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Hello Everyone,
Kiwi Scrum has 2243 members. This newsletter is late. My apologies. (There is a printable version here.)
LinkedIn connects to your Twitter Account. I am directly connected to nine people from Egypt. Four of those connections have twitter comments on their LinkedIn Profile Pages, all supporting the protests. If you don't use Twitter, this might help. Using Twitter for Beginners.
Does access to the Internet change everything? I plan three blog posts about that, but very briefly. For me the Internet has been a liberation from constraining ideas. For certain other groups of people who are driven to use the Internet, the Internet is a lifeline. For most people who are online in New Zealand, including most members of Kiwi Scrum, access to the Internet has not yet made any fundamental change to what they do, and how they think.
The useful common is there. Most of the people I've done research with make occasional use of it. Very few of those people have ever published something of their own, even on Facebook. They use the useful common as a library, but they don't contribute to it. They are consumers of the Internet, not yet the creators of the Internet.
Membership of the Internet as a peer, as a creator, as a publisher, as a contributor, changes how you see the world. It still takes ten years or so to earn you wings, so get started.
We've just seen what happened in Tunisia and Egypt and is about to sweep the Middle East and perhaps the world. Why was Egypt one the most active counties in Facebook? Because they were driven onto the Internet by the pressures of their life at home.
My little story about that is from 1996. I met a group of head injured people online, who were using web sites and Internet Relay Chat and email to do remarkable things. They built web pages to tell personal stories (horror stories) about head injury, and the inadequacy of the hospital treatment, and the failure of recuperative care. They were joining together to inform each other about their situation, and to make public representations to the medical profession, and the government, to improve treatment and recognition. This group of about 50 people were far ahead of me, streets ahead of any business activity on the Internet. They were driven by a deep need to communicate. "When I'm online, I escape the prison of my room, where my parents hold the key," responded one young man.
You might be on Facebook to share a few family photos, but the young people from Tunisia and Egypt are driven to be there for quite different purposes. They use the Internet with urgency and purpose, because for them it serves a critical need.
It is really pleasing to see the number of members Kiwi Scrum continuing to rise. One of the best gifts you can offer a business contact is a link to yourself on LinkedIn and the invitation to join Kiwi Scrum. You might also let them know where to get help in making their LinkedIn page. Here are my notes on that topic.
Like many New Zealanders, I ceased to follow any religious tradition sometime over the last 30 years. I feel uncomfortable about using the words religious and spiritual to describe what I do, and I never use those terms to suggest that others should respond in that way. Even so, I'm heavily involved with several groups doing work as a volunteer that I think is important. Every month here in this newsletter I encourage people to volunteer in some way. Those who are making a new Middle East, are volunteers in that cause. There are paid demonstrators too, and look at what they achieved.
There is power in the action of volunteers. Volunteering changes who you are, and changes the possibility set for the community in which you live. Rev.Prof. Lloyd Geering tells me that anyone who takes life seriously and strives to live a life according to the highest values is being religious. My friends in Four Years.Go. tell me that being "spiritual", is responding to intrinsic motivation, an committing yourself to important work.
On that basis the world needs more religious people and more spiritual people.
The Internet allows us to connect to other people at many levels. We should try to activate each of those levels. Joining Linkedin, most easily makes you a member of your company network, and the International network. To join a large New Zealand Network, you have to take special action and join a group like Kiwi Scrum. LinkedIn Groups allow you to connect in some other ways.
Missing from the mix is some system of very local connection. That might seem to be a strange idea to you, but in fact it's very practical. Kiwi Scrum member, Andrew Groom, has developed a local news system. You join, and you post news about your street, or your company or the club you are a member of. Other people who are registered close to you will see the message. A very clever idea called Placerama. You should join.
My own contribution is the idea of Street Groups. Available world wide. We can help you create a group in YOUR Street. All you need to do is volunteer to help the group get started. I'd love to see a hundred new groups open. You could help to make that happen.
More challenging news next month,
John Stephen Veitch
The Network Ambassador
Global Spread Team Leader
Four Years. Go.