Outside boxes indeed
Heya,
indeed I have been in touch with Oana last week, and now I see you guys are working together, cool! Being in Bucharest over these next two months is quite important because I’m counting on someone to show us around and maybe interface physically with people we don’t know yet, but nothing that you can’t make up for. If not for this gig, then we’ll surely find collaboration spots. Plus you’re right in time for the July event - we’re thinking sometime before mid month.
Re: Urboteca, how do you see that you failed at your initial goals? From where I’m looking at, it seems you managed to get funding to map citizens’ views on their neighborhoods in terms of access to and quality of green spaces, leisure spots etc and have built good collaborations. Great use of OSM by the way, I know a lot of Edgeryders folks use that too, for example to organise mapping parties. Are there signs that people are using your maps or other eMedia tools?
I know some people in Arcub are doing neighborhood or sectorial workshops too, as a way to consult citizens. But this goes nowhere near building empowerment, which unless it’s a sustained effort feels like the hardest thing to do. What does it take for people at that scale to work together? With online networks for example, being awfully passionate matters A LOT, sometimes it simply does the trick because people come on board based on stuff they already care about. Of course, you design with more things in mind, but curious what is the glue which can tie together people living on the same streets?