103 questions about community informatics

These came from a Prato conference on community informatics held this fall in Europe. Here are the 103 questions that were raised through group process at the Prato Community Informatics Conference workshops. If you go to www.ccnr.webstylus.net/wiki you can see hyperlinks to some of the answers. If you would like to add any answers please go to the website and add them. The password is prato2006 and it will only be open for a couple of days for security reasons. Perhaps we'll see further discussion and reports about action on answers at the next Conference scheduled for 6-8 November 2007 at Prato. Larry Stillman What is empowerment? Nana Yaw Boaitey 2. What about the CIRN website? Larry Stillman 3. What is the place of theory in community informatics especially? M Smyth 4. How are regional communities in various parts of the world influencing government decision making on matters/policies affecting those communities? Mary O'Flynn 5. How has technology been used in different countries to empower communities to develop more strategic lobbying methods? Mary O'Flynn 6. Catalysts - who are the people that ensure (?) success; How do roles change across the lifecycle - have ideas, create projects, instantiate ideas, sustain initiatives - roles, skills, barriers, strengths, weaknesses - Andy Williamson 7. How can small regional communities develop the ability to control their own destiny? Who has an interest in this issue? Rod Jewell 8. How can productive collaborations best be managed at great distances? Graeme Johanson 9. What ways can we measure the health benefits of engaging community? We know people enjoy the involvement/experience, but can we measure this feeling quantitatively within a qualitative research project? Helen Klaebe 10. How do we get community to continue to use the technology - e.g. community portal after the facilitators have gone - to build on their own community? Helen Klaebe 11. Technology needs to be relevant to the community. Should build on what they have rather than what they lack. ? 12. How to make conversations which occur globally through the Web be more effective to allow people in playing a role in shaping the future (globally and locally) focus with the major problems (environment, health, etc)? I.e. how to enhance citizenship locally and globally? Fiorella De Cindio 13. How to activate community members to play their appropriate roles in complex community processes? Aldo de Moor 14. The role of the social appropriation of ICT in participative governance? Wallace Taylor 15. The role of university in advocating for and with civil society for shared knowledge societies? Wallace Taylor 16. I am interested in learning about genres of reporting community memory/community research. My sense is that there a variety of genres to be used at different times. What are the factors that a community group should keep in mind when deciding on a genre type? Ellen Knutson 17. Where is the coffee? Aldo de Moor 18. Getting the IT to work at conferences is always a problem! Mark Gaved 19. What literacies do communities need to construct and shared memories digitally and how do we empower disadvantaged communities with these digital technologies? Barbara Craig 20. How can Africa benefit from all these ideas? Braam 21. What protocols are other people using to "find out" about the communities they work with? Thomas Bongiorno 22. How do we define community? Thomas Bongiorno 23. What does it mean to have a "strong" community? Thomas Bongiorno 24. Where is the nearest pub? The Back Row 25. What is community? Nana Yaw Boaitey 26. How do you define participatory design? Sarai Lastra 27. How do you empower local or indigenous communities to preserve their own information? Randy Stoecker 28. Interested in community network research initiatives in Australia. David Mitchell 29. What is the history and future of community informatics? Kate Williams 30. What is this commnity's view of the scope of CI? William McIver 31. Is organizing activity around the explicit goal of building and sustaining community the most effective way of achieving those goals? Sandra Braman 32. How to measure achievement of an information society for all? Alex Byrne 33. How are archival sites and surfaces inter-related? ? 34. How can indigenous groups from around the world coalesce/network on effective use of ICTs to their advantage? Yvonne P. Pratt 35. How can refugee and immigrant communities use ICTs to stay connected to landscapes and experiences that have formed their cultural identities? Barbara Craig 36. How can CIRN network more effectively? I.e. sharing information and research, finding out who else is working on similar research etc. Clair Farenden 37. Cultural institutions and constructing memories: working models, case studies, their evolving roles and transformations of cultural institutions in communities Natalie Pang 38. How do we design for community rather than individual use of technologies? Supriya Singh 39. How do issues of privacy and security differ at the individual and community levels? Supriya Singh 40. How can we develop tools that really work and get used? Stefanie Kethers 41. How can technology aid the retention of community memory in places of high population mobility? Julie Roberts 42. Helen McQuillan and Lyn Simpson gave presentations that highlighted instances and issues of communities that were able to subvert or pull/guide major government and commercial CI initiatives. At the same time they spoke of communities who are themselves subverted (were not able to reach all their aspirations; experienced negative unintended consequences). How can CIRN be more effective in influencing policy, giving voice, and helping to resource (indigenous) communities. It seems to me that, as an organization that sits at the intersection of research, action, and policy, we are well positioned to take a more active and concrete role. Ann Bishop 43. Given limited resources, how do we increase engagement in CI initiatives without undermining or depleting existing community? Lyn Simpson 44. How can we measure effects of CI interventions on individuals - short term, long term? M Smyth 45. How do we measure impact of ICT on quality of life - do we need better indicators? Helen McQuillan 46. What metrics can be developed to assess the cultural impact of a community informatics project? Paul Rankin 47. Observation: there is still a lack of evaluation and reflection in community informatics projects. a) To separate content of project from its context especially influence of context on success or failure b) very few short-term proxies have been identified for long-term impact, imponderables "cultural impact" "social cohesion" "inclusion" "empowerment" "identity" etc. c) sharing of failures as well as successes needed. This area needs much more work. Paul Rankin. 48. How do community informatics methodologies relate to the broader paradigm of qualitative methodologies? Marco Adria 49. What are the design considerations for helping a community to use new (Web 2.0) technologies? author: ? 50. How do you catch people's imagination or change people's mindset that they can use new technologies in their community? ? 51. What are the design methods being used to create participatory tools ? Sarai Lastra 52. We need to consider how to evaluate what we are doing - currently we are not doing a very good job of this (generally) Mark Gaved 53. What research methods have been proven useful for investigating ICT-supported learning in communities? Particularly, any stories on using auto-ethnography. Patricia Arnold 54. How can GIS be used in CI practice? Shigeki Toyama 55. Community memory or memories - rich in context - can be stored digitally in various ways. How are they then effectively recovered or used in the future? Stephen Burgess 56. What are useful community lifecycle models? What purposes can they serve in describing, analyzing and improving community operations? What are good, archetypical examples of successful community evolution processes? Aldo de Moor 57. What can digital storytelling achieve that written text cannot? Barbara Craig 58. How can stories help to support learning in communities and how can ICT support this? Patricia Arnold 59. Ideas re low tech establishment of community archives (ongoing formative approaches that engage with the technology)? Frank Upward 60. How can we make the whole process of remembering fun (that includes activities such as curation, accessing memories, etc.)for a community? Stefanie Kethers 61. What is the true driving force in community informatics (individuals? groups? (individual) politicians, political parties, government, etc.)? ? 62. What are the principles of community informatics? Hugo Quisbert 63. How will social networking technology tools enable social interactions? Where are they being deployed today? Stephen Musgrave 64. Potential of Web 2.0 technologies for community development? Stories, examples, case studies Patricia Arnold 65. Is there a collective memory? Ruth Grossman 66. How to access heterogeneous community memories? Hugo Quisbert 67. It's difficult to talk about failures, but it's really important Mark Gaved 68. Where is collective memory? Victor Jan Vos 69. How does media technology affect collective memory? Victor Jan Vos 70. How does media technology structure collective memory? Victor Jan Vos 71. How can memories and shared digital community goods be structured and presented in order to be easier accessible from or to outsiders? ? 72. Communities of memory: post-colonial, post-trauma, diasporic communities employ various methods in creating and sustaining their memories. To what extent can their methods be developed into universal best practices? Eric Ketelaar 73. How can ICT be used to increase the dialogue between civilizations, increase mutual understanding and enrich us all? Gunilla Bradley 74. What are the aggregation-sedimentation or recalling-forgetting processes involved in both collective memory and collective aspiration, what are the interactions and mediations between 'short-term' and 'long-term' human memories? (i.e. What are the transfer processes between personal/individual - family - community - cultural memories or role modelling)? Paul Rankin 75. How is the tension between: a) memory and cultural roots, ie the past and b) creative aspirations, i.e. the future, mediated and resolved? Paul Rankin 76. Are community memories a result of constructivism or constructionism? Hugo Quisbert 77. How can we get community informatics on government policy agendas? Helen McQuillan 78. Are there any risks of conflict between community informatics and public national archives? Jorgen Nilsson 79. How can ICT contribute to or prohibit weapons of aggression and war? Gunilla Bradley 80. How can historical archives interconnect with contemporary community memory projects? ? 81. Does community informatics embrace a concept of societal memory information systems? Hugo Quisbert 82. Storytelling linked to government planning for human services. Are people aware of this happening in an ongoing manner? Andrew Clark 83. The creative idea to start up a dialogue with China related to a collaboration on the web site for the Olympic Games planning for 2008 at Beijing. Nathalie Pang 84. How to facilitate and accommodate multiple perspectives including dissonant ones and enable them to emerge as multiple sustainable memories. Also question of sustainability of memory - because of ephemeral nature of some web sites. Kirsty Williamson 85. How does one remember? Nana Yaw Boaitey 86. What do we mean by technology? Larry Stillman 87. Emphasis on process rather than outcome in participatory methodologies? Yvonne Pratt 88. The importance of leaving room for community interpretation Alex Byrne 89. Good examples of techs in action? M Smythe 90. Explore intersection of values with informatics Alex Byrne 91. Links and relationships between CIRN and emergent memories, communities, technologies, network? SueMcKemmish 92. Role of community members and memory institution stakeholders in CIRN? SueMcKemmish 93. How can historical archives interconnect with contemporary community memory projects? ? 94. Connecting with non-academics. How do we do it? - cost and resources, language, academic agendas LarryStillman 95. What are the benefits of involving academics in a community's memory building work? MarkGaved 96. Community space needs the facility to annotate public records, edit, add to, delete their own content. What are the appropriate technologies to take the people to do this? ? 97. How far are we from accessing these memory sites on mobiles and PDAs? ? 98. How can community members drive community memory or oral history projects? How do you get a buy-in to a project? ? 99. Using technologies that allow different groups to create and share their cultural and political memories. Groups such as immigrant groups and long-term residents. How can this sharing of databases empower the community as a whole? ? 100. Ethics of community communication? ? 101. Collaborative activity as a means of self-reflection on identity and narrative? ? 102. Privacy and security and cultural norms intersecting with technological design? ? 103. Archival construction and its incorporation of ethical norms of producers? ?