Blogs

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I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but I've read that website essay a couple of times now and I still don't know what Net² "is". I hear that it is ...

the beginnings of a very large project to encourage and support collaboration among and between nonprofit organizations and non-governmental agencies that are doing crucial work that otherwise wouldn't get done

... but then I get no vision at all what that means, actually and physically in the real world. You say this interesting thing about "community plumbing" way way below that sentence, and that's intriguing so I click to the site and get a bunch of technical gobbledegook, and it doesn't say "community plumbing" anywhere. And I have no idea what "grab a hammer and dive in" means in this context.

Now, here's a surprise...

The Salvation Army’s Western Territory, which covers the 13 western-most US states and Micronesia, was recently named to the prestigious InformationWeek 500, InformationWeek magazine's 17th annual ranking of the most innovative Information Technology (IT) organizations in the nation. [read more on Salvation Army site...]

Background on the InformationWeek 500 -- as well as the complerte list for 2005 -- is available here. It appears that the magazine has covered the Salvation Army fairly often in the past (see google search).

I was looking forward to the Bioneers session yesterday afternoon titled: Blogs, Wikis and Indies: Citizen Media and the Fate of Democracy. Finally, a place where we could dive deep into the churning waters where social justice meets web2.x!

 So, why was it the discussion kept circling back to television? While we certainly  touched on web2.x topics, the conversation largely revolved around the longer running skirmishes over non-web communication modes. Lots of talk about the FCC, media consolidation, television, print journalism, etc. There was relatively little discussion of the impact the blogosphere has had, or the potential that lies ahead. 

First off, a hearty hello to the NetSquared world! I'm Phil Ferrante-Roseberry, one of the folks who helps keep the good ship CompuMentor afloat and on-course. I'm looking forward to seeing where this grand experiment takes us all over the coming months (and hopefully seeing many of you in person in April!)

Right now, I'm back from Day 1 of the Bioneers Conference, my mind racing... and yet slow in that way that comes from too many big thoughts in one day.  Bioneers is one of THE hot events in enviromental activism (or any area of activism, I suspect) and I'm looking forward to soaking it in over the next couple days.

Hey folks, Looks like we had the moderation turned on for the comments.  I just approved all the comments in the queue. Sorry if that puzzled folks.  We'll get it fixed straight away.

The first draft of the case study database awaiting to be populated looks cool!  There probably aren't many nonprofits doing vlogging posts and certainly there are some good reasons for that, but was wondering why vlogging wasn't included on the tool list?  

OK, folks - this is my very first blog ever, anywhere...

Here are my raw impressions from the Web2.1 conference some of us attended on Friday afternoon:
My main goal was to listen and soak in the culture of Web2.X (2.0, 2.1, 2.2 etc).  Toward that end, I noted words, phrases and concepts that were repeated often and appear to be defining characteristics of Web 2.X.   Many of these reiterate what we’re hearing from people here inside CM/TS and are in our plans for site redesign.  Hearing them from a new round of voices gives them added weight in my mind and awareness of what we’re aiming for.
Here’s my list:

• Sandbox
• Creative Commons
• Knowledge Conversation / Knowledge Café
• Plant a seed rather than dictate an agenda
• Do what you’re passionate about
• It’s about play
• Software enables people to do things *together* online (emphasis mine)
• There’s a lot of interest in using technology to let people find events that will attract people like themselves (vs letting people find people like themselves on line and then leaving it to them to figure out a physical meeting place)
• “Structured blog”
• Search capabilities: some desire to look for info and have returned a spectrum of related ideas and material  -- not something that simply matches the words you already know to use in your search.  Searching to locate info vs searching to learn
• Open API’s grew from hacker mentality
• The web currently holds *islands of multimedia content that need to be connected*
• Desire to connect to “my data” from anywhere vs desire to have single profile that can be used by multiple applications, with user control over what aspects of profile are available to what apps / vendors – see www. attentiontrust.org
• Tools need to be simple and they need to be “right”
• Overall motivation appeared to be what’s for the common good
• Cultural norms: smart, not aggressive
• “All tagging tools suck”, we need a better one
• Blogs are both to get information out (to whomever’s reading) and to get info *in* (eg post-Katrina efforts)

Sites/Products that caught my interest:

We get together every Friday in the Net2 Hideout to talk about this effort.  Here are some notes from today's meeting.

How to reach and involve international voices

• Club of Rome
• Ashoka
• Changemakers.net

The face-to-face events

How do we keep individual events a part of a larger conversation? How do we capture what's there to be learned from each of these events?

TechSoup is looking for a Community Builder. You don't really need experience on the high steel, but there are a number of other competencies that would come in extremely handy.

The Net² Community Builder will be focused on building and engaging a team of volunteers from within and outside of the Net² community and will ensure that TechSoup staff (100 of ‘em) have an opportunity to contribute to the event.

<!-- Uh... Billy... do you think we should tell the folks that "the event" = TechSoup NetSquared Conference and Gala? Or is figuring that out part of the "test"? btw, remind me to remove these comments. I always forget that part. -->

Saw this Op/Ed piece in the NY Times:

 Walking The Talk

This article is about grassroots efforts to stop the genocide in Darfur. See http://www.genocideinterventionfund.org and http://www.dollsfordarfur.org

Unfortunately, the article itself is on the paid section of the NYTimes website. But you can get a trial subscription.