I-Open Civic Forums Build Collaborative Communities

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I-Open Civic Forum Process

Map by Betsey Merkel on Flickr

Civic Forums offer a new model of civic collaboration for a networked approach for economic and community development.

Civic Forums begin by building open economic networks to catalyze innovation and entrepreneurship. The civic forum process encourages new civic collaborations by behaving in ways that build trust, respect and accountability.

I-Open promotes civic behaviors that overcome fragmentation by focusing on shared interests, transformative business enterprise opportunities and pragmatic "next steps".

Civic Forums Accelerate Innovation in Education, Economic and Workforce Development

I-Open on Strategy-Nets: industry collaboration with an enterprise footprint

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 I-Open first announced its partnership with Near-Time.com May 14, 2007. Over the following three years, I-Open focused on applying the Near-Time tool set to early applications of face-to-face and online network and community development in Open Source Economic Development initiatives in many states.

Ed Morrison, Co-Founder and past Director of I-Open, led initiatives across the country while Northeast Ohio Co- Founders and Directors Betsey Merkel, Dennis Coughlin, and Susan Altshuler - along with the expertise of regional leaders - co-led initiatives in Northeast Ohio.

Article: "I-Open Selects Near-Time to Help Drive Community through Web Integration" 

I-Open's value as an industry partner with technology companies works in a couple of ways:

First, I-Open collaborates with technology and creative companies to build the place based open, neutral spaces for new conversations to take place, engaging business leaders focused on shared interests. Over time, conversations increase opportunities for innovative, collaborative local partnerships.

That's where a second stage of partnership comes in: in this case, the application of a Web 2.0 platform to sustain conversations and amplify community building, complete with a tool set to advance project work.

Online destinations offer a landing place for people to continue their conversations once they've gone back to the office. If a project is started, Web 2.0 tools enable work to continue from any place, independent of traditional meetings.

Midtown Brews and the Women's Enterprise Network are two Northeast Ohio based I-Open business collaborations that advance regional-to-global industry networks. Both are tested, successful models of integrating technology at the intersections of face-to-face and online network building. I-Open Civic Forums turbo charge activity and with the help of social media, local transparency is improved and global issues generally not addressed openly, are.

Collaborations between technology companies and network organizations like I-Open are invaluable because they advance cycles of industry improvement in social process and tool building. I-Open applications are unique because they focus on building enterprise under the mantra of open source ideology across social, economic, and environmental sectors.

Today, the Near-Time tool set has assumed a new application and brand: Strategy-Nets, an enterprise company founded by Ed Morrison that combines what was learned in those early applications to advancing strategic network building for economic development across regions.

By continuing to launch industry collaborations between technology companies and I-Open process, innovations capable of sparking technology and social process advances emerge. The added bonus is a footprint of trusted networks, evolving mindsets, collaborative behaviors, and plenty of competitive enterprise opportunities for any technology innovator prepared to grasp them.

Copyright 2011 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 2563 Kingston Road Cleveland OH 44118 Phone: 216-220-0172 Web: http://i-open.posterous.com/

 

Building Collaborative Communities

This presentation provides an introduction to building face-to-face and online collaborative communities that generate social capital and transformative initiatives in Open Source Economic Development.

Collaborative communities form from I-Open Civic Forums, a simple but disciplined process to accelerate place based, globally connected innovation and entrepreneurship.

Learn from the wisdom of civic leaders across these I-Open communities:

    •    Facebook I-Open http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Open/170817416694?ref=ts
    •    Flickr     http://www.flickr.com/people/iopen/
    •    Friendfeed http://friendfeed.com/iopen
    •    Livestream http://www.livestream.com/iopen/
    •    Posterous http://i-open.posterous.com/
    •    Scribd http://www.scribd.com/I-Open
    •    Slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/IOpen2
    •    Twitter http://twitter.com/iopen2
    •    Vimeo http://tiny.cc/106p0
    •    You Tube http://tiny.cc/j5rse
 
Copyright 2011 Betsey Merkel and I-Open. Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works. Institute for Open Economic Networks (I-Open) 2563 Kingston Road Cleveland OH 44118 Phone: 216-220-0172 Web: http://i-open.posterous.com/