God willing and this storm lets up, I’ll be bound for San Jose at 8am tomorrow morning, arriving in San Francisco at noon. No promises to be able to meet up with any Bay area friends, but if you get this, I’ll be staying at the Fairmont (no it’s NOT my usual digs…). Call me there at (408) 998 1900 and we’ll see what’s possible. Be nice just to say hi, and who knows, I might have time. Leaving Friday morning.
John Dumbrille on our recent efforts here on Bowen Island:
That self governance will be better enabled using web tools is probable. After all, there are economic drivers (‘more for less’) propelling it. But probable success factors are all about money and efficiency and intention, spirit and design. Thinking the litmus test is – does this BOWEGOV etc help people come home to themselves. How to measure this may be ‘happy’ indices, or, put another way – ‘spirit of giving/sharing’ indices.
I am dedicated to the face to face. Inasmuch as these tools bring us into generous relationship with each other, I say yay! And they do that in spades.
We`re living through a mighty big snowfall here on Bowen Island, the likes of which haven`t been seen for at least 40 years. As a result there is much handwringing about what other people should be doing about things like keeping the citizenry informed about the current road conditions and such. Most of our municipal government officials are on holiday and there have been no official releases of information since before the snow started falling on December 16.
As a fan of passion bounded by responsibility, I decided yesterday morning to set up a weblog which provides a space for the crowd to get to work. The idea is that people will visit to check on road conditions and while they are there, leave a comment about how things are in their neck of the woods. It’s a gift exchange and so far it’s working marvelously. Yesterday, up for half a day, the blog had posts from 7 people describing conditions on most of the major roads on our Island. Today with a massive snowfall (30cms) ongoing since early morning, we have had reports from 16 people covering all of the major routes on the Island. Even the bus company folks wrote to announce schedule cancellations.
A group of us were also up late last night tweaking the blog and working on a Google maps mashup creating a road status tool that users can colour when conditions deteriorate. Stu Cole is leading the charge on that one. Also, one islander, Boris Mann created a FreindFeed home for some of the Bowen Island eGovernment iniatiatives that John Dumbrille and Peter Rawsthorne have been musing about. Richard Smith, James Glave and Brad Ovenell-Carter are looking into a wifi mesh and a webcam network across the island. James Glave and the One Day Bowen crew are hosting the development pages for these projects at the Bowen 2020 wiki. Most of the development chatter has been happening over twitter.
Everything we are doing is gift based, and we are hoping that the municipality will steal it (or better yet , post links to all of this on their infrequently updated web page. What amazes me is what a small group of us can do, in responding to a need, in so short a time using freely available tools. We’re lucky that this has happened while we have had a little time, being snowbound and all over the holidays, but when there is a need, it’s amazing to see what can come of it.
If you have anything to add to our efforts or tools we should know about, post them in the comments or visit the Bowen2020 wiki and join the effort.
When we are hard on ourselves, or hard on others, isn’t it interesting how it is those small moments that define character? Most of the time we are fine, everything is alright, things are calm. Even in war, soldiers spend most of their time in tedious inactivity punctuated by bursts of frightening violence. Cities are not in a constant state of crime. Governments work perfectly fine most of the time. It is the small aberrations that we notice and these then colour everything.
When you become aware of how much fear you don’t have, how much violence ISN’T happening, how much struggle ISN’T going on, you can take on fear, violence and struggle in context without a story that your whole life is like that. It’s like becoming aware of how much space there is inside an atom or between stars.
Presence is fine. Presencing absence is awe inspiring. We are mostly made of space.
The Friday “From the Feed” returns for 2009. Great finds by other people:
- John Dumbrille blogs Clay Shirkey talking about egov and citizen engagement.
- George Nemeth retweeted Valdis Krebs‘ link to a list of great ambient recordings from 2008.
- The Tyee publishes a great series of 10 new ideas for the new year
- The Edge posts its annual question edition: “What will change everything?”
- Jordon Cooper and Stowe Boyd on the best windows desktop and web apps of the year. I love posts like these. If you have others, add them in the comments.