The Future of Evolutionary Salons (Tuesday afternoon)

“One cannot unite a community w/o a newspaper or journal of some kind – Gandhi
How do we find that unity now?

Kaliya’s open space session was around how we strengthen communication & communities with the use of online tools. It was a great session – and I think it is really important for us as a community to support her and this work. Kaliya is coming from the perspective of how do we make the tools meet human needs (from the perspective of the people, rather than the perspective of pushing the tools).

What is needed for Real Social Change:

1. Strong social ties
2. Rich communication network [Universal phone book? meet space? Etc]
3. Common story {we’ve got folks working on this…universe story, etc}
4. Shared resources
5. Clarity of purpose

Where Kaliya sees the gap right now is in the communication network, & this is what she’s been working on.

There was also some discussion about how to embed more learning and feedback into the tools themselves – to help the tools evolve faster – and also how to facilitate the development of collective knowledge in the work that the tools are used for. I hope to see this discussion continue further.

Q: Rich Communication Network…What’s missing?

A: Identity

Tools are emerging around empowering individuals to show up in multiple communities, and in spaces that are contextualized in face to face meeting… Aspects of this empowerment are:

• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Personification: having an identity that allows you to move more fluidly through the internet & different networks of which you are a part.

• <!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]-->Open standards & open source: Open source & Open standard are DIFFERENT. Open source means anyone can take the basic code of a program and add functions to it. Open standards means that the information (like your name or address or a date) is coded in a way that different software that uses the agreed on standard can identify & make use of that text. (so for instance, a computer could pull all the dates from various events posted on websites using the open standard and make a calendar without a person having to do that ). Something could be proprietary source but open standard so can communicate to others or vice versa (open source so people can add functionality, but not open standard so a computer couldn't automatically pick up the data content
  

• Standards dealing with this are RSS (which will basically suck content info into a group field w/o requiring human action – so you could build newsletters based on RSS content – a community could build a community filter & create their own local YES magazine online!). There are also calendar standards (HCAL & ICAL) which allow one to pull together events from different groups/websites into a common calendar.
  
• There are a bunch of examples of sites trying to work with this concept: Gaiafield Project  & EnvironmentalNonProfitNetwork ---David niccol @ RSS is working on how do we link all meditation orgs together.. & how do you support a trusted hub…(??)
• DRUPAL is an open source content management system which allows for making (online) community building easier. There are a lot of other platforms like Drupal but Drupal was built around community building.
  
• Tagging provides contextual/topical information by users. http://del.icio.us/tag/  - Tagging gives content,  ranking gives quality… If were tied with identity you could filter based on someones tags. If it isn’t tied to identity it would be more spammable - “easy to spoof the system if there is no cost to entry”

• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Trust: The problem of online identity is both technical & social (how to do it & how to insure proper behavior of those using it…). There needs to be a way to ensure “trust”, possibly through a  “reputation network” that insures integrity… Part of trust can be built through use of a link contract [people using these standards & tools agree to certain guidelines about privacy, not selling info, and other standards] If we agree to this the computers will talk to eachother (otherwise they won’t).

• Tool Values: There was some discussion on programs that can use geo location tools to map where people are from the IP address on their email headers. These tools will be developed, but the communities of which Kaliya are a part are conscious of choosing & developing tools that map to basic principles & values (of privacy, etc).  Riseup.net 

Other aspects of an effective communication system

• A reputation system: Where an individual has an identity fingerprint that is robust (so that people can’t create multiple identities & spam). Individuals can ‘tag’ content as to its relevance & possibly its quality, and you can use these tags to find content – perhaps choosing based on individuals that you trust.
• Peer-to-peer capabilities of wider network: The question is how do you find people in your locality who share interests/ etc. Building this capability into the tools could greatly enhance local in-person networks, as well as enhance the ability of widely dispersed people to network and learn from eachother.  
• One question is how to transition listserves into this kind of community (so people on the listserves who chose to could then find each other)

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Issues:

• Overload & Selectivity: The Internet is chaotic disruptive environment with a high noise level. It is easy to get information overload, but filtering can provide a narrow perspective. How to deal?

• Big Aomeba (or, internet ego): everyone wants to build the site that everyone joins…that (ego) model doesn’t work. Important to develop community boundaries & integrity w/  interconnects between communities.
  

• Usability, Adoption, & Feedback: 

• Usability: There is often a disconnect between what tool developers put out & people’s actual needs. Needs to be more attention to how to improve the Human/non interface [calendar/events/info].
• Some people are working on this -- Aspiration Tech has something it calls“penguin days” which bring together normal people w/ goals & software people to figure out how real needs can get met. Bill Aal’s work w/ Tools for change deals with this. They are applying for a grant to establish “use cases” to explore what gets used/ what works/what doesn’t & what tools do we need?

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Adoption: It can be a struggle to get people to understand the tool – even a really good set up but still not used. It is a growing edge to discover how adoption is best facilitated (things like making the tool more integral to a gathering from the start).

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Feedback, learning, & evaluation: what works for people in terms of useability, adoption patterns, organizational/social systems that facilitate good use of tools available. We need more focus on & better ways for:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Facilitating people/communities making use of the tools

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Tools evolving to meet the needs of people (feedback between user’s & developers)

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o       <!--[endif]-->Tools evolving to enable feedback & learning w/in the systems that they are used for.

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