, 2006 8:51 am (# Total: 66) HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates
Hi Dan:
Once again, thanks for your instructive comments. I'd like to pick up on one particular point you made...
- The fact that we're each in the same on line forum may mean were achieving the purpose Charles had in starting this thread. We're getting to know each other better.
- I'm not sure about everyone else who post messages in forums like this or Omidyar, or everyone who write blogs, but I lead a small non profit and spend most of my waking hours trying to find a way to keep it funded, and achiveing its purpose. Finding extra time to spend digging through the deep thoughts posted on some of these forums is almost impossible.
There are people I seldom if ever see here any more, whose presence I sorely miss.
Charles Cameron aka hipbone - Nov 27, 2006 9:02 am (# Total: 66) HipBone Games / Rheingold Associates
They're not about the kind of formal mentoring that your work coordinates and facilitates, Dan, but I wanted to post you these two stories about the man who was my own mentor, a remarkable English priest and school teacher working in the Johannesberg shantytown called Sophiatown, Fr Trevor Huddleston.
- One young black kid in South Africa aged about 8 or 9 was sitting with his mother on the "stoop" outside his house in a South African shanty-town, when a white priest walked by and doffed his hat to the boy's mother. The boy could hardly grasp how this had happened -- his mother was a black woman, as one might say, "of no account". But the priest in question was Fr. Huddleston, and it was a natural courtesy for him to lift his hat in greeting a lady... The young boy never quite recovered from this encounter: we know him now as Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu.
- Another young black kid, Hugh, aged 12 or 13, fell ill and was taken to hospital, where Trevor Huddleston visited him. Trevor asked him what he would like more than anything in this world, what would so thrill and please him that he would have the greatest possible motive for getting himself out of the hospital and back to school. Hugh said, "a trumpet, Father", so Trevor got hold of a trumpet to give to the boy -- now known the world over as the internationally renowned jazz trumpeter, Hugh Masekela.
At times, it seems to me that there's a "transmission" of sorts by which one life sparks another, and that Trevor's existence and impact was largely a matter of making that transmission with as many people as possible. I see your own work in a similar light, and it's the presence of so many "transmitters" gathered here that makes thuis place, for me, such a compelling online context to return to.
tutormentor - Nov 27, 2006 11:32 am (# Total: 66) Cabrini Connections Tutor/Mentor Connection
The story of Rev. Huddleston is one that I'd like to see multipled many times and in many places. That can't happen without a network of people working together with this purpose in mind.
I learn a lot by dipping in and out of these discussions, just as I've learned alot by hosting Tutor/Mentor Conferences every six months for the last 13 years. In fact, this is the primary way that I learn. There just is not time for me to read lots of books and research papers, or to dig through some of the extensive on-line conversations that I find in some on-line forums.
I feel that what Charles and others are Social Edge do to facilitate understanding and relationship building is extremely important, One of my goals is to find people who do this on a regular basis, within the tutor/mentor knowledge network. A few people with deep understanding of a subject can do much to help many other people build a functional understanding, which is enough to make better decisions in support of a cause.
I've added a new Google map feature to the Program Locator at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org. Now when you search for a program in Chicago, you'll get a Google map showing where the program is located. Using the Google feature a program could also search for businesses, churches, hospitals, etc in the same zip code, who could be sources of volunteers, dollars, and job/internships for kids in the program.
This work was done by volunteers, which shows what's possible if we can unleash the talent that's in the world and apply it toward a network of purpose.
surya prakash.Vinjamuri - Nov 28, 2006 9:08 am (# Total: 66) Life-Health Reinforcement Group
Jeff.Mowatt,Dan,chrismacrae &Charles - I read through each of your mails so many times -
And I see & understand that they are so many different approaches for similar situations & networks would attend to the purpose.
I just like to quote this dilemma - My wife being gyenocologist is able to address the issue of infertility and bring in life to those families who are longing to have children & I being part of implementation of Child Care Protection Act 2000 (Govt.,of India) am responsible for taking care of children who are destituted for various reasons are given direction with provision of safe environment to continue their life till they attain 18years of age.
So while we lead our life I see that we have the responsibility of understanding,reflecting, on what is going on with life in the area we represent and thus develop, borrow & or just observe to help ourselves to move forward.
I see reflections by seniors such as Charles, experiences shared by Dan, knowledge of various methods suggested by chrismacare & Jeff, along with words of WORDSWORTH shared are deffinete inputs for me, here I like to end using the words of Charles -
" it's the presence of so many "transmitters" gathered here that makes this place, for me, such a compelling online context to return to".
chrismacrae - Nov 28, 2006 9:55 am (# Total: 66) I would recommend that Surya goes to http://www.ashoka.org/ and goes through the catalogue of social entrepreneurs in India which is where Ashoka started social entrepreneurship's edge nearly 30 year ago. I believe many do work relevant to his or his wife's vocation. What I dont know is whether they network as a group yet. If they do, they should let Surya and his wife join their knowhow flows; if they don't perhaps that's the first network of purpose Surya can build out from. If that makes sense but for some reason there are inertias in getting India's child-nurturing entrepreneurs on the same map, tell me and I will go pay Bill Drayton a visit down in Arlington. I enjoy the cure of publishing whether network maps connect or are full of holes!
I have just come across perhaps the most purposeful message a summit of 100000 people has ever issued; world social forum kenya 2007 has announced its about:
which world do you want to live in
- B) where profit matters most?
- A) where life matters most?
see the 3 minute invitation video link at http://futurehistorian.tv/_wsn/page8.html
I'm working on helping to propagate the WSF ad in simplest ways that any forum can include, but help is always inspiring if this message is one your social networks want to interconnect to chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk http://futurehistorian.tv/
Incidentally , Peter Eigen of Transparency International and ashoka's Global Academy forecast last year that Jamuary 2007 would be one year from our last chance deadline for starting to end corruption everywhere. So for our amazing human race, Kenya is probably the final crossroads for all networks of purpose to do with human sustainability. It is not just Gore's and Skoll's climate crisis' inconvenient truth where we at the precipice (or final tipping point) of dare we get hi-trust and deep purpose interconnected.
If folk want a community thread to continue conversing around the WSF invitaion at , one is at http://www.omidyar.net/group/community-general/news/1564/
Jeff.Mowatt - Nov 28, 2006 11:33 am (# Total: 66) P-CED
The end of corruption is something worth talking about, so I'll join you Chris, This brought to mind the story of one of the earliest advocates, a lone tranmitter who I only learned of recently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Gracchus
Ebay has now been outbid it seems, so perhaps