Social Capital

Paul used to think that there was no public interest work, just work in the private interest. Then he came around to this definition: Public interest work is work that creates public goods, or reduces inequality. Something for which the benefits accrue to everyone. Ask yourself: is the work or internship you're involved in creating a public good?

Public goods

• At the margin, my use doesn't use it up.

I'm working on redeveloping the main navigation bar for the CIC site this weekend, a task suddenly significantly more challenging as I've lost my free home Internet access. Thank goodness for screenshots!

I don't expect to produce a perfect new version right away. I expect I'll come up with something that may be a little more workable, and will probably split the current navigation into multiple pieces. And we'll try it out and then change it as needed. I'm thinking along the lines of splitting the navigation among features, resources and actions, which would provide logical groupings for the options. Fortunately, this is a relatively discreet task that I can work on without spending too much effort considering the whole site, which helps--I have a tendency to look at the big picture and the details become overwhelming. … Read more »

It's all about peer pressure.

Well, it's really all about others getting involved (or getting others involved) on the CIC web site. I've been working on it for almost a year now and it's been a lot of effort. Today's meeting with Lev and Kyle about our approach for the site this fall was really refreshing for me. We agreed that core functionality--accommodating what people REALLY use on the site--is our main objective. Hurrah!  … Read more »