A few quick updates about what's happening at NetSquared including information about Katrina relief efforts, Angela Glover Blackwell's talk at the NetSquared Conference, BarCampEarth and DrupalMentor Bay Area.

<a href="http://odeo.com/claim/feed/db63c9163e7c3bf6">My Odeo Channel</a> (odeo/db63c9163e7c3bf6)

Description:

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) offer the promise of global connectivity, economic growth and democratization.  Questions remain, however, about both the political and economic implications and the best technical way forward.

Some people point to the informal network of community telecenters as a key way to bring the world online, while others are working to create super low cost laptops.   There are international travelers who help local organizations set up blogs and there are people who ride satellite-connected motorcycles around the countryside to provide brief periods of internet access.

ICT for development is a part of a larger conversation unfolding that calls for the creation of knowledge and innovation centric economies. How does this movement impact the NGO sector in the developing world and would-be allies in the developed world?  Since there is no guarantee of success for the innovation and ICT centric model of economic growth, how can nonprofits make sure that they benefit even if the private sector efforts suffer or fail?

There are also political questions to be asked.  What role should governments play?  Is digital connectivity a neo-colonial railroad - ultimately transporting resources out of the developing world?  Or is it a key factor in leapfrog development, enabling some of the nastier stages of industrialization to be skipped?  Does ICT for development end up imposing paradigms on users they may not be in their best interest?  In the context of nonprofit technology, what are some of the most important steps to take *now* to ensure positive outcomes down the road?

What technologies - and supporting infrastructure - will be successful in the developing world? 

What technologies are already successful, and why?  Is the $100 computer really going to be the panacea of tech challenges in the global south?  Is the panoply of Web2.0 tools that rely on broadband going to lie fallow for over 4/5ths of the world's Internet users because they'll be going straight from dial-up to handheld-based wifi access?

Photo of Kate Raynes-Goldie

Description:

While online activism can make an impact on the world, it's vitally important that we consider how all these exciting new technologies can be leveraged to mobilize and activate people effectively off-line.

Online organizing was widely credited as a key factor in bringing large numbers of people to Seattle in 1999 to protest the World Trade Organization.  MySpace and cell phone text messaging were essential in getting huge numbers of young people out to the recent rallies against the immigrant targeting US HR 4437.  From the Philippines to Bolivia, cell phones have been used for off-line organizing around the world. The website Meetup has helped countless people interact face to face for a variety of purposes.  Protest.net is a huge centralized directory of global protests and Upcoming.org lets users tag and search by tags for events of interest.

What are the most powerful lessons we've learned so far in the early years of integrating online and offline social change work?  What have we learned from earlier organizing that can be transferred to online organizing and what is different?  How can our organizations engage with the often highly decentralized communication that goes on online?  Are old-school, centralized organizations going to get left in the dust by emergent decentralized communities of interest?  What's the best way to use communication technology in support of offline activities beyond just rallying warm bodies who've seen too many informational web pages to be useful?  How can we make sure that this kind of organizing reaches beyond the young, urban middle-class?

photo of Ruby Sinreich

This is an interview by David Collin with Teck Chia and Flora Sun, the founders of Gabbly. Gabbly is a chat service that allows you to chat around any webpage. Gabbly is building a platform that enables people to connect instantly and collaborate around any content, topic or interest.

Open Source software has had significant market success in server-based platforms and applications. But some people believe that there is great potential for low cost, easy to use, open source based personal computer systems, especially for developing countries. This belief has been put to action by some, including the low cost, handheld Linux OS Simputer. The famed $100 laptop project is another open source computer effort underway.  A variety of other projects aim to create open source thin client systems, where one hard drive networks with a number of very simple computers that use its processing power and memory.

When will fully-functional, easy to use (open source) systems become available? How successful are localization efforts? When will these systems be low cost, and fully supported? What are the implications for use by non-profits and deployment to low income users both in developed and developing countries?  How much agreement is there on standards and interoperability?Is open source computing even the best strategy to pursue in order to make low cost computing widely available?  Would seeking donations of proprietary systems for populations in severe need be a better approach?  Will issues of access be taken care of by a future where hardware is given away for free so that users can look at advertising-supported software as a service?

Assuming that widespread distribution of open source computers is the best path the world can forge - what is it going to take for that to happen?

Photo of Jonathan Peizer

Open Source software has had significant market success in server-based platforms and applications. But some people believe that there is great potential for low cost, easy to use, open source based personal computer systems, especially for developing countries. This belief has been put to action by some, including the low cost, handheld Linux OS Simputer. The famed $100 laptop project is another open source computer effort underway.  A variety of other projects aim to create open source thin client systems, where one hard drive networks with a number of very simple computers that use its processing power and memory.

When will fully-functional, easy to use (open source) systems become available? How successful are localization efforts? When will these systems be low cost, and fully supported? What are the implications for use by non-profits and deployment to low income users both in developed and developing countries?  How much agreement is there on standards and interoperability?Is open source computing even the best strategy to pursue in order to make low cost computing widely available?  Would seeking donations of proprietary systems for populations in severe need be a better approach?  Will issues of access be taken care of by a future where hardware is given away for free so that users can look at advertising-supported software as a service?

Assuming that widespread distribution of open source computers is the best path the world can forge - what is it going to take for that to happen?

Photo of Allen Gunn

Speakers:

• Dimitri Glazkov
• Bob Robertson-Boyd
• Ginger Thomson
• Ami Dar (immoderator)

MySpace has become the second most visited web site on the Internet. There are new general, themed and niche Social Networking Services being launched on a regular basis. Why do so many people find these so compelling? Perhaps because they help quickly facilitate connections between people with common interests. Perhaps it's the self expression that they enable, with ever fewer technical skills required with each new set of tools.
Many other online tools have begun to incorporate social networking features as well, and social networking is becoming an increasingly multimedia phenomenon as outside services tailor their features for use in social networking environments.
NetSquared has found that some organizations and nonprofit workers like to use the large commercial social networking services. We've also found a large number of topic specific and fundamentally nonprofit social networking systems. Just a few examples from our case studies include:

1. The Lightstalkers networking system for media workers
2. Malecare Prostate Cancer Support for Gay Men
3. The youth oriented TakingITGlobal
4. The sophisticated Never Again network bringing young Rwanandans and young people in the USA together.

These examples seem to belie the idea that Social Networking is just for lonely or intoxicated teenagers and those who would gawk at them. The business world uses systems like Linked-In, but do these kinds of activities really work in a nonprofit context? What are the benefits of engaging in a large, public network vs. a small targeted one - and vice versa? What are the best ways to maximize ongoing use of these systems - are they worth the effort to set up - or do busy people lose their interest after a short period of time? Does time spent interacting in a Social Networking Service count as working? How can you prevent individuals associated with your organization from making you look bad via their activities in such a system? How can you and your organization get the most out of this type of tool? What valuable Social Networking techniques can you import into your own website?

Photo: Dimitri Glazkov

A few quick updates about what's happening at NetSquared:

* Net Tuesday with Teck Chia and Flora Sun of Gabbly.
* Net Tuesday Meetups in Los Angeles and DC August 15th.
* Global Exchange, Rainforest Action Network and the Ruckus Society's Flickr photo contest.

This is an interview by David Collin of Susan Tenby and Salvador Luna of Compumentor about how they created the TechSoup presence in Second Life and organized the "mixed-reality" Net Tuesday that took place both in Second Life and in San Francisco at the same time on July 18, 2006.

Speakers:

• Catherine Geanuracos
• Christine Herron
• Fran Maier
• Lisa Stone
• Susan Mernit (Immoderator)

Description: Many lists of the most high-profile individual blogs online, sometimes called the A-list, appear to be dominated by men. Science writer Annalee Newitz says getting Slashdotted leads to as many comments about her looks as her article. A large proportion of video blogs are hosted by young women who are Beauty Standards �¢ï¿½�¢ compliant. Second Life skin pics of naked avatars get more comments than almost any other items in news blog coverage of the space. On the other side, the Blogher network is going strong in its second year of "creating opportunities for women bloggers to pursue exposure, education, and community." Mary Hodder has created a diverse wiki directory of available public speakers on tech. Shelley Powers has helped kick off a movement to write and defend biographical entries to Wikipedia about women. It's widely argued that gender cannot be engaged with in isolation from other factors of identity. It's also argued that the new web tools offer profound democratizing effects. Technology in general has a history of male dominance. Will there be anything different in the proliferation of tools and expressions that constitute the social web? Are there ways that the social space around new web tools can be articulated by new actors with a new vision of equitable interaction?

Photo: Susan Mernit

David Collin interviews Jeska Linden, Community Manager for Linden Lab, about the mixed-reality that happened during the July 18th Net Tuesday in San Francisco. Net Tuesday occurred simultaneously in the "real" world at CompuMentor and in the virtual world of Second Life.

A quick update about what is happening at NetSquared.