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Inside Web Lab
Issue 13.0
June 11, 2003
This month's weirdest Googling that brought people to the Web Lab site:
"frowning mac"
"on a beach ball"
"malcontent conference"
"a silly noisy house"
"bizarre thumb gallery"
=========================
CONTENTS
A New SGD on Men, War, and Love
Project 540: Learning What Students Want
Planning a "Clean River" Dialogue in Oregon
Reaching Out for Dialogue Partners and Projects
Crossover Makeover
Transcript: Jed's Panel on "Re-Marketing Dialogue"
Crossover, Down Under
Web Lab at Sundance and Beyond
Blogging for Deliberative Democracy
SGD Goes to Harvard: Marc Turns Crimson
...and LTC is honored by the Smithsonian
=========================
A New Small Group Dialogue on Men, War, and Love
Web Lab is working with a group of men to use our SGD technique
for an international men-only dialogue about men and war. We
hope this discussion will generate enough good material to become
the makings of a book, possibly even the first in a series of
SGD-generated books.
Registration is open until June 15 for the two-week discussion
beginning on the 16th. Join a diverse group of men to explore
the connections between traditional notions of masculinity and
the current state of the world -- as well as related issues --
in a safe, open, and respectful discussion.
For more information, or to register, please go to:
http://mwl.weblab.org
=========================
Project 540: Learning What Students Want
This past school year, almost 2000 teenagers from all corners of the United
States signed up for the Project 540 Online Dialogues created by Web Lab.
Some focused on hot school issues like detention, clean facilities and
friction with school boards. Others looked beyond school, with students
probing their feelings on a military draft, the war on Iraq and immigration
here at home.
The theme of all Project 540's dialogues, online and in 250 schools nationwide,
has been change, and students' role in it. In peer-led classroom dialogues and
also online, students were asked to speak up about what matters most to them,
and think together about how to make real change possible, at school and beyond.
As the project concludes its second year, school teams are drafting Civic Action
Plans, and enthusiastic online students have posted their thoughts on 540's
progress and the prospects for student-led change in our schools and communities.
All the dialogues and web development work for Project 540 have been managed
by community director Jed Miller, with invaluable support from a dozen dialogue
Monitors, dialogue managers Maria Echaniz and Shiri Bilik, design and coding by
Nekeisha Alexis-Manners, the dedicated team at Citysoft, coordinator Addison
Smith and our dauntless SGD developer Steven Borenstein. Headquartered at
Providence College, Project 540 is a two-year high school civic engagement
initiative funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. To read Featured Discussions
from Web Lab's 540 dialogues and learn more, go to:
http://www.project540.org/speak
=========================
Planning a "Clean River" Dialogue in Oregon
Web Lab is working with Portland, Oregon's Bureau of Environmental Services to
plan a citizen dialogue on issues surrounding Portland's Willamette River. The
city has already begun a process of outreach and dialogue with residents about
achieving the cleanest, healthiest river possible.
The working title for the project is Clean River Conversations. If you would
like to receive updates about these upcoming dialogues, just send an email to
crc@weblab.org.
=========================
Reaching Out for Dialogue Partners and Projects
We receive inquiries regularly about contracts and partnerships to create
thoughtful, structured online dialogue using SGD, our patent-pending Small
Group Dialogue technology and technique.
Would our technique extend the impact or expand the possibilities for your
project or organization? Web Lab is actively seeking clients, partners, and
sponsors interested in utilizing this break-through approach to online discussion.
SGD has been used successfully in vendor/client relationships, where Web Lab
provides initial services then acts as a project consultant; and in full
partnerships, where Web Lab works closely to co-design and co-manage dialogues,
and even to collaborate in outreach for funders or sponsors.
To explore the potential value of SGD to your own work, or to learn more about
our model for high-quality discourse and citizen deliberation, please contact
Jed Miller at jedm@weblab.org, or by phone at 212-353-0080. More about SGD's
features, history, projects and evaluations is available at:
http://www.weblab.org/sgd
=========================
Crossover Continues, With a Revised Strategy
Crossover II has gotten underway this spring, and is moving right along. This
round will be quite different from Crossover I — with limited funding, and
some helpful feedback from Crossover I participants, we are consolidating the
process to be more production-oriented. We have received R&D funds to develop
a "hybrid" TV/Web project, and we are currently holding brainstorming sessions
with an extraordinary group of filmmakers and new media makers to discuss project
ideas. In the fall we plan to start finalizing the strongest ideas so they can
move forward into a prototype/production workshop at the beginning of 2004.
Names and bios of the brainstormers are at:
http://www.weblab.org/crossover2
=========================
Transcript: A Panel on "Re-Marketing Dialogue"
Last fall, Jed led a panel at the National Conference on Dialogue and Deliberation.
Entitled "Re-Marketing Dialogue," the discussion asked how practitioners of
dialogue can adapt their language and outreach strategies to raise awareness of this
important work in the public consciousness and to make dialogue and deliberation an
accepted "value" in our culture.
This last-minute addition to the conference, which was sponsored by the Hewlett
Foundation, drew a big crowd (to a small room!) and spurred active discussion among
attendees and panelists, who included Dr. Amitai Etzioni, Elaine Shen, Lars
Hasselblad-Torres and Miriam Wyman. The transcript, available at the link below,
represents rich raw material for anyone thinking about how to make dialogue and
deliberation more accessible and more sustainable.
http://www.weblab.org/sgd/ncdd-transcript.html
=========================
Crossover OZ or "I Have a Feeling We're Not in Florida Anymore"
After Web Lab convened independent filmmakers, new media makers and artists
from related disciplines for Crossover's Studio A in February 2002 (see
http://www.weblab.org/crossover), the South Australia Film Corporation,
a government-funded agency dedicated to fostering home-grown films and other
media, asked for our assistance in organizing "Crossover Australia." We worked
with them to replicate the model we developed here, and even sent our very own
Vanessa Wruble to help facilitate their gathering. By all accounts, the result
was as transformative an experience for the Aussies in attendance as Studio A
was for us.
A couple of choice quotes from participants:
"An extraordinary experience. Intellectually, professionally and emotionally, one of
the most challenging and stimulating environments imaginable."
"The relationships and process of ideas formed during these five days would normally
have taken months, maybe even years, to achieve."
http://www.crossover.org.au
=========================
Web Lab at Sundance and Beyond
In January, executive producer Marc Weiss recruited and moderated a panel on
Emergent Narratives and Computer Games for the Sundance Film Festival. An
"emergent narrative" is a story created by game "players" rather than game
designers. Panelists included Chris Trottier, Lead Designer on the Sims Online;
Celia Pearce, an interactive multimedia designer, researcher, teacher and author;
Janet H. Murray, director of Georgia Tech's graduate program in Information Design
and Technology; and J.D. Alley, Creative Director for Project Leo at Microsoft
Games Studios.
http://festival.sundance.org/pages/program/places_events/places03.aspx
In March, director of special projects Suzanne Seggerman and Marc co-curated
an exciting exhibition as part of the Florida Film Festival in Orlando.
"Provocations: digital art takes on the world" featured the work of Natalie
Jeremijenko, Michael Mateas, Tamiko Thiel and Zara Houshmand, and selections
recommended by Natalie Bookchin and Brody Condon, among many others. As the
title implies, the show highlighted work designed to break out of the producer/consumer
relationship of traditional art and enlist the "audience" as active agents. Among
the issues dissected: environmental toxins, a history of the world shaped by
audience input, and the camps in which Japanese- Americans were confined during
World War II.
http://floridafilmfestival.com/events_provo.html
=========================
Blogging for Deliberative Democracy
As a committed supporter of democratic renewal in the United States and around
the globe, Web Lab is a member of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, formed
to connect practitioners and support and foster the nascent movement "to promote
and institutionalize deliberative democracy at all levels of governance."
The Consortium web site includes a blog with news, project announcements and
expert commentary from across the fields of democratic deliberation and civic
dialogue, online and face to face. To read the latest entries, add your own
comments and learn more about the Consortium, please visit:
http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/mt
=========================
SGD Goes to Harvard: Marc Turns Crimson
Marc will be guest-teaching a class at the Harvard Design School on July 18. Marc
will be talking about last summer's Listening to the City online dialogues for a
class called "Participatory Design and Planning with the Internet — Case History:
Rebuilding the World Trade Center Site." Part of the "Executive Education" program,
the class and the larger curriculum "bring design professionals, real estate leaders,
government officials, policy makers and scholars from around the world to address
emerging issues affecting their fields."
For more information or to register:
http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/professional/exec_ed/seminars/summer_fall_2003
=========================
...and Listening to the City is honored by the Smithsonian
Speaking of Listening to the City, Lab has been named a "Laureate" in the 2003
Computerworld Honors Collection at the Smithsonian Institution for "using
information technology to benefit society." The LTC online dialogues were
nominated by Kathy Bushkin, President of the AOL Time Warner Foundation — the
foundation's only nominee this year. The case study is distributed to libraries,
museums and research institutions worldwide, and is also available online at:
http://www.cwheroes.org
... click "VIEW THE 2003 COLLECTION" then type "web lab" in the search box
=========================
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newsletter@weblab.org
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