OneWebDay

Six weeks ago, I became the first full-time Executive Director and organizer of OneWebDay.

Today, we announce our theme for OneWebDay 2009: “One Web.  For All.”  These are challenging times of economic crisis and worldwide conflict.  The leadership of OneWebDay — our Board, our most dedicated volunteers and I — believe that the values of the Web – openness, opportunity, and participation, to name just a few, will play a major role in how our global society solves its problems.  It is clear, however, that access to this crucial resource is far from evenly distributed.  Even in the United Sates, 37% of households do not have a high speed Internet connection. Many also struggle to keep up with the rapid pace of technological change, while others don’t yet understand that their life chances and their children’s futures depend on full participation, online and off.  Across the world, people in poorer nations develop amazing innovations on top of low-bandwidth networks; imagine what they could do to meet their needs and prosper with more capacity to communicate.  Let’s not forget, too, that the worldwide struggle between the right to communicate online and the authority of the state to censor and misinform continues to escalate.

Our founder, Susan Crawford, said that each year, the Web should be better after OneWebDay than it was the day before.  She also understood that OneWebDay was about much more than the routers, protocols, and standards that make the Web work; it’s about the human network the Web has empowered.   This year, let’s do everything we can to get anyone who wants to connect to that human network the resources they need.  After September 22, 2009, the Web will be better for having a broader, more diverse, better-educated human network, and we will all benefit from the new voices joining the network.

As Executive Director, I am not here to tell the OneWebDay community what to do next.  OneWebDay is Your Day.  I have some ideas, and I will strive to make it easier than ever to organize activities and events leading up to September 22.  However, I believe in the power of communities to tell their own stories, to define their own challenges, and to collaborate to address those challenges.

Guided by that belief, I have asked dozens of smart, passionate people to advise me over the past month and a half.  I have shared some of my ideas, and already I have learned so much.  I am so excited to get started with you to make OneWebDay 2009 the biggest, richest, most meaningful celebration of the power of the Web ever.

Based on what I have heard, I want start a conversation with you by asking some questions.

What if, by September 22, we have supported hundreds of groups that work with aging populations, kids in poor school, minorities and immigrants, and other marginalized communities to design Web skills training curricula that they can deliver all across the US and the world on OneWebDay and beyond?

What if every library used OneWebDay to reach out to their communities to provide training and to illustrate that libraries have always been the center of our communities’ informational needs and will be crucial in the 21st century in guiding people through the wilds of the Internet?

What if thousands of people with technical skills discover ways to serve their communities by installing new wireless networks in public housing, teaching a class, or committing to a regular, long-term volunteer relationship with a local non-profit organization?

What if, for one day, tens, or even hundreds of thousands of individuals, businesses, and institutions shared their Wi-Fi networks with their neighbors by taking down their passwords so that anyone nearby could use their excess bandwidth to connect?

What if people all over the world stand up together on September 22 to tell the leaders of their nations that it is time to invest in the future of One Web for All?

What if, after all of this hard work of community service and activism is done, people threw a big celebration for their communities, using multimedia from the Web to showcase the work they have done and the ways their neighbors are using the Web to make a difference?

These are challenging times, but also times of hope, courage, and passionate collaboration.   What could happen if we work together to show the world that we can’t take the Web for granted and that everyone deserves a chance to connect?

I encourage you to join this conversation on our new collaboration hub for volunteer OneWebDay organizers and participating organizations at my.OneWebDay.org.