Alan’s Kiloblog

Bart Everson and I had lunch Monday last.

I’d left my cell phone charging cable at Xavier when I conducted my workshop.

We spoke about the direction of Think New Orleans, and there were some interesting points, some conclusions were drawn.

We spoke about how effective mailing lists, like Yahoo! Groups are in New Orleans. There is no training necessary for someone to begin writing.

The drawback is that the information is not as far forward as it would be on a WordPress web site. In my experience the information is much removed. The Yahoo! Groups require Yahoo! membership to view files and calendars. The information is not as easily found through search engines.

Although, I do feel that there is still a place for deliberation, discussions that take place without public scrutiny.

We talked about the appropriate times to implement a mailing list, a syndicated web site, or to use the Wiki. Bart felt that the Wiki was an idea that was so revolutionary, it raised many questions, and required a lot of explanation. Thus, it was best to talk about the a web site versus an email list, and leave the “web site that anyone can edit” as a resource for the enthusiasts.

As far as the direction of Think New Orleans, Bart and I spend a lot of time debugging the word advocacy. I was insistent, that if the right technology for civic collaboration was tin cans and string, then Think New Orleans would be poking holes in cans. Bart said that it’s obvious that I’m advancing WordPress. I asserted vendor neutrality, but not feature neutrality, hence WordPress. Restated, vendor aside, I’m advancing a form of publishing over another, and then pandering to my particular vocabulary, he accurately describes a syndicated web site, versus an identity web site, I advance the former over the latter.

Which is to recognize the challenges we both face as technology advocates. There’s that word.

I don’t feel that I am a technology advocate, rather I am systems integrator, I really see the City of New Orleans as, first, the most beautiful and gracious city in the word, and second, a working environment in need of networked software, where a fair share of the users are telecommuting.

I want to crack this nut with a nut cracker, not a paradigm cracker.

Actually, the rhetoric of California, destruction, paradigm shifts, it sells in California, because they are trying to sell investors, but it’s not appropriate language for post-Katrina New Orleans.

Bart and I have both been banging on about the need to put things were they can be found. We need to use the Internet to organize.

Though, advocacy, for me, means something different, and it is scary word. In world of voter information and education, advocacy ties into disenfranchisement, which is a different world than the world I inhabit, which is focuses on the efficacy of voter information web sites to provide information in advance of elections.

Thus, I don’t want Think New Orleans to be an advocacy group, in the sense that it aligns itself with organizations whose agendas it wishes to advance, nor seeks out people that are perceived as under-represented and offers to speak on their behalf.

The latter is just not my style, and liable to get me the boot, since a huge part of the digital divide has always been a resentment at being told that there is a brand new divide you’ve got to cross. (A message that grates especially, because the people who advocate the crossing are convinced that this will be the ultimate act of empowerment.)

The point was made that I’m assisting neighborhood groups, which implies advocacy, while I countered that I’d be more than happy to assist the Sheriff by creating a crime map. That was understood.

I talked about capacity building, which is a new term for me, and that was where we reached an understanding. My aversion to the term advocacy was understood. It was said elsewhere that Think New Orleans was not anointing spokespeople, something that came out of a discussion, which was shocking, to imagine that my effort was anything other than the technical support drudgery that it has been.