I have moments where I’m really involved and immersed in NYSCI and Hive almost on the same level, other times I have to take a step back, and sometimes the Hive has gone a little MIA or quiet as they transition and figure things out, as they shape the network. It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride over the past couple of years. For me, that’s been the biggest challenge — going through that process.

Success? I don’t really like that term, because the opposite of success is assumed to be failure. When we talk in terms of social movements, I think the most important thing is to continue fighting, doing the work, establishing networks, making connections, meeting people, exchanging ideas, and at some point, achieving greater change. In that context, and using your term, I believe that continuing our work should always be considered a success.

There are various elements that contribute to the difficulty of brokering within a network like Remake Learning, such as competition (for funding, for participants, etc), and less sharing  because of it. Networks can help share metrics, data, and build pathways for young people to participate between programs, but it’s still not working for everyone. It’s a multi-sector problem, which is why it’s important to work with organizations like Mozilla, or with the government, or with the private sector, in addition to all the nonprofits, academia, and K-12.

Another instance, is my collaboration with the Nemetics Institute of Arts and Science, Kolkata (NIASK), where I do research on complex adaptive systems, and design pieces to share the Institute’s research. It is a network of many great minds, who are scattered around the world. I’ve been working with them for a while now, and, even though I feel that I know them, I have only met two of them in person. We work online, and we use Twitter, Popplet, Gtools, and any other new open source tech we can find. It’s because of this ability to connect and collaborate online that we are able to work together, even from far away. The open web and open source technologies provide opportunities to collaborate with people we’ve never met, across the globe.

I was part of the team that founded Creative Commons in Tanzania. Since that time, we’ve created a large network and come to know so many people. To me, that’s the greatest strength of my involvement with CC; I’ve gotten to connect not only with people from Tanzania, but also people from around the world. I now have friends in places like South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria – and colleagues in South Korea and Canada, where I attended previous summits. If it weren’t for Creative Commons, I wouldn’t have met these people. The success is the power of networking.

It’s so hard to capture those network effects. It’s something we did, we are, and we will continue to struggle with. You probably know that a little bit from your PASE experience. We understand that those results from the network effect can be so impactful, but they’re so hard to measure and talk about.

As a participant in the Hive network, there were many moments when I felt that there were great ideas being shared. What I always enjoyed the most was hearing from other organizations and what they were doing. I would learn about their work, their unique perspective, and their way of doing things with young people. When it came to working together and collaborating, I didn’t always feel like everyone was truly open to that or able to engage in that way. I felt some wanted to keep a really close, tight knit group so it was hard to figure out how to actually begin collaborations. A lot of the groups were smaller organizations and so funding is always a driving factor and they likely saw others as competitors, making it difficult to figure out how collaboration could work. There were moments when I kind of felt like, “Do I really belong in this room right now?” But I felt there was always a greater good and that I had something to offer and things to learn, which is what kept bringing me back.

People conflate ideas of community and network and think that they’re interchangeable, but they’re not. Communities are strong because of their similarity in their bonds and they tend to circle and look inward. Networks — and I’m not saying these are mutually exclusive or that one’s better than the other, I’m just articulating where I think a difference is — intentionally look outward and leverage difference to augment and gain strength over time. And so many people when they do this kind of work miss the nuance of the difference and they’ll use community and network interchangeably in the space of two sentences. That really misses the power and the weaknesses of both systems. So it starts with understanding that a network is actually going to be seeking out difference to build its strength. Successful networks understand the difference between strong and weak bonds and that weak bonds are actually incredibly powerful and useful. To then take those networks to be high-performing, you actually want the nodes in the network, whether they be people or organizations or a mix, to understand how to toggle between being strong and weak. A strong network is going to know when those things turn on or off, depending on the problem, depending on the opportunity, and so on. A network is strong when you have many dormant, weak connections that can flip back on. Hive NYC, as a project able to advance a field, did so because of these networked practices.

I think the Pinkerton Foundation sees the value in networks and in people in the field sharing best practices. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel for out-of-school programming, especially around digital learning, so it’s important for us, and the individual organizations, to see the network continue. The challenge is that the Hive started off as a funding stream, so a lot of organizations came together in part to share best practices, but also for the potential to receive funding. Now that that piece is gone, I worry about how involved the members will continue to be, but encourage them to stay connected, especially because of the value that it has on their programming. For the network to continue, there needs to be a group of members who are willing to take the lead and organize the meetings and other gatherings. And I understand that it requires time and resources that some members may not be able to commit to.

Earlier on, I struggled with not knowing how other organizations could become part of the network. I wasn’t sure about the structure or timeline for members to join and participate in that kind of community. It was great to see that a few of my grantees had come on board.

Right now, a lot of people are getting turned off and apathetic from participating in developing community infrastructure. We need to nurture participation and show how important it is. Right now, the civic sphere — the words and the rhetoric — looks scary, aggressive, and mean. I don’t want our folks to turn off and to not participate.

One of the things that we’re doing is we really want to change the city charter to include privacy provisions in New York City.

How do you think creatively and find the right language to illustrate to people that their online identity is just as valuable and just as rich as their tangible identity? How do you instill a sense of urgency in them?