I've just returned from Recent Changes Camp 2007 (Portland)

Recent Changes takes it's name from Wiki tool and takes it's inspiration from Wiki Culture

Among the many developments of this Open Space format event is the effort to establish an Open Guild. See the wiki: http://www.oguild.org

Under this rubric there is opportunity for a place-based node for Portland as well as a more general virtual community and dreams of a network of such place-centered nodes. Open Source technologists/developers are a core constituency, but there was some care in framing the idea as being about an Open movement, rather than just Open Source.

John Kenyon, a highly recommended professional trainer, will conduct a
workshop Thursday, November 2, 2006, at the Fitzpatrick Center for
Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (FCIEMAS)
on the Duke University campus, Durham, NC. The morning session is on
Open Source Content Management Systems, focusing on Drupal, and the
afternoon session is on Open Source Customer Relationship Management
Systems, focusing on CiviCRM. See http://civicrm.org/aboutcivicrm for
more information about CiviCRM and a list of key features.

Registration is open to the public. You may register for only the

Internet and Media policy are one and the same. We're witness to a convergence of platforms and the emergence of Internet ubiquity.

Our laws regulating media and communications are out of date. New paradigms have emerged and we're only beginning to see what is possible with communications technology of the past decade.

But in that admission that our laws are "out of date" we must distinguish between the fictions of technical exigency and the broad civic values that should establish the frame of the law.

The arguments of business and technical exigency rest upon particular investments and in interpretations of the technologically possible and they do not serve the business community at large. They establish systems of self-reference and produce the illusion of verification. They are extremely time-bound, and tend to constrain innovation and reconfiguration, establishing barriers to market entry and healthy competition.

Beyond the Information Society
Enabling Communities to Create the World We Want

(A statement prepared for "Paving the Road to Tunis WSIS II: The Views of Canada's Civil Society on the Geneva Plan of Action and the Prospects for Phase II," Winnipeg, May 13-15, 2005)

All around the world, communities are at the heart of social and economic life. On-line and off-line, they are dynamic, creative, adaptive and adoptive. We see communities as the social networks that will, together, forge the "Learning Society" that national and international governments seek to facilitate.

Coordinating from the grassroots is difficult and rewarding, and sometimes we let it slip to the back-burner.

We have a major challenge in bringing Telecommunications & Networking issues to the general public. The language of business and the market are pervasive, constituting the lens through which many people (mis)read the world.