It was an amazing night! I went to the Elections Party at Oakland. Oakland is closed to Berkeley and it is mainly black population. People were so happy!, but more than happy. There were very deep feelings: liberation of long time sufferings; opened eyes for fraternity; awareness of history. Specially the old and black people. People crying, people dancing in the streets. People looking to each others eyes, saying: “Can you believe this? It is so great!. We did it! We did it! We did it!” The days before, the polls were saying that Obama was going to win, however people didn’t want to believe it until they really see it.

A white women activist said: “Oh My god, I had been fighting for this my entire life”.

A black grandmother socked me specially. She was going around saying “I need a hug”, “I need a hug”, and hugging everybody and saying one time after another: “I am so happy for my grandchildren” “I am so happy for my grandchildren”. Black and white children were just playing around, with Obama t-shirts, but ignoring what this day could mean for their future lifes.

No more Bush - the end of the monsters era - … but, it is more than that!. Historical change with a black person - one of the categories of excluded collectives - representing the whole; the crisis (anticipated by the Global Movement) opening up the possibilities to change in the economical system; energy in the air; new technologies enlarging the scale of people that can be reached and mobilized; new free culture proactive generations.
I think the Global Movement or any source looking for changing the world needs to reflect about this new context. People who thought they “have” the solution or that the solution is already written need to open their minds. It is time to leave the pass away; of a post-Seattle cycle; to refund the movements with a new larger alliance; work with people and sectors we don’t know; breaking movements barriers; protagonism of the colors; build a global scope; synergy between different political strategies. Three keywords in the immediate agenda: Crisis; Climate Change and Free Knowledge.

Change depends on us! … All of us.

Mayo

Hello! Why San Francisco Bay Area is so creative and technological innovative? One reason is becouse the great networking events. See one below which I am attending. Kisses! Mayo

2008 Nonprofit Software Development Summit

Dates: 17 November, 2008 - 19 November, 2008

Location: Oakland, California

Event Details:
Are you a developer writing code to support nonprofit needs? Are you a nonprofit user with strong opinions about what software you need developed to empower your programs and operations? Are you someone who just cares about seeing better technology developed to address the broad range of issues we face as a global community?

The 2008 Nonprofit Software Development Summit will be the second annual convening of people and organizations developing software tools, web applications and other technology to support social justice causes. Bringing together a diverse range of developers, technologists, managers, eRiders, integrators, users and other practitioners who self-identify under the umbrella of roles around “developing nonprofit software”, the 2008 DevSummit will provide an opportunity both to gather as a community and to take stock of the field, while building connections and capacity.

The Summit will take place at Preservation Park in Oakland, California, from November 17th to 19th, 2008. Additional code sprints and collaborations will scheduled on the 2 days following the event.

Register Now! Sliding scale registrations are available!

See Accommodation and Transportation Information, and send any outstanding questions or comments you have to info@aspirationtech.org.

And feel free to join the Event Mailing List to participate in discussions about the Summit!

Goals of the Summit

The Summit will have as its primary goals the following:

• To convene and strengthen connections between the networks of stakeholders in the nonprofit software ecosystem, providing a fun and creative environment for celebrating successes and leadership in the field.
• To share skills and knowledge in a highly collaborative, peer-to-peer fashion.
• To map and discuss what is available and what is missing across the nonprofit software landscape in specific software “verticals”, and to posit solutions for addressing the gaps.
• To offer a point of entry for software developers interested in offering their skills to nonprofit sector.

The agenda will take a concrete and hands-on approach to topics and challenges, focusing on transferring skills and process knowledge in interactive and fun ways. Panels and slideware will be in short supply, supplanted by participant-driven collaborations and small-group formats.

Event partners working with Aspiration to design the agenda and sessions include Blue Oxen Associates, Brattleboro Technology Collective, Chandler, Change.org, Chicago Technology Cooperative, CiviCRM, Craigslist Foundation, DemocracyInAction, Drupal, EarthJustice, Floatleft, Joomla!, MAPLight, Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI), The Open Planning Project, PICnet, Radical Designs, Salesforce.com Foundation, SproutBuilder, TechCafeteria, Tim Bishop and United States Institute of Peace.

As with all Aspiration events, the agenda will be extremely participant-driven, developed in collaboration with participants and session facilitators. Sessions already confirmed for the event include:

• Open Source CMS Mini-Summit
• Assessing Security for Nonprofit Web Apps
• Listening to Users and Designing Appropriate Tools
• eAdvocacy Platform and API survey
• Open Source Case Management
• The State of Nonprofit CRM
• API Review: Where Are We At With Tool and Platform Integration?
• Business Models for Nonprofit Software Development
• Building Usability into Nonprofit Tools
• Software Project Management
• Engineering for Accessibility and Inclusion
• Helping Non-Techies and Techies Build Successful Software Projects
• Going Green: Serving Sites on Less Carbon

Register Now! Sliding scale registrations are available!

We hope to see you in Oakland in November!

Este blog es útil. Hacen frecuentes report actualizando sobre nuevos datos o experiencias de suceso.
http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/

Link al seminario que organiza Todd Davies en Standford sobre tema relacionados (aunque desde un punto de vista critico). Cuenta con una selección bibliografica muy amplia y rica, algunas cosas pienso que pueden ser útiles:
http://www.stanford.edu/class/symbsys209/

Web de los que propusieron el concepto de Web 2.0. En el artículo en el que proponen What is web 2.0? no explican como las empresas generan beneficio pero O’Reilly describe los patterns que han hecho exitosas las aplicaciones Web 2.0 en contraste con el enfoque del fallido dotcom.
http://oreilly.com/

Por último, es muy interesante ver la riqueza del tercer sector aquí en California. A parte de las grandes compañias de communicación, hay mucho tejido organizado entorno a non-proffit technology sector que se sostiene bien. Powell ha hecho un estudio de este non-proffit sector, aunque no centrado en las nuevas tecnologias (http://www.stanford.edu/group/song/woody_index.html). Es interesante ver como aqui se crean como distritos industriales de empresas de non-proffit technology, se juntan en centros y aunque hacen cosas muy parecidas estar juntos les beneficia.

Ei! Take a look to a very rich series of  activities reviewing the 68 organized at San Francisco and Berkeley.

As part of the activities I  have been invited to make an intervention on “Even newer social movements? Virtual communities” at the session “What new social movements?”
The Great Rehearsal? The World Revolution of ‘68 @ University of San Francisco. 20 September 2008 http://www.greatrehearsal.org/

Suggestions on similarities and disruptions between the organizational logic at the 68′2 movements and the online collective action are welcome!

Something is really (nicely) surprising me from my experience on visiting the UC Berkeley and Standfort University in contrast to the European University Institute is the use of the technology to support the academic life. Some concrete things:

+ School of information website has an intranet with wikis and e-lists to facilitate community communication and storage of infos and useful knowledges.

+ There is an institutional support on on-going communication to the external world while doing the Phd. Encoraging that researchers has websites and spread work-in-progress materials.

Courses:

+ Each course has a e-lists among the participants and syllabus online where you can see the schedule of sessions and access to the related readings.

+ Around 70% of people in the courses have her/his laptop and are doing things online while attending the class! This is not something seeing as disruptive or impolite. It is “normal” that people is constantly connected, also during classes. The class methodology assumes that and try to “sacar partido” (make worth?) of that. The methodology of the classes is adapted to the changes in the attention  of people permanently connected.

+ Work in groups is an important aspect of the classes requirements.

I am moving to Berkeley next 8th of July until end of December. I will be visiting the School of information - UC Berkeley. I will be collaborating with Howard Rheingold and Coye Chesire . I will also be doing field work on two of my case studies (one is Wikipedia).

Marco Berlinguer (my partner and researcher on new forms of political organization) will be coming for some period, too. We will be trying to build bridges between the techno-political scene and Social Forum process in Europe and the State in the frame of the Networked Politics Project.

This new adventure makes me very happy! I will be posting news from it here regularly.

If you have any suggestion on places to go or people to meet in California! I would appreciate if you let me know. If you are at California and are interested on this research and my work on online creation communities governance I would be happy on meeting you. Contact: mayo.fuster@eui.eu

In solidarity! Mayo

The www.globalisations.org Website is thus conceived as a training and self-training tool, dedicated to professional, pedagogical or merely personal use. « Globalisations » refers to all cultural, social, economic and political processes which are “globalised”, meaning: i) circulated at world scale, despite of national, geographic, technological and linguistic barriers ; ii) offering to men from every origin, country or culture: comparable ideas, contents, services and products ; and, finally: iii) able to produce a global impact on human activities, whatever they might be. The website has a critical dictionary of terms.

Very encouraging guidelines from the European Research Council on “Open Access”. Click here