The issue of course, is that private ISP's are fighting the whole concept of low-cost municipally managed WiFi - they see it (correctly!) as a serious threat to "their" franchise. -- jim ware

Our own Regina Miller was in the thick of it. I am not going to rehash the various posts (go read the links above, as they are all substantive explanations), but I wanted to draw your attention to a distinction that struck me as interesting and useful: that between commitment and engagement.

At roughly the same time, I had discovered blogging, and rapidly become immersed in it and other emerging communications tools, such as RSS feeds, wikis, podcasts, tagging, social networking, and so on. I firmly believed at the time -- and still do -- that these tools are incredibly valuable for corporate communications and marketing.

At the same time, however, these tools are also transformative as they work to break down the old hierarchical command/control structures of organizations, giving rise to more collaborative/cooperative network-based structures. Now, it is too strong to state that these structures are breaking down because of these tools. In fact, old hierarchies have been being undermined for quite a long time due to a confluence of forces, including technology, science, population demographics, globalization, education, society, culture, and so on.

It is these forces and how organizations are reacting to them that we will be examining here. I will be looking at them primarily through a framework of organizational communications, which is my expertise. I firmly believe that as we move to more distributed workforces, communications will be at the heart of whether or not we are successful. Other authors here will take different frames, including HR, technology, education, community development, and so on.