Oppidan.org

I’ll be speaking with Ilona this friday at Communautique’s Forum Ouvert

The subject is a conference on democracy and technology that a bunch of CivicAccess folks from Montreal are organizing.

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Agenda

13h15 - Mot d’ouverture : Denis Boudreau, président de Communautique

13h30 - Table ronde avec :

* Michelle Blanc / michelleblanc.com - Où va notre économie numérique?
* René Barsalo / Société des arts technologiques [SAT] - Le “déclic” générationnel, une clé pour comprendre la mutation en cours
* Yves Otis / Percolab - Les triplets de « Web-ville » : communautés, savoirs et web sémantique

14h45 - Présentation de 14 nano-conférences :

1. Pierrot Péladeau / Communautique - Apprendre à vivre entre les lignes : le programme
2. Michael Lenczner et Ilona Dougherty / Ile sans fil et Apathy is Boring - DemTech, une conférence sur les possibilités d’utiliser la technologie pour approfondir la démocratie
3. Antoine Beaupré / Koumbit - Le réseau et vous
4. Sharon Hackett / Centre de documentation sur l’éducation des adultes et la condition féminine (CDÉACF) - Partager sa culture en alphabétisation
5. Caroline Tagny / Alternatives - Tech sans violence
6. Claude Ouellet / ATENA - Environnement, inclusion numérique Et-TIC
7. Nicole Nepton / Cybersolidaires - Un réseau cybersolidaire
8. Samantha Slade et Yves Otis / Percolab - Crise(s), compétences et identité numérique
9. Frédéric Dubois / Parole citoyenne - Images engagées: propulser les débats
10. Jean-François Roussy et Alexandre Gravel / Centre de communication adaptée et Toast Studio - Le Réseau Francosourd, un site de réseautage social ciblé
11. Denis Boudreau / AccessibilitéWeb - Quand l’accessibilité du Web devient un enjeu gouvernemental (le plus handicapé n’est plus celui qu’on pense)
12. Anthony Hémond / Union des consommateurs - Neutralité d’Internet: où en sommes-nous au Canada?
13. Robin Millette / Controlez-Vous - Laconica, ou comment communiquer un p’tit peu, mais souvent
14. Pierre-Léonard Harvey, Ph.D. / Laboratoire de Communautique appliquée de l’UQÀM - CoL@b : Communication, transdisciplinarité et design socio-technologique

16h45 - Forum Ouvert : « Qui m’aime me suive! »

1. De l’accès universel à l’accessibilité des personnes handicapées : un centre d’expertise au Québec ? / Communautique
2. Services en ligne pour la participation civique / Visible governement
3.

Les rencontres de discussion seront inscrites sur le site du Forum au fur et à mesure de leur création.

L’événement sera filmé en collaboration avec Parole citoyenne de l’ONF.

What is Media Ecology?

Still working through the idea of using “community information ecologies” as language for my work. Supported by the concept of “community information infrastructures”. I’m not certain about it yet.

Speaking of reflection - I’ve been very taken with the book The Revolution will not be Funded. It’s a series of really interesting questions + examples of how social change is controlled and made less radical through the activities of foundations and public funding. Kind of obvious when it’s said that way, but it definitely surprised me and made me think of some new things. Slavoj Zizek is also someone that I’m looking forward to learning more about. This interview was exciting and fun to listen to.

I worked with Craig Davey to create OurParliament.ca / NotreParlement.ca. It scrapes the Handsard and we’re hoping to turn it into a great Canadian version of TheyWorkForYou.com. The source code is up at github.

Tomorrow there’s a CivicAccess meeting to explore the possibility of having a *camp in the next two months. Laika at 6.

So I’ve been pretty stumped on figuring out how to formulate a mission for Oppidan. A lot of what stopped me so many months ago was being fixated on writing something that would be easily approved for charitable status. I’ve decided to move forward and figure out charitable status at a later point once I have a capable board.

A good, if too brief, work session with Tracey was helpful in that it got me to focusing on capacity building. Capacity building for who? - well, us, but big us. The only way I can formulate that right now is the canadian public interest technology sector. In that I would include both the individual, for-profit, and non-profit folks or projects. But I’m less concerned about articulating the “us” thing as I am the “capacity building” thing. Being on the board of Coco is helpful as it gives me a concrete version of what one organization devoted to capacity building actually does. The latitude should be enough for me + the org.

More soon…

Recently invited to participate in
“Building the Commons into All We Do”
May 29th - June 1, 2008
Blue Mountain Center, NY
Convener - Kim Klein - Building Movement Project and Institute in Management and Community Development

I was the only “tech” guy, so I got to learn more about community organizers from other fields and from diverse parts of the US (LA, Chicago, Missouri, NYC, San Diego, etc). We spent time thinking about applying the framework of the Commons into each of our work and to the social justice movement as a whole.

And next week is the annual Summer Program of the Concordia Institute. I’ll be attending the full week in a invited stream of community organizers. The theme is “Citizen engagement and movement building as a force for social transformation”.

Community wireless project ZAP Sherbrooke had some great news the other day:

Internet gratuit: Sherbrooke se démarque
Sherbrooke deviendra l’une des cinq villes canadiennes disposant du plus grand nombre de points d’accès public et gratuit à l’Internet sans fil.

La Ville a annoncé jeudi qu’elle proposera une trentaine de points d’accès dans divers lieux et établissements municipaux d’ici à Noël, ce qui portera le nombre de zones d’accès public (ZAP) à environ 110 à la grandeur du territoire sherbrookois.

We (ISF) followed up yesterday with the unveiling of our proposal to the city of Montreal worth 1 million over 5 years to open 400 hotspots on city territory.

Du WiFi jusque dans les parcs
“Un projet de partenariat financier entre la Ville de Montréal et l’organisme Île sans fil fait son chemin dans les couloirs de l’hôtel de ville.”

It was a front page article in today’s La Presse.

I’m looking at applying for this project for some funding to start Oppidan.

Echoing Green

What is the Echoing Green Fellowship?

“Each year, Echoing Green awards 20 two-year fellowships to entrepreneurs creating new social change organizations. Fellows receive up to $90,000 in seed funding and technical support to turn their innovative ideas into sustainable organizations.”

The Knight Foundation’s News Challenge is pretty much _exactly_ what direction I’m hoping to go with Oppidan. Go watch the 1 minute flash animation to get a sense. It’s all about what I call Community Information Ecosystems. Too bad no one else calls it that ;-) (I’ve been working on a comprehensible mission statement. Not there yet, unfortunately).

Being on the board of Apathy is Boring and Coco have been helpful. I am learning the ropes of Coco - where I just joined as a member of the board. I see what it takes to draw up yearly budget estimates, all the grant writing that has to happen, as well as the networking essential to be seen as a relevant organization. It also helps me connect with interesting people in the non-profit sector.

On Wed I was able to talk to the Sam Singer who’s running the new non-profit focused legal resource/clinic at Coco, tonight is a lecture on fundraising and tomorrow is a Apathy is Boring 5-7 in their office on pine + st. laurent.

“The 10 Most Important Fundraising Strategies to Weather Uncertainty and Raise Money Successfully”

Join us for the Abitibi Consolidated Lecture to hear our distinguished guest speaker, the internationally renowned author and fundraising trainer/consultant, Kim Klein.

7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Sir George Williams Campus
Henry F. Hall Building, Alumni Auditorium, H-110
1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal

Kim Klein was awarded the 1998 Outstanding Fund Raising Executive of the Year by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (Golden Gate Chapter), Ms. Klein is the Chardon Press Series Editor at Jossey-Bass Publishers. She is also the founder and publisher of the Grassroots Fundraising Journal, and author of Fundraising for Social Change and Fundraising for the Long Haul.

Kim Klein has worked in all aspects of fundraising and is best known for adapting traditional fundraising techniques, particularly major donor campaigns, to the needs of grassroots organizations. She has taught fundraising in all 50 U.S. states and in 21 countries.

I’ve participated in a workshop by Kim and I know that she’s really looked up to across NA as an expert.

Also, I recently asked someone to be my mentor to help me through the steps of setting up Oppidan. It’s early, but I’m happy with how that’s working out so far (and very pleased that he accepted).

The whole process of starting up this organization is really intimidating. The learning curve seems to be very steep. I think that I’ve found a mentor with some experience in the field to help me push through it though. One of the pieces of advice was to separate my conception of the corporate mission from the legal mission. That doesn’t mean a difference in vision, but to remember that the legal mission serves a solely legal purpose, while the corporate mission serves as an organizational focus.

Hopefully I’ll have more news to post here soon. In the meantime I’m continuing to blog at on my personal website - mtl3p.

Jon Udell sits down with the sheriff

I think that this is the type of work that is required at this stage of the game in terms of access to government information. Doing the hard work of talking and working with people who have data to set high-profile, very successful precedents in different areas (health, public security, mapping, etc).

Tracey and Hugh have been busy getting DataLibre.ca off the ground. I’m glad that people are trying different things to gain traction in this battle.