Email: sizzo@rkmf.org ...
Follwing was done by Scott Izzo
3RC Leadership As we described both the community need and the role that 3RC has traditionally played it is clear that 3RC has been more of a facilitator rather than a leader and an implementer rather than visionary. As 3RC moves forward with its future plans it needs to identify ways in which it can engage visionary thinkers, who are working on community-wide problems and solutions, and how they can be engaged to think creatively about the application of technology to these activities. An example is the HumanService.net project. We are trying to serve the community with the exchange of information that will help individuals, human service agencies and regioanal planners and funders. This site could be simply about sharing information or it could provide the forum for addressing community problems in a much more comprehensive way. To do this we will need to bring social scientists, community leaders, funders and others to the table to discuss the issues, needed resources and possible solutions. It can become a new way of thinking about how we help solve community problems and how we better serve our community.
Convening can become one vehicle for engaging some of the best thinking in our community and for bringing national innovators to help us think creatively about solutions to our community issues. Community agencies traditionally think about themselves as mechanisms for delivering services. Convening them with others to discuss community problems may provide a forum to help both better define the problem and come up with comprehensive community solutions. Additionally, We may need to bring people to Pittsburgh who represent think tanks or other organizations that have spent considerable time and effort working through the development of innovative solutions to problems that may be the "issue du jour" in Pittsburgh.
Through convening and discussing community problems we may be able to come to understand that sharing information and working together to solve a problem can be a very powerful tool. We might be able to lead people to understand through some demonstration projects that by creating standards for how we create and maintain information can benefit the larger community as a whole. These standards can be reinforced by having 3RC focus on keeping the thinking about problem solving at a high level, by demonstrating good process in collecting the best ideas and by bringing talented national leaders to discuss the value of these ideas.
As a practical step 3RC could meet with the leadership of the region several times each year to have roundtable discussion about both the problems of Pittsburgh and the innovative activities taking place that may help address these problems. By meeting with the Allegheny Conference, Corporate, Agency, government and foundation leaders the 3RC can determine where there may be some critical intersection of ideas where opportunity for the application of innovative technology may exist.
The following are notes from previous meetings
WHAT ROLE WILL 3RC PLAY?
• Help set community priorities regarding information technology and civic computing. • Promote the growth of civic computing and the economic expansion of information technology in the region. • Endorse and facilitate the implementation of a regional information technology agenda. • Encourage community-wide investment in technology.
It will do this by:
• Endorsing existing programs that contribute to the vision. • Setting priorities for a regional information technology development strategy. ï Aiding promising new initiatives that fit the strategy. • Developing new projects to fill gaps and meet needs.
Discussions went on for a bit about this. The common thread was that InfoRen is driven by these “Big Ideas”, whereas 3RC seems to react more to the needs of the community as a whole. InfoRen acts more as a “think tank” and 3RC is more of a “project broker”. InfoRen seems more interested in their own ideas. 3rc is more interested in what the needs of the community are. Pete said that maybe 3rc needed to look for more “Big Idea” type of projects
Subcommittee: As you write think about these following issues as a guide:
Convening
- Present concrete ideas to the regional foundation community in order to build consensus. Have our friends in the foundations help us to faciltate the event. provide concrete examples of how this technology will make grantee organizations more effective.
- Convene a similar meeting of our partner/peer organizations.
- Organize one-on-one sit-downs between 3rc's ED and local/state political leaders to create buy-in.
- Issue press releases? Grant interviews to the media to build momentum and recognition of our ideas?
Standards
- If foundations buy into our idea, they should require that all online websites, data, evaluations, etc., of their grantees' projects will conform to and contrinute to the information commons. this has been discussed in the past but we need to write the standards so that it is easy to share and implement.
Promote ethic for sharing
Create subversive technologies
Leadership of partnering organizations needs to be involved
Call or email if you need help. Scott
