Summer-Fall 2001

What have community network practitioners learned to do well that can now be taught to other practitioners? In antiquity, the walls and gates surrounding a town or city did more than provide protection: they helped define the boundaries of the culture and commerce that thrived within. In the age of the Internet, these boundaries are electronic. The art of community networking is evolving into a practice that uses the Internet creatively to help communities better define themselves, as the city gates of old had done. “Ars Portalis” literally translated means “the arts of the city gates.”

The idea for the Ars Portalis project began during an Association for Community Networking strategic planning retreat held in July 1998. The Technology Opportunity Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce (formerly TIIAP) had just announced a request for proposals to help the agency better focus program guidelines and improve understanding of how funded demonstration projects could thrive under their own steam. This issue of “sustainability” was an important theme at the AFCN retreat and remains so. Building on these discussions, the Center for Civic Networking successfully negotiated a one-year $100,000 contract from TOP, awarded in June 2000, to ask leading practitioners to compete in a cluster of small, short-term studies to sharpen understanding of key sustainability issues facing community networks.

Ars Portalis planning meeting on Whidbey Island, Washington, last September with Richard Lowenberg (Davis Community Network), Karen Michaelson (TINCAN), Tom Campbell (SnoNet) and Michael Gurstein (Vancouver Community Network).

As an initial activity, a planning meeting held in September 2000 assessed the current “state of play” of community networking, producing a white paper entitled “Community Networking Gets Interesting” that can be downloaded from the Ars Portalis website. A request for proposals was prepared, based on the white paper. Twenty-five applications were received in November and reviewed by a panel of community networking experts in December, with five contract studies awarded in January 2001 and completed in May. Towards the end of the studies, online requests for comments were invited from community networking practitioners from around the world to critique initial findings.

The five contracted studies tackled a range of practical challenges and opportunities facing community networks.

• MIT PhD candidate Randal Pinkett analyzed data from interviews with residents of a recently constructed—and resident owned—public housing development in Boston, on their use of a prototype community networking software application called the “Creating Community Connections (C3)” system. The C3 system incorporates a suite of modules that could be useful in a variety of settings relevant to many community-based organizations such as CTCs and community networks. These modules include: User profiles, web email, calendar, forums, listserv, chat, file storage, news, org/business database, GIS maps, job/volunteer postings, surveys, resumes, personal portals and site-wide search.

• Randal Pinkett with Rachel Kimboko, HUD Neighborhood Network technical assistance staff, at special CTC VISTA Project HUD resource development session in February.

  Dr. Avrum Bluming, founder of the Los Angeles Freenet, tested a potential community network “killer application” for health care that empowers patients and reduces demands on nurses, which can be replicated world-wide.
• Matthew Shapiro, of a Boise Idaho based community development firm and one time mayoral candidate (with over 30% of the votes), explored prospects for municipal contract support of community network services to neighborhood associations.
• Tom Campbell, executive director of SnoNet, a community network near Seattle, examined 12 business opportunities with a prospect of generating close to a half million a year in annual operating revenue. The business case analysis was critiqued by venture capitalists, attorneys, accountants, and others in the field of community networking to validate directions and risks for future development.
• Finally, San Diego community media consultant Susan Myrland researched federal policy supporting public telecommunications and interviewed a number of community networking practitioners to uncover critical gaps that community networks need to address to understand audience demographics and marketing—and where key federal investments based on public broadcasting precedent perhaps now need to be made to help open new markets for community networking.

Richard Civille is director of the Ars Portalis project and co-editor of The Community Technology Review.

Where does the Ars Portalis project lead? Community networking is a work in progress. There is a great need to better formalize tacit knowledge embedded in the field experience of practitioners into formal knowledge that can influence both curriculum and funding priorities both public and private. The Ars Portalis project promotes a continual cycle of improved practice by supporting the work of practitioners in translating the lessons they learn in the field into practical ways that can be used by others.

A final report compiling overall findings and recommendations and the online critique will be completed during the summer of 2001. This report will contribute to the transformation of ten years of demonstration projects into robust new enterprises that help local communities better define themselves in the digital age. The report will offer a detailed and rich assessment of key sustainability issues facing community networking. This assessment hopes to create a foundation for new curriculum development designed to improve practice, and suggest shifts in funding priorities needed to open new markets for community networking.