In a recent interview about the Hive Learning Networks, with Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, Chris Lawrence, director of Hive NYC, and Connie Yowell, director of education at the MacArthur Foundation, Chris recently used their funding of GK's new geocaching program to address the question of why organizations until recently haven’t been operating as networks.
[It] is an audience question. The populace wasn’t as hungry and thirsty for it until recently. So the audience is driving this kind of collaboration, this understanding of the city as a larger learning space—the city as a game board. The trick now is to infuse that “city as game board” with some learning.
One of the Hive NYC organizations, Global Kids, is, for example, tapping into the online geocaching culture—a totally interest-driven, user-driven culture and community—to answer that question. They’re using geocaching to map the coming 2012 elections and civic engagement strategies with geocaching strategies. They’re using the city as game board but putting in some content that affects cities. The geocaching infrastructure is already there. The process is already on the phones. They’re just leveraging with a learning goal.