vision2020@moscow.com: INVITATION: Collegium of Civic Participation Practitioners
INVITATION: Collegium of Civic Participation Practitioners
PCEI (pcei@moscow.com)
Thu, 12 Jan 95 15:07 PST
>X-POP3-Rcpt: pcei@grouper
>Date: Thu, 12 Jan 1995 19:32:10 GMT
>From: ccn-announcements-approval@world.std.com
>Subject: INVITATION: Collegium of Civic Participation Practitioners
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>
>[PLEASE REPOST AS APPROPRIATE]
>
>To: Individuals involved in running a community-based civic
> dialogue or civic participation program
>From: The Center for Civic Networking
>Subject: Invitation to Join a Collegium of Peers
>
>Over the past two years we've helped to develop the Cambridge Civic
>Forum - a public dialogue program in Cambridge, MA. Along the way, we've
>come across similar efforts focusing on citizen planning, neighborhood
>action, and citizen-government collaboration at the local level. A member
>of the CCN team (Ken Thomson) co-authored a book, The Rebirth of Urban
>Democracy, that looked in depth at a number of these programs, including
>those in St. Paul, Portland, Dayton, Birmingham, and San Antonio.
>
>One thing we've realized is that there doesn't appear to be a special forum
>for those of us in the trenches to compare notes with each other. Ken convened
>several conferences from 1978 to 1992 for a broad range of community-based
>organizations, and invariably participants urged development of such a
>forum on an ongoing basis. There are a number of national-level and
>collaborative efforts working to promote civic renewal in one form another
>(e.g. Healthy Cities, National Issues Forum, Alliance for National
>Renewal, American Civic Forum), but as yet, no ongoing, day-to-day linkage.
>
>Since we'd like to participate in such a forum, and can't find one, the
>obvious thing to do is start one! We'd like to create a forum that brings
>together grass roots practitioners, who are currently working on (or
>have worked on) locally evolved programs, with the specific goals of:
>
>- providing a vehicle for us to compare notes and otherwise
> provide mutual support and assistance
>
>- engaging in serious examination of issues that we all face
>
>- developing ways to disseminate what we've learned in order to
> help other communities develop their own programs
>
>- providing a vehicle for collaboration on joint projects - such
> as regional forums and joint fund-raising
>
>We'd like to start by recruiting 100-150 participants in an ongoing
>"electronic collegium" - essentially a focused electronic mail list open
>to anyone with practical experience in community organizing, citizen
>participation, and/or civic dialogue activities.
>
>We'd like to assemble an initial group during January, then use February
>to exchange introductions, describe the activities each participant is
>engaged in, and identify specific topics that we'd all like to explore in
>more depth. Over the rest of the year we'll explore one topic per month
>in depth (possibly with one or two academic or other experts invited to
>participate in each topic discussion). Some obvious issues are lessons
>learned in how to get started, engaging broad-based participation,
>organization and staffing, financial support, the possible role of
>technology (a favorite topic of ours), policy impacts, and program models.
>We'll provide moderation and facilitation to keep the discussions on
>track. Of course, on an ongoing basis, we also see this collegium as a
>vehicle for each participant to solicit input and assistance from other
>members of the collegium.
>
>By keeping this as a limited admission, focused forum, we hope to create
>high value for all participants.
>
>As we develop useful results, we hope to disseminate them via our
>respective participation on other Internet lists, by publishing summaries
>(electronically and otherwise), by organizing "electronic seminars" for
>people getting started in organizing new local efforts, and through all
>the normal channels of speaking, writing, teaching, etc.
>
>We would like to ask a modest financial contribution to help support the
>effort - $35 for the first 6 months, and $15 per quarter thereafter
>(around the price of a limited circulation academic journal). This will
>go to setting up a full set of network capabilities (mailing list,
>archive, WAIS server to allow searching the archive, gopher server
>containing supporting documents, mail-responder to allow email only
>participants to access the archives and documents), to partial support of
>staff time for facilitating on-line dialogue and editing transcripts into
>distributable summaries (e.g. a periodic report to more public lists), to
>partial support of staff time for technical administration of the list and
>servers, and possibly to honoraria for invited expert participants. Of
>course, collegium participants will get copies of any edited summaries we
>put together.
>
>If you're interested, please send email to CCN@civicnet.org - with a brief
>description of:
>
>1. who you are
>
>2. what program(s) you're involved in
>
>3. specific areas of interest you'd like the collegium to focus on
>
>If we have sufficient initial interest - say 40 or more people -
>we'll come back to you with the details of getting started.
>
>Regards,
>
>John Altobello
>Richard Civille
>Miles Fidelman
>Ken Thomson
>
>for the Center for Civic Networking
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>The Center for Civic Networking is a non-profit organization dedicated to
>applying information infrastructure to the broad public good. We work to
>develop and promote ways for the Internet to be used more effectively to
>improve the delivery of service by local governments, increase access to
>information that people need in order to function as informed citizens,
>and provide "electronic town halls" which can broaden citizen
>participation in governance at every level.
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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