introducing Net²

Net² is an invitation into the marvelous, messy world of the Internet as a participatory, interactive community: a community created by its users. This site, and the Net² conference, will help non-profit organizations move into that world -- byte by byte, blog by blog, RSS feed by RSS feed. We don't know exactly what the Net² community will look like, or how it will change the face of the non-profit web. What we do know is that both the online and offline work of every non-profit can be enhanced by a dynamic online community in which organizations and users support one another. And we know that the creativity and commitment of the non-profit world is crucial to achieving the creative and community potential of the Internet itself.

building a community of nonprofit communities

Welcome to NetSquared -- or as we'll be calling it here Net² -- the beginnings of a very large project to encourage and support collaboration among and between nonprofit organizations and non-governmental agencies that are doing crucial work that otherwise wouldn't get done. Watch where you step, there are cables and wires snaking around all over the place, bits and pieces of unfinished information infrastructure we're banging together. The noise is a bit deafening.

From one perspective, it'd be nice to be able to say that the construction will be complete next week. Or next month, or next year. But it won't be. The construction will go on as long as there are people plugged in to this collaborative framework. Because the framework itself invites further construction, further elaboration, mutual discovery of new ways to get things done. So it's noisy, yeah, but it's a joyous noise. If you get it, grab a hammer.

But first, come on over here where we can hear ourselves think. Let's talk.

We launched this thing up just a few weeks after Katrina hit the US Gulf Coast. While our plans for Net² were laid long before that disaster, Katrina emphasizes some of the core problems we hope to address -- and that we invite you, whoever you are, whatever your skills and background, to join us in solving.

let George do it

Ironically, there's an old expression used by people who want to avoid this sort of work: let George do it. Clearly, that's not such a terrific option these days. The sluggish response to Katrina shocked the world, not least Americans who expected the US Cavalry to arrive in the nick of time and save the day, just like in the movies. But this wasn't that kind of movie. It was a horror show.

The US Department of Defense used to have a slogan (maybe it still does) that shaped its approach to the many problems it faced: C³I -- for Command, Control and Communications Intelligence. Of those three, communications remains viable. Command and control don't fit so well anymore, even for the military. And certainly not for our purposes here.

Command and control assumes a top-down pyramidal hierarchy with a small cadre of power-wielders at the top and a large number of commandable, controllable agents at the bottom. The more these "agents" resemble unthinking, unquestioning robots, the better. Such power-based approaches to the problems of today's world don't work so well anymore, if they ever did. Not because they're authoritarian -- though they're certainly that -- but because such a setup assumes that the best knowledge of what to do and how to do it resides at the top of the pyramid. It usually doesn't.

When Katrina hit, the best "intelligence" being communicated was coming from bloggers who were at ground zero. Until the power failed, that is, which happened pretty fast in many cases. But still, this news from the field was enough to alert the mass media that something was wrong -- very very wrong. The bottom-up news didn't jibe with what the press was hearing from the top of the power pyramid. And some intrepid journalists started getting the real news out to the rest of us. Score one for we the people.

We are all at ground zero today. And expecting help from the Cavalry may well be an obsolete fantasy. It's just us chickens, as the saying goes. But us chickens, to torture the metaphor, have a few tricks up our sleeves.

enthusiasm trumps obedience

The open source software phenomenon has created exciting new possibilities for bottom-up, as opposed to top-down, solutions, not only to technological challenges but to social problems as well. Open means non-proprietary. It means that many programmers can tinker with these tools and share the best of what they've developed with a global community of like-minded individuals. The rapidly resulting next-generation tools are also open and unconstrained by patents and other impediments to rapid improvement and deployment. And so it goes. In this case, the "next generation" may be ready for deployment in days, not months or years, as in the case of conventional software.

Notice that none of this happens by top-down "command and control." It happens bottom-up through voluntary collaboration. It is driven by curiosity and enthusiasm, not slavish obedience to some "higher" authority.

Because of all this openness, and all the cool new tricks it makes possible, many more people want to understand it and put it to use. Programmers steeped in the open source way of doing things, and who have understood this groundswell -- some would call it a market -- have opened these tools still further. Today, you don't need to be a programmer to start a weblog, share digital photos across the net, pull local maps into websites, share hard-won "intelligence" with a community -- whether that community is located in your hometown or distributed across the planet.

Such easily assembled tools -- bits and pieces of capability that can be wired together like Tinkertoys -- have enabled the development of powerful social networking platforms, such as the one you're seeing evolve here. New models of organization structure and community involvement are emerging rapidly on the net right now, and we'll be pointing you to what we think are best of breed in this area. We'll also be learning from and taking advantage of such tools and models to make Net² more capable, more robust, and easier for more people to use.

Two such systems bear mentioning here. One is Drupal, an open source content management platform, which Net² is running on. Use this link to learn more about its "community plumbing" -- the company's tagline. How cool is that?

The other is Bryght, a value-added hosting company, which is using Drupal and other tools to help individuals, businesses and organizations quickly assemble complex websites to serve the needs of their respective communities. Bryght is hosting Net² pro bono, for which we're extremely grateful.

bowling together

In 2000, Robert Putnam published a book titled Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Although this sociological manifesto-of-sorts was aimed at the US, its findings were applicable to the world at large. Putnam studied the breakdown of what he called "social capital," the community resources necessary to get important things accomplished. The trend, he said, was toward isolation and disempowerment, a steady and disturbing corrosion of social capital.

However, Putnam also pointed to the Internet as a potential source of hope. "Social capital is about networks," he wrote, "and the Net is the network to end all networks.” This prediction of the net's power to increase social connection and facilitate shared vision has come true in ways that exceed even the wildest dreams we may have entertained five years ago.

The nonprofit world has always been about increasing social capital. Linking the social objectives of nonprofits with the open source tools now becoming widely available on the web enables that "capital" to grow in entirely new ways, increasing the social cohesion we need so much today. We have the intelligence, we have the communication capabilities. This isn't pie in the sky.

working with a net

For too long, we've been working without a net. Now we've got one, and its potential is enormous. But as ever, we need each other to bring that potential to bear on real problems. As open and easy as the software has become, it's still not a walk in the park for underfunded nonprofits to wire it all together in useful ways -- or even to see, in many cases, what's possible. That's what Net² is all about. Creating a framework where those who've already found working solutions can share them with other organizations. A place where savvy technical professionals with a sense of social responsibility can contribute advice, education, and much needed skills.

Not least, Net² is a place where the private sector can plug in to lend assistance, and actually get their hands dirty in the process. Nonprofit initiatives need money, sure. Bigtime. But companies that have thrown cash at social problems have typically learned nothing from the work of identifying and implementing solutions. Net² is a place where everyone will learn from everyone -- building out this collaborative framework at the same time we use it to share tips, tricks, challenges, and effective methods.

Who is the audience for all this? You are. We are. Just us chickens down here at ground zero. We are audience to each other.

OK, now grab a hammer!