• Jasmine
• The Middleman and other Stories
• Wife
• The Oxford book of Irish short stories (Ha! See that?! They’re selling it for $55!)
• Chechnya: A small victorious war
• Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe 1648–1789

Why? I’ve always meant to read some Bharati Mukherjee, the Irish are cool and short stories are my favorite, 1650 is about the time my ancestors decided, all at once and en masse it seems, to get the hell out of Europe, and I’m especially interested in reading history these days. So I’m loving Orlando Figues’s A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924. This summer, I read it to Liam at night before bed. How do I get my teenager to listen, you ask? Trust me: plenty of blood and guts in here to keep any 13-year-old happy.

Then, one day, while I’m reading this…

…I see these bits:

As students of Karl Marx and of history, China’s party leaders will know that labour movements can begin with economic grievances and end in political revolt. By concentrating people in one place, Marx argued, factories turn a crowd of strangers into a “class”: conscious of its interests, united with each other and against the boss. But workers in China’s coastal factories have hitherto shown little class-consciousness. They migrated from all over the country, jumped from one plant to another and retreated to their villages when times were bad.

Their new assertiveness may reflect a labour law introduced in January 2008, which gave workers more contractual rights. The strikers at Honda were better educated than the average rural migrant and also trained together, which may have given them the social glue to organise their protest. The malcontents may also represent a generational shift among migrant workers. According to John Knight and Ramani Gunatilaka of Oxford University, they no longer compare their lot with the rural folk they left behind, but aspire to urban standards of living. (The rising power of the Chinese worker, The Economist, July 29, 2010)

…as well as this:

And although their wages are increasing, their aspirations are rising even faster. They seem less willing to “eat bitterness”, as the Chinese put it, without complaint….In truth, Chinese workers were never as docile as the popular caricature suggested. But the recent strikes have been unusual in their frequency (Guangdong province on China’s south coast suffered at least 36 strikes in the space of 48 days), their longevity and their targets: foreign multinationals. (The next China, The Economist, July 29, 2010)

Wow. I’ve read this before — different country, different century. But so familiar. See for yourself. The following bits are from A People’s Tragedy, from the section where Figues is describing the rapidly shifting personal and class identity and aspirations of peasants going to work in urban factories in during the industrial boom in the 1890s.

The desire for social betterment was very often synonymous with the desire to leave the village and find a job outside agriculture. Becoming a clerk or a shop assistant was seen by the younger peasants as a move up in the world. (p.109)

[T]he experience of the city transformed the way most peasants thought — of the world, of themselves, and of the village they left behind. (p.110)

Most of them supplemented their factory incomes by holding on to their land allotment in the commune and returning to their village in the summer to help their families with the harvest. … In this way they were able to keep one foot in the village, whilst their economic position in the city was still insecure. (p.110)

As they developed their own sense of self-worth, these workers demanded more respectful treatment by their employers. (p.114)

[S]trikes became the principal form of industrial protest and they required the sort of disciplined organization that only the most urbanized workers, with their higher levels of sills and literacy, could provide. (p.115)

Self-improvement was a natural enough aspiration among skilled workers, like Kanatchikov, who were anxious to rise above their peasant origins and attain the status in society which their growing sense of dignity made them feel they deserved. (p.116)

You see? Pretty cool, eh? I showed it to Liam. He, sadly, was somewhat teenagerish and blasé about the whole thing. Meanwhile I was going on about it like a wierdo.

Ughghghhgh. So many books and so little time.

I used to love the mortician’s daughter

We drew our hearts on the dusty coffin lids
I grieve tonight over this letter
My tears dissolve an image in the careful ink

Her father stands in the open door
He’s waiting for her
There’s a storm blowing across the lake
It’s late summer
On the broken step is a cardboard box full of wilted flowers
She whispers in my burning ear
It doesn’t matter

I used to love the mortician’s daughter
We rolled in the warm grass by the boneyard fence
Her skin so white
The first leaves falling
This long forgotten night I am there again

Her father stands in the open door
He’s waiting for her
There’s a ribbon printed with last respects
Blowing down the gutter
The rain comes in, she drops my hand, she’s turning, laughing
And I used to love the mortician’s daughter

I used to love the mortician’s daughter
We drew our hearts on the dusty coffin lids
There’s a lonely dove out on the telephone wire
I turn my head and she flies away

Now that you read the words you get to listen.

NPR’s collection of books that changed the world. I’m going to go listen to Hitchens talk about Paine now, as I do the morning’s dishes.

The ever-so-awesome James Bridle‘s new podcast of (kinda) daily readings: Mattins. Sigh.

Enjoy.

Okay. Enough excuses. I’m back. Really. I’m kicking things off with these:

Now aren’t you in a better mood? Were you dancing? I bet you’re at least thinking about it. Or wishing you were. Simple, joyous music.

My fantasy: I’m living in my grandmother’s time, on the prairies, everyone with ten to twelve kids. Big family gatherings. We eat stew thickened with browned flour and fresh veggies from the garden: corn, beets, small potatoes with thin red skins, and tomatoes and cucumbers sliced and sprinkled with salt. Finish it off with white cake doused in sucre a la creme. Then out comes the whiskey and the cards. The kids are under the table or in some corner upstairs, their world full of whispers and intrigue. Now my family was not so musical but I crave it. So in my fantasy out come an accordion, a fiddle, some spoons.

I’ve had little bits of this. I know what each piece feels like. It’s fun to gather up the fragments and put them together.

Think about it: Wouldn’t it be so nice if making music was something mostpeople did? Like writing and reading. Not something you consume. Not something veryspecial verytalented people make for you. Instead an everyday creative, collective act. A joyous togethering, washing away for a moment pain and discord. I would like that so much.

PS. I hear Eugene Hutz lives in Rio these days ;)

Tips before you begin:

• The reader should be able to get the gist of your findings and their implications from reading the title and summary. Since every word counts, so you’ll need to do some careful wordsmithing, writing and re-writing these a few times. You may want to do this part last.
• Language should balance precision and accessibility. Use plain English, avoiding jargon and acronyms. Define obscure terms and explain complex concepts.
• Your research abstract (in the front matter — topic for another post) is a good place to start because you’ve already had to think through what’s most important.
• Remember the purpose: To enable independent, rigorous research to guide policy and practice.
• Briefs are also intended to promote dissemination/downloads of the full research paper and to promote our work.

Format

Two-sided 8.5×11-inch paper. Easy to print from typical black-and-white office printer. Maximum 1000 words.

Topic

Main topic. One or two words. Ideally this should map to your core research areas. Examples: Public Access, Employability, Youth, Disabilities

Country/Region

Insert geographic region

Title

A short, pithy title (8-12 words).

Summary

One or two sentences with main takeaway message: the “so what?” — no more than 30 words.

Background

Describe the social or economic challenge. Tell us about the context. If applicable, describe the program(s). What are we trying to achieve?

Research Design

Describe the methodology, number of people in sample, limitations, etc.

Findings

Summarize your most important findings. Include at least one chart or graph to illustrate. Qualitative research can be illustrated with quotes.

So what?

Policy, program, or research implications. This is the most important section of the brief. What do these findings mean for people making policy or funding decisions? For folks designing programs targeting similar populations? For researchers investigating similar topics or considering using a similar methodology? How can your research make a difference?

Source

Insert the name of the full publication and where folks can get it.

Example:

Pal, J., Freistadt, J., Frix, M., & Neff, P. 2009. Technology for employability in Latin America: Research with at-risk youth & people with disabilities. Seattle: Technology & Social Change Group, University of Washington.

Download the full publication at tascha.washington.edu.

Sponsors

Include sponsor information. After all, it was pretty nice of them to give you all of those thousands (or millions!) of dollars to ask important questions and hang out with cool people. If research is part of a specific project include a sentence or two on that.

Example:

This research was supported by a grant from Microsoft Community Affairs under the Unlimited Potential Community Technology Skills Program.

The Technology & Social Change Group

Include your organizational boilerplate. Here’s ours:

The Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA) at the University of Washington Information School explores the design, use, and effects of information and communication technologies in communities facing social and economic challenges. Active in over 40 countries, TASCHA brings together a multidisciplinary network of social scientists, engineers, and development practitioners to conduct research, advance knowledge, create public resources, and improve policy and program design. Our purpose? To spark innovation and create more opportunities for those who need it most. To learn more visit tascha.washington.edu.

Copyright & Creative Commons

Make it easy for others to promote and build on your work. Open research rocks! Here’s what we use:

©2009 University of Washington. All rights reserved. The content if this report is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. If you wish to use any of this content please contact us at tascha@uw.edu.

Let me know how this works for you and if you have any questions. Samples would also be cool — I’ll add them here. Or you can leave a comment and email me the file to add to your comment.

Well I feel like an old hobo, I’m sad lonesome and blue
I was fair as the summer day now the summer days are through
You pass through places and places pass through you
But you carry ‘em with you on the souls of your travellin’ shoes

Well I love you so dearly I love you so clearly
Wake you up in the mornin’ so early
Just to tell you I got the wanderin’ blues
I got the wanderin’ blues
And i’m gonna quit these ramblin’ ways one of these days soon
And I’ll sing

The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs…

Well it’s times like these I feel so small and wild
Like the ramblin’ footsteps of a wanderin’ child
And i’m lonesome as a lonesome whippoorwill
Singin these blues with a warble and a trill
But i’m not too blue to fly
No i’m not too blue to fly cuz

The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs…

Well I love you so dearly I love you so fearlessly
Wake you up in the mornin’ so early
Just to tell you I got the wanderin’ blues
I got the wanderin’ blues
And I don’t wanna leave you I love you through and through

Oh I left my baby on a pretty blue train
And I sang my songs to the cold and the rain
I had the wanderin’ blues
And I sang those wanderin’ blues
And i’m gonna quit these ramblin’ ways one of these days soon
And i’ll sing

The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs…

I don’t care if the sun don’t shine
I don’t care if nothin’ is mine
I don’t care if I’m nervous with you
I’ll do my lovin’ in the wintertime

My grandmother is now 92 and lives at the Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal. She often thinks my mom is her favorite sister, Yvette, and that I’m her niece. She always remembers who Liam is. Germaine is part of the reason I’m assimilated. I respect her nonetheless. Story for another post.

I’ve been trying to trace my maternal line. It’s frustrating. I have my paternal line all the way back to the 1650s — and then some (Prefontaine, Beauregard). But women are more invisible.  Rose Alba Guindon (1888-1961) > Alexina Perron (1865-1946) > Angele Sarrazin (1832-1886) > Anastasie Cyr (1804-?). Then I hit a dead end. Grrrrrr.

On Sunday, November 22, Liam turns 13. This magnificent creature that I have the honor to mother is passing from boyhood into adolescence and manhood.

So many of us now are hybrids. In between. With that comes freedom. But also the loss of a sense of connection to something bigger and that can contain us in a comforting way. Like a parent’s embrace. The rituals that marked passage and grounded and gathered communities are fading away. I believe that acknowledging and celebrating the milestones in our lives is important and can help us transition and accept change. The public aspect matters — bringing together witnesses and supporters.

I’ve not been so good about organizing a bar mitzvah. Plus somehow it did not seem to fit — we’re not religious and it only speaks to part of his identity. It’s on the back burner. So my gift for Liam is the creation of a ritual. A rite of passage befitting a French-Canadian/Israeli/American boy. Here’s how it goes:

• Everyone selects a book that has deep significance for them and that they want to share with someone who is beginning their transition into adulthood. Any book. It does not have to be new (maybe better if it’s not). It can be complicated or obscure. Whatever. You decide.
• Inside the cover of the book each person writes an explanation of why the book was significant for them and why they chose to give it. And, of course, their name and the date.
• We all come together to celebrate. People in turn present their gift to Liam, explaining why they selected the book.
• Liam has a chance to speak if he likes.
• Food, drink, revelry, ridiculousness.

Books, learning, ideas, debate, and sharing are deeply important to me. They have formed me. I hope this ritual creates a special library that Liam can bump up against and dig through for years to come. A place to discover: fingers over covers and pages, smell, the curves of the letters, the wor(l)ds within. I also hope that Liam has the sense of being guided — that others took the time to share something intimate and meaningful to his journey.

I’ve told Liam it’s a big surprise. Now I find out if he reads my blog ;)

Their latest production is called Sexy Beton — a play about the tragic collapse of a highway overpass. Five people died. The conclusion? The collapse was “nobody’s” fault. The survivors went on to be further victimized by evasion and bureaucracy. Here’s the video:

Pretty amazing, huh? Sexy Beton is playing next week — from November 24 though to December 1st. I’ll likely go on the 28th. Here’s the ticket info.

Why is Porte Parole so important? Because much of our public discourse is what I lovingly call polarized and paranoid. People ferociously hold on to their weird little theories about how the world works and talk at each other instead of l-i-s-t-e-n-i-n-g. Yeah, I know, listening is hard work. I suck at it most of the time. But it’s important. Another reason: The most critical social issues are complex and overwhelming. Enough to make you run in the other direction. Or go shopping. Shoes or the healthcare system… Hmmm….

Porte Parole humanizes controversial social conflicts. They do a ton of research: conducting interviews and combing through legal documents, transcripts, and newspapers. They use all of this to create great theatre. Theatre that becomes the spokesperson — the porte parole — for the issue. Theater that brings you the people and stories and voices (literally!) from all sides. The actors embody the people within the conflict, animating and defending them in a public space. You’re compelled to listen. Dialogue becomes possible. And as you sit at the edge of your seat — laughing, feeling angry, frustrated, touched, wanting to jump in — something has just happened: you’ve become engaged. You’ve taken on step into participating in democracy and in your public life. It’s a gift.

Kudos to Laurence Miall and Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet for putting together the Porte Parole Pecha Kucha presentation. You guys rock.

A telecentre is a public place where people can access computers, the Internet, and other digital technologies that enable them to gather information, create, learn, and communicate with others while they develop essential digital skills.

Check out the Wikipedia article for a full list of alternative names and an overview of the range of models. (Some of which, I understand, have failed — especially those following the let’s-put-a-squillion-computers-everywhere-then-walk-away approach.)

Telecentre enthusiasts consider libraries with computers to be a type of telecentre. Library folks don’t like that so much. Understandably. Personally, I have way more warm fuzzies toward the word “library” — waaaaay more. Libraries get me all excited. But that’s another post, uh, and likely better suited to a different blog ;)

Right. So libraries and telecentres, telecentres and libraries. It’s a debate. Some folks resolve it by using the term “public-access venues“. Did you just cringe? Good. Welcome to my world.

A public space where you can learn how to make technology work for you. That’s the main takeaway. So maybe we should call them hacker spaces. Hackers understand and manipulate technology — software and hardware — often using it in ways its designers never intended. Hackers take what’s available and tinker with to solve a specific problem. There are plenty of cool examples of this from all over the world. (This is also why open technology is important — designing stuff from the outset to be hackable. Or “extremely configurable” as Mark would say — he’s been  thinking about this in his efforts to build a better Internet. Beth talks about it too — using systems instead of fitting into them.)

But there’s an even more important dimension: public space. Places where people can be in community. Third place, agora, whatever you want to call it. What’s important is the ability to gather with others and the possibility to be accompanied in your work. To be able to ask questions and bounce around ideas. I’ve been thinking for some time that public-access venues and coworking spaces are connected. This is why. They provide access to helpful people — librarians, dinamizador@s, infomediaries, the-guy-sitting-across-the-table-from-you. People willing to help you accomplish your task. And I suspect that people in communities with stronger social ties will succeed faster because they likelihood of being helped, or feeling okay about asking for help, increases. It also has some interesting implications for public-access venues struggling to become more sustainable — what if they pushed the coworking/colocation angle?

There’s more thinking to do here. But here you have the basics.

PS. This is also why mobile devices will complement but never replace telecentres or libraries. We need to come together.

PPS. The photo for this post was taken by Luis Carlos Diaz. The two women in it are taking a citizen journalism class in Venezuela. Luis is part of Global Voices. I like how they appear to be solving a problem together. It depicts l’esprit d’accompagnement that I want to explore here. (Photo used under a Creative Commons license.)

I managed to shield Liam from the worst of it. (I wonder if the need to do that sustained me, because we spent wonderful time together in the middle of this.) My mother was less fortunate, as were some of my friends.

I desperately — not a pretty word, I know, but accurate — sought something, anything to hold on to. To comfort me. To stop the descent. Some of those somethings were not, ummmm, productive. Or very healthy. Then I stumbled upon Naada Yoga.

Now, if you know me, this is where you start giggling. You know that I HATE yoga. The whole visualize-the-yellow-light-and-breathe-in-the-universe bullshit of it. I would point out, and still will, that this practice is from the same folks who brought us sati. Chew on that. Twenty years ago I spent a month in an ashram learning to do massage — and I managed to skip yoga most every day.

But I desperately needed to take care of myself. And I knew that part of this meant physically. Getting out of my head and negativity and into my body. Consistently. So I decided to research Ashtanga yoga teachers in the Mile End. I had done some Ashtanga in the past and found it to be less annoying than most.

At Naada, Elizabeth Emberly and her partner, Jason Sharp, have created a wonderful, welcoming space. Their approach to yoga is practical, simple, and supportive. The mixing in of sound sends me to a far away (or far inside) place. The best part? They serve tea afterward and folks are invited to stay and chat. And they do. Aaaaaah, community space. My favorite thing. Feels good.

Naada is sanskrit for sound, vibration, rumbling. Like a river. I’m going most everyday. Helps (miraculous?) that it is five minutes from my house, and right next to Station C. Last week I did seven hours of yoga. It does make a difference. Making space for myself matters. It is healing.

I just watched I, Robot… You, Jane (Season 1, Episode 8). Woven throughout the story is a debate  between the librarian, Giles, and the computer science teacher, Jenny, about adopting technology. Giles is uneasy about technology: “I don’t think something is good just because it’s new.” (Although many Buffy episodes feature a hacker, Willow, who provides Giles with critical assistance using the library’s computer.)

Jenny explains that technology is creating a new society. Her students echo this: “The printed page is obsolete. Information isn’t bound up anymore. It’s an entity. If you’re not jacked in you’re not alive.” Giles is horrified. (And that particular student later gets killed by a nasty demon.) Near the end of the show Jenny asks Giles why he has such an aversion to computers:

Jenny: Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?
Giles: The smell.
Jenny: Computers don’t smell, Rupert.
Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a – it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It’s-it’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.

Clearly I love my computer. And sometimes I hate it. Have not been sniffing my books enough lately. Something to think about.

I’ve heard this again and again. So, why’s it so hard? I’ve come to suspect that part of it has to do with the structure of communications within organizations. The centralized structure is a problem. We need to figure out how to make a distributed model work (see an early stab at how this could happen for a network or distributed team). You hear all the time about user-generated content. Well how about staff-generated content? Then the communicator becomes facilitator, supporter, curator. No longer struggling to find out what’s going on but rather focused on packaging and outreach.

This also has implications for knowledge sharing (or whatever KM is called these days) and organizational development. It’s about documenting learning, mistakes, victories. Taking the time to stop and think about process.

So as part of this thinking toward a new model I’ve developed (with help from my friends) a list of observations from my last ten or so years of experience. Mostly these are with international development organizations, most of which were implementing research or social change projects. They all had similar characteristics and issues:

• Multi-cultural teams made up of passionate, opinionated researchers and development professionals (read: herding cats)

• Partners who are at other times competitors

• Far-flung teams and partners facing similar issues and or learning things that are relevant to each other’s practice — they have things to share and are hungry for knowledge

• A “boss” (read: donor) who’s not at home — or several absent bosses each with different (sometimes shifting) priorities and stakeholders — so important spend time building understanding, updating, and demonstrating return on investment

• Disincentives to document or openly discuss failure stifles learning and innovation (this is the down side of the performance-based contract)

• Ability to see organizational issues but no way to fix them — Because of the nature of their work (talking with many team members, needing consistent updates, pushing for clarity on audiences, messages, activities) communicators’ work is affected by organizational issues and information flows, yet addressing these is outside of their mandate

• A “core + support” staff structure, where support staff often feel marginalized, their contributions and needs misunderstood or unacknowledged because they don’t do what the organization does (administration, finance, human resources, communications)

• Communicators not invited — and often must lobby — to attend meetings, events, or site visits that would allow them to better understand issues and activities, create richer content, and build relationships that improve information flows
• The staff closest to the work are least likely to communicate, so key information, learning, and stories often remains hidden
• Expectation that communicators can create compelling content from a mix of existing documents: proposals, contracts, presentations, various reports (coded, jargon-laden, sanitized, noisy)
• Communicators not in direct or regular contact with activities or colleagues in the field must use an investigative-journalist approach to dig up stories, which may annoy field staff as they’ve been preparing reports and communicating regularly with project managers

• Little attention or resources dedicated to internal systems (infrastructure + practices)

• Lack of coordination of basic information such as travel, events, and contacts leads to missed opportunities
• Productivity lost finding and re-finding assets
• Little time allocated to reflect on how the organization is working, what can be learned, and how to work better

Have you observed this? What’s the same? What’s different? How do you think these issues can be avoided or overcome? Any ideas for solutions?

This stuff tastes like flowers, but it’s not sweet. Magnificent for a hot summer day. Their website describes it this way: “Lifted aromatics of tropical fruits combined with the traditional nettle and herbaceous aromas of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.” Yeah whatever. Blah, blah, blah. Flowers, I tell you!

It costs almost $20 a bottle here in Quebec. Comes with a classy screw top. But don’t let that put you off. I saw it a Trader Joe’s in Seattle for $15. Not fair.

Tim Hwang looks like a super cool guy. And not just because Joi Ito took his portrait. Nope. Most important? He founded ROFLCon, the internet culture/celebrity conference. (Which my amazing friend Kate covered for CBC radio’s Spark. Yay!)

Maybe he’s cool because of his work at Harvard’s Berkman Center, where he does research with Yochai Benkler as part of the cooperation group.

Or maybe because he helps out on the Internet & Democracy project.

Or maybe because he knows so much about online community and the history of internet culture. Ethan wrote a nice post on Tim’s explanation of Internet memes. (Some of it is gross. But you may, nevertheless, find yourself compelled to look at it. You’ve been warned.)

I wrote previously about the rocking good job that the Participation Camp organizers did. Distant participants felt like they were right in the room. I couldn’t “attend” the second day, so I missed Tim’s talk — Gaming Open Government Data. But now here it is for you and me. It’s pretty damned cool. Games and citizen engagement. Some great ideas in here. Maybe this is why he’s super cool. Hard to decide…