All Blog Posts (41)

From Ideas for Cities: Tech Missions

Tech Mission Tech Mission is a ossible design for mid-size cities that either don't have a particular strength in technology or a logical location for a tech company to

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Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on December 31, 2009 at 12:43pm — No Comments

Think we could get something like Ganicus working here on Bowen?

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Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on December 29, 2009 at 12:14pm — No Comments

Government Data & the Invisible Hand

Preview of a paper on using infotech to make gov't more transparent. full paper will appear in Yale Journal of Law & Technology.

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Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on December 27, 2009 at 4:18pm — No Comments

Top News Sources of 2009

A good list. But what's more interesting to me is that we now think it important to think about where we get out news.

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Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on December 27, 2009 at 11:39am — No Comments

What would always-on-the-record government look like?

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Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on December 27, 2009 at 9:16am — No Comments

Government 2.0: 5 predictions for 2010 - 2012

Key takeaways: Local governme… Continue

Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on December 18, 2009 at 4:23pm — No Comments

Conversations from the Open Space on Nove 29

Hi...I thought I'd share the headlines that generated conversations, around the general theme of "Transition Towns". * Transition Towns - What and Why * Transition to What? * What would a Bowen Transition Town Look like? * What would a Development Policy Framework look like? Thanks to those who joined our circle...and I wonder if anyone has had any reverberations from our conversations that they'd like to capture here? Continue

Added by Carol MacKinnon on November 29, 2009 at 4:44pm — 3 Comments

Something for Bowen to Consider: Endless Debate Destroys Democracy

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Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on November 25, 2009 at 2:12pm — 2 Comments

Nov 11, 2009

I'm so proud of our community. We love to share our sorrows and our joys. According to Chris Corrigan we were 800 strong.

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Added by Sally Freeman on November 11, 2009 at 3:56pm — No Comments

Sunday's BAA Openspace Workshop

On Sunday 100 Boweners gathered to discuss food: growing it, raising it, sharing it. The big question of course is how do we start making some of our own stuff? We have kind, skilled, bright, fun people here and their intentions are good. I intend to give them as much support and take part as much as I can. Bless you Stu! Here is a photo that reminded me of what happened Sunday:

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Added by Sally Freeman on November 3, 2009 at 8:10am — 2 Comments

Bowen's Gogo's

These (I join them when I can) are a group of organized, beautiful, cheerful women on Bowen who get together to brainstorm ideas about raising awareness and funds for 'Grandmother's to Grandmothers' a creation of the Stephen Lewis Foundation attempting to connect Canadians to Africans. After brainstorming they actually get together and do things. Here they are creating cool stuff for the Bowen Christmas Craft Fair. Grannies at work at Collins Hall - Oct 2009 Note Sheila Webster ba… Continue

Added by Sally Freeman on November 1, 2009 at 5:30am — 2 Comments

Want Hi-Speed Internet? Let's Roll Out Our Own

"ISPs may not act for years on local complaints about slow Internet—but when a town rolls out its own solution, it's amazing how fast the incumbents can deploy fiber, cut prices, and run to the legislature." In ars technica:

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Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on October 29, 2009 at 10:00am — 9 Comments

US Open Government and Innovations Conference "TweetBook"

Great way way to package conference tweets. And a propos talk re open gov't to boot.

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Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on October 25, 2009 at 9:13pm — No Comments

RWW's post on Putting the Public in Public Media

As the Fourth Estate is so important in democratic society, I think we'll find something useful here, in particular NPR's list… Continue

Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on October 24, 2009 at 12:01pm — No Comments

WORTH READING: Larry Lessig on the perils of openness in government

Larry Lessig, a champion of openness and member of the Sunlight Foundation's Advisory Board, warns that transparency without context should cause concern. In a review of Lessig's essay on the O'Reilly Radar, blogger Carl Malamud says: "The point of Lessig's essay is not that transparency is bad.… Continue

Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on October 13, 2009 at 4:00pm — 1 Comment

Why live data from the visioning sessions is important

Traditional publishing is essentially black box engagement - we meet, or I think; I go away, I write, and the presses are scheduled to print. A year or a month later - when we and the world are different, my work comes out. Hooray. This doesn't work well in community process. The last visioning session - held Aug 15 at Cates Hill Chapel - took aweeks to result in a report. The report was a well written narrative, and these things take time. The problem is, there were 60 versions of what happene… Continue

Added by John Dumbrille on September 14, 2009 at 6:00am — No Comments

Rahaf Harfoush & lessons to learn from the Obama campaign.

Rahaf Harfoush's talk about the Obama camaign may teach us some things about getting governance or decision making tools into the hands of citizens. Here's the link: Rahaf at Rotman Continue

Added by Brad Ovenell-Carter on September 13, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Featured Discussions: For timely input into each OCP development process

Click on the Forum page you will see "Featured Discussions" at the top of the page. I'd like to propose that during the next 6 months we use this space to feature discussions that pertain to what process/task the OCP Committee is currently working on - according to their schedule. The OCP Committee will advise us of what process/task is current, to encourage timely input. We would retitle this Featured section according to the current process. Sound OK? In October the process moves from Visi… Continue

Added by John Dumbrille on September 9, 2009 at 1:00pm — 1 Comment