Sherida Ryan

I attended MESH 2007 this week and I find myself with conflicting perspectives on the event. The conflict is between sherida, the indiscriminate student of all things new and shiny and Sherida, the Academic.

MESH was divided into two days and two streams. The first day was mostly devoted to Media/Society. I found myself stimulated by some of the keynotes and panels, particularly the ones that could be loosely interpreted as being related to the Third Sector. I was paying attention to how the participatory web could be used by nonprofits and to any new ideas or applications that the sector could adopt. I came away excited by some of the things that I heard, sherida, the student was engaged.

Oh, except for one thing. I am sure that the organizers gave a lot of thought to the structure of the conference and were trying to find new ways of presenting information and engaging people. However, I found myself somewhat irritated by the style of the keynotes: interview, large audience. It was a good effort at trying something different (not new, but different), however, the structure made poor use of adult learning principles. I felt that I was experiencing a TV program…like Inside the Actors Studio…except that the ‘hosts’ weren’t quite as unctuous. The panels and, especially, the workshops were somewhat better.

There were many breaks between presentations and this was probably excellent for people whose primary purpose for coming to the conference was to network. I found myself at times wondering whether there were such long breaks because there was not enough content. Segue to Sherida the Academic.

The second day focused on Marketing, PR and Business. At first, I was quite open to the presentations and could happily ignore my fellow participants whose world views were ubercapitalist. Where the conference began to irritate me (Sherida, the Academic) was when I encountered people talking about community and forms of trust. Not surprisingly, since this is the focus of my thesis. I found people discussing these subjects with little depth, with nothing more than anecdotes of what worked for them in narrow circumstances. The online community workshop was something of an exception, as at least, I felt that the person conducting it had depth of experience.

So when I walked away from the second day I began to reflect on what I had really taken away from the conference. It added up to a few bright shiny ideas and a few people that I will contact. Did I really learn anything new, anything that I could sink my teeth into, anything that had lasting meaning…no. I learned something about myself…always good. The conference was definitely worth the student price that I paid ($25). Nevertheless, I have a feeling that if I were paying the full registration ($399), I would have been underwhelmed.

Despite reports that associational activity is in decline; people, in increasing numbers, are turning to the Internet to connect with others who share their interests. Online communities or groups are the fastest growing form of social organization. In 2001, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that one in five Internet users, approximately 20 million people, belonged to at least one online community, visiting this group several times per week. Many of these online communities appear to share characteristics that are normally ascribed to place-based nonprofit organizations. Yet these online enterprises are rarely included in any mapping of the nonprofit and voluntary sector, rendering them invisible in any study of the social economy.

There are a number of challenges to including online nonprofit enterprises within the study of the social economy. The first challenge is to accurately identify them. Although criteria for place-based social economy organizations have been developed, it is uncertain whether these conditions can be generalized or transferred to an internet-mediated environment. Online communities are characterized by fluid boundaries, widely fluctuating membership, the majority of which remain invisible and only partially committed, and informal, malleable, organizational structures. These are just some of the features that have contributed to the offline-online community debate and that may also have an impact on the conceptualization of online non-profits or social economy phenomena. Concepts operationalized for place-based phenomena have not always transferred well to the online milieu. Generalizing from a traditional definition of place-based social economy enterprises may not be the optimal means for coming to grips with these boundary spanning organizations.

Driving down Highway 1 (California coast) around San Simeon, we came around a bend and were greeted by what I thought at first was an hallucination of moving rocks. Turns out to be an elephant seal rookery very close to the road. David and I were able to get close enogh to these animals to report that they have very fishy breath.

These amazing creatures are watched over by the Friends of the Elephant Seal, a voluntary organization dedicated to educating people about this type of marine mammal.

One of the things that I enjoy doing when I travel is to suss out local free newspapers and unique radio stations. San francisco is a delight in terms of these travel pleasures. Picked up the San Franciso Bay Guardian at City Lights Books. My guess is that the Guardian would be the equivilent of Now Magazine in Toronto. However the writing and the content are certainly not similar. The Guardian’s editorials and articles are much better written and have an unashamedly left-wing focus. The events listings show San Francisco as a very diverse and exciting city.
And Berkely Free Speech Radio…what can I say. It’s right up there with the best.