As you know I’m really interested in this idea and the work you’ve done so far. I’m just going to throw in a couple of reasons to be cautious, as I’ve really been struggling with a couple of things that I think relate to this.

The first is around people who look for quick solutions, because they haven’t been exposed to thinking which helps them to understand that, as Dave says above, there is no silver bullet. This post on ‘changes’ blog goes some way to unpacking where things go wrong: http://changesuk.net/2013/05/15/community-engagement-method-technique-or-tool/
Because people who are really good at community development, working with groups, working with power, facilitating etc don’t appear to be doing much (to the casual observer) it must be easy for others to assume that there’s not much to it, and they don’t see the layers of skills, experience and reflection below the surface when a given activity/method is being used. So while I recognise that we can do little or nothing to hold them back, a concern would be that well-intentioned but inexperienced and untrained officers who self identify as community enablers might come along, use and abuse whatever is developed and then the framework/kit gets a bad name.

Another problem which I’m currently musing on is around interpretations of your ladder of participation as described in the Guide to Effective Participation. I kind of see what’s going on when officers with no experience of community work misinterpret the ladder and think it’s all about moving from information giving to positions ‘further up’ the ladder. We try to address this assumption in training we deliver in Dudley, to get across to people (who may not actually read the guide) that it is about identifying your stance and understanding therefore which tools are appropriate to use and so on. I was surprised recently to hear colleagues in a meeting talking about ‘moving people along the ladder’. That wasn’t at all what I thought was the intention behind the Guide to Effective Participation – it doesn’t come across to me as a guide to making people get more involved in civic life and marking their progress on the ladder of participation. I picked this up with a colleague afterwards. She and I have been delivering training together using your Guide, and I had thought we had a shared understanding of what we were saying. Apparently not! I found myself trying to describe the sorts of participation which takes place completely outside the spaces, agendas, and support of public and voluntary sector agencies (in other words outside Eileen Conn’s vertical hierarchical system as described in http://www.tsrc.ac.uk/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=K8%2BrbdUTghQ%3D&tabid=827). And arguing that the ladder of participation has no relevance outside those spaces. That an individual might have initiated an activity, collaborated with others, made change etc. but would be nowhere on the ladder because the activity was in a different sphere (or system, as Eileen Conn helpfully differentiates). Not just that, but where I might wish to be informed about proposed changes to local highways or doctors surgeries doesn’t mean that I lack the ability to engage as a representative, if I could be bothered. I don’t want someone making me ‘move along the ladder’. So I think that being a happy recipient of effective communication can be a great thing for participation, though it would seem my colleagues disagree.

Having said all of that I’m not totally sure what my point is in relation to community enablers and a new framework and kit, except to say that I think there is some confusion about who is enabling whom and for what purposes, and this could affect how and why people might use anything new. (If I’ve got the wrong end of the stick about the ladder of participation please do tell me.)

Dave – personally I’d replace Alinsky with Friere. I’m not familiar with Ted Nelson so I’ll look him up. Maybe we could throw in a modern day twist on EF Schumacher’s appropriate technology (user friendly, sustainable technology) – which wikepedia links to Illich’s conviviality.

I really can relate to the story above, and have been trying to find ways just to organise my own stuff better online and on various devices, before I even get to effective ways of sharing things. I’ll add a few more thoughts on your related posts. I think the key in relation to this post is what is said in relation to the idea that would be useful to develop ways to help community enablers and for them to identify how they can help others, and I totally agree that it can’t be one-size-fits-all, and it shouldn’t duplicate what’s happening already.

Seriously, I’m increasingly aware that there is no silver bullet for online learning, just as there isn’t for social reporting, or community development, or hyperlocal stuff. It depends on the topic, the learners, the facilitator…

It would be nice perhaps to develop some ‘patterns’ of community and learning tech. Produce some scenarios & personas, build example tech stories around them.

Am having a discussion with the NT about the pop up CoPs idea in the next couple of weeks which should be good hopefully.

One thing I’m increasingly wondering/worrying about is the control people have over their online assets. Sometimes I think a self hosted wiki and mailing list might be the way to go!

I’ve also always wanted to do a thing that links the web with modernist fiction: Joyce, Beckett etc. After all, Here Comes Everybody is from Finegans Wake originally and Beckett wrote “fail better” in Westward Ho.

Also other stuff like John Berger that muse on perception, media and creativity.

Catherine Howe and I were also discussing a reading group for web obsessives the other day. Manuel Castells, Stpehen Levy’s “Hackers”, Joh Markoff’s “What the dormouse said”.

It’s basically the reading list for the greatest undergraduate course that never existed.

Thanks so much for that encouragement. I agree tech really does push us to reflect on the way we look at the world and encourages some overlaps, I guess because software and the web both reflect how we operate and then change that. I did a bit of musing here on frameworks.

I remember those early days, when we first got the web. I blagged my way to the Ties that Bind conference in Apple HQ Cupertino in 1995, co-sponsored with the Morino Foundation: their story here. There were some 300 community networking pioneers full of new (digital) frontier optimism, mixing the elements you mention. I came back and co-founded Communities Online to promote local community networking … some archive here .

I’m not sure we have quite realised the potential we saw then. Maybe it is just all moving too fast, and it is time to focus on simplifying. Looking at tech for later in life has brought that home to me.

An inspirational reading list, with much non-tech, should definitely be part of the kit! Including fiction. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby may be relevant. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Good stuff and certainly along the lines I’ve been thinking of, and reading around. I’ve been thinking of a bit of a Venn diagram, based on some of the topics I’m starting to feel are really important. Three in particular: community development, learning, and technology.

As you say, technology is not a community organising panacea. But computers are excellent tools to use to help organise groups and to facilitate learning.

Go back to the early days of computing and projects in San Francisco like the People’s Computer Company and the Community Memory and this is exactly what those projects were about.

So I’m thinking maybe Saul Alinsky + Ivan Ilich + Ted Nelson might come close to what you are looking for?