Template for Building a (Community Technology) Knowledge Network with Common Online Tools

March 26, 2009

in Featured Posts, Human Potential, Social Media, Work & Career

I’m a community technology activist and believe that access to knowledge is a key factor in reaching our potential as humans. Lately, I’ve had a few ideas running around in my head.

bridging the work of old school activists (knowledge, history, experience) with new school activists (enthusiasm, technical aptitude, hyperconnected online and off)
listservs as ’spinal cords’ to movements and communities
moving from grassroots organizing into cloud computing for activists
not reinventing the wheel

How we can bridge the knowledge, history, experience and resources of ‘old school’ community technologists with the ‘new school’ energy, technical aptitude and net centric thinking of some of my peers?

I’m sketching out a ‘ecosystem prototype’ that I’d love feedback on.

(Disclaimer: if the following is a bit too ‘techie’, please ask for clarification. I’m no expert, but I’m sure between us we can clarify in the comments for those coming to this post after you)

Template for Building a (Community Technology) Knowledge Network with Common Online Tools

Community technology fans/supporters contribute/create knowledge about community technology (issues, resources, policy) through some open, internet channel:
- a blog post (Blogger, Drupal, Wordpress etc.)
- a socially bookmarked link (del.icio.us, Digg, Twine, etc.)
- a Tweet (small, viral, quick)
- an email (content sits in people’s email boxes, but these days, can now be emailed into blog posts, social networks etc.)
Each of these channels ’sits’ someplace on line and has an RSS feed coming off of it.
These RSS feeds are than pulled into an cross-posting service/network to proliferate outward into other networks.

Some of the components for building this already exist on the wide open web:

Posterous

you can email just about anything to a special address and have it appear on a webpage (with it’s own RSS feed). Can even integrate with your other social network accounts.

Twitterfeed

This service allows you to pull in any RSS feed and have it ‘autotweet’ into the Twittersphere. Mash it up with bit.ly and you can track the analytics/virality of the shortened URLs on the web.

A Working Prototype

I’ve built a working prototype of how something like this work here using Twitter, del.icio.us and Twitterfeed.

http://twitter.com/ctnetwork

To see your posts appear in the Tweets for this Twitter account, simply bookmark you CTC related posts on del.icio.us with ‘ctcnet’.

Connect with Other Activists

Check out the following links to connect and learn more about community technology:

The CTCNet Google Group
The CTCNet Facebook Group

Christina

Serendipity - I was looking at the Social Entrepreneur API just yesterday around the time I posted here! What I am hoping to also see emerge, though, is a landscape in which small/new "better world building" initiatives can also be fertilized to grow through collaborating with each other and their constituents on the development of offline programs. Not just to find money resources, but to think (and work) together in more collaborative ways on approaches to the issues they are tackling. The sharing of information - and the ecosystem in/through which that happens - is key (I think...) Can we imagine one that reaches across dimensions to draw non-experts who support and/or have a stake in social change into collaborative conversations with activists and willing implementers? Will be working on some ideas this year... lets keep discussing. And thanks very much for sharing.

Christina

Nice. Been thinking along very similar lines lately in terms of connecting social purpose orgs and their fans/stakeholders to each other (ie to other orgs and their stakeholders) for collaborative purposes. Your diagram is a really great start, but what's missing for me (read: the part of the puzzle I lay awake thinking about) is how to more effectively bring in ongoing activity from collaborative environments like ning groups, ned.com, UnLtd.net, Nabuur, etc.

Morgan Sully

@ChristinasWorld Great! I'm glad you liked it. I've been thinking about that too. How do we leverage attention/resources/connectivity to people/communities/causes in need? Perhaps people that work outside (or alongside?) organizations, using their nimbleness and connectivity to 'channel in' *offline* activity into online groups/stakeholders that can 'channel back' resources - like a cycle.

I think a lot of the time, orgs/businesses move too slowly (though they usually have great pull/influence).

Have you seen: http://www.socialactions.com/social-entrepreneu... ?

Morgan Sully

Thank you for your thoughtful comment Rob! Knowledge I do feel is cyclical - it kind of gives back to itself as it's cultivated. There's also a people part of the equation to that Felicia raised above. I'll be fine-tuning this a bit over the coming weeks...

Rob Bettmann

Your drawing reminds of the water cycle... the natural cycle by which water goes around on the planet. Your drawing shows the up (like water in a tree, which gave me the idea) but doesn't show the feedback. Perhaps that's the generational/long-term part of the drawing? Here's a random image I googled of the water cycle: http://community.seas.columbia.edu/weatherstati...

Carlito Headset

Gangster!

hugh

The autopost to Twitter seems only to work for one's own posts. Is tha tcorrect? Other people's emails aren't posting to Twitter fo rme. Am I missing something?

Morgan Sully

Hi Hugh,
the autopost to Twitter (currently) only works for users of the del.icio.us service (http://www.delicious.com) who 'tag' their bookmarks with 'ctcnet'. The Twitterfeed service updates this once every hour.

This is just a prototype. Twitterfeed can pull multiple RSS feeds into the same Twitter account - I currently have my last.fm favorites going into my personal one as well.

Regarding emails, we can use something like Posterous to handle the emails-to-online site-to-RSS.

Felicia

I like the metaphorical links of this and it is really clear. We can also get really focussed on the tools. I just want to make sure that we don't loose site that such networks begin and end with people. And in our case we are concerned with those often left out of such innovations.

Morgan Sully

certainly. second drafts of the idea above would have people as the roots and leaves. The web services are simply the trunk (if that make sense).