Netcentric Advocacy

Seattle Initiative 103: Limiting Corporate Rights and Elevating Peoples' Rights

Initiative 103 will change the law in Seattle to:

• Ban corporate spending on elections, reversing Citizens United
• Ban corporate lobbying except in public forums
• Strip Corporate Personhood and judge-made corporate "Constitutional" rights
• Establish a Community Bill of Rights for Seattle which includes Rights for Workers, Rights for Neighborhoods and Rights for Nature to protect our environment. Learn more...

via envisionseattle.org

Is this the next evolution of the occupy movement?  Did the reactions last summer create space for an agenda to emerge? It will also be interesting to watch how the opposition moves against the prop.

 This is worth watching.  I love the idea of a ban on lobbying except in public forums.   

The Agitator Recap on Mobile 2012

Check out the recap and overview of the Neilsen and Pew findings on Mobile over at the Agitator.To apply mobile strategy to social change, I  also recommend following the ongoing great work of the team at www.mobileactive.org . 

“Some 70% of all cell phone owners and 86% of smartphone owners have used their phones in the previous 30 days to perform at least one of the following activities:

• Coordinate a meeting or get-together — 41% of cell phone owners have done this in the past 30 days.
• Solve an unexpected problem that they or someone else had encountered — 35% have used their phones to do this in the past 30 days.
• Decide whether to visit a business, such as a restaurant — 30% have used their phone to do this in the past 30 days.
• Find information to help settle an argument they were having — 27% haveused their phone to get information for that reason in the past 30 days.
• Look up a score of a sporting event — 23% have used their phone to do that in the past 30 days.
• Get up-to-the-minute traffic or public transit information to find the fastest way to get somewhere — 20% have used their phone to get that kind of information in the past 30 days.
• Get help in an emergency situation — 19% have used their phone to do that in the past 30 days.”

Activity by age shows the expected pattern

via www.theagitator.net

Is Mobile  a part of your strategy? 

Yochai Benkler. Keep Watching. We will Catch Him Someday. Foldit

  

Thinking about FOLDIT, I started thinking about the brilliance of Yochai Benkler. 

There is something here for all of us in the social sector.  The critical innovation in our space is to continue to throw the challenges of our work out to the network to create the content, plan the campaigns, set the course, and do the work.  

The challenge for us is breaking the challenges down and setting the network to share. They did it at FOLDIT. 

How does my game playing contribute to curing diseases?

With all the things proteins do to keep our bodies functioning and healthy, they can be involved in disease in many different ways. The more we know about how certain proteins fold, the better new proteins we can design to combat the disease-related proteins and cure the diseases. Below, we list three diseases that represent different ways that proteins can be involved in disease.

 

Compound Bow, Longbow and Bowling Balls. Network-Centric Advocacy: Potential Energy with the Advocacy Movement.

Compound bows maximize the energy storage throughout the draw cycle and provide let-off at the end of the cycle (less holding weight at full draw). A traditional recurve bow has a very linear draw force curve - meaning that as the bow is drawn back, the draw force becomes increasingly heavier with each inch of draw (and most difficult at full draw). Therefore, little energy is stored in the first half of the draw, and much more energy at the end where the draw weight is heaviest. The compound bow operates with a very different weight profile, reaching its peak weight within the first few inches of the draw, and remaining more flat and constant until the end of the cycle where the cams "let-off" and allow a reduced holding weight. This manipulation of the peak weight throughout the draw is why compound bows store more energy and shoot faster than an equivalent peak weight recurve bow or longbow.

via en.wikipedia.org

The rules of potential energy tell us an object can store energy based upon its position and structure.

How is your movement building a “compound bow”?

Here is another way to think of energy, imagine a bowling ball…in a flat gravel driveway,  a significant amount of force is required to accelerate it. However, the same ball sitting on a dirt road at the top of long hill will roll with the slightest nudge.  The ball will start bouncing, hopping and rolling down the dirt road. 

The difference in these scenarios of the bow or the ball on the hill  lies in the stored “energy of position” created by the ball’s placement and the bows structure. Potential energy is measured in degree of ability to perform work, to displace some quantity of mass.

It takes exactly the same amount of energy to move the ball up to the top of the hill as it does to accelerate it along the driveway but “the cost” of investing the energy is not linear. 

It would take a lot of capacity to blast the bowling ball down the drive way to the same speed (bouncing, hopping and rolling).  

A compound bow takes the mechanics of energy storage to an even greater design alloing a user not just to hold the energy but to hold it comfortably and directed and stored to deliver the most use.

These same forces exist within advocacy. With a little creative thought about building stored energy into a campaign infrastructure, we can lower the costs and capacity needs of accelerating change.

In our world when we are working to “displace some quantity of mass” we are talking about influence in culture, policy, opinion and actions. Do you build a base overnight or do you leverage more efficent stuctures to build and store energy?  How do you position your assets so they have the greatest work potential stored in them?  Where is the last place to store your bowling balls  and assets (in the middle of a valley or behind hoops of program officers and applicaitons) ?

 Using this framework,  we can think of some principals for campaigns.

1. Don't wait to build your movement because you want to hold back your reserves. Focus instead on building tools that build steadily "hold" resouces ready. However, borrowing from logistics and supply chain management also remember  the flexibility of your "energy holder" really matters.    There are a few new movement structures out there but they are deisgned to "store and nuture" a movement for others to leverage on demand. 
2. Once a base of clout is organized in a new "position" it will change the dynamic of work. The compound bow changed warfare, and distributed supply chains drove shifts in business models. As we build more flexile campaign teams and infrastucture, the fundamental ways we organize will transform to leverage the new systems in place.   When many groups can all leverage the reach to the  same base of activist while still being independent you will see new organzing as a service model emerge (testing at www.movingmdforward.net).
3. Finally, the tempo of delivering clout changes because the potential of the movement is organized more "forward and nimble" and therefore the other campaigners see a shorter cycle between developing campaign ideas and being able to implement them. The increased tempo of organzing creates a "mobilizing" dynamic consisting of many things "to do" for people that are eager to see progress and move the aganda forwad. The momentum creates more clout.

(I need to push this forward more...another day...must sleep...) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maid Serives, Nail Salons, Taxi Cabs, Issue Groups and Complex Problems for Organizing Change.

We operate in a sector that has no profits, no barriers to entry, little overhead and low labor costs.  In every other sector like our own, the dominate model of operations becomes small independent operations or very lightly controlled franchises. The world of issue organizing is joining the ranks of barber shops, landscaping, maid services, truckers, taxis, newspapers and nail salons.   This shift threatens the core business model of important groups but it also gives rise to new models and services.  

The life-cycle of a movement usually starts as an issue emerges inspiring individuals to act and organize. Founding groups in a movement are organized (NAACP, wilderness society, Teamsters, Amnesty International) get formed and grow.  The new groups recruit talent and pulll together power to create change. As staff increase in skills, build personal and professional networks and talents, a percentage of the talented staff, Board members or funders get increasingly frustrated by the decisions of managers (boards, brands, etc) or politics (wrong message, wrong focus, to conservative or to radicle) so these talented staff split off to create splinter operations that compete directly for media, members, attention of policy makers and funders.

 The basic barriers to entry and the overhead with being a political issue group have gone down toward zero.  In the last ten years the tools to organize, collect information and broadcast messages has dropped drammatically.  The overhead of running an organizaiton has dropped so much that new groups start up quickly and can compete with the same tools as the best funded groups.  These new start ups can survive with less money and provide the niche organizing that the public wants.  Additionally, the overhead of running an operation has dropped and is so low that both groups remain in operation and are likely to continue.  

 The trend willnot go away unless there is an increase barriers to entry or drastically increase overhead costs to stay in business (both unlikely). Political and issue organizing is a complex and chaotic environment in which we want many or all organizers to survive. In fact, we care about overall market share of people engaged and growing the base of people that wish to be a part of organizing for change. We know that the new groups often reach new segments and work on new issues so we are always interested in pushing new organizing to a new edge.  We care about growing the overall engagement and overall success not the allocation of interests and members within individual groups.  

 The problem that has emerged is that as the cultural forces splinter organizing units into smaller and smaller factions the issues that must be addressed grow in scale and quicken in tempo.  Issues such as balancing influence of multi-national corporations, climate crisis, human justice and dignity on an international scale, war, natural resource management and child safety have spiraled into global issues requiring extensive power to track, evaluate and promote solutions.  Even in the US, our own government has take to moving prisoners overseas to complicate the extension of ability to address oversight by US activists groups.

Simply, the problems we want to address are getting bigger while the mechanisms working on the problems are getting smaller. Smaller groups are becoming more powerful but the sum of the smaller groups’ power is significantly less than the potential power of the whole.   

Given the transformation this trend represents to organizing, it is essential to actually solve the challenge of enabling a highly fractured network to work together in an advocacy and issue context.  It is essential to invest in the strategy, training, analysis, research, tools and platforms that enable relationship building to occur and it is essential to train a new generation not just of managers but of network leaders.  

"Choices Reveal Who We Are" & Who We Are Is Shaped by our Choices.

I always enjoy Valdis Krebs' perspectives on networks. The way Valdis sees the world is interesting and this riff is no different.  Getting the data on what users hi-lite is in a way like a peek into a deeper  level of our behavior than just the books we follow and the friends we keep but gets at a level of data that may reveal why we like that book, or maybe why we like those people.  

It is not just the also-bought data that matters (which books bought by same customer), it is what we specifically find interesting and useful in those books that reveals deep similarities between people -- the hi-lites, bookmarks and the notes will be the connectors.  Our choices reveal who we are, and who we are like!

via www.thenetworkthinkers.com

When the choices available are shaped by our culture and policy, the reverse of this statement starts to become haunting.

The choices we have available to us, reveals who we are and who we can become. Working to shape fair choices, healthy choices, and uplifting choices  is at the core of lots of policy and social advocacy work. 

 

Guerrilla Libraries .. The Network Coordination. Old Phone Booths as Network Hubs.

Is there any screening process for the books? For instance, do you try to include great works of literature, or perhaps focus on more accessible and popular novels?

I want everything and anything. I don't have much of a budget, so all the books are donated from people that live nearby and off my own shelves, so everything from Oprah-approved to Jane Jacobs. And obviously as people leave their own books, I'd want the collection to become a record of the interests of that particular site.

A next site I have in mind is near a public school, and I'm trying to get a good collection of children's books.

via www.theatlanticcities.com

This is beautiful.  The real human network finding ways to leverage resoruces (love the art angle). This is the "open source" of library organizing.  Find extra capacity or resources built into the basic unit then use network production to leverage it.

Where does it go from here?  

1. Create a common vision on the future of the open library. (The "leave one. take one" network?)
2. TXT to sign in an volunteer as a librarian. Text sends reminders. Send photos 
3. Encourage people to sign the book when they return it so people get a sense of community in the asset. 

 

Network Learning at TEDEd...

 

Can we use this on advocacy issues?  How about some TEDEd and Activism linked together? 

Evolving to pull off the revolutions necessary for our own survival.

 

an informal riff....reacting to   "We live in a society that’s become intractably resistant to the large-scale changes necessary for its own survival." 

We live in a society that is clearly evolving to be able to pull off the revolutions necessary for our own survival.  In social context, network strength grows proportionally to the threat to the network.   Yes, the outcome of the current revolutions are not yet certain but we can easily  observe and document the growing strength of the network as a mechanism. The network connectivity is the key to revolutions.   

We are facing network scale, global and complex challenges but we are also evolving and inventing our human capacity as a network to adapt and respond to the problems we face.(huge riff material)

 We are scaling our ability to communicate and exert pressure across all kinds of borders to meet the challenges.  I worry more about our ability to wield revolution more so than the stagnation of society. 

boo.. "technology plays a critical role in maintaining connections and enabling loosely coupled collaboration across large numbers of people. ...more networked movements to stay coordinated with minimal organizational overhead. "

 

I am less "sold" on the idea that the transfiguration role technology plays is about maintaining connections and facilitating coordination. I am more focused on acknowledging that technology is shifting US. We are accelerating our capacity to work and learn. The effect is transforming our perspective and behavior. We are becoming more networked as a global species building tribes and friendships and collaborations that are redefining the norms of relationships (working, personal, production).  

Technology is redefining what constitutes a "relationship" and as such changes the DNA of how we think about working together.   This shift will follow us online and offline. 

Network participation is adding to our personality. We are seeing our networks shape people in many ways as powerfully as their global location, cultural backgrounds, education, up bringing,  or economic plights. (for better and worse.) As more people identify more tightly with the network perspective to identity, then relationships and problem solving we will see a massive shift in behaviors.  

As a species, we are the the only one that can create "tangible" from symbolic. Think of the idea of a currency. We watched "trade" move from tangible swap of bread for pelts or meat, to shells, to gold, to bill representing gold, to digital. Something very real and very personal became "scalable". Imagine NYSE working on barter with pelts. 

Networks and relationships are becoming scaleable. We are literally building and maintaining ties (fame) that are no more real than digital money.  We are going to continue to see networks reshape our solutions.

In my expereince, sorting out the organization role and state of the sector is almost irrelevant. They are important and will continue to adapt to the people in them but the biggest gap lies in  sorting out how to build netcentric campaigns and work with emerging networks to manage their capacity for creating useful revolutions.

 

What Flows Through the Network Defines It. Twitter, Facebook, Ebay, Amazon, School Network, Knowledge Networks, Advocacy Networks

Twitter is Not a Social Network is a really thought provoking riff by Gideon Rosenblatt it also has links to some interesting data analysis of twitter.  I agree with the basic trust of the post and it has triggered some clarity about the nature of designing advocacy networks online and offline. I have riffed before on the concept that advocacy networks are not social networks (people that worked on climate change do not want to socialize with each other and may even hate each other.)  But this post brings that distinction into event more clarity. 

My big take away lies hidden in the way Gideon focus on the differece between networks of people (facebook) and networks that use people to achieve specific ends.  

You could call eBay a social network and you wouldn’t be wrong. eBay does connect people; people who want to sell stuff with people who want to buy stuff. What’s interesting about eBay though – what defines it, really – is how those connections are used. What flows through the eBay network are bids, transactions … and products. That’s because it’s an online marketplace; an online marketplace that rests on top of a network of people.

How about Amazon? One of Amazon’s most valuable assets is its user-contributed product reviews, which are essentially just Amazon connecting people who know something about a product with people who want to know something about a product. Clearly, that’s not all Amazon does, but connecting people is a really important part of what they do. So, is Amazon a social network? Well, yes, you could call it that, but that would be confusing ends with means. While less obvious than eBay, Amazon’s marketplace also rests on a network of people.

This approach line of thinking triggers two responses that are consistent with how I understand networks and yet are really contradictory. (oh well)

Good Networks are flexible: Once networks are built (as they are components of infrastucture) the networks will be LEVERAGED IN NEW AND DIFFERENT WAYS .  Sewage networks to run fiber optic cable, cable to run internet, power grid to run data, work networks for dating, dating networks for business, etc. etc.  I think all smart network designers really try to figure out how to manage that. 

 Facebook is on its way to building a general purpose computing and communications platform with the same kind of power Microsoft held in its hay day.

Getting networks to work together comes from establishing protocols for connections and use of the network, but any set of protocols will be tested and constantly pushed for more flexibility. Good network design (ones that embrace a strategy of growth and nimbleness accept both ).

If Facebook is the social network utility, Twitter is a social network application. It’s a great social network application. You might even say it’s a killer social network application. 

As advocactes, we need to test those protocols and exploit the funcationality of networks to achieve change. In the framework Gidieon suggest, our job is to design "advocacy applications" that exploit the power of networks that others have built.  (campaigns on facebook, www.mobileactive.org , organizing revolutions on twitter, political organizing after a local community group meeting, http://www.ebaymainstreet.com/, leverage facebook, etc. etc. ) However, to do this we need to both understand the functionality and culture of the network AND we must understand how we need to complement "what is"  with what is needed to make a funcational advocacy network.  The lack of mashing together social network (builds trust and communicaitons lines) with the full needs of a advocacy network (feedback mechanisms, common vision, common language, access to shared resources, etc.)  leads to the failure of many advocacy camapaigns run on social networks.  (look at the funcationality differences between nationalfield.com and facebook.)

Design of networks DOES influence the character and outcomes that the network will produce. (Here is where the apparent contridictions come in with everything above.) Ebay, Twitter, Facebook,Google, etc. are all networks designed to connect people to do certian things and LEVERAGE what they do as connected to create greater value of the network. 

We can build facebook followers, we can get twitter followers and build email lists but these acts are very important to be able to listen more, and broadcast more. They are ways to open new pathways of communicaiton to users and from users but alone they are not sufficent to say we have build an advocacy network.  Smart advocacy networks are made up of smart advocacy leaders and participants. Without the full set of elements for an advocacy network the network will fail. (see the Nov ananlysis of Occupy network).

When and how we build the advocacy network,establishes the protocols for use, scalability, behavior, and connection (see preventobesity leader registration) this in turn dictates the general parameters of what the network will produce.  The network funcationalities we measure,  the tools we offer, and the feedback we bake into the design are what create the ways the network will get smarter and the capability of what it can do. (for example: ebay seller trust, amazon reviews, facebook likes, googlepage rank).  In a good advocacy network design, we need to provide tools not only for connecting to people (channels and relevant intelligence so people can pick who to connect with) but also tools and services for moving the tageted policy and culture change. We need to do both while constantly developing shared data that informs the network particiapants and the network designers about what is going on, what is working, and what gaps exist.  simply put, building a social network is not building an advocacy network.

Finally, in either case Gideon's conclusion holds true challenge to advocacy network designers as the biggest stuggle in an advocacy context.  

Utility is power and general utility is power squared.

This is the limiting factor of traditional focused advocacy, one off campaigns, single issue groups and the like.  This is the strength of TeaPArty, Occupy, Momsrising, AARP and Moveon. the more fluid they can be across advocacy thier utility power is amplified. These groups established "flexible" brands but we are also testing flexible data policy that encourages sharing the data on individuals that are part of the network in support of the mission.

As advocacy network designers, we want to be as general as possible without loosing the ability to influence the most important elements of direction.  We must disgn networks that provide value and funcationality to "hook" users and manage the connections with those users to the greatest value for them, for the connection to each other and for the network effects. 

I try not to be so late to the conversation but this post by Gideon Rosenblatt has been cooking in the draft pile for a few months. I think his point is looking at utility and the relative strength of Facebook vs. Twitter but teases out something that I think ties up the ways we think about building advocacy networks. However, I have been hoping that I could come up with a solid post  that reconciled conflicts in the way I read the post. 

The networked radar detector:

The new feature, Cobra iRadar Community takes the warnings your detector receives and shows them to other iRadar users. Already available for the iPhone, it becomes available for Android phones next month, the company announced at the International Consumer Electronics Show here.

via gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com

this is a beautiful design. I love the idea of gadgets being able to talk to each other so that even though they are distributed to multiple users they act as a comprehensive grid. This would be very interesting in security alarms, smoke detectors, asthma inhalers, door bells, etc.

If we can connect like products, in the value added and nonintrusive way, the idea of connecting together data to add further value would provide great advantage.

How long will it be before the police seemlessly pass data from radar, and photo enforcement to cars in the street? I am also curious how the radar/phone connection exposes users in states where radar is illegal? Can police ring/txt those phones and remind them of the penalty of using radar detectors?

This is a really interesting space.

Building a movement to listen. Building a network so the movement can adapt.

There is a fantastic riff at occupywinning by Jonathan Matthew Smucker.  I highly recommend reading it. 

it’s wrongheaded to get caught up in the elusive search for the perfect silver bullet tactic. Movements are, more than anything else, about people. To build a movement is to listen to people, to read the moment well, and to navigate a course that over time inspires whole swaths of society to identify with the aims of the movement, to buy in, and to take collective action.

For a long time, I have been thinking about the tactics of resistance and change.  I really like this piece because it speaks not only to #occupy as a tactic but seems to ask many of the right strategy questions.

A tactic is basically an action taken with the intention of achieving a particular goal, or at least moving toward it. In long-term struggle, a tactic is better understood as one move among many in an epic game of chess (with the caveat that the powerful and the challengers are in no sense evenly matched). A successful tactic is one that sets us up to eventually achieve gains that we are presently not positioned to win. As Brazilian educator Paulo Freire asked, “What can we do today so that tomorrow we can do what we are unable to do today?”

In the epic game of chess, if you loose because your opponents change the rules and you don’t get as many pieces, find another game to play.  The thing about #occupy that is a “different game” is not the 99% frame but what is going on among the people.

I want to offer that occupy is not a tactic. “occupy” is an organizing structure. Is setting up a nonprofit or launching a traditional coalition a tactic or an organizing structure?

Occupy is the brand but occupy doesn’t mean staying over night in the streets but something more about ownership by the people who participate. Occupy is the message that leadership is not a fixed thing. Occupy is compelling because it demonstrates and tells a story that leadership is among us. This movement is ours. Occupypolice, occupydesign, occupylaw, occupyarrest.occupyoakland, this is the sense of people ownership . The 99% frame is a reflection of a structure that is empowering because it casts a light that we also own other power tools.

We own the democracy. We can if we muster the courage own the power to reset the rules of the chess board.

Any new message discipline or change in operations that doesn’t reinforce that everyone owns occupy or can own occupy is the genuine threat to its strength.

Suggesting change

The occupy movement and the network of the 99% is not yet functional enough to change or quickly adopt, message or movement or tactics. The people lack the connective tissue across cities, there is not enough viral people to people conversation beyond the twitter and other social media.

What can we do? Listen more and turbo charge the capacity of the people that have shown up to inspire others.   We can continue to vary the offerings so that Occupy can pick up the long-tail of support not just the power users that camp and march.  Focus heavily on more voices and adaptability based on the needs identified by the people that participate.

If we do that, the network will strengthen, common language will be given the breathing room to evolve and the visionaries and leaders within the occupy network will be able to guide it thru the change in operational tactics and messages.  The strong network with a high tempo of people owned and lead mobilizations (online and off) will keep the movement vibrant.

One of the most important things we can do today so that we can do more and different things tomorrow is to layer across the occupy movement in the street is the layer of advocacy network structure it will so desperately need in the weeks ahead.

Occupy & The NY Department of Education. The Peoples' Mic. Who Structures the Conversation?

The people want to be heard.  It is interesting that the officals are interested in breaking people into 14 rooms for feedback.(You can hear the proposal in the background of the first 30 seconds) However, the people want to be heard (by media and the community) not just the leaders at the table.

Rock On! People without mics still have voice. there is also intersting background thread of discussion on the youtube page.  Democracy is not always smooth but the people in that room must feel empowered and the people at the table not so much. Which is the point. 

Here is the media coverage...

 

The thugs win again New York Post - ‎Oct 27, 2011‎ But a group of 200 teachers and Occupy Wall Street backers came out to crash the party. Calling themselves Occupy the DOE, they flooded Seward Park's auditorium and shouted down Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott as he tried to brief parents on the new ... Protesters Affiliated With Occupy Wall Street Disrupt Department Of Education ... Huffington Post - ‎Oct 25, 2011‎ "If you want your voice heard, all you have to do is say 'mic check.'" The approximately 200 protesters, loosely affiliated with a new public education committee offshoot of OccupyWall Street, called for increased participation and democracy in ... What Do You Think of Walcott's Parent Involvement Plan? New York Times - ‎21 hours ago‎ What do you think of Mr. Walcott's plan? And what services do you think the city needs to provide to get parents more involved? Further, is the parent coordinator an effective resource for drawing in parents? Parent coordinators, what do you need to ... Department of Education: #Occupied Our Schools NYC (press release) - ‎Oct 26, 2011‎ And the Occupy Wall Street Public Education committee already has plans for a People's General Assembly on Public Education on Nov. 7th at DOE headquarters. So, for now at least, the People's Mic appears to be winning over an unaccountable, ... Teachers and Parents Occupy Education Meeting The Epoch Times - ‎Oct 25, 2011‎ That voice echoed many others that are concerned with the DOE, Chancellor Walcott, and Mayor Bloomberg. The protesters took turns speaking via a "people's mic," in a meeting similar to those in held Zuccotti Park by the Occupy Wall St. protesters. ... Education Panel Meeting Disrupted By "Occupy" Protesters NY1 - ‎Oct 25, 2011‎ Called the "People's Microphone," the protesters' call-and-repeat chants, now a trademark of the Occupy Wall Street movement, derailed the Department of Education meeting. Walcott continued to introduce the scheduled speaker, despite the chanting, ... Protest derails DOE meeting on curriculum after just minutes GothamSchools - ‎Oct 25, 2011‎ But as Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott and the standards' architect, David Coleman, took the stage at Seward Park High School, protesters aligned with the Occupy movement launched a chorus of complaints via “the people's mic.” “Mic check! ... Walcott Pledges Measures to Increase Parents' Involvement New York Times - ‎Oct 26, 2011‎ New York City's Department of Education will create a parent academy and eventually measure how well public schools interact with their students' parents, Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott announced in a speech on Wednesday. ...

 

Managing Shared Resources as important as a shared vision in Netcentric organizing?

I have been thinking about the struggle to prioritize network elements. Do you focus on one first? Traditional leaders seem to want to drive emerging networks to create a vision first but I am no longer sold on that framework.

Does a network need a vision? Yes, but does it need a vision more than communication grid, shared resources, feedback mechanisms,etc... Maybe not. Arriving at a shared vision is an exercise of trust exchanges, communications, language clarity. Driving for a shared vision before the other components of the network are built is just as much as a recipe for failure as never driving for one at all.

With that in mind, this came across my radar today....

OccupyWishList.org, a simple platform where people who want to give direct support to occupiers in need of things like blankets, batteries, sleeping bags and the like can connect with each other. OccupyWishList doesn't just make it easy for people to list their needs or their willingness to meet them; Mintz says the site will also work to ensure that connections and commitments are actually met, or a need will get relisted.

Build the network as you can.

Map of a Movement : Where are leaders working on childhood obesity? Are you on the map?

 

One of the projects I am working on is focused on addressing the issue of childhood obesity.(learn more about the issue at RWJF) 

During the interviews and assessment phase before the project, we interviewed lots of leaders in the movement working to reverse the epidemic that wanted to know who are the other leaders in their cities.  We heard "If we only had a map".... when we decided to build the map, we wanted to make it so everyone could "own it" this is their map.

We went the extra mile (ok 10 miles) to make it like a youtube video. This map can be embedded on lots of sites (including your own). You can just grab the code (copy) and paste it on any site.

As people join the movement, they are added to totals of supporters on the maps all over the internet. As leaders join the movement, they are added to the map with a way to contact them all over the internet.

There are a few advanced features like the ability to customize the map size, add your logo or change the zoom (if you work on any of the issues related to childhood obesity or want to support those that do please start spreading the map far and wide.)

This map is pretty netcentric. As it creates new pathways for people to connect to each other, it creates a shared resource, and it becomes a feedback tool for showing how and where the movement is getting organized to reverse the epidemic.  

Let me know what you think? How many places will we see this map distributed in 6 months?