Jtm-pnw-session-northwest-commons
JTMPNW ONGOING (COLLABORATORY) & CIVIC COMMUNICATIONS COMMONS
Convenors: Susan Gleason, John Hamer, Mike Fancher
Participants: Anne Stadler, John Spady, Richard VanderKnyff, Sheri Herndon, Jonathan Lawson, David Beers, Bart Preecs, Sally James, Yuko Kodama, Jeff Vander Klute, Sam Kimball, and others.
DEFINING THE COLLABORATORY AND THE CIVIC COMMONS
Anne Stadler, re JTMPNW Collaboratory:
* A learning lab for entrepreneurial projects and nourishing connections that meets quarterly face to face and online all the time!
John Spady, re Civic Commons:
* An extension of the Town Forum / Town Hall paradigm * Safe space that allows us to meet physically and virtually, and enables a great diversity of voices to be heard on a variety of civic issues * With civic space, or civic spectrum, we can tune in to what we want to hear or follow — we wouldn't be able to hear or follow it all.
Example of the Civic Commons in practice:
* King County-wide Community Forums — a first step in this model that's already in the works * The familiar town hall model of one big meeting is distributed throughout the county to small meetings held in homes * Meeting hosts distribute a post-event survey; survey results are tabulated (and later aggregated?) * This model scales very easily
HOW THE JTMPNW COLLABORATORY AND CIVIC COMMONS IDEAS RELATE TO EACH OTHER
Commons Idea – experiment for civic engagement space
Players: government, nonprofits, people who care about the civic space
Anne: The collaboratory – a juicy place where people are exploring the possibilities; the civic space that welcomes the collaboratory’s experiments is the commons
News & Info ecosystem – gaps, needs, resources
Rick: Information Commons could be pilot project of JTMPNW Collaboratory.
Anne: Community forums are one aspect of the commons. Many more assests can be explored including the Healthy Communities Report from the Seattle Foundation. There’s a larger plate of possibilities.
John: Concentric circles. Collaboratory is nurturing many different species, projects
JTMPNW Collaboratory and Civic Commons/civic engagement – not sure there’s clear distinction; very blurry, getting blurrier.
Anne: ''Collaboratory''—experiment/learning lab. ''Commons''—big space for community to learn from itself
NEXT STEPS FOR THE JTMPNW COLLABORATORY / NEXT STEPS FOR THE CIVIC COMMONS
Sheri: This conversation relates to local conversations about the Hub (inspired by Jonathan Robinson's work in England). Should we find out more about what’s already happening, what the common ground is, and go deeper?
Bart: Still interested in the revenue model – exploring that, capturing it. Is there room in the Commons project to explore ideas of issue-based advertising?
Lew Friedland earlier referenced Elinor Ostrom's work — the Economies of the Commons — relates to this conversation.
John Hamer: Town Hall – another local commons
Jonathan Lawson: Iron that’s hot—gov’t is offering major bucks to deploy broadband infrastructure focusing on local anchored institutions (Washington Hall? Community Centers? Neighborhood libraries?). Possibilties!
Bill Densmore’s NewsShare project.
John Hamer: CCME – citizens committee for media excellence, and Seattle Foundation – Healthy Communities
Susan Gleason: Lance Bennett, Center for Communication & Civic Engagement
Town Hall: Weir Harman
Susan: Get these stakeholders together for deeper conversation on meeting ground of media and civic engagement / civic commons.
Tool: John Spady offers access to Maestro phone meeting platform where folks can separate out in smaller groups
Another player: Rotary. John Hamer is a member. It’s more diverse than you would think, bigger than you’d think.
MCEI – executives. Charlie’s a member of.
Phone meeting re Commons.
JTM Collaboratory meet to determine purpose.
John & Rick meeting to bring Commons conversation forward.
Leif interest/curiosity in use of zanby, will give pre
David Beers would like to be involved in pinpoint way
Tyee innovations are posted on the wiki; willing to come down, be on the voice.
Irwin – W2 Vancouver – contact for W2 space.
MAPPING EXISTING RESOURCES THAT RELATE TO THESE PROJECTS
* The Hub - Conversations in Seattle inspired by Jonathan Robinson's work out of England.
Contact: Sheri Herndon
* W2 Space (Vancouver, BC) - 8,000 sq ft. community space that community radio stations and other media and culture producers are moving into for the 2010 Olympics and 30 yrs beyond.
Contact: Irwin
* Town Hall Seattle - popular nonprofit event space for 800 attendees; host to major lecture and culture events year-round.
Contact: Weir Harman
* Center for Communication & Civic Engagement at University of Washington.
Contact: Lance Bennett
Readings:
* Elinor Ostrom, 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics winner, Economies of the Commons
COMMENTS FROM SESSION PARTICIPANTS
Anne Stadler: Thanks all of you! I look forward to the notes and to the rich soil we are cultivating!
