Hello Everyone

This is a message to share info about and encourage support of a local 21st Century Network platform, set up by Palmers Green resident Francis Sealey and myself for residents and groups to utilise and support. The local site is linked to the main 21st Century Network platform which, under the leadership of Francis this platform has been a great success, steadily building up 4500 members in less than 5 years and, as you'll see holding lots of great, well-attended meetings.

The purpose of the network is to:

- discuss some of the great issues of the 21st century and then follow this up with further debate and action. It is about enlarging the Public Square where debate takes place using social networks to bring new audiences of people into that debate.

- hold events several times a month to create and expand engagement in the public square between citizens as well as corporations, government and NGOs where there is a common concern for the sustainability of both our planet and the people on it and to use social networking to enhance democratic discussion.

- encourage online discussion, regular well-attended public meetings and online meetings (webinars) that involve a global audience.

Suffice to say the platform, like B&B Connected, Harringay On_line and other micro sites albeit in a completely different context has been a great success. It has a large membership, with regular well attended meetings involving great speakers taking place every week, in a whole range of venues from the prestigious House of Commons to local house meetings.

You can see (and join) the main meeting calendar site at  http://www.meetup.com/21stCenturyNetwork/  and their main url which has an overview of all their work at http://www.globalnet21.org/

SO - to cut to the chase Francis, myself and many others hope to see a local chapter of the network, with the same aims but also more broadly in support of localism and democratic development through discussion, debate and local action. Therefore in 2009 we set up the local meet up site for the project. This site, which we hope you will join and share with your friends, family and colleagues is http://www.meetup.com/Enfield-Network21

Unfortunately until now we've not had a the capacity to promote it properly, but we recently agreed to try and see if we couldn't get 100 members signed up (there are 36 now) and then perhaps from there we can replicate the success of the central London platform at a local level.

We hope you like the sound of this and if you'd like to support it, please join up and /or get in touch by email or SMS.

Once again the local URL for people to sign up and share is http://www.meetup.com/Enfield-Network21

Cheers

Mark Barrett

marknbarrett@gmail.com

0785 439 0408