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