Community Informatics: Enabling Communities With Information and Communications Technologies At the Many Voices, Many Places - Electronically Enabling Communities for An Information Society Colloquium http://www.ccnr.net/prato2003/ held at the Monash University Centre in Prato, Italy a group of participants from some 7 countries and representing a variety of universities and research networks agreed to proceed to the creation of a formal Community Informatics Research Network (.Org) (CIRN). There was an agreement by the CIRN Interim Committee of the Whole that the organization would be open to participation and membership by individuals, institutions, for profit and not for profit enterprises and networks, with an active interest and involvement in Community Informatics Research and particularly those from Developing Countries. The approach agreed to was also that this organisation would seek to build a network of the related organizations that for subject, language or other reasons feel more comfortable operating on their own. In other words it would be pro-actively facilitating the formation of a structured open network among CI research groups. An interim executive steering committee consisting of Michael Gurstein, NJIT; Peter Day, U. of Brighton; and Don Schauder, Monash U./Wal Taylor, Central Queensland U., and Larry Stillman of Monash U. as the Interim Secretary/webmaster was formed to work towards the timely incorporation of the group as a not for profit society under the Australian corporations act. In addition, an invitation was extended by Dr. Peter Day and Brighton University to host CIRN's first research conference in the spring of 2004. The Founding conference of CIRN it was agreed, would be hosted by Monash University at the Prato Centre in late September 2004. It was also agreed that the CI Researchers list http://vancouvercommunity.net/lists/ciresearchers would be the e-list for the organization and that a website based on the design developed by CQU would go on line as soon as possible and hosted by Monash U. in conjunction with CQU. Michael Gurstein agreed to provide an interim linkage with the newly created CI Research Network of the Commonwealth of Independent States formed in conjunction with the St. Petersburg (BIC) conference http://communities.org.ru/conference/ Several members of the Interim Committee of the Whole agreed to liase with a variety of other CI research networks and specifically the CRACIN network in Canada and the network which is currently being created in the United States. It was further agreed that efforts would be undertaken to find resources to move forward with the continued development of the Open Archive Community Informatics Text Book building on the work of Sergei Stafeev, Mike Gurstein and Michel Menou in the publication in English and Russian of Community Networking and Community Informatics: Prospects, Approaches, Instruments Part 1 of a CI Text book (St. Petersburg, 2003) And the website http://www.ci-text.dr.ag/ .... A statement to be forwarded to the World Summit on the Information Society on behalf of CIRN was adopted and will be circulated in a subsequent message. Those with an interest in either affiliating with the Network or learning more about it are invited to subscribe to the Research list or to the more general Community Informatics interest list. To subscribe send a message To: sympa@vancouvercommunity.net Message: Subscribe CIResearchers And/or Communityinformatics Best, Peter Day, U. of Brighton Michael Gurstein, NJIT Don Schauder, Monash U./Wal Taylor, Central Queensland U. Community Informatics Researchers News: * An informal meeting in conjunction with the Information, Communications and Society Conference at the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/event/conference/iCS/iCS2003_programme.pdf , agreed that efforts would be undertaken immediately to begin the development of an on-line journal with interim resource support committed as available through NJIT/NSF; CIRA in Teeside, UK; Monash U. in Australia; and the CRACIN Network in Canada. A follow-up meeting to "brainstorm" on the design and development of the journal will be held in conjunction with the AoIR meeting in Toronto in October and with an interim discussion on the CIResearchers e-list as a lead-up to that meeting. * Dr. Peter van den Besselaar, Head of the Social Sciences Department Netherlands Institute of Scientific Information, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, (NIWI-KNAW) presented an important outline of the scope of Community Informatics Research including its links to his own work in Digital Cities and related Community Networks, in a keynote presentation at the Communities and Technology Conference in Amsterdam http://www-winfo.uni-siegen.de/wulf/CT2003/ . * Brian Loader and Leigh Keeble of CIRA/U. of Teeside with funding from the Rowntree Foundation have prepared a most valuable annotated bibliography of Community Informatics Research which they will be making available on line in the very near future. It is their intention to keep this up to date as a continuing resource for the CI Research Community. http://www.cira.org.uk * A Workshop bringing together US Community Informatic researchers and Practitioners was convened in April in Colorado Springs with the sponsorship of the Ford Foundation and organized by Richard Civille and Michael Gurstein. It was agreed at that meeting that follow-up action towards the creation of a US CI Researchers group would be undertaken as well as a number of other related follow-up initiatives. http://www.communityinformatics.org * The CQU/COIN team including Wal Taylor and Stewart Marshall have just published two books including "Using Community Informatics to Transform Regions" through the Idea Group publishers and "Closing the Digitial Divide" with Greenwood Publisher. They are pleased to invite Community Informatics researchers and practitioners to the Upcoming 5th annual ITiRA conference (IT in Regional Areas) in Caloundra, Queensland, Dec. http://itira.cqu.edu.au/2003/ * Bulletin: The CRACIN (Canadian Research Alliance For Community Innovation And Networking) proposal: PI's Andrew Clement, U. of Toronto; Michael Gurstein, NJIT; and Leslie Shade, Concordia U. has just been awarded a major 3 year grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to undertake a series of community IT/Community Informatics case studies across Canada and in conjunction with the larger CI Researchers Network. There will be a presentation on the project at the AoIR conference in Toronto Oct. 17.