IPN WORKS FOR MAINSTREET

(Overview of IPN Handout #1)

People in 1000’s of small and medium sized communities across North American are rediscovering their local “Mainstreet”.  Seen in their terms, “Mainstreet” reflects a way of about thinking, making, and doing everyday local projects such as affordable and locally sustainable/resilient, energy, 5G, water, health services, libraries and some forms of housing. They seek to collectively design initiatives for projects that, attract a diverse range of creative people and interests, offers public forum for discussions in its coffee shops, social organizations, schools and, strengthens cross town neighborhood connections, as well as establishes access to regional resources networks and other attributes. Mainstreet making and doing, is local people actively seeking creative ways to open local governance processes to support active hands-on role in the delivery approach for upgrading what projects they have in place, while adapting to what they need into local project initiatives that will build local community wealth, social reliance, and environmental resilience.  

However, the Mainstreet initiatives are next generation public project agendas that are ill-suited by the constraints embedded in today existing financing models. Mainstreet requires a third option funding model based on new growing inter-generation wealth building, circulating capital strategies and “community intelligent” (Ci) digital technology management systems. We have spent 8 years doing field research and practice analysis, comparing existing processes resulting in the formation of IPN and the design of funding models, education tools and a technology platform to serve “the people of Mainstreet’s” growing list of project innovation needs, creative social capital needs, ecological and economic outcome needs aligned to today’s delivery schedule demands. We now see that these crowd of people are more than citizen participants.  They are long term and everyday players. Based on what we learned we have “upgraded” thus crowd to that of acting as an “invested public network”. IPN, a Ci Company who have designed the education tools tied with a digital technology project management platform through which people learn how to shift contesting projects towards a community collective action investing directly in local projects. IPN brings to your local Mainstreet worktable five discussion points through which we appropriately scale the terms of your local project initiatives:  

·      Ways for aligning diverse interested and energies

·      Models of localizing Fed/State policies and company products

·      Methods for designing mixed menu of systems upgrade and adaption 

·      Tools for projecting hidden community connections

·      Learning technologies for building circulating knowledge