I admit it. I’m a Craigslist addict. Like thousands of other people, I turn to Craigslist almost daily instead of heading to the local shopping mall. It’s kind of like Grocery Gateway without the guilt of home delivery; or like shopping on Amazon but knowing that you’re part of a community of people committed to not buying something new if you can find it second hand.

Craigslist in their own words is “Local classifieds and forums for 450 cities worldwide - community moderated, and largely free.” Basically, you can buy and sell almost anything, locally, for free. Craiglist is a “non-corporate” corporation that earns revenue by “charging below-market fees for job ads in 7 cities and for broker apartment listings in NYC.” The founder — Craig Newmark — is a committed philanthropist and set up the Craigslist Foundation in 2001, which helps to develop the skills of emerging non-profit leaders.

Last year I wrote a bit about the implication of “The Syndicated Web” for non-profits and mentioned the use of services like Craigslist as a simple way to push useful information out to a community, e.g., job ads, free stuff, volunteer opportunities, etc. This year I was lucky enough to be able to help a few organizations implement some of these ideas … but, alas, that’s another post. Right now, we’re talking about my personal Craigslist addiction! ;-) read more »

It is hard to believe that it’s months into 2006 already — it seems like 2005 was just a blip on a very large radar screen.

Last June, I was working with my colleagues at Communicopia.Net to support the International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) recently launched telecentre.org initiative. At the time, our colleague Mark Surman was working hard to document a vision of a global network of telecentres (anything from an Internet café in Nairobi to an ICT training centre in India) that could share information freely and fluidly.  read more »