Aldo de Moor

21
Mar
2009

Presentation at the National Research Council Canada

090321_nrcc3On Monday, I will give another version of the talk “From Inspiration to Activation: Making Online Collaborative Communities Work” that I gave at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, this time at the National Research Council Canada Institute for Information Technology in Fredericton, New Brunswick. It’s good to have another opportunity to present  and get quality feedback on these ideas that have been keeping me busy for such a long time.

Abstract

Inspiration is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for collaborative communities to work. Such communities often make use of complex Internet-based tool systems. In these systems, work gets distributed over many tools, often leading to the fragmentation of communicative acts. To address this problem, explicit attention needs to be paid to community activation.

… Read more...
Posted by Aldo de Moor in CommunitySense, Presentations, 0 comments
16
Mar
2009

Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems

Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems

090316_soctech_research_handbook1ISBN: 978-1-60566-264-0; 1,034 pp; March 2009

Published under the imprint Information Science Reference (formerly Idea Group Reference)

http://www.igi-global.com/reference/details.asp?ID=33019

Edited by: Brian Whitworth, Massey University, New Zealand and Aldo de Moor, CommunitySense, The Netherlands

DESCRIPTION

The focus of this book is not how to make technology more efficient, nor even how technology harms or helps society, but rather how to successfully combine society and technology into socio-technical performance.

The Handbook of Research on Socio-Technical Design and Social Networking Systems provides a state-of-the-art summary of knowledge in this evolving, multi-disciplinary field distinctive in its variety of international authors’ perspectives, depth and breadth of scholarship, and combination of practical and theoretical views. This noteworthy Handbook of Research extends a useful collection for anyone interested in modern socio-technincal systems where knowledge of social principles can mean the difference between success and failure.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in CommunitySense, Publications, 0 comments
17
Feb
2009

D-Day for Communities and Networks Connection

As you know, the field of community informatics is a very fast moving target. Trying to keep up with even only the most basic developments in research and practice, from the softest social psychology intuitions to the hardest network infrastructure deployment, is the best way to get completely overloaded. Sometimes, you just want to give up and zone out (try clicking the square in this digital sandbox for some wonderful R&R if you reach that state of emergency!) However, when you feel the “Force Is Starting To Embrace You Again”, a brand new Jedi sabre is awaiting to help you cut through the conceptual tangle and quickly zoom in on the most relevant developments: the Communities & Networks Connection blog portal.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in CommunitySense, 0 comments
23
Jan
2009

From Inspiration to Activation: Making Online Collaborative Communities Work

Invitation to my UAH lecture, January 21, 2009On January 21, I presented my lecture “From Inspiration to Activation: Making Online Collaborative Communities Work” in the UAHuntsville Distinguished Speaker Series. It was a revised version of the invited talk I gave at the ALOIS 2008 conference in Venice in May 2008. In the lecture I addressed how collaborative communities require not only the sense of purpose and drive provided by inspiration, but also the activation of the community in terms of explicitly supporting the initiation, execution, and evaluation of  goal-oriented (online) communication processes. To this purpose, a socio-technical design process is needed in which the communicative context and tool system are matched.

A major theme in my lecture was the paradigm-shifting approach of the Obama administration to involve the general public, not only in getting elected, but also in providing ideas for and feedback on the policies proposed.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in CommunitySense, Presentations, 0 comments
01
Jan
2009

Yes We Can 2.0

It’s amazing what transformative power Web 2.0 services are increasingly making available to everybody at (almost) no cost. Using Animoto “The End of Slideshows” I just made a professional looking video supported by (Creative Commons)-music out of my collection of 1993 Clayoquot Sound uprising-pics for only US$ 3,- (30 sec videos are even free):

Compare this to the static slideshows “of old”.

Of course, such “fast and furious” MTV-style videos are not always the best choice, but they could play an important role in energizing, for example, youth to participate in community-building campaigns.

Happy Change Year!

Posted by Aldo de Moor in Tools, 0 comments
21
Dec
2008

Strategy interviews

CommunitySense now offers a new service, strategy interviews, which may be of interest to you if you are a  management level professional. Such a one-on-one  interview allows you to break away from day to day operational issues and instead to jointly reflect upon the important questions: what is the mission of my organization or department? What values are we after? What services do and should we provide? Where do I want us to be a couple of years from now, and so on.

The interview takes place in a relaxing setting and can range from a couple of hours to half a day. I will prepare a couple of questions to get the interview going, and will process and structure your answers in an interview report.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in CommunitySense, Services, 0 comments
08
Dec
2008

Liberating Voices book published

A while ago, I posted some ideas on the socio-technical infrastructure needed to create a network of “thinking communities”. I was then contacted by Doug Schuler, coordinator of the Public Sphere Project, who asked me to create a Thinking Communities Pattern  for their Liberating Voices: a Pattern Language for Communication Revolution project.

081208_schuler_liberating_voices_front_coverA selection of patterns, including the Thinking Communities Pattern, has now been edited and published as a book by The MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-69366-6). See also the book flyer. To get an idea of how these patterns could be used, see, for instance, the post by Justin Smith, who lists some requirements for a pattern-based knowledge system.

The best way to introduce the book is by using Doug’s own words:

After eight years of work, the book on our information and communication pattern language project, “Liberating Voices: A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution,” is finally available.

… Read more...
Posted by Aldo de Moor in Publications, 0 comments
29
Nov
2008

BarCamp Berlin 3 revisited

081129_mcs_barcamp_berlin_3On October 18-19, Barcamp Berlin 3 took place. It was organized in the impressive Berlin Representative Office of Deutsche Telekom. Over 800 people attended, a true bee hive of creative tech people from all walks of Internet life.

BarCamps are a special kind of conference, sometimes even called an “unconference”:

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

BarCamps live and breathe Web 2.0, not only in what they are about, but also by adopting its user-driven style in how they are organized. There is much attention on participatory process, or, rather, on providing an overall infrastructural framework, while making participants responsible for what topics are going to be discussed and in what way.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in Conferences, 0 comments
25
Nov
2008

Dutch Innovation Seminar 2008

On October 9, a beautiful autumn day, I went to the De Baak estate, in the wooded centre of the country to attend the Dutch Innovation Seminar 2008. De Baak is a well-known training institute, established by the largest employers’ organization in the Netherlands. As their site states, it “is the place for leaders, business people and professionals in search of inspiration, motivation, knowledge and insight”. Well, inspiration abounded, plentifully.

The seminar comprised a couple of keynote addresses, as well as a number of workshops, and lots of opportunity to network in a very pleasant atmosphere. The theme of the event was “Pulverizing Borders”, about how the Internet allows all kinds of borders to disappear, borders between people, organizations, supply and demand, and so on.… Read more...

Posted by Aldo de Moor in Conferences, 0 comments
06
Nov
2008

Mr. Community President

[The text of an e-mail I just sent to the Community Informatics Researchers-mailing list]

What a wonderful moment in  emancipatory history we have just experienced! No need to add here to the deluge of analyses of the profound impact Obama’s election is going to have on all levels of U.S. and global society. At any rate, congratulations to all American and international colleagues on this list who are so very much in need of a change of societal paradigm.

One thing some of us discussed at the conference in Prato (another great event in the series, it was, as always, good to be back) was what Obama’s election could mean in terms of boosting community informatics research and practice.  His is very much a way of community (informatics) thinking and working, both in philosophical outlook by putting community first and in practical approach, see, for instance:

http://fairsay.com/blog/obamas-win-and-the-power-of-networking

… Read more...
Posted by Aldo de Moor in Ideas, 0 comments