COMMUNITY PLANNING AND TECHNOLOGY

    While the business model of giving away services and attracting millions of users only worked with a few companies, other firms started, then either folded up when the money ran out or sold their company to a larger one. eGroups was one that attracted immediate interest because anyone could set up and run a mailing list and archive with little technical expertise. Many of the MIRA teams were involved in community planning, and one of the complaints had been that most of the decisions were made in the county seat, Hilo, without much input or consultation with citizens in other parts of the island. Bonnie Goodell, a planner, activist, and entrepreneur was the project director for Cooper Center Council, a MIRA community support organization in Volcano. Goodell started the idea of an electronic mailing list to discuss planning issues. Someone else suggested using eGroups for the list, called big_isle_workshop, in March 1999. At its peak it had 41 members, some of whom were on MIRA teams. The goal was to use the list to plan an island workshop on the use of GIS and the concept of the ahupua`a ecosystem and its use in county planning decisions. The word ahupua`a refers to a community or watershed running from the mountains to the sea, usually in a triangular shape. These appeared on early maps of Hawaii, and at present a number of groups are trying to integrate this concept into planning methodology that originated on the American mainland.

Mac Cooper envisioned this mailing list as a "learn-by-doing" exercise. In the first few months there were between 7 and 91 messages a month, and after the workshop the list was almost dormant, indicating that as a project planning tool it was useful, but then people started other lists or kept in contact with friends and new acquaintances by other means. While other MIRA clusters used electronic mail, only Hawaii, Ohio, and New Mexico have public archives where members and sometimes guests can track the interaction.

By the end of the trip around the island, I was impressed with the lasting effect that MIRA training and funds had had in many different parts of the county. It was a mix of enriched personal connections, sharing about problems facing technology centers, less suspicion about distant parts of the island, and transformative experiences that changed some MIRA participants' lives and bank accounts.