CALL FOR PANELS — Due March 31, 2008

International Summit for Community Wireless Networks
 May 28-30, 2008, Washington, DC
 Send panel proposals and questions to: summit@chambana.net

Since the first National Summit for Community Wireless Networks in
2004, hundreds of community Internet and municipal broadband
initiatives have sprung up around the globe. Internet access is
increasingly important to all facets of civil society, but many
communities are being left out of this communications revolution.

Friday, June 15, 2007 was a very special day for community in Chicago and for Chicago community media. The Benton Foundation and the Community Media Workshop convened a Community Media Summit with the launch of the Benton Media Scan - What's Going on in Community Media a report by Fred Johnson of the University of Massachusetts, Boston with Karen Menichelli, Benton Foundation.

Julia Stasch, Chair of Mayor Daley's Advisory Council on Closing the Digital Divide released it's official report at the summit - the Chicago Report on Digital Excellence.

Third time's the charm! The International Summit for Community Wireless Networks is a few days away. We look forward to seeing you there.

SEO and the NPO: Grassroots.org has launched a toolkit for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for non-profits - spread the word.

Civic Garden: The notion of the Civic Garden we've been promoting locally in Chicago (as an evolution of the Minneapolis' "Walled Garden") is being taken up in Minneapolis.

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.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Oct. 18 2006. A community panel organized by Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology, and Society and the Broadband Institute of California urged greater public participation in planning broadband networks that are being commissioned by local governments around the country. The panel also asserted that truly equal access to municipal broadband can only be achieved by providing underserved groups -- seniors, low-income, rural residents, the disabled, and non-English speakers -- a free or discounted tier of service with the same speed, privacy, and security available to households that pay full price.