Netsquared N2Y2

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San Jose at Cisco for the Netsquared N2Y2 event thanks to Omidyar Network and the Omidyar Network Community.

We had speed geeking mixed with a Yahoo and Cisco talk the first part of the day. The speek geeking was appreciated by some as making it easier to get a sense of projects (as opposed to reading about them online). However others felt like the presentation might impact voting bubbling up personalities rather than worthy projects. I didn’t feel strongly either way. There is clearly a very broad spectrum of people here in their understanding of what Web 2.0 is about and how to use it.

Collaboration is a buzz word that half the people speaking it don’t understand.

I have been most impressed by Genocide Intervention Network. The young energetic man speaking about the organization, radiates 2.0 behavior and thinking. He talks about tools and practices that build identity for their participants/members. I would love to see more of the projects here learning from the GI net model.

The event itself could be much more collaborative. I would love to see more collaborative practices and exercises. What about rewarding those who identify an area for improvement AND suggest what to do OR offer the necessary resources to move forward. Maybe we should be acknowledging attendees with collaboration stars or something. What does each person here have as a resource to contribute? Where can we post to each project what we think would help them? How do we incentivize the flow of resources in ways that could not happen any other way than through THIS event? How do we reward those who are modeling what we collectively perceive to be the leading edge?

How do we amplify the good things?

Attending Barcamp Portland

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Barcamp Portland. We started Friday night with networking and the creation of our sessions. I met some great people including Kara from White Lotus Design. Kara and I have similar haircuts and had on similar shirts. We decided to find out what else we had in common. Definitely a lot more than these superficial things. We posted sessions on User Interface and on Mapping/Visualization of Information. I hope we get to work together more.

I also met the owners of Cubespace and realized that they were the folks in Portland that my friend Lisa Tracy had wanted me to talk with about the Collaborative Building project for Chicago. We touched base and committed to reconnecting at a less hectic time. I took every brochure and pamphlet I could find of theirs.

It was great to see “old” friends as Habib Rose, Aaron Nelson (Meyer Foundation) and Ray King (AboutUs). It was also great to make new friends like ms James Keller and Dawn Foster. Despite there being a heavy imbalance of men to women, I still found myself yammering with the ladies more often (and yes, James is a gal with great style!).

Saturday, I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions on graphics as well as Habib’s session on Network Weaving and the Network Weavers Network. However, my favorite sessions were probably Community Collaboration with Dawn Foster and Web 3.0 with Peter Mui. The Web 3.0 conversation ended up being a follow on to the community discussion. We talked mostly about currencies–as an option for how we might compensate people who make contributions but are not working “within” organizations that give them pay or health benefits. It was a great opportunity to present the material Eric Harris Braun has been working on from Open Money.

I also look forward to connecting to LaVonne Reimer. I spoke with her only briefly. She also has much wisdom and experience to share on creating the Collaborative Building, at least as it may relate to her Open Technology Development Center.

I forgot to mention, of course, that I attended with onetters Lewis Hoffman and Ethan McCutchen of Grass Commons.

Acknowledgment Tools

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I just had a fantastic conversation with Eric Harris-Braun of
Open Money. I am really excited to share this with you. Eric has started talking about currencies in a new way. He talks about wealth acknowledgment.

Open Money, of course, is a group of people (Micheal Linton, Jean-Francois Noubel, and Eric Harris-Braun) working to open up currencies.

Open Money is still in development on the tools (anyone want to help on this open source effort?). But soon to come will be a widget that can be put on any webpage that will be connected to a system tracking these acknowledgments–whether that is reputation or more traditional forms of transactions.

This is a critical piece we have been looking for–a tool independent of the particular implementation. So it doesn’t matter if you are using a Drupal site or anything else, you can use this system for tracking one or more currencies/acknowledgments. Also, this is a critical piece in the sense of explaining currencies in a way that is graspable to many. Eric said that after years of trying to explain currencies to people, he is finally able to get people to understand and, even better, get excited about using currencies/acknowledgments.

We are also talking about how acknowledgments help facilitate network weaving, helping make more dense networks.

I will be opening a conversation on Omidyar.net for open discussion of what they are doing. I will put it in Targeted Currencies group. (Arthur Brock and Eric are good friends of course.)

I would like to see two things come together, so let me know if you are interested in either or both extended conversation around this breakthrough or the development of the tools and implementation of them in spaces like AboutUs.org, Hooze.org, and CatComm.org among others.

Let me know if you are interested in continuing to learn about this powerful way of transforming our world together.

One Web Day

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Where would I be without the web? One Web Day celebrates the connection and collaboration that the web enables us to have.

I couldn’t do the work I do without the web. I have serviced clients without ever meeting them or even talking on the phone. And those that I do meet or call also connect with me online. I live in Illinois, but most of my clients are not in Illinois, some are not even in the US. Some of my friends like to remind me that the work I do is something I could, because of the web, do from anywhere there is an internet connection. Anywhere. And this is just the beginning. In the last month, I have started wiki collaborations. Several ideas I have brewing heavily involve online collaboration, often by international participants. Not only couldn’t I do my work without the web, more and more my work is the web.

My personal life? Yeah, well with friends spread from sea to shining sea and beyond, the web connects us. Whether it is sharing ideas and photos of potential bridesmaid dresses or talking on Voip, the web connects us, enables us to talk in ways we couldn’t have done as freely without this medium. I have friends from my online community, some I consider good friends though I may not even know their home address. And my intereactions with them are all web-based. In fact it is odd when you do finally meet them face-to-face to start to put a body with a writing style or opinion.

I do much of my volunteering work virtually too!

Okay, I admit it. I am on the computer a lot! I love the internet! Long live the internet!

Peer to Peer

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Catalytic Communities recently celebrated their successful fund-raising drive through the peer to peer network activity of Pledgebank by drawing a lucky winner for a trip for two to Rio. A doctor, Jason Yax, won the trip, and he says he will be taking his brother Justin. Both Jason and Justin focus their attention on infectious disease and international work. Look for future updates from Catalytic Communities on their new blog.

Peer to Peer network activity seems to fit strongly with my values. And there is something in the network analysis information I have read from Valdis Krebs which makes me think there is a clear argument about how peer to peer networks have great strength as opposed to top-down networks which restrict information flow and dis-empower people at all levels. I will be reading more about network analysis, and let you know. For now, check out the network analysis papers Valdis has listed on his site, orgnet.com.

Boston — Uplift Academy

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I was there. I witnessed it. I will attest. What happened? Well, many wonderful and good-hearted people joined together in strings of conversation about uplift. What is uplift? Let’s jump on the elevator headed for good.

Jeffe Ashe and his co-worker Vinod from Oxfam explained savings-led microfinance. Fascinating stuff. To me it:

    encourages self-sufficiency
    rejects foreign aid dependencies
    leverages community capital and social capital
    contains community profits (rather than leaching them outside)
    builds capacity and skills for entrepreneurship
    spreads virally and independent of specific NGOs…

Sounds like the values we picked up in the theoretical portions of our discussions. Straight from the mouths of pale white men to the ears of this pale white woman, we have the academic analysis of how complex systems need to work in the global environment–late-binding, core/periphery networks, Reed’s law…

We came across our disciplines to develop a common language and a common vision. We might not have crossed as many boundaries (national, ethnic, “otherness”) as I might have liked, but we held the world in our hearts and spoke of love, healing, strength, connectness, community, and understanding.

I will be watching, listening, questioning, inquiring, probing, delving, weaving.

People I will be paying attention to?