Archive for May 21st, 2009

Take your spot. Jump in wherever you see fit. This public initiative is a lot like a village, having numerous centres of production and cooperation. An array of efforts help realize the larger enterprise, which in this case is the aggregation of budget-relevant data, the creative re-presentation of that data, and the creation of participatory learning opportunities developed out of collected resources and public contribution.

Where do you fit in? Can you lend a helping hand? The work that needs to be done is much more like play. At least it feels that way when you get connected to the right people who share your interests and passion. Do you write? or report? How about programming? Can you apply yourself in the packaging of data for public consumption? Are you a good storyteller? Voice or keyboard? In this town, we’re collecting raw goods (read: data) and we’re processing it for public digestion and export. The larger achievement of this enterprise is the broad, voluntary participation by active Canadian citizens. And the reward is not simply ‘participation’ but rather the skill of ‘coordination’. That is to say, from being a part of our village’s activities, each participant gains strength and knowledge in the realm of self-organization among (geographically) dispersed, (digitially) inter-connected social networks.

A dynamic site. A crowd-developed wiki. A project blog. A database. The site will explain, re-direct, outline, and offer detail about various aspects of the project as it evolves. Reflections and reviews of this evolution will take place in the project blog. The wiki will ideally grow into a public resource, which educates visitors about the budget, its development and implementation, with broad connections to all current and emerging resources aggregated by the project. The database hosts public data sets, while also serving as a support for the tracking and coordination of related online resources and feeds.

The truth of the matter is that our village is only coming to be. We’ve put up flyers about a frontier town, which we’ve only named and surveyed recently. We just now have the basic infrastructure up for people to settle here and take their place. So a variety of lots are presently available. Where ‘ye reckon you’ll lean up? The liberty’s yours.