[Air-l] Formation of "Community Informatics Researchers.Org"

[Michael Gurstein]

Community Informatics: Enabling Communities With Information and
Communications Technologies

At the Many Voices, Many Places - Electronically Enabling Communities
for An Information Society Colloquium http://www.ccnr.net/prato2003/
held at the Monash University Centre in Prato, Italy a group of
participants from some 7 countries and representing a variety of
universities and research networks agreed to proceed to the creation of
a formal Community Informatics Research Network (.Org) (CIRN).

There was an agreement by the CIRN Interim Committee of the Whole that
the organization would be open to participation and membership by
individuals, institutions, for profit and not for profit enterprises and
networks, with an active interest and involvement in Community
Informatics Research and particularly those from Developing Countries.
The approach agreed to was also that this organisation would seek to
build a network of the related organizations that for subject, language
or other reasons feel more comfortable operating on their own. In other
words it would be pro-actively facilitating the formation of a
structured open network among CI research groups. 

An interim executive steering committee consisting of Michael Gurstein,
NJIT; Peter Day, U. of Brighton; and Don Schauder, Monash U./Wal Taylor,
Central Queensland U., and Larry Stillman of Monash U. as the Interim
Secretary/webmaster was formed to work towards the timely incorporation
of the group as a not for profit society under the Australian
corporations act.

In addition, an invitation was extended by Dr. Peter Day and Brighton
University to host CIRN's first research conference in the spring of
2004.  The Founding conference of CIRN it was agreed, would be hosted by
Monash University at the Prato Centre in late September 2004.

It was also agreed that the CI Researchers list
http://vancouvercommunity.net/lists/ciresearchers would be the e-list
for the organization and that a website based on the design developed by
CQU would go on line as soon as possible and hosted by Monash U. in
conjunction with CQU.

Michael Gurstein agreed to provide an interim linkage with the newly
created CI Research Network of the Commonwealth of Independent States
formed in conjunction with the St. Petersburg (BIC) conference
http://communities.org.ru/conference/ 

Several members of the Interim Committee of the Whole agreed to liase
with a variety of other CI research networks and specifically the CRACIN
network in Canada and the network which is currently being created in
the United States.

It was further agreed that efforts would be undertaken to find resources
to move forward with the continued development of the Open Archive
Community Informatics Text Book building on the work of Sergei Stafeev,
Mike Gurstein and Michel Menou in the publication in English and Russian
of Community Networking and Community Informatics: Prospects,
Approaches, Instruments Part 1 of a CI Text book (St. Petersburg, 2003)
And the website http://www.ci-text.dr.ag/ .... 

A statement to be forwarded to the World Summit on the Information
Society on behalf of CIRN was adopted and will be circulated in a
subsequent message.

Those with an interest in either affiliating with the Network or
learning more about it are invited to subscribe to the Research list or
to the more general Community Informatics interest list.

To subscribe send a message

To: sympa at vancouvercommunity.net 

Message:

Subscribe CIResearchers

And/or Communityinformatics

Best,

Peter Day, U. of Brighton
Michael Gurstein, NJIT
Don Schauder, Monash U./Wal Taylor, Central Queensland U.


Community Informatics Researchers News:

	* An informal meeting in conjunction with the Information,
Communications and Society Conference at the Oxford Internet Institute
in the UK
http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/event/conference/iCS/iCS2003_programme.pdf ,
agreed that efforts would be undertaken immediately to begin the
development of an on-line journal with interim resource support
committed as available through NJIT/NSF; CIRA in Teeside, UK; Monash U.
in Australia; and the CRACIN Network in Canada.  A follow-up meeting to
"brainstorm" on the design and development of the journal will be held
in conjunction with the AoIR meeting in Toronto in October and with an
interim discussion on the CIResearchers e-list as a lead-up to that
meeting.

	* Dr. Peter van den Besselaar, Head of the Social Sciences
Department Netherlands Institute of Scientific Information, Royal
Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, (NIWI-KNAW) presented an
important outline of the scope of Community Informatics Research
including its links to his own work in Digital Cities and related
Community Networks, in a keynote presentation at the Communities and
Technology Conference in Amsterdam
http://www-winfo.uni-siegen.de/wulf/CT2003/ .

	* Brian Loader and Leigh Keeble of CIRA/U. of Teeside with
funding from the Rowntree Foundation have prepared a most valuable
annotated bibliography of Community Informatics Research which they will
be making available on line in the very near future.  It is their
intention to keep this up to date as a continuing resource for the CI
Research Community. http://www.cira.org.uk

	* A Workshop bringing together US Community Informatic
researchers and Practitioners was convened in April in Colorado Springs
with the sponsorship of the Ford Foundation and organized by Richard
Civille and Michael Gurstein.  It was agreed at that meeting that
follow-up action towards the creation of a US CI Researchers group would
be undertaken as well as a number of other related follow-up
initiatives.  http://www.communityinformatics.org

	* The CQU/COIN team including Wal Taylor and Stewart Marshall
have just published two books including "Using Community Informatics to
Transform Regions" through the Idea Group publishers and "Closing the
Digitial Divide" with Greenwood Publisher.  They are pleased to invite
Community Informatics researchers and practitioners to the 
Upcoming 5th annual ITiRA conference (IT in Regional Areas) in
Caloundra, Queensland, Dec.  http://itira.cqu.edu.au/2003/

	* Bulletin: The CRACIN (Canadian Research Alliance For Community
Innovation And Networking) proposal: PI's Andrew Clement, U. of Toronto;
Michael Gurstein, NJIT; and Leslie Shade, Concordia U. has just been
awarded a major 3 year grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council to undertake a series of community
IT/Community Informatics case studies across Canada and in conjunction
with the larger CI Researchers Network.  There will be a presentation on
the project at the AoIR conference in Toronto Oct. 17.