Andrew Miller

Hyperlocal Networks Presentation Abstract

Digital technologies are changing the way people work, recreate and communicate within their physical community. The explosion of social applications has caused vast amounts of opinion and fact based data about local resources and issues to be cataloged. Due to this explosion of information; collaboration and community organizing is building around these issues, ideas and community resources with participation levels not previously possible. This phenomenon is referred to as hyperlocal networking.

Cities and organizations can take advantage of this hyperlocal networking and (re)develop around user groups who self identify through digital communities. In Columbus these user groups form on sites like The Columbus Underground and Columbus Tech Life, etc. Through monitoring and participation in these hyperlocal networks the approach to civic and private projects can be specifically targeted. The very same networks can then be used to market (re)development in a micro-targeted way; creating grass roots networks that evangelize for you.

Hyperlocal networks utilize the free tools of the internet to aggregate and re-use the data being creating. The result is knowledge repositories as micro as a city block. Often what is developed by these networks can be directly adopted by other entities or easily remixed to fit an even more specific need.

During the ferocious Mumbai terrorist attacks that occurred in November 2008 a stream of real-time data was being remixed by individuals, participating in hyperlocal networks, to build useful information such as Google mashups that plotted the danger zones and Wiki’s with health and safety information; all the while developing a historical record of the event as it unfolded. An unfortunate side affect of this information may have been to provide the attackers with data to further their destruction.

At the heart of the hyperlocal network is individuals with a passion based, instead of profit based, motive for the focal issue or resource. An important distinction of hyperlocal networking is the rejection of hierarchy and a general distrust of push (one direction) information.

Engagement at the hyperlocal level is only effective if a strategy is in place for sustaining the interaction and understanding the resulting information. It is important to interact transparently otherwise your efforts will be rejected as being manipulative. The short-term reward for engagement is a relatively low (or no) cost research and data development group. The long-term reward is greater buy-in from user groups and a healthier and safer community.

Slide by slide notes:

1.Hello. My name is Andrew Miller and I’m a founding member of the Columbus Social Media Café, a social justice and technology activist and community organizer working here in Central Ohio. I’ll be talking with you about Hyperlocal Networks and how we can build community engagement through them.

2.What are Hyperlocal Networks? Essentially they are micro-targeted communities of interest defined partially by their physical locations (although they will also have other attributes to them that further define them, such as mass transit supporters in Columbus). Hyperlocal networks are not just the connections between people though. Hyperlocal networks include individuals, organizations, relation to place and the cumulative data associated with all of these things.

3.In order to expand on the idea that these Hyperlocal networks are more than just the individuals who connect let’s take a look at EveryBlock.com. This site was born out of the website ChicagoCrime.org and was the project of a journalist named Adrian Holovaty. EveryBlock.com presents data collected from sources all over the internet, and in some cases from internal government networks, for quickly digestible consumption by residents of a particular physical location. The project was underwritten by the Knight Foundation and as a term of that agreement is now Open Source and available for any community to implement. This idea of opening up data relevant to a locale is key to a site like this functioning. The return benefit is a more aware COI that is able to proactively take on tasks related to their locale that they otherwise would likely have been more reactionary to. An example of this is the building permits and business license sections. Making these documents easily accessible by the public provides a forum to make changes that best fit with the residents needs before finalizing project plans which are then fought via referendums or in the courts. There is a great deal of data about events and other social opportunities to be found here as well which further builds community between residents. The next websites I’d like to talk about expand upon that idea.

4.Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are certainly being utilized in a hyperlocal fashion for certain issues. But it is the truly local sites that are more directly engaged as a part of hyperlocal networks. Here in Columbus a couple of standouts are the Columbus Underground.com and IndieColumbus.com which have each had an impact on how the residents of our city interact.

5.Thom, a user on Columbus Underground, created a possible route map for a light rail system here in Central Ohio. He used maps of existing rail lines that could be incorporated into the light rail solution. The topic of light rail is frequently on the lips, or, in the case of the Columbus Underground, fingertips of its Community of Interest. With no monetary interest these users are tapping into each others passions and skill sets and developing solutions, or at least the framework of solutions, to many of the issues facing our community. As an individual, developer or agency looking to get projects done it is important to recognize this work being carried out by the COI and how you can gain support by embracing the appropriate network.

6.I’ve got several case studies that I have been closely tied to, on one side or the other that I’d like to share with you. The first one I became involved with somewhat involuntarily. On May 30, 2008 my motorcycle, along with many others, was issued a parking ticket for parking in Pearl Alley in downtown Columbus. Knowing that there was no reason that a motorbike should take up a full car parking space (and thus pay the same amount) a network of riders and transportation activists formed. Two days later a face to face meeting was held which included city representatives and local business owners. Local motorbike and scooter clubs spread the message online and off about the parking issue, social networking sites like the Columbus Underground quickly grew the numbers in the Community of Interest and a blog was setup to keep everyone updated with the latest information. This rapid mobilization of the COI and a willingness to work with the city to find a solution instead of expecting the city itself to do all of the heavy lifting resulted in permanent, officially sanctioned motorbike parking throughout downtown Columbus and its busy neighborhoods. The parking remained free for the first year of operation. All of this took place by July 17, 2008 – about one and a half months from start to end.

7.Last year several changes came to Gay Street in downtown Columbus. These changes have made it much more pedestrian and business friendly. The business owners and city felt it would be both beneficial and fun to throw a party to celebrate this newly redesigned part of our city. The Couchfire Collective is an artist collective who throw many interesting events and have helped to create many unique public events. The Couchfire was feeling the need to expand out from their space and the city was happy to partner with them. What happened was a crowdsourced festival with minimal overhead. The city and Couchfire took the lead on lining up stages, road closing, permits and equipment. For all of the booths, performers, visual arts, etc. it was left up to the COI that formed through the already established online and offline social networks. Using Google Docs as the central repository for schedule data and volunteer needs the COI filled in the blanks and threw one heck of a party. Those who joined in to make it happen became shared owners of the space. Advertising was primarily done through the COI reaching out to its broader networks. All in all this festival which included hundreds of volunteers and thousands in attendance happened, from idea to execution in under 3 months time.

8.This case study hurts me the most because I was very much on the other side of this issue. I invested a great deal of time working to pass the UA Library Levy this spring and we were soundly defeated by the anti-library levy campaign. The point here is that you can learn a lot from your mistakes and when dealing with networks that can mobilize so quickly there is a great opportunity for multiple failures over a short period of time. A little background is that the UA Library was looking for a $25M Capital Improvements bond to make repairs, reconfigure some of the space both for compliance reasons as well as to meet the future needs of the space. Over the past 2 years a group now going by the name Change In UA has been building its network of individuals generally opposed to any and all tax increases. Using an online data repository they have been collecting targeted public records that they were able to use against the library. They also employed tactics such as redirecting a pro-library levy campaign domain name. Two major lessons include that even very local politics can devolve into the use of bogus tactics (like the redirect) and that these hyperlocal networks improve access to data and vastly speed up organizing capabilities but they still require the offline connection between participants to get full buy-in. On the library’s side of things there was an assumption that the library’s standing within the larger community would speak for itself which obviously didn’t work out.

9.As I’ve mentioned; the difference between today’s hyperlocal networks and your pre-web 2.0 networks is not just the organizations and people that are connected but the data and information creation, searching and sharing as a part of the network. There is a limitless pool of data floating around out there and that leaves us with the problem of being buried or being planted. The action is essentially the same but the difference is being buried associates with being dead and gone while being planted offers the hope of growing into something fruitful, something new. One way of allowing hyperlocal data to grow into something else is to use data visualization. With the amount of data available to people these days it is exceedingly important to present your principle information in a dynamic fashion that is attractive, captures attention and is still useful. For the purpose of this discussion a lot of visualization occurs around mapping. That said consider the dashboard setup by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and how that gives perspective on the many facets of museum operation the average supporter might not otherwise consider. The larger point though is that this data is out there, data that has been generated for free or little cost and all you have to do is grab it. Why let good resources just rot in the ground? This data is telling the story of your COI and it just makes sense to help tell that story.

10.Sticking with the idea of storytelling lets look at what is happening in Iran right now. After the election process fell apart and protestors began taking to the streets data started pouring out of Iran in real-time, across multiple platforms. From people sitting at computers to people in the streets on cell phones; news media couldn’t keep up but they too were getting out their part of the story through their channels as well. The COI were spreading data so fast that much of it was getting buried before it even had a chance to grow. One estimate I have heard was that, at the height of the post election evening, over 2500 tweets (twitter posts) about #iranelections were hitting a minute. This is where the outside world was able to start gardening. Those people with interest in what was happening at that hyperlocal level were joining the COI, gathering what data they could and creating useful narrative and data visualization to be used by those on the ground. Coordinating of refuge and rally movements from all around the world. Reposting of pictures under the Creative Commons licensing so as to maintain a visual record of the events, one that can’t be buried by bureaucracy. This has now happened several times over, the last major event being the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Unfortunately a secondary effect of this sharing was that opposition forces have also been able to reuse this data.

11.So, this is what we are left with after the particular event has occurred. Looking through the wealth of data created during the organizing and collaboration efforts we find a narrative that provides both historical perspective but also sets the foundation of a continuous story arc. In the past we had few strands of narrative to build from, primarily news media archives and public records but individual and even organizational narratives would be lost unless someone specifically chose to document and publish those perspectives. Due to the hyperlinked nature of open online data we can successfully rebuild and follow the narrative of all players in any project – or against any project. In all of these ways we see how the narrative of our world can grow and change and follow us.

12.The best way to move forward is to listen, share and participate; by doing this you will embrace, and be embraced by the network. Listen to what is being said about your ideas, your project and your organization. Share your information freely, take feedback and retool. Participate in these networks, not just on a professional basis but as a real human being with real thoughts and ideas and concerns. Don’t rely solely on the experts because those people only make up a small part of the community; understand that your story is linked to the story of the community at large. Honest, open direct dialogue can make the difference between getting a project done and doing nothing.

13.Thanks to the community of Creative Commons users out there on Flickr who so willingly share their great work with the rest of us so that we can all do even better work together.

14.Thank you very much for letting me present this information to you. If you’d like to review these slides they’ll be posted soon. You can email me at andrew at andrew dash miller dot com or friend me on twitter at digitalocracy. Andrew dash Miller dot com is one of my blogs you can track me down at as well.

The summer has shaped up to being full of interesting projects; not the least of which is this week’s speaking engagement at The Ohio State University’s Knowlton School of Architecture conference “Communicative Cities”. I’m honored to be speaking with Lily Shirvanee (University of Cambridge – “The social viscosities study: Mapping social activities in public space”) and Andrew Taylor (Lincoln Street Studio – “Multiple commitments: Practicing diffuse ties as a mode of civic engagement”) from 3pm to 4:30pm on Friday, June 26, 2009.

For a quick reminder of what I’ll be talking about take a look at this post about Hyperlocal Strategies which is a basis for what I submitted. Since things are changing all the time the presentation will reflect the learning since I posted this submission.

If you’d like more information on the conference and/or would like to attend check out the registration info and schedule here. I hope to see you there!

Friday night was a great time seeing friends, making new friends and watching some great presentations. I don’t dare try and choose a favorite one from the evening but the top three were probably Dan’s Mechanical Turk, the DynamIT guy’s Infinity (wish he had 10 minutes for this one though) and the presentation about Kurdistan which was excellent. As you may remember I also presented about the Digitalocracy. Below is the video of all of the presentations (mine begins at about 2min 30sec) and below that is my Slideshare if you want to see the slides I used a little more easily.

I was fortunate to have been contacted by writer Jennifer Wray (@10bagspacking) of the Columbus CEO magazine for a brief interview about Social Media and its use by businesses and organizations here in Central Ohio. Below is my part of the article. If you’d like to read the full piece, and I recommend you do, then please go out and pick up the July 2009 issue of Columbus CEO at your local newstand. BTW- the book project I’m a part of is Social Knowledge: Using Social Media To Know What You Know that I blogged about here.

From July 2009 Columbus CEO, Social (Media) Studies:

Airs on Thursday 6/11/09 on WOSU or listen to audio here.

WOSU Commentary by Andrew Miller

Our families and communities are facing greater challenges than we have seen in several generations. When faced with such challenges I find some comfort by looking to our history, for the ideas of our fore fathers.

Consider these wise words written by Walt Whitman about the Civil War.

In his poem States! Whitman wrote; “States! Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers? By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms? Away! I arrive, bringing these, beyond all the forces of courts and arms. These! To hold you together as firmly as the earth itself is held together…”

As you read the full text of Whitman’s poem he doesn’t talk about financial windfalls or victory through the defeat of others. Whitman instead defines the word “These” as friendship, camaraderie, innovation and countless linked hands. “These shall tie and band stronger than hoops of iron, I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! Henceforth with the love of lovers tie you.”

These are the bonds of community created by our souls.

The current recession has reminded many of us that it is not the agreements on paper that have built the greatest parts of our society; these institutions have been built through the use of collective resources and public funds.

Libraries, schools, community centers and green spaces; food pantries, shelters and free clinics; fire, police and public works departments – these are the institutions that bring us together. They require that you participate in the social exchange which in turn creates community.

Like a potluck, or the story of stone soup, we each contribute one small piece of the recipe to build something much greater than our individual effort could afford. Unfortunately, the common response as of late has been that we are turning our backs on “liberty” – becoming “socialists” by joining such collective efforts.

Whitman answers this in his poem by stating, “The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly, the dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, the continuance of Equality shall be comrades.”

When we remind ourselves of the history of our nation it is evident that no singular important event happened based on pure individualism, but on a community of individuals working together for the greater good. Standing united, in solidarity, for the sake of community; for the sake of love and compassion. This was the birth of our nation.

My hope is that we listen to those wise words that Walt Whitman put forward; when individuals and community organizations reach out we must meet them with open arms.

In these trying times we must again hold together as firmly as the earth itself.

This is the time of the year that the Michigan farm boy in me kicks into high gear. The vegetable garden is taking hold and the fruit trees in the yard are producing. Yesterday saw me up the tree, picking cherries for my family and our friends. Like my quest to follow my passions as a way to feed my family (and my soul) both literally and figuratively; this act of growing and sharing food is a very literal example of what makes me happy in life. I believe we should all attempt to live our lives in as happy a way as possible; in as fullfilling a way as possible.

That may be a loaded statement, we all have a different perspective on such things, but it is an important idea. Without it what is life worth?

So, in this case I climb the cherry tree which gives me both the joy of eating fresh, organic, local cherries but more than that it also gives me an excuse to climb a tree and get a new perspective on the neighborhood. A birds eye view can be good for the soul and the mind. Beyond that I get the joy of sharing with my neighbors, making new friends through the act of kindness and reconnected with old friends.

In return, in this case, my neighbors baked us a cherry pie that has been delicious.

Thinking of this example, in your life’s work, are you giving away cherries and getting cherry pie in return? If not, how might you get to that point?

The argument about intellectual property continues to rage on and the newest supreme court nominee sides with the RIAA and other hardline IP rights groups in some of her decisions so this issue won’t be going away soon. Do you think this couple should pay a fee to Vampire Weekend for this video? Do you consider it theft and injury that they didn’t pay?

Personally I would hate to see someone who is exceedingly visually creative be stunted because they don’t have musical ability to provide a solid backdrop for thier craft. I’m not suggesting that directly profiting off of someone elses hard work is fair either; however I believe that this issue needs to be brought back into the grey instead of this current black and white argument it is currently mired in.

The latest attempt to break the Google stranglehold on the search market is Microsoft’s new product: Bing (Bing Is Not Google). If you’d like to check it out for yourself then I suggest you head over to http://bing.com but don’t worry about breaking a sweat to get there. Bing is pretty uninspired visually and the back-end functionality feels more like Microsoft is catching up with Google, not surpassing it or even changing the game.

The issue is that Microsoft continues to look at projects with an engineer’s eyes; in very black and white terms. “If we can build a better search engine than Google we win.” This constant focus on competition instead of community keeps Microsoft falling short. Microsoft should look for ways to create new community instead of just “better tools” as a way to grow sustainable innovation (and thus fan base).

Of course this past week there was a new product that has shown innovation and community centered philosophy. And of course it is Google’s new product (protocol?) called Wave.

Before you sink your teeth into the Google Wave Developer Preview video which is 1.5 hours long and worth every minute (the very last demo will blow your mind) I want to relate to you where I see this application being a game changer for organizations and individuals.

Google Wave is based on the idea of conversations as opposed to messages (along with about 100 other innovations) and the engineers have done a fantastic job of accomplishing that. There is a lot of speculation about whether or not people will adopt to this product, to “catch the wave” or whatever. The advantages that Google are hoping pay off are:

• That the product lets you integrate so much work-flow that it would be difficult not to use it,
• The work-flow is all about collaboration and building community through sharing of control and content,
• They are making it open source so anyone can implement it and develop off of it, and;
• Everything happens inside the browser using HTML5 so you don’t have to deal with device dependencies.

The technological advances that allow the level of control sharing are unbelievable and the closest comparison I could make to this in our physical world would be the types of decentralized leadership being practiced by groups such as The Art of Hosting.

When you consider the social changes that are currently underway around the world you see that this product is directly in line with those changes. Google let the community dictate the direction of their solution instead of the engineers. What I mean this; current trends show the digital leaders (and their networks) are using online tools to share and create things without the hierarchy and centralized control of the past.

This digitalocracy of people are ignoring the protocols of society to create their own solutions to business, organization, community and even individual problems by collaborating online, sharing transparently and crowdsourcing.

Breaking big problems down into smaller chunks and allowing the group to solve them and then fit the pieces back together has become second nature to many of us and this is exactly how Google Wave approaches collaboration, conversation and problem solving. Taking it one step further is that Google Wave allows for a report out and harvest of every collaboration making it not just a fantastic tool for building collaboration and community but also for knowledge management and growth.

One of the biggest walls stifling the digitalocracy is the bureaucracy built into our current systems. If a new application like Google Wave can find its way into our current systems then by the nature of how it empowers everyone to be equals and to work communally we will in fact see a change in how organizations function.

So, without further ado I present the Google Wave Developer Demo:

As you may or may not remember I’ve talked a good bit here and on my personal blog about a social movement I’ve dubbed the digitalocracy. While I’ve skirted around the issue of whether or not it is in fact a new type of socialism writer Kevin Kelly feels secure in calling it exactly as he sees it, this is his idea of The New Socialism.

Mr. Kelly does a great job of relating several technological advances to how we are acting in a very social way (sharing, collaboration and value based on community instead of capital) and how that might change the fundamentals of our offline society.

Most important, and defining, about these ideas and the social movements occurring around them is the fact that they are happening independent of government, industry or national borders. This is a human movement, not one of a single culture, race or creed.

You can see more of my posts related to the digitalocracy here and here. You can read the full article by Kevin Kelly here. Below is a snippet of that article from Wired.com.

Communal aspects of digital culture run deep and wide. Wikipedia is just one remarkable example of an emerging collectivism—and not just Wikipedia but wikiness at large. Ward Cunningham, who invented the first collaborative Web page in 1994, tracks nearly 150 wiki engines today, each powering myriad sites. Wetpaint, launched just three years ago, hosts more than 1 million communal efforts. Widespread adoption of the share-friendly Creative Commons alternative copyright license and the rise of ubiquitous file-sharing are two more steps in this shift. Mushrooming collaborative sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, the Hype Machine, and Twine have added weight to this great upheaval. Nearly every day another startup proudly heralds a new way to harness community action. These developments suggest a steady move toward a sort of socialism uniquely tuned for a networked world.