Open Governance and Learning

Hi All,

I am glad to have joined such a diverse group. I am sure we will all get to learn a lot.

Here i go - This is Adil Muhammad living and working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I am from Bangalore, India. I completed my Engineering Studies in Electronics and Communication and from past three years i am working as a IT consultant in Riyadh. I am also a environmental ambassador at my company trying to reduce our carbon footprint in small ways.

I like to travel, read, laze around and not do anything at all sometimes. I hope to learn more about open governance practical implementation and advocate about it in whatever way possible.

Adil

Hello!

I'm Justin, dialling in from the fields of the southeastern UK.

I've just graduated from a Masters degree in digital media theory, so, with an undergraduate background in the social sciences, I'm approaching this area from a slightly less technical perspective than some; mostly as a result of my frustration with the failures and inefficiencies of the university system as it currently exists.

I'm interested in science fiction, politics, and the social and cultural impact of new technologies.

In my free time, I spend far too much time watching American TV shows, chatting on Twitter, hiking, and sleeping (though not all at the same time).

Hi! I'm Maya from hot and humid Malaysia! However it's been raining a lot these days so I'm enjoying the cool weather while it lasts :).

I currently work as an Instructional Designer designing job aids for SAP end users. It's pretty technical and rigid which is why I am also constantly in the look out to learn more and this topic caught my interest.

I use the Internet a lot so it takes up most of my leisure time as well. At random I would read, bead earrings, watch movies, catch up with friends and travel.

Hi all: Thanks for taking the initiative on this. I've probably been a bit slow to reply because I'm currently involved setting up two other courses at P2PU (in the new School of the Mathematical Future). Marisa has been great getting this one going! I'll be doing what I can to help :0 -- she and I have been talking about related ideas for a while.

To introduce myself: I'm a graduate student at the Knowledge Media Institute of The Open University, UK, which is mostly famous as a distance learning institution (but I live very near the main campus in Milton Keynes). My main focus there is on the topic "mathematical knowledge and problem solving", but I'm looking at this from a very community-driven perspective. I'm on the board of directors of the nonprofit that runs the community-created mathematics reference site PlanetMath.org, http://planetmath.org, and this will also be the main case study for my thesis project.

There are many ways these topics intersect what we'll be talking about in this course, I'll just mention a couple of things that particularly interest me right now, and that's (1) building coalitions; and (2) designing and supporting peer-based learning environments.

I find my work quite fun :) - but outside of work lately I've been riding my bike, drawing, talking and thinking a lot -- and trying to catch up on sleep.

This is Dan in Michigan USA. I am an electrical and computer engineer and learned about P2PU last summer at the Allied Media Conference from a Mozilla employee who gave a presentation. I joined a few course last September and now I am organizing the jQuery course in WebCraft. This is a very interesting community with a lot of diversity both geographically and in terms of education and careers of the members.

I can join the video conference on Jan 26 at 11:00 am GMT+1 (which is 3:00 pm GMT+5 for me locally).
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Morning hour meeting will take place on January 26 at 11:00 am (GMT+1) (which means 10:00am in UK, 12:00 pm in Saudi Arabia, and 6:00 pm in Malaysia);

Hi folks! People call me Patrick Gibbs, and I currently live in the wooded hills of mid-south Tennessee, USA, at a community land trust known as The Farm (known as a famous hippie commune in the 1970s). My work for Gaia University focuses on website management, community governance, and strategic development. In 2009 I did counseling, event planning, bookkeeping, and inn keeping as part of a 7-person collective running The Farm's Ecovillage Training Center, where we (in the collective) all lived and worked together.

I dream about locally-produced, organic, fair-trade, cradle-to-cradle recyclable, open source computers, and using them for ecosystem regeneration. (I see humans as part of the ecosystem.)

Why do I come to this course? My passion for respect, dignity, creativity, and effectiveness in groups and in society draws me to free/libre/open culture and peer-based governance. Maybe I'll get feedback about my current effort to integrate sociocracy, Holistic Management, and solidarity economics. I want to hear what other people think about these subjects, and I want to bring some new perspectives to the Gaia University 5-Year Review and Re-Visioning (happening this month) and the culture of The Farm.

I really enjoyed our introduction call and I look forward to cooperating with all of you!

More about me and my ideas online at http://www.mutualgift.net

Hello everyone, I'm Russ. A friend of Marisa now working in at Gothenburg Uni. I just read through everyone's comments and was overwhelmed by the diversity of members now participating. A bit about me. I use to teach English and Media Studies in UK Schools, got interested in digital media and learning and ended up doing a DPhil at Oxford that explored the implications of media change for the future of (self) education. I'm particularly interested in social media and the opportunities it opens up for collaborative learning across institutional boundaries. So when I saw Marisa talk about P2PU I was really keen to find out more. I guess this space operates as what Jim Gee calls a 'affinity space' or more recently a 'passion space'. That is a space where people with very similar interests come come together and share their passions regardless of age, race, class, nationality, political affiliation, gender or sexuality. But I'm also intersted in exploring how individuals within these kinds of spaces exercise 'relational agency' and start to draw upon each others knowledge, skills and expertise. I call these kinds of informal personal learning communities: 'Globally Distributed Funds of Living Knowledge'.

I look forward to finding out more about your own passions and sharing a few of my own. If any one is interested you can find out more about my work on my academic website. My book is actually called: 'The Decentring of the Traditional University: The Future of Self Education in Virtually Figured Worlds'. I think P2PU provides the most vivid emblem of this process of cultural transition I have discovered to date.

http://russfrancis99.wordpress.com/

welcome Russ :),

Your background looks so diverse and you have such mastery in the knowledge of fields you are in. Really nice that you have joined the group. Looking forward to learning from your expertise, knowledge and experience.

Thanks and Regards,
Adil