Concept Paper: Cloud-Community Ecosystem
I. General Deliverables
A) Promote collaboration that results in innovative, sustainable solutions that resolve social problems.
B) Invigorate cross-sector engagement that emphasizes the common good.
C) Establish an innovative framework for community leaders to self-organize and produce results.
D) Evaluate results with an eye towards incubating promising solutions and decreasing orphaned innovation.
II. The Purpose and Approach
Catalyze growth of pathways to existing resources and emerging, innovative, collaborative products and services.
A) Dynamic Mapping
Mapping is intrinsic human behavior mediated by culture and individual capacity. Most persons never use a cartographical map and yet they know where their vital interests are located. “Dynamic mapping” uses modern information technology in concert with traditional “hands-on” methods to connect people and resources. The result is not an item such as a guidebook. Rather, it is a set of community-wide patterns of inputs and outputs that change lives for the better in a defined population.
B) Leveraging Community Wisdom
Wisdom from decades of community development and innovation from current waves of information technology are compatible. The paradigm recognizes that culture and geography are fundamental variables in utilization patterns and the creation of new resources. This is a pedagogical perspective that emphasizes the commonwealth rather than the interests of a sector, institution or organization. A “Community-Cloud Ecosystem” platform supports grassroots organizing and autonomous, individualized connectivity, as well as sustainability among collaborating organizations.
C) The Individual is Valued in the Ecosystem
Conditions, such as scarcity or abundance of essentials and amenities, set the menu of choices that are available to an individual. A marginalized community has fewer opportunities for individuals to build wealth (e.g., incomes, businesses, civic institutions). A perception of chronic futility militates against the motivation required to overcome obstacles. In contrast, the experience of personal benefit associated with actions reinforces the perseverance required for sustained progress. Each person that puts value in gets value out, regardless of their station in life or their status in the system.
D) The Ecosystem’s Platform
The platform connects interpersonal transactions and virtual interactivity. Dynamic mapping creates collaborative history in the ecosystem. The result is fractal growth of knowledge that simulates an organic process such as growth that emerges in a fallow field. Data and analysis tools are available to each person and organization that participates in the ecosystem. Credentials constrain and expand access according to requirements.
E) Evaluation in the Platform
Motivation ebbs and flows based upon perception of value. An obstacle to collaboration during times of scarcity is competition for resources, because self-interest tends to trump the common good. The platform is the result of an adaptive development cycle which includes ongoing evaluation of participants’ interests. Among the deliverables is capacity-building at promotes enlightened self-interest among participants. Through this process, the organization/system promotes a “double bottom-line” (social venture enterprise) perspective.
Prepared by Victor Bloomberg, LCSW, CEO, IPTTP – November 12, 2011
