04 July
2005
The Deliberative Democracy Handbook
I am back from the USA with much to blog and much to delight and intrigue of a day to day nature. As my molecules are reassemble, I will post here on one or two matters - in the order in which they occur to me.
I saw a few copies of the Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century, while I was in the US. I'd recommend this for a comprehensive and in-depth introduction to deliberative democracy in the US today, whether online or in traditional settings.
05 July
2005
SchoolTool
I have been hearing about SchoolTool more often, lately.
They have a big vision: "a common information systems platform for school administration from California to Calcutta, via Cape Town! We hope to provide a single tool that will be readily adapted to the specific regulatory requirements and practices of different countries and regions, but that retains enough common functionality to make a shared development effort worthwhile."
This makes sense to me as an ideal application for an Open Source approach. SchoolTool (like GroupServer) uses Zope and Python. It has a standards-based calendar module called SchoolBell.
Is anyone using SchoolTool in Aotearoa/NZ?
Open Source IM Clients
I have been happily using Gaim for some time. An alternative is Miranda. Both are multi-protocol. Both are GPL. Gaim runs on Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. Miranda runs on Windows only. Both my kids happily use Gaim to chat with their MSIM friends.
Which do you prefer?
Which others should be compared with these?
ACE Sector online community
A new online community for the Adult and Community Education sector has opened.
Funded by the Teriary Education Commission, membership of the community is open to any organisation or individual - provider or learner, in Adult and Community Education in New Zealand.
The ACE sector site uses Harvey Calder's Communities Online platform.
06 July
2005
Photos from Deepening Online Deliberation
The prize for Most Prolific Photographer goes to Griff Wigley. Griff's pictures capture the mood of this firts day nicely.
The others of us are tagging our ODDC pics at flickr. And my shots from our post conference retreat in the woods are skeetermocracy.
07 July
2005
Stocks and Flows in Social Software
When I met Lee LeFever at Vita (in Capitol Hill, Seattle), we carried on a conversation sparked by Jerry Michalski's application of Stocks and Flows thinking to communications technology. Lee has written an excellent overview of this.
The basic idea is that some technologies do one or the other better. TV does flow. TiVo does stocks. Email does flow. The Web does stock.
In the KM space, we've been thinking about Stocks and Flows in Intellectual Capital Theory since Karl-Erick Sveiby visited in 1998.
I wonder if it is worth pursuing the distinction into the three "types" of intellectual capital: "human", "structural" and "relational"?
Clearly, the role that technology plays in developing individual human competence is debatable. I for one, however will readily confess that I "know" a lot more when I have access to my PDA (especially now that it can acecss Google).
It's a no-brainer that the Web, file system, intranet, filed email, wikis and blogs are massive repositories of structural capital.
The interesting question is the use of technology for enhancing relational capital. As ClueTrain becomes a given, we are opening up media that are accessible inside and outside our organisations. Clearly blogs are a prime example, but in the Michalski taxonomy, blogs are "flow" tools.
I am particularly interested in how we can make increased use of "stocks" technologies to provide a navigable interface to the social/semantic networks that they represent.
12 July
2005
Google Maps, Earth and John Udell's Screencast
Jon Udell's screencast using Google Maps to give a tour of his neighbourhood created a stir online about the use of this technology when integrated with a handheld GPS. It's also a nice example of a screencast, the medium that Steve Clift used to provide his virtual tour of GroupServer.
Of course, Google Earth has just lifted the bar a jump. It provides a spinning globe where you can zoom in for a near ground-level virtual tour with links plucked live from Google and other databases providing almost the intimacy of Jon Udell's commentary.
Gataga: Search by tags, anywhere that tags
Gataga is a search engine that allows you to search using tags across multiple sites that use tags.
Right now, it searches: del.icio.us, flickr, technorati, blogmarks, blinklist,jots, spurl, furl, podcast, simpy, connotea.
That list is an eye-opener all by itself.
Tags as Community
I heard that communities are forming around agreements to use particular tags for, say flickr. One was around Gay Pride Week in Minneapolis. It is pride2005?
At the recent meeting of the Online Deliberative Democracy group, we agreed to use the tag ODDC. That works nicely in Gataga.
13 July
2005
Gatheroo: new community organizing and meeting site
Chris Dykstra of Warecorp is one of the founders of Gatheroo, a new community meeting and organising site. It's free to the people and groups who use it and is supported by providing highly targeted advertising.
Gatheroo is due to open in the (northern) fall. If you are interested, you can register now.
Gatheroo is built on top of open source collaboration platform CivicSpace.
I recently met Chris in Minneapolis. He is evaluating GroupServer for some significant projects in the US.
Stephen Demming Speaking in NZ
If you didn't know about this, give some thought to registering for the Telling tales at work sessions.
Stephen Demming is a world expert in the use of stories to spread insiration and good ideas.
19 July
2005
CSS Zen Garden
The CSS Zen Garden is a good example of the interface-switching we are after in GroupServer .
