Hi, folks. We had a very exciting week unveilieng "Power to the Edges" at the Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE) in NYC this week.

We had a very enthusiastic group of about thirty people who listened while I walked through the highlights of the report. Jill Blair, chief honcho of PACE, then asked smaller groups to talk about what the distinct opportunities and hurdles are for this new field of online civic engagement.

People were excited about the opportunities for engaging young people and potentially people from marginalized and uderserved communities using the new, digital technologies -- particularly cell phones.

But, and no offense to anyone in particular who was there!, we also hit a generational divide. What are we going to do with you people who know you should get it, watch your teenagers get it, but are terrified to poke around and try IM'ing or text messaing yourselves????

Seriously, tell me what you think, should we have a basics training for people who are finding this new world intimidating?

And starting next week, we're going to push the report out more widely and start to talk about how we operationalize the ideas in the report and begin to fulfill all of the potential for amazing social change that is possible in a highly networked and connected online and on land world.

Thanks to everyone who helped with the report - particularly our crew of Aaron, Jillaine, Marty, Rob, Henri, Dan - you guys are great and really worked extra hard on this. And thanks, of course, to our friends at PACE - Jill, Tina, Normie, Ellen - great conference and great start to our partnership!

I'm heading to CA next week, if you're in the Bay Area and want to chat about the report, just let me know. Later,

Allison