This week on CivicWise

Hello everyone,

After the long post last week, this time it’s going to be a short update. Enjoy!

//PRINCIPLES//
The topic of this week’s hangout was Principles. We discussed the first drafts that people shared on Discourse. We want to finish the work by next week so please share your thoughts and ideas on Discourse by Monday 15th. On Tuesday 16th 10am-12pm (GMT+1) we will host a Hangout to summarise the different suggestions and finalise the draft. Let us know if you want to participate.

//PARIS CIRCLE//
We have a great news here! CivicWise is taking part in a neighbourhood project to find ideas to regenerate Place des Fêtes, a square in the North-Est of Paris. Every Wednesday during the whole month of July, CivicWise will be out there in the square, talking to the local residents and engaging with the space. Watch out for the CivicWise stall if you are around and stop by to say hi.

//CIVICWISE COMMUNITY//
As we highlighted last week talking about the governance, people can join CivicWise both as individual and as an existing organisation.

On this spirit, Paola Buttiglione e Luigi Reggi from Monithon, got in touch because they are interested in expanding their project abroad and were considering to possibly partner with CivicWise. Monithon was born as an independently developed initiative to promote the citizen monitoring of development projects funded both by the Italian government and the EU. Citizen monitoring of these projects is possible thanks to a combination of open government data and citizens’ collaboration, joined by the goal of controlling how the projects are progressing, and whether they deliver actual results.

We think it’s a great idea and are looking forward to continue the conversation with Paola and Luigi. Who knows, maybe they’ll become a thematic circle soon.

Have a great weekend!

Still working on our Principles

The topic of our Global Hangout this week was our Principles. See more details on how you can help reading this post on our Discourse platform > http://discourse.civicwise.org/t/principles-first-proposal-for-a-civicwise-principles-chart/113/5

Next global hangout will be next Wednesday at 21h (CEST Central European Time) and will be focused again on our “PRINCIPLES” and “GOBERNANCE”.

Have a great weekend!

This week in CivicWise

Happy weekend everyone!

While Summer finally sets in and most people start to think about BBQ, sun and holidays, we have been pretty busy bees so there you go, the roundup of what happened this week.

//PRINCIPLES//
During the hangout we discussed about the first draft of our Principles chart, which you can see here. It’s a work in progress and we aim to work on it until next Wednesday in order to have develop the final copy by the end of next hangout. Take a look at it, share your thoughts and any improvement idea on Discourse.

//GOVERNANCE//
The topic spontaneously arose during the hangout as well. There are two main news on this.

The first one is that we decided to define four different roles in the CivicWise community according to the level of involvement: friend, member, civicwiser and civicwiser executive we know, this one sounds terribly corporate but we run out of creativity for the name. Any ideas for a better one?! To find out more about what each role means, check the CW role matrix here.

Both civicwiser roles will be subject to meeting certain commitment requirements, which means that there will be an initial expression of willingness to overtake the role. During this ‘incubation period’, the person will be considered a ‘candidate’ and will be required to contribute to different activities within the community. You can see the detailed description of them in the role matrix. We will publish a form for those interested in becoming a civicwiser soon; in the meantime you can already start thinking about your ideal role and share it with us in the comment section.

The second news is that we polished off the definition of circles vs projects. Over time we realised that people were getting confused about geographic circles, governance circle, magazine circle, project circles etc. and we came up with three simple clusters.

There are two types of circles: the geographic ones and the thematic one. Geographic circles are all the one defined by the countries (CW France, CW Italy, CW Spain, etc.) or cities (CW London, CW Paris, CW Bogota, etc.). Thematic circles are created around a topic rather then a location. Think about them as a group of people working on a specific topic. Examples can be magazine circle, tech circle, urban apps circle, street design circle, etc. Another type of thematic circle, is an existing organisation that wants to join the CivicWise community. In this case you will have the ‘name-of-the-organisation’ circle.

Every circle requires someone to take care of the welcoming (be the first point of contact for anyone interested in the circle, welcome new members, answer queries, etc.), communication (social media, emails, etc.) and general coordination (make sure that the circle’s activities run smoothly and stuff gets done). Ideally these three tasks will be split between different people to minimise the burden but obviously in a small circle, one person can be responsible for all of them.

Different circles together form a community, regardless whether it’s a group of geographic circles, thematic ones, or a mix of the two. All of them will be under the umbrella – no superstition here while the sun is out! – of the CivicWise community.

This means that projects now specifically defines the participatory urban projects supported by the CivicWise community.

//METHOD//
We took on board the feedbacks on the first draft of the Projects toolkit and looked back at the 10 steps of our Civic Design Method. The result is a 3-stages process (THINK – DO – ROLL), which is available here. The explanation of it is up on Discourse, where you can also comment and suggest improvements. We want to get this done and over by the end of the month, so hurry up and have your say!

//MISCELLANEOUS//
During the week we got the outcome of two competitions we applied for, the ECF Idea Camp and the Designing the Urban Commons. Unfortunately we were not successful in either of them. Sigh. It’s a pity, but that actually made us realise that it is probably too early to apply for competitions given the little evidence of impact we can show so far. This should motivate us to work harder on defining our identity (principles) setting up the organisation (governance) and finding the first projects to work with (method).

To do this efficiently and fast, we need your help so click on the links, take a look of the drafts and share what you think. A collaborative effort is the best way to succeed!

Have a great weekend

This week in CivicWise

Since our launch in London almost three months ago, the CivicWise community has rapidly grown and so is the work we are doing.

From engaging with new people, working on the method, talking about internal governance, and shaping the platform, it is a real challenge to keep track of everything that’s going on.

We therefore decided to introduce a new weekly post here on the blog to briefly recap what happened during the week.

No matter if you are a dedicated civicwiser but are extremely busy during the week to join the Wednesday hangouts or you are just interested to keep in the loop, watch out for these posts every Saturday morning.

We promise they will be as short as a breaking news and won’t take longer to read than having your breakfast. No more excuses to feel left out!

Please tell us if you find them useful or anything else you would like to be informed of.

There you go, enjoy the first post of the ‘This week in CivicWise’ series.

– During the hangout on the ‘method’ we discussed about a first draft of a toolkit or canvas for supporting CivicWise projects. Read more about it here and take part in the discussion on Discourse.

– On Thursday Domenico presented CivicWise in Padua, Italy, hosted by the co-working space Co+ . It was very refreshing to acknowledge the commonground between their mission and our Civic Space project.

– Domenico’s trip in Italy continued on Friday in Verona, invited by Francesco Previti where he met a group of passionate people interested in setting up a CivicWise local circle. They are working on the renovation and repurposing of the old arsenal and they are thinking to use CivicWise method for the participative design phase of the project.

– Melissa, a civicwiser living in Berlin wants to set up a local circle there. We think it’s a great idea given the amount of potential projects in the German city. If you live there and would like to be part of it, get in touch!

Have a great weekend!

Toolkit or Canvas?

The topic of our Global Hangout this week was our Civic Design Method. Orsola brought a new approach: a sort of Toolkit or Canvas. She presented a first draft of it. Now everyone is warmly invited to contribute to improve it. See more details on how you can help reading this post on our Discourse platform > http://discourse.civicwise.org/t/opening-how-we-should-start-a-civic-design-process/44/15

Next global hangout will be next Wednesday at 21h (CEST Central European Time) and will be focused on our “PRINCIPLES”

Have a great weekend!

Summer is coming

After a two weeks break we are back with our weekly global hangouts. We need to restore our rhythm and go ahead with our own definition and organization.

This hangout has been very quick. Has been a sort of warm up for the coming summer.

We discussed about Governance and the coming steps for the CivicWise development with some concern about the need to get as soon as possible the first version of our Principles “chart”. Andrea offered himself as a volunteer to synthesise all the information collected so far and he will generate that document.

Next week the Governance Circle will start again with the weekly sessions, programmed for the Thursday 28th at 13h (CEST Central European Time).

Next global hangout will be next Wednesday at 21h (CEST Central European Time) and will be focused on our “METHOD”.

CIVICWISE LONDON CIRCLE MEETUP – PART OF OUISHARE FEST 2015 SATELLITE EVENT

It’s been over two months since we had the CivicWise Kick off event in London. Since then, the CivicWise community has grown and now we are nearly 300 people working on the project worldwide.

While the global network is growing, we would like to reinforce the “London Circle” by bringing together everyone who is interested in the project and taking about the next steps.

It will be an informal meeting at The Hoop and Grapes pub in Aldgate at 7pm. It’s a great chance to see each other and to talk about where the project is going and what kind of local actions we could do.

The event will take part in the OuiShare Fest 2015 as a Sattellite Event, meaning that we will find out more about what is going on in Paris in the main event. It is a good opportunity to share ideas with a community that has many things in common with us.

Sign up on Eventbrite and join us!

Coordinating our Communication

This week our topic of discussion was Communication. We had a “different” Global Hangout, as you can see on the recorded video. Following you have the minute of the session.

Twitter:

Global account:

Manager: Domenico and Orsola.

Content:

  • Information about the hangouts: before (Orsola), during, after (Domenico).
  • Replying to people.
  • Engagement.
  • Inspiration.

Create a photoshop (or similar open source software) template with image and text for announcing the hangout.

National accounts:

Managers (so far):

Italy: Saverio.

Spain: Daniel.

France: Domenico.

Catalunya: Ana.

Colombia: María.

Netherlands: Carer needed!!!

Content:

  • Translating global account into local language.
  • Some extra content.

 

Twitter lists:

Categories:

Civicwisers

Civic Engagement

Organizations

People

Academia

Local authorities

Communities

Urban Praxis

 

Newsletter:

We will send newsletters only when something important is happening. For updates we will use the blog. We won’t use the newsletter for announcing hangouts or anything similar.

The objective of this is to avoid sending too much information to people.

We will try to send one per month.

Blog:

Monday: Announcing the hangout and promoting the topic of the week (Daniel).

Thursday: Post-hangout: minutes and discussion (Domenico).

Saturday: Highlights of the week (Orsola):

There will be a discussion on discourse about what are the highlights of the week. The deadline for the discussion on discourse will be Friday, so the carer of communication can do a summary a publish a post in the blog on Saturday. This post will include around 5 bullet points about what has happened during the week.

The all will be shared on social media.

Local physical presentations:

Prepare a text (Domenico) and slides (Pablo) for the presentation.

Brand book:

Jonathan will do the illustrations.

Pablo will do a brand book to show how to use logos, texts, how to compose slides, name cards, images for the blog, etc.

Facebook:

Sharing the blogs-posts (Pablo): Monday, Thursday, Saturday.

Inspiration posts (Domenico and open to anyone).


We will skip the hangout next week for having two weeks to think deeply about the principles and having a Global Hangout on Wednesday the 20th about PRINCIPLES.