i-together: a scenic tour

I thought I'd write something about i-together, the organisation I am planning (and now building) with friends. A lot of you will already know a lot of where we're at with the project, but sometimes it's nice to pause on the road to take stock and look at the scenery.

Here's a brief description of i-together itself:

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i-together is a platform, a space, a set of tools and a collection of ideas on, in and with which people can express and explore their identity and build community through relationship and co-creation.

i-together manifests both online, initially via existing weblog-creation tools and—when we've developed it—in our own original web-based software, and also offline, in grassroots projects helping people—especially kids—to develop creative projects which can then be shared and communicated about with other people around the world over the online i-together network.

i-together has commercial and charitable elements: i-together ltd. is responsible for developing, maintaining and supporting the i-together web platform (i.e. software), and charges a subscription fee along similar lines to weblog services such as Typepad. i-together ltd. channels a proportion of its profits into the i-together foundation, which works to help materially-disadvantaged people access the i-together network and develop the creative, social and IT skills necessary to make full use of it.

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So where are we at in this plan?

We have three potential trustees and an administrator for the foundation.

I am talking to two people in the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) world, with expertise in ICT in education (especially weblogging) and ASP.NET programming for education solutions respectively. Even more importantly, they share my fundamental vision of what i-together is about. We are discussing the possibility of collaboration and/or partnership.

I will be meeting with Blake Ludwig and Robin Daly of Global Generation, a charity that works with kids to encourage them to explore the global dimension of their identity (with particular regard to the environment—Blake is a Greenpeace friend of mine) to discuss a pilot project with kids in London and then possibly Africa and other overseas locations, utilising existing weblog and related software to develop a social and creative online network.

Talking of Greenpeace, my friend Jason Torrance is a Greenpeace Area Network Coordinator who is developing their Active Supporters Network. Jason is very supportive of the principles of i-together, as is another eminent Green thinker and do-er aquaintance of mine, Gary Alexander, a professor at the OU who has written a fascinating book on the potential of online networks to facilitate sustainable and healthy community: eGaia (you can read the whole book in .pdf format!).

Another potential project is with Children On The Edge, who run a school for ex-orphans in Romania, and are interested in partnering with i-together to forge a link between that school and another in Britain. We have a number of other Romanian contacts, too, so the Romania angle could prove fruitful!

I am working with Jonathan Clark to develop a new mock-up of the i-together web software. This should be ready within a few weeks, hopefully (it always takes longer than one expects).

I am also in touch with people who variously work with psychologically disturbed and physically disabled kids using art therapy, post-Freudian analysis and mythic drama. I feel that these kind of modalities could provide the ground-soil for projects with kids that then could link up with one another via the online i-together network.

Finally, my Sioux Indian friend Walking Eagle has a vision of helping kids from sacred sites around the world to link up with one another via an online network, so he was most enthusiastic when I told him about i-together!

I hope that paints a clear picture for you of where we are with everything. I haven't mentioned names where I felt it might impinge on privacy at this juncture. Please do add your comments to this entry by clicking on the link below this text—your ideas and feedback would be hugely appreciated. Hoping to talk (and work?) with you all very soon... : ))