Nativeheart Mission Statement:
Combining Caring and Connectivity for Sustainable Communities
http://lone-eagles.com/nativeheart.htm
by Frank Odasz, frank@lone-eagles.com
NativeHeart exists as an initiative to gather and share best practices for Native Internet empowerment including cultural sustainability, rural ecommerce, telework and preservation of lifeways, communities, and cultural knowledge.
NativeHeart invites both native and non-native persons to participate, as only by working together can be reach our highest joint potential impact. We recognize that we all share common bonds at many levels. We have much we can learn from each other and we share concern for the environment, and the necessity of learning to use the Internet well to make a positive difference in our homes, communities, cultures, and nations.
Instead of being overwhelmed or disheartened by all the negativity in the world today, we are responding with action – demonstrating how to combine caring and connectivity with common sense. We seek to gather and share multimedia success stories, training resources, new tools, and visions for what needs to be done.
The Big Question is:
"What's the best that can be done based on knowledge of the best online tools, with willing hearts?"
The NativeHeart Start-up Concept:
A Community Internet Learning Program Emphasizing Inclusion and Innovation
Creating a culture of caring and capacity-building integrating traditional Native
values with the newest web and digital tools to produce a common vision for
the very best applications.
Moving forward together as a community of purpose generating and maintaining
the best Native Fast-track digital skills and entrepreneurial training solutions.
Teaching how to learn to make a living while helping others learn to make a living, as generously as possible.
A Web 2.0 Demonstration Project - Reflecting Native Values
Create a trusted peer support network showing the best ways good people, both Native and Non-native, can support others online through peer-mentored online instruction. Peer evaluations will determine the best posted text and video tutorials suitable for the most people requiring the least time, energy, prerequisite literacy.
Demonstrate peer-assisted personal web-profile creation (doubling as online resumes) with emphasis on promoting one’s identity, worldview, skills, talents and work/life goals in an entrepreneurial context. Each profile will feature the best gathered resources and creative works generated by the featured person to be shared as contributions to the Nativeheart community.
Each profile will include features for visitors to leave messages (approved by a moderator) in a public web-conference format and for displaying how many people have viewed and benefited from the tutorials and resources posted by each profiled person. Thumbnail images of those offering personal support and expertise (similar to a friends listing) will be included.
A key feature will be learning how to teach others specific skills online in both text and video formats. This instructional entrepreneurship model will emphasize online on-demand short video tutorials, under 15 minutes, with peer evaluations for effectiveness focusing on the most motivational uses of humor, multimedia, free web-based tools, and measurable skill outcomes. (Tools Note: www.camtasia.com (free 30 day download PC software) allows capturing all screen moves and narrated instructions in a shareable video.) New free web-based version http://screencast-o-matic.com/ http://screencast.com
Nativeheart participants will be challenged to stay as current as possible on evolving online entrepreneurial innovations, such as ad commission models (google adwords, etc.) and affiliate program models. Ad commission models will be used on all profile ands tutorial pages.
Additional incentives will be automatically forwarded back to those who post tutorials that have the greatest positive impact on the lives of others as evaluated by peers and Nativeheart leadership. All Nativeheart economic activity will be transparent with the goal of providing the highest return possible to contributing individuals.
The Nativeheart site will serve as a start-up entrepreneurship incubator linking foundations and corporations with grassroots entrepreneurs through development of microloan programs coupled with entry-level ecommerce, telework, teletraining, and mentors (coaches).
Success stories in short video format will present Native role models with emphasis on personal testimonies will be presented to celebrate the exercised Native values necessary to become successful (philosophies, values, hard work, patience and perseverance)
Nativeheart Summary:
Create a peer brokerage of the most empowering self-directed training resources set in a peer-mentored, peer-evaluated instructional context.
Provide an ongoing video showcase of ways Native and Non-native folks can support each others’ shared values and lifestyle choices by sharing text and video short tutorials focused on empowerment skills with peer evaluations and adsense commissions and document/celebrate those whose contributions benefit the most people with the least amount of time, cost, and energy.
Utilize videos like youtube.com, how-tos like ehow.com, resources like wikipedia.org and keyword tags like del.ic.io.us
Combining the virtual peer connections and personal profile aspects of Myspace
Video and peer evaluations and entertainment/humor attractions of youtube.com
Business peering aspects of linkedin.com
Educational co-editing and open knowledge aggregation of wikipedia.org
Instructional entrepreneurship of Ed2Go.com and the self-assessment for self-developed skills from http://proveit.com
Free resume building and job seeking from http://monster.com
Photo slideshows of flickr.com (need easy way to add audio narrations to photos)
As a work in progress, below is a draft article expanding on these themes.
See also http://lone-eagles.com/afn-resources.htm and http://lone-eagles.com/future-proofing.htm
Nativeheart -
A Model for Local/Global Change and Transnational Activism
Our Commonalities
Our diverse cultures represent our common search for individual and group identity and meaning. Each culture has unique contributions to offer regarding who we all are. We must bring all the puzzle pieces together to see the big picture of who we are and what we share as the human family. We share a historical opportunity for mutual self-discovery.
Our Joint Potential
Our true potential can only be realized by working together, using the new digital communications capabilities at our fingertips. We are not talking about theory or hypotheticals, but actual practices that generate true power and measurable outcomes at many levels.
Simple Truths and Power Generation Though Effective Collaboration
When the first trans-atlantic telegraph cable was laid between the U.S. and Europe, in 1867, the potential for global telecommunications was heralded as the ability to keep us all “up to the same instant of progress.” Back then, however, the rate of change was nothing like it is today. In the modern day, the same instant of progress has dramatically enhanced meaning. In our world of accelerating change we share increasingly intense needs for current information, daily.
just in time inquiry based mutual support systems
Modern search engines do machine searches of billions of records in nanoseconds and many new E-businesses are based on these database technologies. Yet what most of us need is “a friend in the business” that can give us the personal assistance we need – informing us of what we didn’t know we needed to know – on an ongoing basis. We need a human connections counterpart to search engines, a community skills registry where we can find the friendly human expertise and the willingness to help us in a personal, caring way.
With each new user, the value of the network grows exponentially
In 1910, ads for the newest telephony, the telephone, heralded that with every new telephone installed, the power of the network grows exponentially. That with each new person that joins the telephone network, the overall value of the network increases.
Since the beginning of computer networking, we’ve seen an evolution of organizing, search, and retrieval tools and experimental methods for involving human expertise to create just in time inquiry based mutual support systems have resulted in thousands of community networking projects. While good intentions and high hopes predominated, actual measurement of the intended benefits has not yet validated genuine outcomes. In question is what might be the maximum benefits in an ideal community with 100% participation?
Moving Beyond the Theoretical to the Measurable Benefits
While the theory behind community technology being beneficial is generally accepted, research on genuine results reveals most community technology project leaders have very little understanding regarding issues of motivation for participation, specifics of participative activity, collaborative capacity behaviors that produce mutual benefits, peer-mediated skills transfer, and content generation that adds value to the community. Lacking a definition for success, most projects are unable to mirror back to their communities an accurate assessment of their generated value –or as importantly - the lack of mutual value.
Key pieces lacking are specific training and inclusion methods based on motivational strategies producing effective collaborative capacity that can be simply measured by the number of participants, the amount and value of interaction, skills transfer, and content generation and sharing. And most importantly: a sense of belonging, purpose, direction, and motivation for ongoing learning – particularly involvement in elearning as both learner and teacher as fundamental components for individual growth and self-actualization.
One theory suggests that if we don’t know the answer to a given question and we ask five friends, who each ask five friends, that in only five steps we’ll have five to the fifth power – a huge number. Theoretically, if we all share what we know, we’ll all have access to all our knowledge. Operationally – how might this work? One model has topical human mentors who maintain rich resource topical listings. http://about.com
From a systems approach, if social recognition for sharing our knowledge generates more personal motivation for self-education and sharing, the intensity of commitment and ongoing participation should increase as well as the overall knowledge base. Wikipedia.com represents over a million donated articles – as one tangible example. Proveit.com offers training plus self-assessments as a way of demonstrating expertise for employment purposes. Blogs represent a peer-linking and peer-validation methodology, but perhaps not in a format to which the majority of us will devote the personal time required to sustain.
Is there a fun, social, learning model that will prove motivationally sustainable for the majority of us? Can ongoing elearning and mutual support systems somehow NOT be a fundamental part of survival in the information age?
Mining Innovations from Global Sources
One key issue is that the level of innovation worldwide has reached such a high level that gathering the best of the best innovations from elsewhere is the only strategy that makes sense. But, due to traditional politics of control and politics of appearances, this is rarely the case. The ideal approach would be to aggressively learn from everyone on an ongoing basis and to generate common-sense partnerships and mutual support systems.
What models will prove to be most efficient for keeping current on the burgeoning innovations of others in as simple a support system as possible with emphasis on today’s best practices requiring the least time, effort, and cost? The newer solutions tend to have the greatest benefits requiring the least time, effort, and costs. How best can we leverage the power of all of us…socially, economically, and culturally? How can we become global citizens and help our communities evolve into a world-changing transnational democracy and a knowledge economy combining caring and connectivity with common sense?
Making a Life, While Making a Living
As more and more people learn how to use the Internet to realize and income and take control of their lives, we’re reaching the cultural tipping point for understanding the true power of the Internet at all levels.
Casino tribes are finding that having lots of money doesn’t guarantee a life with meaning and a sense of purpose. It is what we do for each other that has lasting value in life. We’re just beginning to understand the vast impact on the lives of others the Internet offers. And this dramatic insight has everything to do with how we learn to leverage the tools at our fingertips to the highest levels possible to meet the global challenges of the modern day and to instill meaning in our lives.
Similar challenges exist for those who have over generations become dependent on government support and welfare systems. Both levels seek true cultural sustainability, self-esteem, and full control over their own destinies - which is now viable for the first time in generations due to the capabilities the Internet provides. Attitudinal barriers to change, however, are perhaps the primary remaining barriers to positive community and global change..
Growing Global Economic Opportunities
There are a billion people on the Internet and six billion due to come online within the next couple decades.
Upward trends are the increase in Internet connectivity, Internet speeds and multimedia interactive capacity, related skills and understanding of most the effective best practices for leveraging the ideal benefits. There is a growing belief in the benefits of the Internet. The Internet has unleashed global creativity at levels unprecedented in human history, with the volume of bottom-up innovations growing exponentially.
From an economic perspective, more and more people are already purchasing and selling online based on lower prices, and general greater efficiencies. This creates more consumers and greater entrepreneurial potential spurring bottom-up creativity as we’re clearly seeing worldwide.
Downward trends are decreasing costs for computer hardware, software, and Internet access, and shorter learning curves due to easier to use technologies. Technofear and self-doubt is diminishing as more people realize that anyone can learn to benefit.
As we shift from a product-central economy to a knowledge-central economy, the knowledge products that produce the greatest knowledge benefits with the least time, cost and energy will dominate, noting that the shelf-life of useful knowledge is consistently shortening.
This means the need to tap into an ongoing integrated service for skills maintenance, technical support, social services, and participation in the knowledge economy…will produce a market for such services…for that new knowledge which creates new opportunities on an ongoing basis.
The technology supports this by allowing remote technical maintenance and many multimedia distance learning tools allowing anyone, anywhere, anytime, to become both learner and teacher.
Due to the sheer volume of information, burgeoning volume of innovations and new technology options, each of us needs a customized solutions service – for simplifying our lives.
Promoting Culture Assimilation to the Indigenous Worldview
Many people from the non-indigenous world seek to assimilate into the indigenous worldview on many levels, with particular emphasis on lifestyle and restoring balance to the environment. Indigenous worldviews need to be taught and shared in order to meet the Indigenous commitment to preservation of the environment.
The Politics of Transparency
Once the real power of organized collaboration begins to become visible the opportunity for inclusion at successively higher functional levels becomes obvious and emerges as the emphasis for future collaborative innovation. The historical politics of control and politics of appearances, must inevitably give way to the politics of transparency – for in the information age there are no secrets that will not be revealed.Mass Poverty Reduction Through Microloans and ICTs
The Grameen Foundation has proven that mass availability of microloans can both allow those in poverty to pull themselves upward, and at the same time create a solid business case for funding businesses – with a 97% success rate on loan repayments. Add the global reach and self-teaching capabilities of ICTs and world-changing opportunities within a single generation –which are historically unprecedented- now indisputably exist.
Grameen Foundation: http://www.grameenfoundation.org/
A 16 minute video: http://www.grameenfoundation.org/newsroom/gfusa_video/Bottom-up Meets Top-Down
Now the stage is set for community upskilling success stories. The “game” is what communities can best demonstrate the will and the vision to literally write their own press releases on the successes they’d like to achieve, and then to make them happen in the public view and in the short term. Inevitably, the builders of these Internet networks must partner meaningfully with the intended users, and we’re beginning to see this happening among many emergent trends. http://www.comtechreview.org See “What is Community Networking”
See also http://lone-eagles.com/rural-opportunities.htm
Read More At
Lone Eagle Update January-October 2006
http://lone-eagles.com/lone-eagle-update100106.htmWhat is Community Networking; And Why You Should Care
http://www.comtechreview.org/fall-2005/000347.html
Many related links are listed in the overall publication.Community Networking Hits Media Mainstream (Almost)--
And Makes Its Own News (4 pages)
http://lone-eagles.com/mainstream.htm
"Reaching the Tipping Point for the New Generation of Community Networks"
http://lone-eagles.com/tipping-point.htm (9 pages)Community Networking Best Practices and Global Citizenship:
A Knowledge Management Trend Report
http://lone-eagles.com/global-citizenship.htm
See my two new articles at
Spring 2006 CTC articles
CTC VISTA Digest
http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/digestPeer-to-Peer Social Networking; The Next Big Thing
http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/digest/?q=node/67
Empowering Americans: CTC VISTAs in Community Networking
http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/vista/digest/?q=node/64The Power of All of Us? — The eBay Lesson for Community Development
http://comtechreview.org/winter-2004-2005/000261.html