We split participants up by topic areas for discussions and Community Voices team members lead the small group conversations, while others used various tools to capture what was said (audio, video, tweets and blogging). After the small group discussions, we had volunteers from each group provide a short report back to the full room of some of the highlights or lingering questions that came out of the conversation. During these report backs I captured a word cloud on a flip chart of key words. Here’s what came out of each session:

Session #1 Word Cloud:

COMMUNITY
What’s of interest?
PEOPLE
Existing Communities
Stereotypes
Individual Level
Lead
Participate
FUN
Creative Approach
Visible Benefits
Relevance
TRUST

Session #2 Word Cloud:

Relevant Content
Community of Interest
Individuals
No Jargon
Partnerships
TRUST
What’s Success?
User Generated
Access to People
COMMUNITIES
Offline vs Online
HUMAN

The words in all caps represent the words that were repeated in each report out. If you look at the two sessions, you’ll see very similar key words and phrases. Even more important to the topic of the sessions and, I think, in Community Voices’ work in general, the words that every group used that appear in all caps are pretty much the same in both. The biggest focus: trust and communities.

Digital inclusion is not about cool social media tools, or even fancy hardware. It starts with people and stays with people.

What do you think?

Were you there, and have ideas to add to this reflection? If you weren’t there, what ideas do you have about the things most important to digital inclusion other than technology? Would love to hear your thoughts!

Remember to visit the Community Voices group to connect with the rest of the conversations going on there.

One Web. For All.

OneWebDay opens up techie conversations to everyone.  The theme this year of digital inclusion is especially important now as the speed of iteration and advancement is faster than ever and yet there are huge numbers of people without access at all.  Those who are excluded and unconnected are getting online at such a slow pace compared to the break-neck speed the “rest of us” are plowing ahead.  The only way, in my view, to bring those you aren’t connected or participating online into the conversations, especially those on digital inclusion, to help shape policies and changes for creating one web that really does serve everyone.  So, for OneWebDay today I wanted to share a few ways that I think we can all help others join the conversation about creating a Web that includes everyone.

Creating for All

There are many ways to get involved in OneWebDay (see below) but some of the actions that can be most powerful in light of this year’s focus on digital inclusion include:

• Join in and contribute to the conversations, networks, organizations and conferences/events specifically focused on digital inclusion (here in the UK that includes Digital Britain, Digital Inclusion Conference, and many others)
• Share your story (about how you got online, what your first online engagement or activity was, etc.) with local networks working to create online spaces to bring more people online
• Ask your partner, parent, or friend who isn’t online, why? what or how would need to change to get them there? (Don’t assume you know the answer!)
• Are you having a OneWebDay event today? Invite people who would not have seen your online promotions to join you at the ballroom, office or pub to be part of your celebrations and conversations.
• Are you developing tools, applications, or platforms for the web? Invite your friends, neighbors, parents, and others to give you feedback (even if they don’t know what the words you use mean) about what they would benefit from that maybe you and your network hasn’t considered yet.

OneWebDay is more than September 22nd.  The ways above to contribute to this movement are available for you every day.

Every time you host an event, convene a conversation, design a workshop, or anything else, invite those who weren’t on the email list, or at the last event, or part of your local community’s “social media club” to come participate, contribute, and learn.

Continue to share your story and help others share theirs so we can identfy factors and opportunities contributing to a web for all.

Regardless of next year’s topic for the September 22nd celebrations, digital inclusion remains a core barrier to truly celebrating the web globally.

Get Involved

There are many ways you can participate in OWD09 and help celebrate the web.  Here are just a few ideas to get you started:

• Participate in Local Events
• Perform an Internet Health Check
• Post Your Own OneWebDay Story
• Youth: Post a Video Response to the OWD Video
• Sign up for a Mozilla Service Week Volunteer Opportunity
• Help Universal Giving Bring the Web to the Developing World
• Post Your Unique Ideas!
• Help OneWebDay grow by spreading the word

About OneWebDay

For the last four years, OneWebDay has attracted a global network of partner organizations and individual activists committed to broadening the public’s awareness of Internet and Web issues while deepening a culture of participation in building a Web that works for everyone. In 2008, OneWebDay organizers documented volunteer-driven events in 34 different cities across the world. In 2009, we’re geared for events in over 50 cities in 20 countries! OneWebDay is all about your passion for the Web and your creativity.

Learn more about OneWebDay.

Trying to achieve today:

• gather thoughts on the paper
• “make it better”
• examples from our work
• more broadly, challenges and issues around digital inclusion
• action research in Bristol and other places looking at role of social media in deprived communities, etc. (if we were designing that research, what would we do or ask)

Will Davies, “social, digital networks in deprived communities”

those with least social capital = least engaged in community = least access/capacity to connect online, etc.

those excluded offline are excluded online

vicious and virtuous circles of networks: network anaylsis – social and digital – highlights vicious and virtuous circles of inequality; connectivity delivers confidence, information, reputation-information, well being, economic advantages, these deliver further confidence, information, etc.; demonstrates the ’embeddedness’ of economic activity in social and cultural contexts.

how do you break the cycle? perhaps not breaking it, but elevating it to a different cycle, change one element and the cycle continues but at a different lilt

social capital research surfaces lots of relations but not causations – we can extrapolate where we intervene when it is a cycle, if we interrupt anywhere (espeicially in socially responsible contexts) we can stop the cycle

Why do we need digital inclusion

an economic issue on paper: 51% of noninternet users cite coast as a reason; 90% of new jobs in UK require ICT skills; online services and price-comparison are more efficient

but not in the psychology of nonusers: lack of interest dominant reason for nonuse; lack of literacy and education in general; cultural image of computers

or users: benefits include social connectivity, civic participation, media content, better information on jobs, services, etc.

what comes first: literacy or computer literacy? access or interest?  the offline or the online network?

why do we need social capital

“networks, norms and trust”

bonding social capital: long-standing close ties, which are likely to also know each other; for when you need to borrow £100 in a hurry, emotional and psychological support

bridging social capital: weaker, more ephemeral ties, which are less likely to connect to each other, for when you need a job, potentially more diverse, cosmopolitan, associational

an economic issue:

• bonding social capital is an efficient response to emotional, physical and financial dependency, that would otherwise fall to the state
• bridging social capital is an efficient response to ‘information asymmetries’ in markets; it circulates reputation

how does this change after market crash and during market recovery?

beyond economics:

• civic participation is a good in it’s own right
• civic participation and information networks lead to better governance
• informal sanctions against anti-social and criminal behavior
• nearly any positive policy outcome correlates to social capital
• malign social capital

how do we reinforce “positive” social capital within networks?

vicious circles:

• key finding is that social capital has been rising amongst middle classes and falling amongst working classes
• poverty – especially unemployment – tends to correlate to disproproprtionately more bonding social capital than bridging social capital
• the excluded may suffer from dysfunctional social capital, where networks are divisve or antisocial

how do we pull people back into the market, into the network, into the community?

sufficient empirical research now shows the internet’s capacity to build social networks:

• can be used to maintain both forms of social capital, especially over distance
• lowering barriers to entry for civic engagement
• effective at circulating information and reputations, including at a local level
• social netowrking sites and publishing platforms offer new opportunities to build and maintain community, including at a local level
• new form of community, between formal and informal

what is the difference in social capital between local and national networks, campaigns, sustainability?

moving from “just in case” organizations to “just in time” organizations – p. resnick (american) – example: airline group forming after sitting on jet way for hours, to change the policy of the airlines, successful, then separate

speeding up and entrenching network effects: there is a risk that the internet exacerbates existing trends in social capital:

• vibrant, middle class neighbourhoods exploit capacity of internet to circulate information, build reputations, publish their good news
• deprived neighbourhoods do not, but are stigmatized by teh technology

opportunities for excluded groups:

• digital inclusion strategies generate online/offline networks themselves
• shift to audiovisual content broadens definition of literacy
• online communication is potentially more inclusive, less intimidating, more cosmopolitan than face to face – potential to build bridging capital
• building networks in and around labour markets
• considerable local knowledge could be ‘freed’ – free local knowledge
• p2p social technologies have tipping points of take-up/adoption
• potential for virtuous circles amongst elderly

how does ICT aid social capital formation

challenges and questions

• maintaining networks beyond engagement of founding entrepreneur
• altering cultural representation of ICT
• avoiding prescriptions over how networks are to be build and what is to be communcated and how
• dealing with the risk of bad online social capital 0 stigmatization, bullying, etc.

Examples:

• talk about local
• people’s voice media
• digital bridge project (shoreditch)
• haringey online

Questions:

• which are the individuals or agencies best suited to engaging with people in this way?
• leaving ICT aside, what are th emost effective strategies for generating networks in deprived communities?
• how can ICT be represented in a way that doesn’t seem like education?
• how can information be better circulated around local labour markets (as unemployment grows…)?
• how can the shift to institution building occur, if it should at all?
• how to respond to the ‘grey economy’ or questionable networks?
• which ICTs are most suited to developing social capital in deprived communities?
• which software platforms are most suited to developing social capital in deprived communities?
• who are the hardest to reach groups and can anything be done to change this?
• what is needed from public services to facilitate benefits discussed here?

—–

anne faulkner – response

digital inclusion, conference and work

digital inclusion more about social justice, vs economic side of digital adoptions

key question: how can we accelerate the creation of social capital?

evidence form UKonline centers about social impacts of the internet:

• internet users saw themselves as happier, more self confidence, better informed, 25% more confident about ability to find a job, etc.
• doesn’t look at causality: are people coming to internet who are happier anyway

strong correlation between internet use and increased social capital; but it took a long time to get there. takes time, especially when dealing with disadvantaged communities

lots of social networks created via uk online centers are actually offline networks. how do they come together – online and offline networks?

uk online centers of the future might be more about digital mentors or ambassadors that help people identify their goals and needs and how digital media could help – how do we create a model for this?

human infastructure around how we organize around digital inclusion – digital engagement; something around the collaboration of groups increasing social capital

3 key things:

1. action research project exploring social media dn communities
2. better leadership in exploring digital projects that are funded
3. creation of social enterprise – how can we harness brilliant things hapening by individuals to create an enterprise to help groups and localities

—-

south bristol – carolyn hassan – response

think beyond text

consider all kinds of content

people find ways of communicating, connecting, advocating, campaigning

phsyical access to computers is important but also creates problems – not about access, but about motivation and responsbility

—-

connected communities program – damini

social networks (online, offline, connection) and social capital

role that networks can play in building social capital

creating action research projects

mapping social networks – do it not just to see results but understand the process and make it visible

look at networks created in deprived communities and how they create social capital

look at a series of different questions about making sense of social networks and social capital – what we don’t understand now, what could be a new model, etc.

look at social value of networks created around digital inclusion

—-

andy gibson: framing things with behavior change methodology will turn into everyone should want what we want because we think it’s best; digital divide partly about some not seeing a use, not necessarily not access; what do people who aren’t online want to do that they could do online but don’t know

teaching about ICT needs to be completely personalized around what people actually want to do and not a standardized set of uses