Steps We Are Taking

In yesterday's class, I talked about open-source development, Howard Dean's "open-sourced" grassroots campaign, and the grassroots-volunteer efforts to serve the needs of hurricane evacuees (what do these volunteers do that large bureaucratic organizations won't do?).

Afterwards, I broke the class into three groups to brainstorm how we might involve persons outside the class as co-participants in our project. Everyone in my class has an engineering background. There were lots of innovative yet plausible ideas. Maybe one thing we can do is find a way to share these ideas with you, in their formative stages.

The essence of what we are doing: helping cultivate places (or communities) where we can give and receive information about where to focus our efforts on behalf of the displaced people of New Orleans, many of whom are still scattered regionally and nationally. And yes, this does mean doings stuff off the Internet...