Social Networks

Briefly in class today National Issues Forums came up. I got an email today from Taylor Willingham of Texas Forums and some of their efforts to use "innovative collaborative technologies like wikis and blogs to name, frame and report on public issues." Thought it might be of interest to someone, so here are the links: http://texasforums.wordpress.com/2006/10/15/working-with-the-wikis/ http://texasforums.wordpress.com/2006/10/17/20-technology-meets-old-fash...

At my last job at the Kettering Foundation, Unchat gave a presentation. This was several years ago, and I'm not sure about the status of this software. Regardless, I thought I would post a link to it as it is related to our Friday discussion on Civic Applications. I found a few organizations using it including MIT. Ben Barber and Beth Noveck were the brains behind this project. Unchat hopes to provide a chat software program that encourages deliberation. From their web site: "Put to use in civic and political debates, learning and educational development, community building and non-profit communications, corporate meetings and knowledge management, our software will enhance discussion, nurture deliberation and facilitate the arbitration of differences and the quest for common ground."

June Holley writes this about the economic development work that she and Valdis Krebs have been doing in Ohio. For more background on their methods, see the paper at http://www.orgnet.com/BuildingNetworks.pdf

For the last 20 years, I helped co-create economic networks (see www.acenetworks.org) in Appalachian Ohio, an area with deep and chronic poverty and amazingly little business activity. Since 1982, I was also reading research on transformation in complex systems and trying to apply what I was learning.

What we found was the critical factor leading to transformation--as opposed to viral spreading of ideas--was collaborative projects--or rather a densely woven, ever changing ecosystem of people figuring out what they and their community needed and finding others to join them in doing something about that.

Brian Kerr and I recently got back from RecentChangesCamp, a conference for wiki developers and other parties interested in "Building Communities Worth Having." We've written up a small wiki to talk about our experiences, including a few CIC concepts. Check it out below! http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bkerr/asset/rcc-report.html