Aldo de Moor

11
Nov
2019

Conference presentation – Citizen sensing meeting community informatics: from power to empowerment?

Last week, I attended the 17th International Community Informatics Research Network Conference in Prato, Italy. This year’s theme was of particular interest to my research & consultancy interests: WHOSE AGENDA: ACTION, RESEARCH, & POLITICS.

This time, I decided to base my talk on a citizen sensing panel discussion at Tilburg Night University I was asked to participate in last month as a “community informatics expert”. In my Prato talk, I expanded my thoughts, thinking through in more detail what are the relationships between citizen sensing, citizen science, and community informatics, from the angle of power & empowerment.

Title: Citizen sensing meeting community informatics: from power to empowerment?

Abstract: Citizen sensing offers much promise in engaging citizens for the common good, such as working on addressing climate change at the grassroots level.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in Conferences, Ideas, Presentations, 0 comments
22
Oct
2019

Community informatics meets citizen sensing: from insight to action

Every year, Tilburg University organizes a “Night University“, a night full of lectures, panels, and events during which the rest of Tilburg can come and get some sense of what exactly is happening within, between and beyond the ivory towers.

One of the panels this year was organized by the Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology and Society (TILT): “Nudging for Climate Through Citizen Sensing”. Together with representatives from TILT and citizen sensing collective Meet Je Stad, I was to discuss what is going on in this domain and where things are heading:

How can “citizen sensing” stimulate climate-friendly behavior? Together with dr. Leonie Reins & Anna Berti Suman (Tilburg Law School), CommunitySense and “Meet Je Stad”,  there will be an interactive talk on the use of citizen-run environmental monitoring technologies such as smart meters to be placed on roof tops.

… Read more...
Posted by Aldo de Moor, 3 comments
14
Sep
2019

From Climate Action Confusion to Collaboration: Towards Common Agenda Setting

All over the world, organizations are gearing up to address the causes and effects of climate change. However, none of them can do this on their own, joining forces is of the essence.

The 2015 Paris Agreement was a major milestone in accelerating this process of global collaboration:

The Paris Agreement builds upon the Convention and for the first time brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so. As such, it charts a new course in the global climate effort.

Although the intentions in Paris were good, as we all know there is still monumental confusion and dithering everywhere about what exactly needs to be done, in what way, when, and by whom.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in CommunitySense, Ideas, Projects, 0 comments
11
Sep
2019

New publication: Co-Discovering Common Ground in a Collaborative Community: The BoostINNO Participatory Collaboration Mapping Case

A. de Moor (2019). Co-Discovering Common Ground in a Collaborative Community: The BoostINNO Participatory Collaboration Mapping Case. In Proceedings of C&T 2019, June 3–7, 2019, Vienna, Austria

Abstract:

Collaborative communities are learning communities aimed at accomplishing common goals within often complex collaboration ecosystems. Their development requires catalyzing the process of co-discovering collaborative common ground. BoostINNO was an EU networking project aimed at building a collaborative community in which ten major European cities who are leaders in social innovation shared knowledge lessons learnt. We show how the CommunitySensor participatory community network mapping methodology and the Kumu online network visualization tool were combined to support participatory collaboration mapping among the BoostINNO community members. Two experiments were conducted: (1) finding collaboration partners and (2) comparing social innovation lessons learnt on urban spaces developed by each of the cities.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in Conferences, Projects, Publications, 0 comments
14
Jun
2019

New publication: Common Agenda Setting through Participatory Collaboration Mapping – a Knowledge Base-Driven Approach

A. de Moor (2018). Common Agenda Setting through Participatory Collaboration Mapping: a Knowledge Base-Driven Approach. In 16th Prato CIRN Conference 24-28 October 2018, Monash Centre, Prato, Italy.

fig7 conversation agenda

Abstract:

Globalizing society faces an ever-expanding web of wicked problems. Community networks are at the heart of building the required collaboration capacity for achieving collective impact. One bottleneck is the process of common agenda setting among such widely diverging stakeholder networks. Participatory collaboration mapping can help build firmer actionable and conceptual common ground between existing projects, programs, and initiatives on which to base the common agenda-setting process in community networks. By jointly creating and aligning collaboration maps, stakeholders can catalyze, augment, and connect existing collective impact initiatives. To be scalable, this requires a knowledge base-driven approach.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in Publications, 0 comments
11
Jun
2019

Community(Es)Sense

Last week, I attended the 2019 Communities & Technologies conference in Vienna:

The biennial Communities and Technologies (C&T) conference is the premier international forum for stimulating scholarly debate and disseminating research on the complex connections between communities – in their multiple forms – and information and communication technologies.

It is one of my favorite conferences, and as usual, it was an amazing meeting of minds. See the tweet stream for an impression of the topics discussed. More on the paper I presented in a future post.

After the conference, some of us took a tour of the futuristic new campus of  the Vienna University of Economics and Business. The buildings are phenomenal, however, what really struck me was how the concept of the campus being a community space has been designed into everything, from the overall master plan of the campus area to very specific building details.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in CommunitySense, Conferences, Ideas, 0 comments
01
Jun
2019

CommunitySense website makeover

I did a major overhaul of the CommunitySense website. Check out http://communitysense.nl to see how I may help your organization, network or community build collaborative common ground.

170928_end of stakeholder meeting

Posted by Aldo de Moor in CommunitySense, 0 comments
12
Apr
2019

New publication: Participatory Collaboration Mapping in Malawi: Making Mike’s Community Informatics Idea(l)s Work

A. de Moor (2018).  Participatory Collaboration Mapping in Malawi: Making Mike’s Community Informatics Idea(l)s Work, The Journal of Community Informatics, 14(2-3):109-115.

Abstract

In this tribute to Michael Gurstein, we first summarize three of his key concepts: Community Informatics, Effective Use, and Community Innovation. We then apply his ideas to a case on participatory collaboration mapping in Malawi. We end the tribute with a reflection and re-iterating Mike’s call for Community Informatics research and action to keep meeting.

Posted by Aldo de Moor in Publications, 1 comment
19
Mar
2019

Mapping the social innovation ecosystems around public libraries together: the Czech connection(s)

Public libraries are cornerstones of civil society. They form the “third places” where individual citizens meet and mingle, get informed, learn, as well as form and share opinions. Increasingly, however, public libraries are also seen as the meeting and co-working hubs of the many communities making up the rich fabric of urban society. Thus, public libraries are getting new, societal roles as city labs and social innovation catalysts.

The Tilburg Public Library  is known for its groundbreaking library innovations, such as the recently opened LocHal, which is truly a “world-class urban living room for Tilburg in an iconic former locomotive shed of the Dutch National Railways”. More about that in a future post. Another one of its strategic innovations concerns the KnowledgeCloud, the “network in which persons, communities and organisations meet one another both online and offline to discuss current, societally relevant themes”.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in CommunitySense, Projects, Services, 2 comments