Terry’s Twelve (Highly Subjective) Characteristics of Community Networking (CN)

US community networker Terry Grunwald offers 12 characteristics to help clarify what we may mean by community networking.

1 CN is not about the technology and what it can do. It’s about the needs of communities and how communities can use technology strategically to meet those needs.

This has been my personal mantra and I believe it should be the foundation for all CN activities. Can you imagine that once it was controversial ? Now, thank goodness, it has become a truism

2 CN and Community Development (including Community Regeneration in the UK) are closely inter-twined.

Properly understood, both movements share a common vision —- discovering, nurturing, and expanding local assets to help underserved populations. CN is less about the "wires and boxes" and more about new approaches to building a good quality of life for everyone in our communities. Community Development understands community and the key issues of participation, "building from within", capacity building models, and asset mapping methodologies.

Community Networking offers awareness and support for customized applications of ICT to community problem solving and new, collaborative ways of working. They need each other. They need to work in tandem — to build a sense of community, to promote collaborative approaches and "joined-up" thinking.

3 CN understands that Community-wide ICT strategies are needed; not separate silos

Community Networking is the only public interest technology strategy that looks at the community as a whole — at all its needs and resources -- and how they can be used synergistically. Meanwhile, most of the public interest technology funding streams are channeled in "silos" to major institutions whose primary concern is for "internal" needs and particular target audiences. Even the new center-based initiatives are potentially creating just another "silo". Every community (even in rural areas) has far more technology resources than anyone realizes. A CN perspective can be objective -- observing the duplications, the excess capacity, and the gaps and promoting cross-sector collaborations that maximize existing resources and reduce overall costs.

4 Community Networking offers a multiplicity of community technology models.

Since the early days of the Information Age, three key public interest models have emerged: (1) connectivity-focused models such as Freenets/ early Community Networks/ Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs)/ broadband deployment investments; (2) public access-focused models such as Community Technology/Learning Centers; and (3) content-focused models such as community bulletin boards / community web sites/ portals . The CN movement expands and integrates the options available to local citizens, decisionmakers, and organizations and allows them to select the combination of telecommunications infrastructure, services, and support that is appropriate to their needs, goals, and capacity to manage. See the Projects Game to view the rich array of projects from which communities can now choose — to mix and match.

5 Community Networking helps communities identify, use, and "knit together" all the technology (and other) assets available to them.

When most communities think about technology assets, they point to public access workstations, broadband capacity, community web sites, and tech volunteers. CN can help communities recognize the broad range of resources (both ICT and other) they can draw on and apply to meet local social and economic needs. CN recognizes the value of technology champions, community information brokers, specialized demonstration and training spaces, facilitators, community media and arts projects, annual events, free and discounted Internet services, possibilities for co-location and bulk purchase, a history of successful collaborations, the willingness of local leaders to be innovative, formal and informal opportunities for information sharing, and the spirit of community.

6 CN believes in opening the institutional walls within communities.

Too often, key CN resources remain closed off to the community in local institutions — hidden from public view, underutilized, and unsupported. Meanwhile, scarce public funds are spent on construction and development of brand new facilities with computer labs, public access workstations, and videoconferencing facilities — too often duplicating what already exists — often nearby. Issues of extended hours maintenance, security, insurance, and facility management are real, but solvable at reduced overall costs — provided there are incentives for institituional decisionmakers to open their excess capacity to the wider community.

In addition to facilities, education-based institutions can refocus their curricula to offer community projects, internships, and service programs that support public interest technology goals. CN is positioned to identify these win-win opportunities and open the "walls" to these kinds of collaborations — if only funders (both government and private) would integrate public access incentives into their funding requirements for those "closed door" institutions..

7 CN promotes community ownership and "buy-in" to the technology initiatives that will affect their lives.

In the past, ICT initiatives have frequently been technology-driven. Local citizens and leaders have ceded decision-making about their own community to well-meaning technophiles with connectivity or a multimedia solutions that leapfrog the critical step of identifying the problems unique to that locality. The critical question: "Exactly what needs are being addressed?" is often not asked or simply offered as an afterthought. Local citizens — especially those most affected by these problems -- are best suited to answer these questions (which require little or no technical knowledge).

Making the Net Work has developed a series of participatory tools (such as the CN Game ) which helps average citizens understand and control why and how ICT should be applied to their community. CN activities have the best chance for success in those communities where local citizens are actively engaged in creating their own ICT plans.

8 CN recognizes the critical need to provide adequate coordination, support, training, facilitation and maintenance for any ICT initiative.

Investments in people are at least as important to the success of CN efforts as the investments in hardware and infrastrucuture. In fact, they are THE most important way to protect those "hard" investments. And the support issues can be even more complex and challenging than designing network architecture.

Effective ICT programs recognize the need to develop a continuum of support personnel and activities to (1) promote awareness of the benefits of ICT for average citizens; (2) overcome fears and build confidence; (3) provide "start-up" support such as literacy, ESL, and adaptive technologies for people with disabilities; (4) offer a variety of lifelong learning, training, employment, and e-commerce options customized to people’s needs; (5) provide mentors and facilitators; (6) create online civic participation opportunities; and (7) collect and maintain the local information most needed by local citizens.

9 CN integrates the local and the global.

CN rejects the false dichotomy between geographic communities and communities of interest. In fact, effective ICT efforts often demonstrate the ways in which the two complement one another. Community of interest networks (especially those which address key community issues such as housing, child welfare, substance abuse, etc) provide local communities with best practices, lessons learned, new models, up-to-date funding information, and a collective voice to advocate for more resources to address local needs.

Local CN projects provide these same community of interest networks with sources of technical support for their local affiliates, wisdom from the field, success stories, a way to document the nature and extent of problems, support for advocacy campaigns , and feedback on they can be more effective. In addition, local "niche" businesses can find global markets, former residents can stay connected (and even support) the local community, schools and youth projects can participate in "twinning" activities with similar groups around the world, and local citizens can establish and sustain connections with friends, family, and people who share similar interests — at little or no cost.

10 CN supports problem-solving efforts for the community as a whole — not citizens as isolated units.

It encompasses but also focuses beyond the (overly simplistic) Digital Divide issue of computer and Internet access for disadvantaged citizens. It ensures access and builds capacity for local leaders, elected officials, agency staff, human services / community development practitioners, and grassroots activists — as well as the organizations, agencies, and institutions in which they operate. It provides a social infrastructure where all of these people and entities can interact and engage in dialogue with the general public. It promotes and supports a web of relationships and collaborative techniques to achieve these goals in a open and civil environment. It reaches out and provides innovative ways to include and provide a voice for previously disenfranchised members of the community.

11 Community Networking admits the "hard stuff".

CN pioneers recognize that solving the technical problems is relatively easy. The real challenges lie in the areas where many ICT evangelists remain silent: the mysteries of how and why people and institutions engage with, learn, and apply new experiences and knowledge. These remain the major barriers to success in ICT projects and they are too rarely acknowledged. CN practitioners struggle to understand and share insights about:

• How to encourage people to try strange new technologies which they fear are beyond their capabilities
  
  
• How to help people admit what they don’t understand and how to respect their dignity and build their confidence in the process
  
  
• How to find training techniques that work such as using "everyday" metaphors to explain unfamiliar concepts
  
  
• How to break through the "chicken and egg" syndrome whereby some people find it difficult to understand how the Internet can affect their lives until they actually use it, but are not motivated to use it until they understand how it affects their lives
  
  
• How to create and sustain broad-based and useful community dialogue online
  
  
• How to really, really help people with low education and literacy skills use and apply new technologies to improve their lives -- learn marketable skills, find jobs and services for their families, and exercise their individual and collective voices

12 Community Networking is a new field, career path, and discipline struggling for recognition in its own right.

CN works at the intersection of technology and community. It offers a public interest, values-based vision for the Information Age, new tools to close not only the Digital Divide, but all the divides in our society, and a "banner" to bring together people with diverse skills working in many different environments who do not yet realize how much they have in common.

Many, many more people are engaged with CN work than identify with the field. In different work places they are called by different names. Within traditional institutions, people doing this work may be called a media specialist, work force development coordinator, librarian, technical support staff, Webmaster, lifelong learning educator, Helpdesk consultant, community organizer, or outreach worker. In the new field of community networking, we see a variety of creative names emerging, such as circuit rider, Internet coach, technology champion or evangelist, on-line facilitator, community information broker, net-preneur, computer mentor, technology planner, e-commerce expert, cyberspeaker, and virtual volunteer. They all have a "piece of the puzzle" and much to learn from each other.

In order to mature as a field, CN needs a base of on-going support to convene these disparate groups, provide opportunities for information sharing, and most important - build and promote a common identity.