For six years eChicago has
brought campus and community together to talk
about critical issues facing all of us. eChicago
comes out of community informatics. It asks how
local communities and social institutions use
computers and the internet, especially in Black,
Latino, and lower income communities. It’s about
ending digital divides and seeing how the
community can use cyberpower to end racism and
poverty. The public library is the number one
institution providing free computer access in
the community, so we care about the past,
present and future of the public library. And
eChicago always links Chicago’s inner city with
the suburbs, and with city, county, and state
government. It’s about a more digital and
more democratic Chicagoland.
Below are conference documents,
information on the conference organizers, and
presentation, audio and video files from each
session. The Twitter feed archive captures the
virtual discussion that took place shortly before,
during and after the event.
eChicago is organized by the
Community Informatics Research Lab at the Graduate School of Library &
Information Science, University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign. The Lab is co-directed by
Drs. Abdul Alkalimat and Kate Williams. Other
conference staff this year from the Lab and School
included Shameem Ahmed, Haixia Cao, Patti Grove,
Adrian Kok, Noah Lenstra, Ping Li, Quiyuan Liu,
Aysha Marsh, Abigail Sackmann, Diana Stroud, Brian
Zelip and Kang Zhao.
Conference sessions
Session 1:
Chicago Public Library: Empowering citizens
Chicago Public Library has
many old friends and a new director. What
do we need to know about its history in order to
guarantee its future? Joyce speaks from
her dual identity as the first IT director of
CPL and then a scholar of the library’s history.
Session 2: How
is the local library serving communities in crisis
and change?
The library depends on its
patrons and the local community, and vice
versa. What happens to this relationship
when communities are under stress? When
technologies are in flux?
Session 3: Does
Illinois have high speed internet yet and are we
using it?
What projects are being
implemented? Are they working as they should?
What plans exist for when the funds end? These
panelists are either managing or studying the
high speed internet rollout.
Session 4: Is
the library being reinvented for the 21st century?
How are computers changing the
local public library? What is the future of
downloading and uploading digital info in the
library? What skills will 21st century
librarians need?
What courses and research
projects are we engaged in? What jobs are we
preparing for? What projects can we collaborate
on from different institutions? What’s working,
what else can we do?
Session 6:
Towards the digital transformation of Chicago's
South Suburbs
This session focusses on the
hardest hit suburbs. Does the suburban
municipality have Internet connectivity and use
policies and programs? Where are the digital
divides between Chicago and the suburbs, or
inside the suburbs? Where do we go?
Session 7:
Reconfiguring information: New media and YOUMedia
How is old media being
reinvented with digital technology? Will
professional journalism survive? How does new
media change the definition of literacy?
How is the public library involved?
Session 8:
Public Policy and the Information Revolution in
Cook County
What are the current policies
for high speed internet connectivity? Given
budget crises will there still be funding to end
the digital divide? What best practices are
there in Illinois? What are the next
steps?
Session 9: Edit
Your City: Collaborative Media in the 21st Century
Can a wiki take a whole
community into cyberspace? What is a local wiki?
What are the best practices of a local
wiki? What differences does it make for
the life of a community?
In low income communities, why
focus on the digital divide? How can we create
more computer literate “hoodies?” Why is
Facebook so popular? Is it important to
diversify what people do? How?
Session 11:
Workshop: How to build a local community wiki
What is the digital footprint
of the community? How can all digital info of a
community be aggregated? How can someone upload
new info? This session will explain how to
start a wiki and ways to keep it going.
How have they worked so far?
Session 12:
eChicago as global network: China and Chinese
Chicago
China is a rising power and
it’s here in Chicago and Illinois. How is
Beijing “informatizing” its communities?
What do various digital connections between
China and the US look like? How is the
history of Chinese Chicago part of the future?
Session 13:
State policy and practice to span the digital
divide
What is the current program to
end the digital divide in Illinois? What kinds
of projects use these resources? What’s working
and what still needs to be done?
Session 14:
Chicago hip hop, the digital hustle & social
justice
Organized discussions
regarding the hip hop community, outside of
actual cultural performance, have existed since
at least the early 1980s. These discussions have
become more frequent and widespread, especially
as generations who've grown up with hip hop
mature, and as universities, political campaigns
and business models increasingly look to them
for engagement and profit. This session explores
a bottom-up approach to technology and
networking by featuring four hip hop artists
from Chicago who are leading best practices
using new digital tools for community building
and social consciousness.
Session 15:
Workshop: Digital tools for cultural heritage
People around the world are
using technology to share and to stay connected
to cultural heritage. New ways to search for
roots and share culture emerge online. This
workshop discusses simple social and technical
procedures you can use to get involved in
community and family history digitization.
Topics covered include: basic digitization,
using Omeka (http://www.omeka.org)
to build digital libraries and museums,
organizing communities around digital cultural
heritage, and using digital cultural heritage in
face-to-face settings, such as school assemblies
or family reunions. The workshop's theme is:
Everyone can do something now to contribute to
the construction of universal designs for
sharing local and family histories online.
What three main points of the
conference need to be remembered? What is your
personal eChicago goal for the next year? What
should eChicago 2013 be about?
Corporate clouds blow away. eChicago
2011 tweets were not archived immediately
following the event, then they disappeared. This
year the virtual discussion via Twitter has been
archived via Storify. As the conversation
continues to expand so will the archive.
