David Barrie

Liberating the lone blogger: some resources

To quote the Canadian cyberspace maven Pierre Lévy in Collective Intelligence:

New communications systems should provide members of a community with the means to coordinate their interactions within the same virtual universe of knowledge. 

Yeah, right. So?

Well, if we buy in to this, and accept that the challenge of the net is to find ways and means to create a fully transparent market for ideas, arguments, projects, initiatives, expertise, and resources, we need to set to work not just on enabling people to get online but also finding ways and means to liberate and connect the lone bloggers - or people locked in the pleasure or pain of this flaming tomb:

 

There's amazing work going on in the UK just now devoted to encouraging people to win access to the net and 'connect the connected'.

The work is led by some key individuals like Will Perrin of Talk About Local, Helen Milner of UK Online Centres, David Wilcox of Social Reporter, Dominic Campbell of Future Gov and the team behind the social media handbook Social by Social, funded by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.

Initiative is fuelled by U.K. Government policy that's determined to broadband the nation, media organisations trying to realign themselves to "the people formerly known as the audience" and a bubble of evangelism for online social media.

But how to capture what Lévy called the potential of cyberspace to implement a form of computer-mediated civility?

How to connect the dots at the most local level - and for social good?

In the run-in to our online social media workshop in Butetown, Wales last week, a group of people shared examples of web-spaces that seek to liberate the lone blogger and aggregate content at the most local level.

Some were posted at the Digital Engagement website. Others at our Digital Butetown Google group. So I thought it useful to collect them in one place:

B13 - a site that aggregates information from blogs, feeds and other sources related to the suburb of Moseley in Birmingham, West Midlands.

Created in Birmingham - a site that links the city's creative communities online presence. 

Digbeth is Good - a blog looked after by Nicky Getgood who uses subscriptions and searches in her Google Reader and then feeds them into the blog via postalicious.

Hylocal News Wire - created by Jon Bounds, "a pipe I’ve created that attempts to marshal the content from hyperlocal blogging in Birmingham and allow people only to subscribe to feeds that interest them".

Kings Cross Pageflakes - created by Will Perrin that takes feeds from local websites and scrapes sites without RSS

The Londonist - a journalist-written blog whose breadth of source material speaks to the idea of aggregating a diversity of grass-roots content.

Vetnorblog and Pitsnpots (Stoke on Trent) which both aggregate some content and look and feel like replacements for local newspapers.

Planet Balham - a site that 'takes' feeds from a district of South London and its surrounding area. 

Everyblock - that combines photos, local government announcements, data and news items for 15 major U.S. cities.

Some of these sites speak to the idea of journalists as "community weavers" and the great American tradition of community media, digitally vitalized by initiatives such as the Knight Foundation's News Challenge.

But all establish and explore the value of aggregating content at the most local level and (potentially) look forward to a moment when, much like community partnerships in urban renewal, there may be an opportunity to network networks and create a local 'knowledge space'. 

The link between this work and social and economic renewal is now starting to be captured in a group called Local Communities.

We've started to see what we can capture in Butetown with a search on Addictomatic and search on Netvibes.

They don't collect much intelligence though. There's insufficient supply of locally-generated content and the platforms are controlled by outsiders. 

At our design workshop, we discussed a process by which Butetown might start to connect the dots and look to develop a 'hyperlocal' knowledge economy - something that I'll report back on soon but that also, critically, local net users need to decide to advance.

But in the meantime, power to the force that Lévy described as new proletarians, auxiliary workers devoted to effecting the mutual liberation of isolated thoughts.

Sources of first two images lost. Network mapping courtesy of netmaptoolbox. Digital Butetown is an initative supported by British Council Wales, igloo Regeneration and the British Telecom Group.

The People's Supermarket

This is English chef Arthur Potts-Dawson. He's on a mission to create The People's Supermarket: a not for profit, co-operative grocery store that will feature in a series of TV shows on Channel 4 in the U.K. in 2010.

The People's Supermarket is designed to offer an alternative use for the thousands of empty retail units on our high streets and counter the belief that you can only have either cheap or good food - and never both. 

Over the last few months, Arthur, me and a Panzer division of people working in design, retailing, property and project management in the U.K. have been working up plans for the new social enterprise. 

The supermarket is inspired by the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn that was started in 1973 and now has 17,000 members, offers them a saving of 20%-40% off their weekly grocery bill and enjoys a turnover of $32m. 

Anyone will be able to shop at The People's Supermarket. You'll find our shelves stacked with a wide range of product, from conventional breakfast cereal to locally sourced produce, seven days a week.  

For an annual fee of UK£25.00 ($41.00) - reduced for older citizens, the unemployed and students - and a commitment to volunteer four hours time per month, members will earn a discount on their shopping and a share and role in the management of the enterprise. 

The People's Supermarket is about a great shopping experience, collectivizing the enthusiasm and skill of its members, direct democracy and affordability through participation. 

Just take a look at the message board at Park Slope to see the value of "a shop that you can call your own": 

 

We're hoping to raise thousands of members. 

We're creating a simple product that we hope other entrepreneurs, communities and people across the U.K. will copy.

And we are looking right now at several different empty retail units in the U.K. - here's an image of one, but I can't reveal the location, since it will simply inflate its price.  

The People's Supermarket connects with the growing band of people interested in supporting innovation in recession.

And it expresses utopia, resilience and the power of mutuality.  

 

Do you?

If the answer's "yes", become a member of The People's Supermarket or lend us your support and register at our new website. 

Please show link love and pass this post on. 

If you want to get involved, just drop me a comment here. 

And if you know a philanthropist or investor who wants to support innovative, collective and profitable social enterprise, send them my way. 

The blood, sweat and (let's say) joy of securing the premises, forming the co-op and members' first experiences of running the enterprise will be the subject of a series of prime-time shows on Channel 4 Television in 2010. 

And The People's Supermarket will be published in a book, available in all good stores, featuring recipes created by Arthur from ingredients for sale. 

Images courtesy of Elizabeth Pascoe, Park Slope Coop, Heather Ring, APD and Marcus Foley.  

Clouds, platforms and the future of the planet (no less)

It's proving to be a Summer in which design gurus join up the dots - and it's fantastic!

First up was John Thackara who in a brilliant paper called Clean Growth for Design Innovation Scotland promoted the idea of enabling platforms as a way of mobilizing the masses.

In answer to the challenge of pulling people together in support of sustainability - and in part inspired (perhaps, maybe, dunno) by work we've done together - John urges an approach that starts with existing grassroots activity and then moves on

to creating frameworks that enable these actions to grow and develop. The concept of enabling platforms is key here. A variety of tools and techniques has been developed by global business in recent times that can be re-purposed for ultra-local use. These range from service design, to technologies of co-operation, and systems of resource allocation - ranging from people to water.



Next up comes the mighty Ezio Manzini, Profession of industrial design at Milan University, a pioneer of slow design who I've met just once and exchange emails with from time to time - but God, this man is inspiring!

In a new book on service design edited by Satu Miettinen and Mikko Koivisto, Ezio explores its role in an age of networks and sustainability - and forgive me, but it needs to be quoted in full:

The world is rich in potential resources. They are diffuse natural and social resources such as, for instance, solar energy and wind on the one side, and people's creativity and entrepreneurship, on the other.

Traditionally these resources were not considered, because the idea of economy of scale was blinding us, and we were unable to recognise their potentialities.

Today, we have learnt that, in the network society, things can be seen in a quite different way: diffuse resources can be valorised by distributed systems.

The Internet has made thinkable and practially feasible peer-to-peer organisational models that allow us to valorise diffuse knowledge and people's capabilities.

The result is that now we can see a solution in the richness of these diffuse resources, and most probably the only viable solution, to the current major problems of our Planet.

Wow!

But wow - to the power of two.

Why?

Because if you interleave these ideas alongside a definition of cloud computing by Luis Vaquero and recently cited in a paper by McKinsey, you start to see ways and means by which technology might support the delivery of a more sustainable tomorrow:

Clouds are a large pool of easily usable and accessible virtualized resources (such as hardware, development platforms and/or services). These resources can be dynamically reconfigured to adjust to a variable load (scale), allowing also for an optimum resource utilization. This pool of resources is typically exploited by a pay-per-use model in which guarantees are offered by the Infrastructure Provider by means of customised SLAs (service-level agreements).

Meaning: a radical and (perhaps) more sustainable idea of service provision is arriving and one which could have profound implications for certain industries, especially ones that have traditionally relied upon fixed assets - real esate for one. 

First image, source not known. Image of Manzini courtesy of Domus, anime dolls by Youngfook.

Fashion is...

, originally uploaded by mis_gabbana.

:)

Digital Butetown: Building the community collective online

How can all of the excitement of sharing things on the Internet happen at the most local level?

How might online social media bridge communities and network local life in a collective way, much like an allotment site rather than a landscape of fenced private gardens?

Yes, there are community websites and local forums. Yes, applications like NetVibes. Yes, groups on Facebook. Yes, opportunities for networking via Ning.  And yes, lots of brilliant initiatives around the world that encourage digital activism, storytelling and new content creation.

But is there a process that can be rolled out over time locally that encompasses all of these things, brings them together, networks activity, pools interest, shares knowledge and could become a platform for collaborative local change in the future?  

These are some of the questions behind a digital design workshop that will take place in Butetown, Cardiff, in the Old Banking Hall, Bute Street,  July 24th 2009 (1000 - 1800hrs).

The workshop will pool the knowledge of people actively working on the development and application of social technology for social benefit.

It will be a practical session that maps existing online networks, matches them against offline communities and then comes up with a practical plan to implement what might be called - for a slightly hippy phrase - online community weaving. (with respect to June Holley and Network Weaving for inspiration). 

The event is being organised by Tom Beardshaw of Native Media, Jeremy Gould of Whitehall Webby and me. It follows research in to local internet use, analysed by Kelly Page of Cardiff Business School; and will be a backroom brainstorm in advance of an event in the Autumn which will invite local internet users to work with social media geeks to co-design a forward plan.

Butetown in Cardiff is home to 14,000 people and over forty-six different nationalities. It may be cash poor - but it is culturally super-rich.

There are many dynamic members of the community working together on renewal of the area and people keen to explore online media as a way of sharing information, experience and supporting local initiative.

Butetown has a Ning group, local people collect in Facebook groups, kids play games against each other online and there's busy file-sharing going on of music.

This is all great.

But the fragmentation of online social networking mirrors the fragmentation of real life - between new and old communities, diverse ethnic groups, communities of interest and different issues of concern.

If you believe in the power of communication and see the online space as a place that could be socially useful and productive, there's a job to be done to try and find a way to gather online activity effectively. 

And if you believe that a key to the future of public management is online public involvement, the digital space in a place like Butetown needs to be supported in such a way as to be ready and able to contribute to the social and economic planning of the area.

Please join our Google Group. Tell us there if you are interested in contributing to the event on 24th July. And look out for the hash-tag #digitalbutetown.

Digital Butetown is a British Council Wales project and part of a larger, pan-European initiative called OPENCities. And it is supported by igloo Regeneration, an investment fund managed by Aviva and described by the United Nations as "the world's first socially responsible property fund".

Street images of Butetown courtesy of  Paul Corcoran and Walt Jabsco.

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