Community Informatics and Group Writing

The community informatics seminar in Porto was interesting in several ways. One is the whole idea of community informatics -- to emphasize the community part more than the tech part. The framework, which may or may not catch on widely, seems to be to work with communities first to see what people really express as their own needs, then see where different forms of technology might actually be useful. Far too often it goes the other way, companies market things that people don't see much need for, or development agencies from governments or non-profit groups push certain technologies as a cure-all even if they don't really do what people need. So it was refreshing to sit around and talk over both general ideas and specific examples with people for whom understanding communities came first. The first photo shows the group working. The second has everyone who participated posing with the Portuguese flag.

The other interesting thing was that the goal was to spend most of two days first talking and then writing a collective overview with a bunch of examples and case studies of these kinds of issues. Very interesting experience to talk a lot with the immediate intention of writing about it as a group. Some pretty interesting stuff came out, so let's see what gets edited together in the end.