Building the Network With Us

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We are getting out the word about www.dmlcompetition.net and learning the lesson we've all learned before all over again: it's all about the relationships . . .

Sure you can read our blogs, you can visit the www.dmlcompetition.net website, and you can follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dmlComp

We have many, many friends, old and new, doing just that. But building new relationships, making new social networks. That is something else. And that's where we are learning the deep nature of the word "social" in the phrase "social networking."

We have some real challenges this year in getting out the word. For one, we have a youth award and who 18-25 is still dazzled by email, blogs, The Internet. Okay, maybe one or two people under 25 still find it all a marvel, whoo hooo . . . but most of our particular target audience under 25, those who are really doing the great work in participatory learning, well, they aren't necessarily reading every rfp on every list serv. (Hey, I'm over 25 and I can hit the delete button faster than you can say "click!")

Our other new demographic is equally challenging. We hope next year to have an open worldwide competition but, this year, we're piloting eligibility as an experiment in twelve selected countries where either MacArthur Foundation or HASTAC has had a prior working relationships. Our post-911 world poses all kinds of wonderful red-tape challenges to anyone who wants to distribute funds internationally or receive them. So we're doing a pilot to work out the red tape issues and procedures before we make all the world our audience. But twelve countries, mostly where our relationships are not in Web 2.0 networking but in other kinds of projects? Cold call to India or Nigeria or Japan or PRC. (For the full list: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/innovation-pl.php).

We did the research, we sent the info, we weren't sticking. We called upon fabulous people we knew in all those countries. But we weren't getting to the biggest bloggers. And then we remembered that old rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If I hit the delete button, hey, they were probably deleting me (and David, Mandy, Jonathan, Laura, Mindy, Jessica,etc etc.)

Numbers aren't the issue---we know we will have a lot of applications this year, as we did last. What is the issue is making sure the people who will be most energized by this competition and who, if they are lucky enough to win (the odds don't make this easy, we know), can both be transformed and create wonderful projects that will help transform participatory learning for others: well, that's a goal worth shooting for.

So we decided to call in two people who are established respected social networkers, who aren't just seen as Potential Delete Material. We've been working this week with Beth Kanter and Maria Thurrell and what a pleasure it has been. I feel like we're learning so much about how social networking works and, most important, they are actually introducing us to amazing people all over the world. We know that we will close the application system at www.dmlcompetition.net on October 15. But we also know we will be at the beginning of networking and creating relationships that will last far, far beyond that.

This makes me think (for about the millionth time) of how wrong-headed it is to call ours the Information Age. It may be the Age of Sociability. That's a blog topic for another day. I know I'm supposed to feel alienated and isolated and, as a victim of this age, am using social networking as a pale and pathetic cover for my impoverished emotional life in this post-industrial, Neoliberal, disempowered age. That's what the pundits like to say.  Actually, that's not what it feels like to me. It feels like I am able to act and interact with more people with whom I share a view of the world---all over the world---and that makes my piece in this disempowered age potentially more powerful.

Pollyannish? Sure! But cynicism too often leads to paralysis and lack of action. I prefer strategic optimism.  What I like about participatory learning and this week's wonderful new experiences in social networking is that, even when things feel really grim, even when you cannot believe how the media allows the baldest and boldest and most cynical of lies to stand without refutation, that it is possible to know that there is a world of people out there who are working together to do something better, more honest, more visionary, more progressive, innovative, and Yes We Can bold.

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