Archive - Sep 24, 2004
Better?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/24/2004 - 12:48(Originally published in Greater Democracy)
“Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
This is a question that gets asked during just about every election, and the answer usually seems to be more, “Do you want the current administration to remain in power?” People who do want the current administration to remain in power, cite examples of how they are better off, and point out that the places where they are better off are not a result of the current administration. Those who want regime change site examples about how things are not as good as the were four years ago, and how the things that are better are not a result of the current administration.
Herding free-range cats
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/24/2004 - 10:58Herding free-range cats: An exploration into the organizational dynamics of an open software project
On a mid-September weekend in 2004, about two dozen people sat around a table on the fifth floor of an ecologically friendly building in San Francisco. Almost everyone there was under twenty-five, almost everyone there was male, almost everyone there had a laptop fired up and connected to the internet over WiFi, and everyone there was interested in finding ways to better use technology to bring about social change.
It was the first CivicSpace Summit. A year and a half earlier, a couple college kids who had become excited about electoral politics through Howard Dean’s presidential campaign had started talking together. They wanted to build the ultimate open source campaign tool. It would use some sort of content management, syndication of articles, maybe some sort of buddy list, etc. All the sites would be connected together.
