| Hi All, I want to invite any of you who may be interested to join a new mail list that I am starting called 'Friendly Crowds'. I was attempting a bid to the AHRB to fund research in civic software, part of the bid was setting up friendlycrowds.com which will be both a place to publish research, discuss it and publish tools, code examples etc. We didn't get around to getting the submission done for this round (it was November last year). I am currently working on a new / completed bid for the next round but reckoned that I want to start the site and list before then anyway. I had planned to make this the topic of an ETCon proposal, but things got later and later. I am submitting a proposal about grass roots technology, hackers and privacy to CFP and would love to talk to Nat about Where2.0 (they don't do call's for presentations at the *2.0 conferences do they?). Anyway, come next year we will have had some work done with the Design Against Crime team about bike theft that will both feed into the Friendly Crowds project and use some of the current ideas that I am proposing. Back when I started toying with the term 'Friendly Crowds' I was thinking of some mash-up between Craig's List and Smart Mobs, part of me still wants to do that as I am attracted by the simplicity of the 'classifieds' and the ideas behind making it webservice-able so that people can make it useful to them by mashing things up. Craig's List though exists and is very successful and probably does not need replication. The term Friendly Crowds though I think is good for describing social and civic software, invoking the image of the loosely connected as well as an altruism that does show through especially in times of disaster but also appears at times of smaller scale strife, danger or concern. I know that there are a number of sites and lists out there, and again, part of the site will try and build up a reference to as many of these as possible as well as lists and resources that relate to the subject (the geo / locative resources, web2.0 api references). Anyway, I would like to invite you all to join 'crowds', and if you know of anyone who may be interested then please invite them too. Topics that I hope to cover include: Social Modelling (NetLogo, people flows, data flows), Mapping (ok, don't want to take traffic from here :), but one of the things we are looking at for DAC is the idea of crime mapping, especially mapping made by victims of crime, not just mapping the reported crime figures from organisations like the police. Our concern here is do we end up creating 'no-go' areas and our interest here is what design interventions can be made to possibly reclaim these areas, or reduce the crimes). Property, Housing (moving house, buying a house is an absolute NIGHTMARE. what if it was easier? how would it affect property prices? what would it mean for all those empty properties). Also in this area, looking at re-generation, say, set up a PledgeBank pledge. 'I promise to buy a house in this run down street if 7 other people so as well', what would have to be done to make it possible for this grass roots level of gentrification, investment in an area to be done? what support should be demanded from local authorities and when should it be discouraged (make sure the people who are buying are buying to live, not just property investors). Transport, Surveillance, privacy and crime, Civics, Education, Museums. Plus anything else that I love to talk to you guys about but isn't strictly Geo :) The details for the list are all at http://lists.friendlycrowds.com/mailman/listinfo/crowds , the website is at http://www.friendlycrowds.com/ . I am currently using Tinderbox to run the weblog. I am currently scrapping with the simplicity template / assistant as it does not appear to like publishing the sidebar but hey :). The weblog does not have comments enabled, not that I don't want your comments but I do want those discussions to take place elsewhere. Each posting in the weblog will be sent to the mail list, so we can discuss the postings there and we will use technorati to see where the comments are appearing on the net. One of the topics I hope to cover is getting people their blogs. In my day job I am a Technical Project Manager at the BBC and one of the sites I cover is Webwise, responsible for helping a lot of people take their first steps online. One thing we could do is help people take their first steps in creating their own space online. Is that a job for the BBC? If not then how do we move people into their own creative / communication spaces. The first 'About' posting is below, it gives a bit more about the site / project and a bit more about me and what I have been doing. Thanks, mark.   About the friendly crowds What are friendly crowds? Anonymous altruism in large groups? Does it exist? Can we understand social dynamics? Can an individual make a difference? Social Software has helped us understand a lot more of what being interconnected can mean. Civic software has started to open up the engagement in the social process. Is there a space for these tools to be used to in topic areas such as design, architecture, civic planning? Yes there most definitely is but what we have learned from the first two software movements is that an embracing of open source and grass roots philosophies has lead not just to cool new tools but to new cultural and social phenomena. Friendly Crowds was conceived as a low key research project, to open up a discussion list and other spaces online to investigate some of the new vectors of research and topics and see how they can make use of existing tools, hacks and technology and were they will lead to new ones (and how they in turn will fold back into the existing models). This website and the mailing list will be the hub of discussion and publication from this project, so if any of its ideas are of interest to you then please take part. To sign up to the mailing list go here: http://lists.friendlycrowds.com/mailman/listinfo/crowds This project was originally conceived by Mark Simpkins after reading some posts from the GeoWankers mailing list, discussing the idea of applying the grass root methods that have been applied to mapping to social modelling. Mark is working with the Design Against Crime initiative at Central St. Martins in London (http://www.designagainstcrime.com/) to investigate the use of grass roots tools and data, open source methodologies and other new and web2.0 techniques in the field of Socially Responsive Design. With Design Against Crime, Mark helped build a website Bike OFF!, (http://www.bikeoff.org/) that used a weblog format to collect annecdotal evidence on the effectiveness of bike parking facilities. The DAC team have used some of this research to develop design based solutions and interventions to try and improve the security of bike parking facilities in parts of London. It is further hoped that we will utilise online tools and community as an integral part of other design solutions and this is part of what we hope the Friendly Crowds project will allow us to do. Mark's background is in IT and the Web, having done a degree in Photographic Science at the Polytechnic of Central London (now the University of Westminster) followed by a Masters degree in Computer Science at the University of Central London. On entering work, Mark has worked with a number of internet related companies, including office networking and ISP's as well as one of the top web agencies in the world (AKQA). After 2 years of freelancing he joined the BBC, working as a Technical Project Manager for interactive Factual and Learning, the department responsible for most of the non-news factual content from the BBC. Here he has worked on a wide range of projects for delivery on web, mobile and interactive television. Mark is also an online activist and artist. He launched the website ConsultationProcess.org, a site that took the UK Governments ID card consultation paper and converted it into a weblog, so that each paragraph could be commented upon and linked too. Together with colleague Gavin Bell he gave a presentation on public annotation of civic documents at the 2005 Oreilly Emerging Technology Conference. He has also produced, in collaboration with Mysociety.org two sites that allowed the public to comment on the 2005 UK General Election. TheyWantToBeElected.com and IvotedForYouBecause.com both generated a lot of traffic and have been submitted to the British Library as a record of online activity during the election. He is also working on a number of installation works based in satellites and views of earth from space. |
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