We have long been admirers of David Wilcox and his work on partnerships, participation and community development with civil society groups and networks, ever since the earliest days of Brixton Online.

His writing provides an insight into working as a knowledge activist and all the challenges this brings, such as thinking about the right network topologies for participation initiatives and how to use new tools as effectively as possible whilst remembering that "just adding 'e' doesn't guarantee improvement." Equally important, he also looks honestly at some of the problems that beset civil society initiatives. His sites are among my most flagged feeds.

We have worked in partnership on some recent projects, such as the new collaboration site for Involve - a great new initiative established to map the participation sector and assess whether new forms of public participation can strengthen democracy. So, when David was searching for a more flexible Web site system that tied together blogs, feed aggregation and a wiki within a simple site management took, we thought it would be fun to see how we could bring together some of David's existing online output in a new site.

David is already talking about how the site came into being and how it works, so it would be silly not to mention this and the Involve site here. They are both examples of an entry-level social software platform that combines a Moveable Type weblog, RSS feeds, CMS and wiki in a usable site management tool that we have been using for a variety of purposes and projects, seeding new feeds, some of which will grow and flourish.

If you want to buy one, let me know. They are a good starting point for networks or small organisations wanting to try out basic social software techniques in a managed environment.