Sunday, March 31, 2013

causes.com - tools for collective action

http://www.causes.com/

"Support for every cause
We’re here to back you up, 24/7. Head to our Help Desk for FAQs and a Getting Started guide, or check out our blog for success stories and tips on running campaigns."

looks useful.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

How the people in Nairobi are taking charge

http://www.mapkibera.org/blog/2013/03/21/how-slum-communities-came-together-to-help-prevent-election-violence/

"We believe that we have the responsibility to share with Kenyans and the world what is happening in some of the most misunderstood, often mis-reported and largely marginalized places in the country – the urban slums of Nairobi. We strongly believe that people have a right to speak for themselves and to write their own stories. Ordinary citizen reporters empowered with mapping skills navigate their neighborhoods to bring news and stories of happenings within the slums".

This site shows several ways the citizens of a locality are taking it upon themselves to make their lives better.  

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Github spread open source

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/03/github/

"As people who were once just users become producers, they’re re-shaping the culture of open source. GitHub, I believe, is doing to open source what the internet did to the publishing industry: It’s creating a culture gap between the previous, big-project generation of open source and a newer, more amateurized generation of open source today."

"This workflow is very empowering: It encourages individuals to fix things and own those fixes just as much as they own the projects they start. It also gives all users an identity in the new open source culture; GitHub is actually the number-one identity provider for peer-based production over the internet in more than just code."

I'll have to keep up with Github!  Another tool for making collaboration easier.