Civic Engagement

Civic engagement involves working to identify and address issues of public concern and to make an impact, either individually or collectively, in the civic life of our communities through both political and non-political processes.

LinkDump: class notes from Civic Applications I

Submitted by Lev Rickards on October 13, 2006 - 11:01am
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Cost Structures:

as email gets easiest, it becomes least effective way to influence someone.

Coordination+Provision Problems

http://www.pledgebank.com/Electric http://fundable.org/

Neighborhood Informatics:

ThinkNOLA.org Neighborhood Knowledge LA ineighbors.org daviswiki.org

txt-ing:

Sara's experience in Benin: new candidate entered presidential election late in the game. People started txting to get friends to register to vote, then organized buses with music and eye-catching behavior to get people to vote.

Unchat

Submitted by Anne on October 11, 2006 - 10:58am
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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."

Michael Walzer: background for in-class discussion

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For those of you currently on campus, or those of you with a passion for civil society cognoscenti, I'm providing two links that ought to provide some background on Michael Walzer, author of "The Idea of Civil Society," which will be discussed in lecture this Friday, November 17th, 2005. First is an interview from the UNESCO Courier. It addresses some of Walzer's views on the intersections of race and identity politics with civil society:

http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_01/uk/dires/txt1.htm

Design and Development of BiblioCommons

Submitted by Paul Resnick on October 31, 2005 - 8:54pm
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BiblioCommons is a Toronto-based initiative that is developing hosted web services to integrate with libraries’ OPAC and circulation systems. It will enable library patrons to easily annotate the libraries’ bibliographic records with evaluative, associative and synoptic “tags”.

BiblioCommons is premised on a conviction that libraries not only can, but should play a leading role in the emerging field of “social knowledge discovery”.

PledgeBank - dada dada dada dada

Submitted by Lev Rickards on October 8, 2005 - 2:47pm
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I pledged on PledgeBank to help Rebecca and Kyle bring a group of students to New Orleans. You can too: http://www.pledgebank.com/ArchivesNOLA The best part was when I thought only 10 people had signed up, and it turns out they have more like 46 out of 50 necessary pledgers. Talk about social capital - what we cannot do alone, what we could never do alone - can be done with a group of people working together. Like sending a team of students to New Orleans.
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