Information AdvocacySM

Contents

For the latest version of this page: IA Notebook at Wikidelphia

Invitation

Hi All.

I am looking for people who would like to join me in studying the role that an Information Advocate might play in neighborhoods, community centers and churches. This role might include ordinary neighborhood news, but in addition, it might also work on a personal, one-on-one "real needs" counseling and match making level to help people find the social supports and material connections needed to make their everyday living work more smoothly.

I currently manage an email list list with over 50 participants who have shown some interest in Information Advocacy.

Please write if you'd like to learn more ... Stan <pokras@ntronline.org>

The Notebook

This page and the associated links and materials are available as a method for collecting resources that Information Advocates might use in the course of their work. This notebook can also serve as an outline for the further study towards the design and implementation of a network of Information Advocates. The network will need communication tools of its own to compliment existing information resources on the Internet and in existing institutions around the city. Interested people can help by considering how we can assemble a white paper on the effect a network of Information Advocates might have on the social and economic life of the city.

Background

Everything for Everybody

The blog post about the Temple U meeting last Spring.

I met Jack Scully in 1970. I ran the Everything for Everybody shop on South Street in Philly from June of 1970 to June of 1971. Here's one of its original advertising materials, an Everything for Everybody flier (PDF).

The following year we called ourselves the "Information Store Collective." Alec Claton's experience as revealed in the essay below, happened between three and six years later.

Alec Claton's article about his experience with Everything for Everybody in New York. 

Civic Consciousness: Increasing Self-Sufficiency in the Complex Adaptive City

Jennifer Pahlka believes that the value of a city reaches far beyond its borders.  (video)

Ideas

  • Augmented social complexity
  • Consciously increasing the complexity of social consciousness.

Network Theory

Alternative Currencies

Timebanks are systems that allow people to obtain & offer services without using cash. Learn more about them at the links below. These services offer the ability to keep track of the value of the services that are exchanged.

http://www.letslinkuk.net/home/theory.htm

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TimeBanking/

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/HOURS/?yguid=176590836

Jem Bendell - The Money Myth (video)

overview of information on local currencies

Philadelphia area timebanks are listed here: Is-Timebank

Resources Exchanges

Resource Exchanges provide ways for people to exchange goods or services, but without providing a method for keeping track of the value of the exchange. 

See Is-Resource Exchange Network

Qualities of An Information Advocate

Community members may wish to nominate Information Advocates to be their representative in a regional (city wide) advocate network. Nominations might take the form of a nominating survey style document that will ask the nominators to rate the nominee's virtues. The virtues that an advocate should possess might include:

  • Honesty
  • Reliability
  • Clarity
  • Sincerity
  • Discretion
  • Graciousness
  • Knowledgeable
  • Values

Bibliography

  • The Challenge of the Resource Exchange Network - Seymour B. Sarason & Elizabeth Lorentz (Jossey-Bass, 1979)
  • The Future of Money - Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World - Bernard Lietaer (Random House, 1988)
  • Complexity - The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos - M. Mitchell Waldrop (Simon & Schuster, 1992)

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