The community I hope to work with will be a Boston based community which we would have chance to communicate with the members in a face to face style. Our first week readings show that in codesign, local community is considered as codesigners rather than consumers or test subject. The design process must actively involve the local community.  Thus, face to face communication is important for the success of a codesign project. Second, I hope my expertise has a good match with the need of the community. As a communication and media researcher, among the current list of potential community partners, I thought Press Pass TV has a good fit with my expertise. (http://presspasstv.dreamhosters.com/about-us/) I am also interested to work with some NGOs who have interest to web2.0 technologies because my experience in Web2.0 and communication capacity training in NGO2.0 project will be helpful for the organization. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0 )

I am hoping to work with youth from the greater Boston area. I am interested in many intersecting issues, such as educational access and youth empowerment, and I have worked with low-income youth in the Los Angeles. If possible, I would like to continue working with youth from low-income backgrounds. The community-based organization that I would like to work with is Press Pass TV. I have worked with Press Pass TV in the past during the development of AAGO, the citizen youth mobile application being developed with the Center for Civic Media. I really admire Press Pass TV’s emphasis on critical media practice and youth empowerment. 

At the current time, I do not have one community-based organization to which I am wed.  However, upon watching the video about Food Justice being promulgated at Press Pass TV through the creation of community gardens, I became interested in their mission: http://presspasstv.dreamhosters.com/2011/10/27/grow-or-die/.  I particularly had interest in this organization, because I have worked with adolescents for over a decade, and I want to support any cause which helps them cultivate their voice in a productive way.  Furthermore, I think that the way PressPass TV is working, the demonstration of such voice could also allow adolescents to help create better dialogue with adults by communicating their needs and desires in way such that it will help them better engage with youth.

After the first half of the class, which was taken up by a course overview, a round of introductions, and a discussion of logistics, we created a collaborative drawing of ‘design:’

We did one round of drawing, then stopped to discuss what each person created, then did a second round based on adding elements we thought were missing.

Keywords from the first explanation stage: cooperative learning, conversation (+1), foundational support, creating object, hypodermic needle, extraction, inspiration, creative commons, dialoge, local community, disconnect, no time, synthesis, peer production, question/need, commons, organic process, inferences, conflict, pedagogy.

Keywords from the second stage: sabotage, big picture, vision, capital, perfect/good, different processes, phases, project evolution, consensus, space & time, typology, time +1, environmental resources, influence, community access, food, governance, constraints (law, social norms), emerging structure, structural forces & constraints.

I’m excited for the beginning of the new semester, and pleased to launch the Civic Media Codesign Studio course. This will be a space for students interested in working with community-based organizations to develop civic media projects that connect to grounded strategies for social transformation. The studio will also be a space for shared inquiry into the theory, history, best practices, and critiques of various approaches to community inclusion in iterative stages of project ideation, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation. There are still spots available, so if you’re interested sign up for CMS.362/862. The studio meets Fridays, 1-4pm, in E15-363.