Computers in Libraries 2013 - Day 2 - Keynote with Storm Cunningham

Tuesday's keynote was presented by Storm Cunningham, author of The Restoration Economy, Rewealth!, two books about revitalization and the economy.  Cunnigham sketched out a model about the three ways that libraries might play a role in revitalizing their communities.   The first two of these strategies Cunningham went over very quickly.  They were the physical strategy, in which revitalization occurs because a lot of money is spent changing how a library is situated and/or functions so that it can play a different role, and the supportive strategy, in which libraries do what they've always done in providing meeting space, giving people access to materials and resources that help people develop themselves, etc.

The third strategy Cunningham called the catalytic strategy.  In this strategy libraries with their technological resources can provide a kind of coordinating and organization building role in getting people to play an active role in revitalizing a community.

To explain this further he described three trends that play a role in the revitalization of communities: restorative development, citizen leadership, and crowd technologies.

Cunningham described development as happening in three modes/phases.  First there is new development which is where someone decides to build a new subdivision/town/city/country.  This kind of development destroys whatever was there before and has been the most common in our history.  It also results in a lot of economic growth but there is a finite limit as to how far you can pursue this.  Second is maintenance or conservative development.  This is where existing structures that need repairs are fixed or areas that have not been depleted are saved and turned into national parks and the like.  This creates some economic growth, but not nearly as much as new development.

Finally Cunningham described restorative development where a previously developed area has fallen badly into decay and work is done to completely restore or redevelop the area to bring life back into it.  Cunningham described this as the future of economic growth as you can never do too much of it and you never really run out of things you can do.

Citizen leadership is where citizens take on projects that are normally reserved for local governments, normally because the local governments don't take them on.  In some cases citizen action of this sort forces local governments to act.  Cunningham provided examples such as Connect Tampa Bay, a citizen organized public transit system, and the High Line project in Manhattan as citizen leadership actions.

Crowd technologies are crowd-funding, crowd-mapping, and crowd-sourcing.  These are new adaptations that take advantage of the connectivity provided by the Internet and was ultimately where Cunningham felt libraries could play an important role.  He provided several examples where these crowd technologies were making an impact and in a much quicker way than conventional methods have been able to.  For example, in contrast to the High Line project, which took years to spur New York politicians into action, the Low line project (converting an underground trolley track section into an underground, naturally lit garden) got over $100,000 in funding through a Kickstarter project and seems to progressing at an incredibly fast pace.

Cunningham felt opportunities for libraries rested in:

• More projects started by library users
• More ability for citizens to gains support
• More ability to get funded quickly
• More ability to position the library at the heart
• More ability for libraries to accelerate crowd-powered citizen-led revitalization

I am excited by crowd technologies and have participated in some Kickstarter campaigns (although nothing of the sort that he described).  I'm not sure that his optimistic vision of a bright future through such technologies will come true, but I certainly hope that it might.