There were two very interesting, very parallel meetings last week – both about having more and better, more engaging and relevant … meetings.

The first was convened by OneVille, a project from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Ford Foundation, led by HGSE faculty member and Healey parent, Mica Pollock. Held at the Design Annex, on Union Square, a design “incubator” space started by Union Square Main Streets next to CAAS, about 15 people gathered to “incubate” how they might better coordinate their efforts.

Oneville is funded to “help ensure that information related to supporting young people is well distributed across the city.” They hosted the meeting, according to their invitation, because, “Right now, information related to young people (school and community events, after-school activities and other opportunities) is scattered across many online and media sites in Somerville.” Among those attending were parents and activists who blog, chat, own or manage listservs and other social networking (from newsgroups through Facebook through full scale websites).

This cross section – from this news letter to Boston.com (http://www.boston.com/yourtown/somerville/?p1=YourTownHP_Names), SCAT to news groups like Ward5Onlline , the Somerville Journal’s online presence to Somerville Local First , Resistat to the school system – those attending gradually focused on the need for some kind of clearinghouse for events – a central calendar all might use to cross-check dates, times and locations for meetings and events.

This theme of some kind of clearinghouse has circulated among bloggers and other Somerville Voices for as long as our media have existed. There is some prospect of a software solution, raised in a similar discussion at a recent Coffee Party planning meeting. It is possible for software to collect and collate many different calendars – like that in our right column – and sort events by topic, theme, location, time and sponsor, for free subscribers to collect “what’s happening” on topics, themes or neighborhoods of their choice.

Several people also noted the need to post the results of such searches – particularly those related to schools and opportunities for kids – on the bulletin boards in parks and public housing, since many neighbors don’t go online or have easy access to computers. Consuelo Perez  also noted the need to make these calendars as multilingual as possible. As a OneVille consultant, Consuelo’s “Ning” page already has as much information as she can collect available in as many languages as possible.

The second meeting was a two day seminar, Friday, 7/23 and Saturday, 7/24, hosted by CIRCLE, at Tufts’ Tisch College. Although this seminar also had many from HGSE and Tufts, there was only one member of the Thursday group in the two days of training and discussions on civic engagement, involving technology, colleges, and communities. Presenters from Texas, Vermont, California, Europe, South America and Africa discussed topics ranging from the same Web 2.0 issues to campus-community partnerships and citizen participation in city governance. The only program manager to attend both meetings was Alan Michel, who directs HOME, Inc., and, last year, had media coordinators in all Somerville schools helping kids do – essentially – what Harvard and Tufts seemed to think they were inventing (for some dramatic examples, check out last year’s high school products here , which include some national prize winners).

Between the two meetings it was odd that Tufts seemed to be training and exploring problems already being addressed and solved in and among Somerville groups at their door, and that Harvard was re-inventing most of the solutions Tufts was examining in far and distant settings. Meanwhile, it’s probable that the Coffee Party will convene a calendar meeting to support those many blogs and listservs Harvard convened, and make it available to Tufts.

Neither Harvard nor Tufts seemed to know about each other, nor about how much the “civic engagement” and grass roots journalism they were trying to “start” is already quite active – often among the very kids they think need them. It is often amazing to see how complicated simple solutions can be. Of course both Tufts and Harvard projects are well funded to solve more complex problems. There were great lunches at Tufts and a nice selection of food at the Harvard meeting.