[CivicAccess-discuss] Invite + launch + unwants

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

Hi gang;

I had a go at the invite a bit- 
http://civicaccess.ca/wiki/Launch/Invitation? I'll frenchisize after 
your comments.

When should we send this out?  Should we send to a few people we each 
have close relationships with really soon and get started? I would love 
to get my few DataInfo friends engaged while i have them hot - like the 
next week or so.  what so you think?

also, michael started an interesting stream on what we do not want the 
group to be.  Did we want to explore how we want to address those issues 
a bit?  I left them at the bottom of the letter.

I paste the let & michael's bit below.

Cheers
tracey
**************

I think this invitation should be tweakable and targeted as oppposed to 
general and impersonal. Perhaps for the public launch we can do 
something a little more general. my guess is each of us has a variety of 
relationships with the people want to invite so i am approaching this as 
a template with some cut and paste content. We may wanna get this out 
soon though!

*DRAFT INVITE LETTER:*

Hi There;

Stephane, Patrick, Michael and Tracey (change order as required!) here 
and we would like to invite you to co-found a new canadian civic 
engagement space - Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and 
Data (COACID). We are contacting you since we know that you have been 
thinking and talking about these issues, have been actively engaged in 
related activities, and also because each or you has unique expertise, 
knowledge and experience to contribute to this type of activity (i.e. 
social planning, data access, open source, mapping, technology creation, 
etc.).

We are a group of diverse citizens, who also happen to be technologists, 
academics, and activists, who share a common belief that civic 
information and data should be made easily accessible at no cost for 
non-commercial purposes to citizens and civil society organizations. We 
are doing this because, we understand that participatory democratic 
processes require that citizens have access to information and data to 
inform their engagement and to improve the quality of the decisions they 
make during that process. But also because, information and data are the 
essential bits and bytes required to re-imagine, re-envision, visualize 
and critically anaylze the communities we live in.

So far a COACID discussion lists has been created ([WWW] 
http://civicaccess.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss_civicaccess.ca), 
and a wiki ([WWW] http://civicaccess.ca/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/) has been set 
up with some draft content. The wiki is an open source collaborative 
tool that will host content discussed on the list. In short this is an 
emerging community of citizens across Canada like you who want to share 
what they know, do, their skills, information and data and these tools 
are there to facilitate that.

Please join the list and introduce yourselves, navigate the wiki, share 
your ideas, interests, and add some content and discuss issues you think 
are important from your unique and diverse perspectives. There is no 
pre-determined way to do or say things, so feel free to say, modify, and 
do as you like in this environment. The group remains small and closed 
at the moment with the hope that once we have been working together a 
little, and have a better handle on what we are doing, the list and wiki 
can go public to some targeted some related communities of practice in 
January or February of 2006!

We are looking forward to being engaged in this information and data 
community building activity with you!

Cheers Stephane, Patrick, Michael and Tracey

NOTE: so and so can help you with the wiki so and so can help you with 
the listserve this is what you need to do to get on the Discussion list 
this is what you need to do to use the wiki

**************************** Michael, do we want to discuss this further 
on the list? I am thinking that having this in the invite would be 
intimidating, but think there is merit in agreeing to what we do not 
want along with what we do.

A key thing to tell you as possible co-founders of COACID is what we 
don't want COACID to be. We don't want it to become it's own project. We 
don't want it to become an ego vehicle for a small group of people. And 
we don't want it to become something that's chasing after funding. We 
want it to be a [WWW] third place <http://user.gru.net/domz/third.htm> 
for people already motivated in this cause and a place for people who 
are curious to find out more.