I wake most mornings and feel like Marvin the Martian after he blaster the planet out from underneath him. In my case I'm eating the planet out from under me. As a human, and in particular an American, I have the compulsion to always "want more" and the brains and adaptability to always get it. As an American I am programmed to consume and my society "gives" me the fuel and the means to keep consuming more from this dumb, unsustainable Open Loop System. I've seen this for as long as I can remember, and I bet you have too. But man, it's tough to re-program yourself. I applaud those who have.
Here some very smart people have explained the Story of Stuff, and how we can close the loop.
I thought you might be interested in how the US federal EPA is embracing online community building (media wiki experiment) and mashups to foster collaboration from non-agency folk. I'm writing from the EPA Office of Information Technology Conference in St. Louis, MO. It's Nov. 15 at 8:30pm and I've just seen the future. Or at least what I hope is the future. This year's OEI conference is all about sharing. Sharing thoughts, information… knowledge. The theme was driven home by EPA's CIO, Molly A. O'Neill, at the plenary. It was then eloquently promoted by the Former EPA Administrator Bill Ruckelshaus (now Chair of the Puget Sound Partnership Leadership Council) who gave a virtual keynote. Then the experiment was announced.
The core of the experiment this week is a temporary MediaWiki instance meant to support the efforts to protect Puget Sound. There are a few maps (one Open Layers, and at least one VirtualEarth) in the wiki now and it seems more are being added by the minute. The wiki was primarily populated by conference attendees learning to wikify their knowledge. But then something magic happened. You. It seems the public found out about the experiment, perhaps through the blogosphere, and started making posts in the wiki. This was very very exciting.
I must say that the theme of online collaboration, virtual community building, and effective use of interactive technology was effectively and energetically carried throughout the conference in the booths, the sessions and in the conversations in the hall. Perhaps more importantly, no attendee could possibly leave this conference without having at least a basic understanding of how common Web collaboration concepts work, the terms associated with them (if I hear 'mashup' again I'm going to scream), and most importantly the power to combine the knowledge of The Community into something much more powerful than the sum of its bits.
I think this kind of openness by a federal agency is unprecedented very much welcomed by just about everyone I talked with or overhead. Beyond that, from working in the environmental consulting and outreach community, I know these kinds of national-scale tools for building virtual communities of practitioners and the public are sorely needed. It will help everyone learn from others in a more rapid fashion and therefore leverage targeted investments made in data, education, outreach, science, problem solving policy, etc. and multiply the extent of their reach. This extension will increase the effectiveness of those dollars and amplify their effect (we hope).
I sat with Molly tonight at the internet café as we explored the blossoming wiki and we were astonished at the volume of posts in the wiki in just 24 hours of being live. Clearly the experiment was a success.
It's a temporary thing, but I'm interested in telling EPA that the environmental community needs this service.
