Eco-mUNITY is developing an increasingly education-centered focus. Through following the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, exciting developments have recently surfaced and been adopted by Eco-mUNITY. OLPC has recently released the software for the XS, which is the school server. This provides added functionality to the OLPC laptops, or XOs.

One of the most exciting features of the of the XOs is the mesh networking capability. For a demonstration of a mesh network, click on the picture to the left. This feature enhances the hyperlocality features of the kiosk deployment within communities, and is most powerful when allowing collaboration and co-creation.

Eco-mUNITY is developing educational content, and will be launching their first class soon. For more details, stay tuned!

Eco-mUNITY is excited to announce a burgeoning partnership with Bright Neighbor, a web-based toolkit to help communities thrive. Bright Neighbor is having their official launch party today at 5PM in NW Portland at The Ohm. Eco-mUNITY will be there to show how this partnership is shaping up, and to support the launch of Randy White’s brainchild.

Hello, we are the founders of Eco-mUNITY, an Empowering Community Organization, and we are empowering Community Organizers. I am Dwayne Beals and I play the part of a.citizen. Thank you, Thank you!

I am Cyd Manro and I play the part of Democracy Catalyst. Oh, and I am NOT from the future.

We wonder what part you might play in your Eco-mUNITY? Right now, we are working to empower community organization! We are on the cusp of a revolutionary shift in how citizens communicate and collaborate. Resources are becoming free and readily available, and pieces of this revolution have already begun coming together.

Unfortunately, single provider, top-down models are threatening citizens’ ability to use this technology to creatively connect and collaborate. So, Eco-mUNITY is building a grass-roots mesh network and collaborative metaverse to empower community organization.

We will do this by engaging in community outreach and by placing InterACT-a-Vision Stations in your community, complete with a community map and the foundation of a mesh network. These can then be used to interactively explore and co-create each Eco-mUNITY. What’s your community issue?

e-c-o fundraised for 3 OLPC laptops to donate to Portland communities. This modest project has been made possible by the work of a.citizen and d.catalyst. Now, several citizens have expressed their interest in getting involved and helping to bring Eco-mUNITY to their neighbors, providing the infrastructure to bring the people of communities together, and to promote sustainability.

In order to recover the initial outlay of funds by a.citizen and d.catalyst, several of you have made donations to help support this leap of faith. We express our deepest and most heartfelt thanks for helping to make this dream a reality. e-c-o has donated the hardware necessary to implement the collaborative computer kiosks that Eco-mUNITY will install in Portland communities, Eco-mUNITY will connect neighbors to communities and visa versa. Please continue to support our efforts! Click the donate button on the left and contribute whatever you can.

What about the Personal Telco Project (PTP) or Metro-fi, you ask? Well, we intend to work with organizations like PTP who share our vision of putting the power of connectivity in the hands of the people. Many users are having access issues with top-down solutions such as Metro-fi like this article suggests. In fact, a.citizen lives directly across the street from a Metro-fi access node and has spent a frustrating 8 months with little to no internet access, even while sitting directly below the node.

By building a model from the grass-roots, many problems inherent in the top-down Metro-fi model are eliminated, and more control is put back in the hands of the community members. There is no single internet service provider (ISP), but the network is comprised of whatever ISPs the community members deem suitable. Connecting these nodes will be a mesh network. Ubiquitous free wireless is on the cusp of availability on a widespread level. As the recording industry is learning, adapting to that fact is the best strategy for competitive advantage.

If you have ideas or input, please email us, call us at (206) ECO-2688, or simply comment on this post. Thank you for participating.

Eco-mUNITY is working to provide as many laptops to third world children as possible. Each laptop for which we successfully fundraise means one will be sent to Eco-mUNITY, which Eco-mUNITY will then donate to the Portland community. These laptops will be implemented into the free informational kiosks that Eco-mUNITY will install around Portland. For more information about how Eco-mUNITY is working to educate the Portland community while providing third world children with learning tools, continue to read about our project below. The best way to get involved is to contribute today! Hurry, the opportunity to get involved ends with the holiday season, and this is a gift that truly provides benefits for many people. Making a donation in someone’s name can be a great gift, too.

Eco-mUNITY is actively working in the Richmond and Montavilla communities in Portland, Oregon, though this template can be used anywhere. Through a four-phase plan, Eco-mUNITY will work with the communities of Portland to provide learning tools here and in less fortunate communities across the world. Eco-mUNITY will work to provide free wi-fi internet access, linking community members to one another, and free access nodes through kiosks that will be placed throughout the interactive communities. This infrastructure then will be used to link those in the community who wish to provide services to those who may seek them locally, without the need for a storefront, keeping local business local, and thus enhancing the sustainability of the communities we affect. The project will be done face to face, door to door, in a grass-roots format, and paper-free to boot. Eco-mUNITY is working to increase the sustainability of Portland while increasing the sustainability of our business model at the same time. Environmental concerns and awareness permeate our implementation strategies. Keeping the fundamental services available for free ensures that poverty does not overwhelmingly prohibit access to bicycles, computers, or the internet. Get involved today!

Phase 1
Eco-mUNITY is actively working this holiday season to raise enough funds to provide at least one child of a third world country with a laptop through the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. If successful, a second laptop will be sent to Eco-mUNITY, which will then be donated to the Portland community to be used for Phase 2.

Phase 2
Eco-mUNITY will use each laptop earned from phase one as a component in a kiosk placed within the Portland community. Each kiosk will be an information node to teach and learn about community news and events, to meet and interact with local community members, and to provide and seek local services peer-to-peer. Environmental and sustainability awareness permeate our building designs.

Phase 3
Eco-mUNITY will build a wi-fi mesh network from the grass-roots up, providing free and accessible internet access using existing internet connections. Top down solutions seem to be ridden with issues. Grass-roots solutions have worked quite well in third world implementations, and they provide the model for this project.

Phase 4
Eco-mUNITY will build a community collaboration and listing service which will enable interaction, collaboration, and communication. This service can be used for chatting, coordinating community campaigns, voting on community issues, informing the community about news and events, and telling you when and where Eco-mUNITY will be going next!
Richmond Eco-mUNITY: Learn more…
Montvilla Eco-mUNITY coming soon!

Technologies evolve..people haven’t. It’s kind of a strange thing, if you think about it. The machines and materials all around us are getting smarter. Smart phones, smart materials, smart gels with “memory” and we’re all getting dumber. More savvy? Maybe. But more likely to become pregnant before 18 than we used to be. More likely to care less about how these same new technologies which make our lives easier, might also be reducing the “human” and “social” qualities of them.

Toxic and human wastes, life-long, inescapable low-level radiation (doesn’t sound so benign when you tack on a few adjectives, does it?) not to mention the myriad chemicals, specifically isolated and concentrated in factories in order to be disposed of later after processing by our bodies.

Well it’s all there. And we know it’s there. And we don’t care. At least as a society we don’t seem to much. The T.V. will tell you 10,000 ways that your neighbor will kill you, but fails to mention that it’s heart disease that most people die of. Then Cancer. Common sense tends to indicate that it’s not who you know, but what’s going into your body that’s killing you. But again…we don’t care.

Well not as a whole..but here we are. If we come together..even in small groups..those small groups will produce change. It’s inevitable. But to understand how powerful we are as a group of individuals joined together for a common purpose, we have to have the courage to invest a little time, because that’s where our capital is.

Certainly, this is a reasonable mark of our evolution from the simple herd/hive mentality of bees or cows to more conscious human beings: that we chose to do of our own freewill, that which we believe in, with more motivation than we ever did to earn wages and promote the goals of our captains of industry.

Congratulations for making it to Eco-mUNITY. We’re on our way.

daf

“What, exactly, does Eco-mUNITY DO?” you may ask. Well, we shall endeavor over the next few weeks to outline exactly that. Overall, we put the “e” in Eco-mUNITY when we plug the dot into the com by providing free wi-fi access, the “eco” in Eco-mUNITYwhen we plug the community into sustainability, and the “community” is put into Eco-mUNITY citizen by citizen. Thank you for reading this, learning about Eco-mUNITY, and in doing so, thank you for participating.

REAListic optimIST has become concerned that the amazing connection capability of the internet and cellular technology has been causing the opposite phenomenon. More and more, people are staring at their cel phones or listening to their ipods instead of talking to people encountered on their daily commute; or people stay home and watch TV or surf the net to find their entertainment instead of going to local community meeting spots. As a result, one driving purpose of Eco-mUNITY is to build an infrastructure to enable more community collaboration because that collective experience will transform our experience of life by increasing the ease of intentional and co-created community.

Yet, if having a conversation with someone in China is indicitive of people coming together, and texting our next door neighbor is a sign that we need to get out more, where is the tipping point? At what point do we value our ability to enrich each other’s lives enough to brave the threat of misplacing trust? Just where is the boundary where community is sufficiently diverse yet tightknit?

Eco-mUNITY will seek to highlight the artistic expression contained within the community to amplify the color and characteristics which make up each community identity and the mythos of each community story. Eco-mUNITY will invite artisitc collaboration with a community focus to incorporate in each community effort. You are the face of Eco-mUNITY.

Eco-mUNITY will also help to flesh out the flavor and identity of each community by providing a community map with several layers, each of which show the location of particular individuals, services, notable sites, and the like both from Eco-mUNITY’s website, and from publicly accessible kiosks. Eco-mUNITY envisions these kiosks to be able to not only provide information, but to also be tied to Eco-mUNITY’s Community Bike Project, which is designed to function like FleXcar, only with bicycles in order to empower the expedient and eCo-locomotion of community citizens.

Eco-mUNITY will work with already existing organizations to help them to better work with one another to serve the community more effectively. Eco-mUNITYwill also put together community events designed to bring people together to meet each other, and to engage in the the aforementioned community dialogue in order to empower micro-democracy. Eco-mUNITY intends to work with neighborhood organizations and community members to facilitate direct democracy (or as Democracy Catalyst likes to say, “foment micro-democracy”) at the community level.

There is more to come!

Click the button above to sign up for Dreamhost hosting at a discounted rate. Eco-mUNITY will pay some of the hosting cost for you, and in return, Eco-mUNITY earns some dough, too. (Hey, we have to pay for this site somehow!)

I have connected to Eco-mUNITY for the first time through a free wi-fi connection provided by Metrofi.
At the same time, Realistic Optimist is attempting to post a video from his camera to the web for my retrieval.

If we are successful we will have the first EcoTV semi-live field reporting to the web, representing a collaboration between two mobile reporters. A studio is no longer needed as editing is now possible on the fly using the computerized clipboard.

a.citizen