Making "The Network" a Community
-- and Vice Versa

A city is not just a set of buildings, nor a community a group of people. An animating spirit and resources are needed for both...

As one of the founders of "The Network," an informal research network dedicated to global community networking research and activism I am interested in identifying and exploring ideas that can make the network most effectively meet its objectives and the needs of the participants. The network consists of people from around the world who are interested in studying and promoting public computing, communications, and media systems.

This particular endeavor offers many unique challenges that we hope to overcome.

• Combining research with activism is tricky business. (How can the two goals be complementary?)
• Interdisciplinary work is harder to characterize and therefore harder to define and market
• Collaboration across boundaries -- political, cultural, and economic to name a few -- is always more difficult.
• Academic / community partnerships -- particularly those involving advocacy -- are harder to justify to the academic "scientific" community.
• Many of us need critical theories, combining research and activism

1. How can we use the network to best serve participants? (and how do we know if it's doing a good job?)
2. How can we use the network to advance research and activism?
3. How can we use the network to institutionalize a discipline that reflects the objectives of the network and the needs of the practitioners? (This discipline has been variously called "Community Informatics", "Community Information and Communication Systems", "Computer-Supported Community Work", and "Community Networking." There is no consensus yet on what to call what we're doing!)
4. How can we use the network to help build community amongst its practioners?

My working hypothesis is that we can find answers that address all these questions simultaneously.

Supporting Our Work

In order for the outline to be useful for network participants -- and to the world at large -- I will be making it available on the World Wide Web. This also ensures that we will be able to change the outline as necessary as time goes on. In order also to reflect the work, interests, and aspirations of the network participants I am proposing that network members are the only ones who can add entries to the hypertext. I will also revise as appropriate the outline to accomodate the needs of the members. I also want to point out that the outline I am proposing need not be the only one. Since the references are all independent entities on the web, other outlines employing different organizing principles are also possible.

1. Network Toolbox
   • Join network (as a "friend")
   • Search site
   • Discussion archives
   • On-line meetings
   • Project management
   • Add URL to network hypertext
   • Publish a web page on network site
2. General Themes and Background
   • Critical theories (and "Leitbilds")
   • History of communication technology, media, and relevant policy
   • CommunicationScapes (e.g. Pakistan, Harlem, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Seattle, First Peoples')
   • What is community? Relevant issues in sociology, community development, social change, etc.
   • What is the value of public of communication? What benefits do we believe society could obtain from it? (e.g. Habermas' "public sphere," Schuler's "community core values" and others)
   • Other theoretical work
3. Case Studies / Empirical Work / Experiments
   • Descriptions of institutions, services, projects
   • Demographics of users
   • Taxonomy of existing services (including "competitors")
   • Guidelines for community / academic collaboration
4. Public Policy
   • How can we inform policy makers?
   • Descriptions of relevant policy work
   • Relevant policy documents
5. Technology Design and Deployment
   • Applications (e.g. public domain web publishing tools)
   • Search engines
   • User interface
   • Design approaches (e.g. participatory graphic information systems design)
   • Ideas and works in progress (e.g. specifications for an ideal community network)
6. Resources
   • Conferences
   • Journals
   • Organizations & Institutions
   • Funding
   • Archives / indexes / libraries (e.g. pointers to community network listings)
   • Projects
7. The Network (itself)
   • General; FAQs
   • Members' information; research interests, contact information, etc.
   • Events (will point to position papers; notes, etc.)
   • Mail archives
   • Research Issues
   • Questions, request for data (to & from the network??)

   Exploring -- and Developing -- Our Collective Consciousness

   In order to help build our collective intelligence I am planning to send a brief survey to all the network participants. I'll be asking for suggestions and ideas in order to get a "critical mass" of information for the network to use as a base for future work. My plan is to publish the feedback I receive on the web and to use it for future directions in the evolution of the network.
   1. What research issues are you working on and/or interested in?
   2. What working hypotheses are you using in your work?
   3. Using 2 - 5 of your papers, essays, etc. for material, list several questions that your work helps address? (e.g. What demographic characteristics do the users of network X have? or What characteristics do successful community networks share?)
   4. Assuming that the network group is fully developed and operational what would you foresee deriving from it? 1) in simple ways? 2) In more profound ways?
   5. What resources could you envision contributing to the network? For example, do you have any students who are interested in working with researchers in other sites or working on distributed databases?
   6. What information (precise and/or general) would you like to be able to easily obtain from the network and the network resources? What sorts of research results or data would you like other network members to produce in order to help you move your work along?
   7. What ideas do you have for projects that the network could help support in some way? e.g. student exchange
   8. What features or services (electronic or otherwise) do you think could be implemented to make the network more useful?
   9. Are you interested in collaborative projects with network participants or others? What types?
   10. What could the network better support collaborative projects?
   11. What should we be doing to help build our work as an academic discipline?
   12. What should we be doing to help build our work as a movement?
   13. What name(s) do you prefer for the work we're doing??
   14. Can you think of a better name to suggest for our network?
   15. Any other ideas, hypotheses, assumptions, or concerns that you could share?