In a lengthy chapter her 2004 book Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (updated and re-issued in paperback this month), Wainwright describes in great detail how Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT), under the leadership of the city’s mayor, Olivio Dutra, opened up the budgetary process to all citizens. While Wainwright clearly applauds the participatory-budgeting experiment, she is also willing to ask the hard questions, like, Why did the participatory budgeting process decline in the years since 2004, when the Workers’ Party in Porto Alegre lost the mayorship? Hillary Wainwright is one of the finest people I have met over the last few years, so I’m happy to share this profile, written by my friend David Bollier : “If you want to learn the nitty-gritty about social transformation in our times — What works and what doesn’t?

A Muslim social network, where young Muslims can discuss and debate issues affecting them, was launched last week . Here’s a snippet from Mashable which might have social networks reaching for the Rescue Remedy: US patent #7,669,123 – unearthed this week by All Facebook – appears to have claimed the newsfeed on behalf of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and seven others. P’raps in a panic to skitter up to speed with location-based services – till now, it has Welcome to eModeration's round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams.

In 2004, I took a stab at a more academic review entitled A Short History o f Online Facilitation . Shifts have happened in online facilitation of  communities and networks, for learning, teams, communities of practice, for advocacy and action, for games and play. In just over a week I’ll be in Ft. Worth, Texas, opening Monday’s session of the Elearning 2010 Conference .