Some additional progress ...

"The council also unveiled their new website, developed by Karma411.com, offering an information portal for all local chambers. This new technology provides a Web 2.0 tool which empowers all the chambers of commerce members to broadcast their news and events."

I was happy to play a small part in making this happen.

The Council is on the right track by setting a foundation for their members to interact with one another and with other entities employing Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies. They have much more ambitious plans ahead. Congratulations to them for having the courage to change.

This is a central tenet in the "One Long Island" series of ideas.

Sustainability on Long Island will be achieved through collaboration and shared information, analysis and philosophy rather than wholesale "consolidation" which the people of Long Island have resisted for years.

Any consolidation must come "organically" and as a logical outcome to the hard work of providing accurate information, analysis and further, to achieving the trust of the citizens without which it can not be effective and sustainable.

Details in the previous 300 plus posts .... more to come.

Interesting reading ...

"Government data is being put online to increase accountability, contribute valuable information about the world, and to enable government, the country, and the world to function more efficiently. All of these purposes are served by putting the information on the Web as Linked Data. Start with the "low-hanging fruit". Whatever else, the raw data should be made available as soon as possible. Preferably, it should be put up as Linked Data. As a third priority, it should be linked to other sources. As a lower priority, nice user interfaces should be made to it -- if interested communities outside government have not already done it. The Linked Data technology, unlike any other technology, allows any data communication to be composed of many mixed vocabularies. Each vocabulary is from a community, be it international, national, state or local; or specific to an industry sector. This optimizes the usual trade-off between the expense and difficulty of getting wide agreement, and the practicality of working in a smaller community. Effort toward interoperability can be spent where most needed, making the evolution with time smoother and more productive."

Dynamic Collaboration Required ...

“I think this shows a collaborative spirit and it shows that (Paterson) is listening to the concerns of Long Island,” Alexander said. “We have not seen this level of attention to organizations that really are working on a community level in the past. Past governors been attentive to lobbyists and business interests, but getting to the interests of small businesses, of community organizations and other not-for-profits, that shows a real commitment.”

The "collaboration" part is a good sign.

Now we need to add the "dynamic" part to the "collaboration" part and make sure all voices are heard, both individual and organizational.

Also we should be reviewing and discussing the regional issues based upon a "normalized" data set and flexible analysis standards.

Meetings are great. But if there is no mechanism for follow up and "dynamic" collaboration the meetings will never be as effective as they could or should be.

Collaboration, not more bureaucracy ....

"....that includes Empire State Development, which does try to help the Island, but also has to look out for other parts of the state (such as Westchester, where OSI is going); the two county industrial development agencies, and town IDAs that do cooperate, but also compete. Our answer: We need a new structure - preferably a single regional voice.

Getting there won't be easy. The towns that have IDAs won't want to give them up. Nor will the counties. And creating a regional entity would require Albany action, which is as hopeless as it is oxymoronic."

The first step in creating a "regional entity" or a collaborative structure which has the same effect as a regional entity, is the creation of a dynamic "meta-zoning map" or land use map of Long Island and the normalization of the data and analysis we all use.

As it stands today, we are simply not prepared to take advantage of opportunities that may be available to us.

We do not need another level of bureaucracy. We need a dynamic system of collaboration that allows us the freedom to work collaboratively and rapidly.

Certainly changes in the law and new or amended legislation would make it easier to move quickly. Perhaps this is another reason a constitutional convention may be in order.

The One Long Island series of inter-related concepts is an attempt to build such a system.

Survival of the fittest ...

"On April 7, Gov. David Paterson stood in the Melville office of the New York State Department of Transportation and said Long Island’s construction workers were about to get back to work, thanks to the recently approved stimulus package trumpeted by the Obama administration. Also on hand that spring day: members of New York’s congressional delegation.

The big event turned out to be little more than a photo op.

“We don’t need photo ops,” said John Durso, the president of the Long Island Federation of Labor. “We need shovels in the ground and people at work.”

That hasn’t happened.

In fact, only 15 percent of the funding allocated to New York will be used to refresh the state’s decaying infrastructure. Instead, an overwhelming portion of the money went to fill the state’s budget gap ..."

Another example of a good idea not ready for implementation due, in part, to a lack of a dynamic, collaborative system on Long Island for turning good ideas (in this case much needed public infrastructure projects) into immediate action.

In short, we are not prepared to react, adapt and take advantage of rapid changes and opportunities in our environment.

In nature and business this is usually a fatal flaw.

The One Long Island series of dynamic "inter-related" concepts is an attempt to remedy this problem and create a platform for Long Island's future success.

NYS Constitutional Convention

"A "People's Constitutional Convention" must tackle procedural challenges, restoring democracy in our government, realigning the concept of checks and balances that strengthen the division of power making certain one branch doesn't dominate another. To do this, the convention must be nonpartisan as well as demographically and geographically diverse so that every population is represented. We can achieve this, together."

Yet another call for a Constitution Convention in New York.

It's probably a good idea to "air out" democracy periodically.

However we can not have the requisite participation without first giving the public the tools to participate in a meaningful way.

The One Long Island series of dynamic ideas offer a blueprint for achieving this meaningful participation. It would make the NYS Constitutional Convention a living, breathing rethinking of how government works in collaboration with the public.