[LM_NET] Announcing Digital Divide Meetups

[Andy Carvin <acarvin@EDC.ORG>]

Hi everyone,

I've got some exciting news... Some of you may remember the podcast I
posted a couple of weeks ago when the Digital Divide Network (DDN)
hosted an informal meetup in Boston during the LinuxWorld conference. It
wasn't a real "meetup" in the sense that we didn't use the website
meetup.com to organize it, but it was in spirit of that website, which
helps people organize meetings with like-minded people in their local
community.

As it turns out, the podcast caught the attention of the people who run
meetup.com, and they contacted me to say hello. In our conversations I
mentioned to them that Meetup.com didn't have an easy way to organize
local community gatherings specifically around the digital divide, as
"digital divide" wasn't one of the topics they had categorized on their
site. Within a few hours, that problem was solved, as Meetup.com has set
up a digital divide community for those of us interested in the issue:

http://ddn.meetup.com

Effective immediately, anyone who is interested in organizing a
community gathering to discuss the digital divide now has a free tool to
do this. You don't have to member a member of our DDN website; you just
have to be interested and motivated enough to organize a community
meeting on the digital divide. When you register with the site, you'll
be able to organize your own digital divide meetup in your town; then
anyone who is interested in discussing the digital divide can come and
join you. The site even has a notification system that will email you
when someone has organized a digital divide-related meetup in your
community.

I can see this service being used by us a couple of ways. First, it
allows any of us to organize our own community meetings to discuss the
digital divide, whenever you want -- your library, a coffee shop. the
neighborhood church. So if you just want to do it once, or if you want
to make it a monthly event, it's up to you. And now that "digital
divide" has been added to the list of topics for Meetup, other Meetup
members can find out about your meeting and participate.

Second, while this may be wishful thinking, I could see organizing
simultaneous digital divide-related meetings all over the world. For
example, let's say we decide to make June 1 International Digital Divide
Community Action Day; volunteers would then organize local meetings to
discuss the digital divide, all for that same day. Members would be
encourged to make podcasts, video clips, take notes, etc, then share
their experiences the DDN website and elsewhere. Just yesterday, some of
us were talking on the list about why there should be community meetings
related to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which
will take place this November in Tunis. So who's to say that in the
third week of November of this year, communities all over the world
organize their own WSIS mini-summits to discuss the digital divide locally?

So for those of you who have thought about organizing or participating
in local meetings to discuss the digital divide, I encourage you to go
to ddn.meetup.com and organize a meeting. I think it could be a powerful
way of adding new depth and real-world action to the digital divide
movement.... -andy

--
-----------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldivide.net
http://www.tsunami-info.org
Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com
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