Please pass this link on to all of your contacts and friends in our region, so that we can make this the most complete and accurate map in California!

Direct link to crowdsourcing module: http://mshelton.kattare.com/bbcrowdCSC/bbCSC.html

Beaver News

There has been a lot of talk lately about the quality of information available online. The debate has centered around “content farms”, such as Demand Media and the current incarnation of AOL (oops, sorry, Aol.). Kicking off this round was Michael Arrington, who wrote in a post titled The End of Hand Crafted Content:

On one end you have AOL and their Toyota Strategy of building thousand of niche content sites via the work of cast-offs from old media. That leads to a whole lot of really, really crappy content being highlighted right on the massive AOL home page….

On the other end you have Demand Media and companies like it. See Wired’s “Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model.” The company is paying bottom dollar to create “4,000 videos and articles” a day, based only on what’s hot on search engines. They push SEO juice to this content, which is made as quickly and cheaply as possible, and pray for traffic. It works like a charm, apparently.

These models create a race to the bottom situation, where anyone who spends time and effort on their content is pushed out of business.

Journalism professor Jeff Jarvis thinks that decrying the lowering of information standards online rather misses the point.

They may be right. But then again, the internet has always been filled with crap. So the challenge has always been how you find the cream. That’s where opportunities lie. That’s what Google saw. The new question is whether Google can keep ahead of the content farms and continually find new and better ways to find better stuff. I’ll bet on Google over crap-creators. But they better get cracking.

I see three rings of discovery today: search (Google); algorithms (see: Google News, Daylife); and humans (see: Twitter)…. As search becomes more personal and no longer universal, SEO as a dark art and as the fertilizer for content farms will diminish and the social graph — our own circles of authority — will become more important in search as well. So I have faith that there are solutions to stem any rising tide of crap.

The rise of hyper-local media taps directly into Jarvis’ third ring of discovery: humans.  In these systems, there are a couple of routes by which content (e.g. a blog post, podcast or video) might be generated. Either someone takes it upon themselves to produce something of interest to them, in which case they have a vested interest in its quality, or content is produced upon request and there is a visible relationship between the producer and consumer. In either scenario, high quality, individualized content can be the result and in a local community of readers, it can be easily discovered.

Doc Searls, in his brilliantly titled post, The Revolution Will Not Be Intermediated (us oldsters get the reference), also suggests that we are not the slaves to media manipulation that some fear. He doubts that “fast food content” is going to shut down quality writing, any more than McDonald’s stifles serious chefs.

Nothing with real real value is dead, so long as it can be found on the Web and there are links to it. Humans are the ones with hands. Not intermediaries. Not AOL, or TechCrunch, or HuffPo, or Google or the New York Freaking Times. The Net is the means to our ends, not The Media, whether they be new disruptors or old disruptees. The Net and the Web liberate individuals. They welcome intermediators, but they do not require them. Even in cases were we start with intermediation — and get to use really good ones — what matters most is what each of us as individuals bring to the Net’s table. Not the freight system that helps us bring it there, no matter how established or disruptive that system is.

The intermediaries who hope to manipulate our online habits are smart, powerful and well funded. However at this point in time, they rely on massive amounts of generalized data (statistics) for their models to work. The smaller the group, the less well targeted it can be. So, by building personal networks and using sites that cater to our communities (either geographical or ideological), we strengthen the web and feed the demand for high quality, relevant and personal information.

Cross posted from gregfalken.com
Image by WickedSunshine.com (NSFW)

Harvey Chess

I recently spent two days in a grant proposal writing workshop with Harvey Chess, of The FTF Group. Harvey is very well known in the non-profit community around California and now I can see why. I gained an appreciation of the granting process that I never had before, partly because I had no particular need of it before. Now however, I’m gearing up to begin work on the Community Access Internet Project and I anticipate that it will be using grant money, hopefully lots of grant money. While trying to absorb as much as possible in two very full days, I became aware of parallels between Harvey’s approach to grant writing and what I have come to know about software and web development projects.

Know the difference between the means and the end

A theme that wove its way throughout the two days was reflective of what you hear quite often in social media circles: Focus outward; the outcome for the people you are trying to serve is more important than the project itself. To paraphrase Chris Brogan in this context, nobody cares about your stupid project. The people who participate and how they will benefit, now that’s something to care about.

If the end-user’s not happy, nobody’s happy

Trying to write a winning proposal without input from those who will participate in the program is like designing an application without talking to the people who will use it. That’s not to say that this is never done; it is, a lot. But it usually means that the project will later need to be rethought.

Avoid circular logic

It’s tempting to propose that the benefit to people participating in the program is that they have participated in the program. Remember that benefits don’t accrue until after the program has been completed and some positive change has taken place in people’s lives.

Your organization is the proposal

This is probably Harvey’s central message and you can just as easily substitute “product” or “service” for “proposal”. What it means is that you have to know what you’re about. Unless an organization understands its mission, it’s goals, its raison d’être, it will not be able to successfully raise money. Understanding, in this case, means achieving consensus around these goals and then getting them down on paper.

Consider the following questions about your program (or product or service) and whether or not your organization can answer them clearly:

• Who are the participants for the project?
• What are the circumstances, situations or challenges that lead us to want to undertake the project?
• What are the consequences (outcomes) of a successful project?
• What will the effects be for project participants and for others in the community?

These are hard questions and I don’t yet know the answers to them in my own case. I also realize that I’m unlikely to be able to answer them by simply sitting down and thinking real hard. It will take working with others in our community to develop an understanding of what we hope to achieve. It’s a daunting task but one that I look forward to pursuing.

Cross posted on gregfalken.com.

The Scottish Executive, in 2001, defined adult literacy as, “The ability to read and write and use numeracy to handle information, to express ideas and opinions, to make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners.”

Pete Ashton writes on his blog ASH-10:

Digital literacy means being able to take digital stuff [and] make new things with it, just as literacy means taking words and making new sentences with them. Literacy is about understanding the rules of a thing so that they can be worked within or broken as applicable. It’s about making the world our own. This is why we teach reading and writing to children, not so that they can fill out forms or write tedious reports, but that they might question and understand the world in which they live in.

So, what should people know in order to be digitally literate? If we’re going to teach it like a class, what is the curriculum? Most importantly, how can we move away from rote learning of “computer skills” towards understanding the “rules of the thing”.

There are no courses like this in my local community college catalog but here are a few I’d like to see:

Web Browsers – History and Development

For many people, the World Wide Web and the Internet are synonymous. The web browser is the software through which we experience the web. In this course, we will learn the purpose of the web browser and its function in the online experience. We will also explore its history, from the early days of Mosaic (the first Internet-connected software to display images inline with text), through the rise of Internet Explorer and Netscape, to today’s modern Firefox and Chrome browsers.

Cloud Computing and the Rise of Online Applications

And once the programs have moved to the cloud, why not move the computers there too? Cloud computing also encompasses the outsourcing of hardware, eliminating the need for a closet full of servers.

The Hyperlink

Hyperlinks subvert hierarchies – David Weinberger

The term hyperlink was coined in 1965 by Ted Nelson, the founder of Project Xanadu, at Harvard University. Nelson hoped to facilitate non-sequential writing, in which the reader could choose their own path through a document. Project Xanadu was largely abandoned by 1989, when the English physicist Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote a proposal for what would become the World Wide Web, a system of interlinked pages, housed on the Internet and navigated using hyperlinks.

The hyperlink is a radically different way of connecting people to information. In this course, we examine the effects of organizing information in a non-hierarchical system.

Evaluating Online Information

True or false?

SECURITY ALERT: $32,000 worth of UPS uniforms have been purchased over the last 30 days by person(s) unknown. Law enforcement is working on the case however no suspect(s) have been indentified (sic). Subjects may try to gain access by wearing one of these uniforms. If anyone has suspicions about a UPS delivery (i.e., no truck but driver, no UPS identification, etc., contact UPS to verify employment).

Assessing the accuracy of information found online is not always easy. This course draws on the journalistic tradition of verifying sources and establishing their trustworthiness. By considering factors such as verifiability, transparency, relevance, bias, clarity and validity, we can evaluate which online sources to believe and which to ignore.

Online Writing

It seems like everyone online suffers from ADOBSO (Attention Deficit Ooh…Bright Shiny Object), so how do we write in a way that captures their interest? This course looks at online comprehension studies to find effective writing styles. We will also practice writing for various online venues including blogs, web pages, Wikipedia, forums, emails and Twitter.

Syndication and Federation

Release your content into the wild using syndication. Share functionality with other online services using federation. This course examines the current state of machine-to-machine communication on the Internet and how users and site operators can leverage these connections. Technologies covered include RSS, oAuth, Facebook Connect, Friend Connect and Google Wave.

Wordle by Doug Belshaw.

Guest post by Sharon Crost, cross-posted on GregFalken.com.

Let’s do a quick thinking exercise: think for a few seconds about the Central Sierra. Do you think of history and the Gold Rush and panning for gold? Or do you think of Yosemite National Park, Bear Valley or Dodge Ridge, tasting wine, jumping frogs, or enjoying the outdoors? Well some of us who have come to the Central Sierra post-Gold Rush think that the Central Sierra is a gorgeous place to work and live and play. It’s so livable in a way, but in a way not at all. Because about 40% of the people who reside in the Central Sierra don’t have access to high speed internet, called “broadband”.

So now let’s think for a few seconds about dial-up internet connection. Do you know, or remember what it’s like to dial up to the internet via modem? Similar to the Gold Rush, you may think of this as ancient history? The internet is now celebrating its 40th birthday, but a significant portion of our Central Sierra community is STILL connecting to the internet in it’s adolescent connection form, via dial-up.

Now think about what it means to peddle on dial-up while your neighbors are racing on the super highway. You can’t participate in everyday applications such as watching videos, downloading files, takes classes via distance learning, manage your health, transact business online or communicate with your family. Surprisingly, while you are peddling on dial-up, your mates in many third world economies are connecting and thriving. Broadband access means economic and job development, telehealth, communication, education, environmental sustainability and a future for youth that want to stay and thrive in rural communities.

Clearly we need ubiquitous access to broadband, and the Central Sierra and many other rural communities are on the losing side of the digital equality access game. So I’m part of a group of crusaders working to reduce the digital divide in rural communities. You can help too. You can help create a new history for rural communities. You’ve already been thinking about the issue for the last few precious seconds and one of the great advantages of ubiquitous broadband is that it gives everyone an equal voice. In fact, Network Sierra’s Community Access project is an excellent example of project planning to assist a community to create and engage in local issues and news and information and entertainment and art, enabled by broadband. Stay tuned to this blog and check out the Central Sierra Connect project or the California Emerging Technologies Fund for more information and to take action.

Oh, and there’s one final thing to think about in this exercise… think about the reality of high-speed connection throughout the Central Sierra, in rural communities as in big cities, everywhere. Communities prospecting for gold on an equal playing field, engaging and thriving. It’s a thought as good as gold.

Sharon Crost is an educator and a consultant mentoring leaders to develop thriving communities. She tweets as mktwow and can be contacted at sharon@socialmediaalive.com

Working with a group of committed people here in Tuolumne County, I have submitted a proposal to the Knight News Challenge. Funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Challenge seeks innovations that use new or available technology to distribute content in local communities. There are only three rules:

1. Use digital, open-source technology.
2. Distribute news in the public interest.
3. Test your project in a local community.

A description of the project follows. Please visit the application at the Knight News Challenge and add your comments and rate the project. Changes can be made to the application until the December 15th deadline and I welcome the chance to incorporate your suggestions.

Describe your project (max. 1800 characters)
The Community Access Internet Project (CAIP) provides web-based news and community information to rural areas. It draws on user-generated content and provides community education in the effective use of online media. The goal is nothing less than creating a community of digitally literate consumers and producers.

Should this project be funded, it will initially serve Tuolumne Co., CA (pop. ~50,000), located in the Central Sierras, 120 miles east of San Francisco. The county’s roots are in the gold rush of the 1850s and it has a rich historical character. Economically, the region struggles, with unemployment hovering around 13%.

Like community broadcasting (radio) and public access cable (TV) before it, participation is open to the entire community. However, CAIP goes beyond simply providing media access, by actively pursuing community outreach. CAIP provides classroom instruction and guidance on effective online communication, blogging, audio and video production and legal issues.

A paid core staff manages day to day operations and curates content, such as calendars of events, local news (road closures, snow days, fire information) and news features, including podcasts and videocasts. Featured content may be produced both by the core staff and “graduates” of the instructional programs. Blog space is openly available and public blog entries may be “promoted” to featured status by the core staff.

CAIP partners with other community organizations such as schools, libraries, news organizations, local government, service organizations, chambers of commerce, non-profits, etc.These organizations enhance the capabilities and reach of the project, bringing it to the attention of a broad cross-section of the community.

How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities? (max. 750 characters)
In our community, online information is isolated on numerous sites. CAIP provides technical assistance to the operators of these sites to syndicate their public content, making it available to any web site that wishes to republish it. Syndication will be a significant source of content for CAIP, without requiring any group to give up control of their own information.

The Community Access Internet Project provides a publishing platform for individuals and groups in the community. It provides an alternative source of online news, commentary and entertainment, produced locally and addressing the needs of the community. Because the featured areas of the site are curated, it can develop a reputation as a trustworthy and reliable news source.

How is your idea innovative? (new or different from what already exists) (max. 750 characters)
There are many existing variants of the community publishing platform. We plan to build on the best of these, with an emphasis on syndication and aggregation tools. Simply aggregating existing calendars of events will be an enormous benefit to the community.

The educational and community outreach component of this project makes it especially unique. During the initial planning phase, we will engage with the community to learn what information they want to have available online, tailoring the site to meet these needs. With a successful implementation in Tuolumne County, we hope to bring this model to other small, rural communities around the country.

What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project? (max. 1600 characters)
As the submitter of this proposal, I have over 15 years of web development experience and a strong background in both communications and technology. My company, webdancers, was established in 1995 and has assisted in the development and marketing of hundreds of web sites. This experience however, brings to the table only a subset of the skills necessary to develop the Community Access Internet Project. For the rest, I turn to our community.

Network Sierra is a grassroots organization that includes individuals representing a wide range of community interests. Created in 2006, its goal is to use technology to bring our communities closer together and to maintain our rural character in a 21st century economy. We include technologists, arts organizers, educators, writers, marketers, local government officials and retirees. Network Sierra will serve as the parent body for CAIP. In the initial stages, another non-profit agency will act as Network Sierra’s fiscal agent, however we anticipate that Network Sierra will seek non-profit corporation status.

The Community Access Internet Project will be developed in consultation with a Network Sierra advisory board, which will hire the core staff and oversee the implementation of the programs described above.

Leveraging the skills and dedication available in our community, along with emerging social technology, CAIP gives voice to the many diverse groups in our region, providing them with both the training and a forum to speak clearly to their own communities and beyond.

Photo by Tom Magliery

Susan Crawford is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, teaching communications law and internet law. She was a partner with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) until the end of 2002, when she left to become a legal academic. Ms Crawford recently ended her term as a member of the Board of Directors of ICANN.

Ken Werbach is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and the organizer of the annual Supernova technology conference (http://www.supernova2009.com). His research explores the legal and business dynamics of information and communications technologies. Formerly, he served as Counsel for New Technology Policy at the FCC during the Clinton Administration. He has also edited Release 1.0, a renowned technology newsletter, and founded Supernova Group, a technology analysis and consulting firm.

In March, Ms. Crawford had this blunt response to the assertion made by Richard Russell, the White House’s associate director on science and technology policy, that the US rollout of broadband access was going well:

I think it’s magical thinking to imagine that we’re somehow doing fine here, and I just want to make sure that we recognize that even the [International Telecommunications Union] says that between 1999 and 2006 we skipped form third to 20th place in penetration.

At the annual Tech Policy Summit, a gathering of top officials in the world of tech policy, Ms. Crawford made the following observations about the current state of broadband in the US:

We’re not doing at all well for reasons that mostly have to do with the fact that we failed to have a US industrial policy pushing forward high-speed internet access penetration, and there’s been completely inadequate competition in this country for high speed internet access.

This is like water, electricity, sewage systems: Something that each and all Americans need to succeed in the modern era. We’re doing very badly, and we’re in a dismal state.

Since the first step in fixing a problem is the recognition that this is a problem, these choices bode well for increased broadband penetration, especially in under-served rural areas like ours.

You can listen to Susan Crawford discuss telecom policy here, and read Ken Werbach’s columns on tech policy at internet-infrastructure journal Circle-ID.