I haven’t been writing much lately cause I’ve been unusually busy. It seems that there’s only so much time in the day. I’ve been working for the government (Democratic Renewal Unit) part-time, plugging away at Ci-Fi, the lady-friend is keeping me occupied, and I’m still wrestling with my masters thesis…its all a bit much.

My thesis has been the focus of my work lately. I’ve been working on it a varying paces since May, but it’s finally coming close to completion. The crunch is on because if I don’t finish it by Xmas, I’ll have to pay almost $1000 for another semester at UNB; so, work hard now and I can blow that cash on something else, like my debt. Finishing it before Xmas will allow me to defend by the end of January, meaning that by February, I could get my degree! Hopefully it all falls into place.

For those who don’t already know, the intent of my thesis is to find a better way to support community development. Using the academically hot concept of ‘Social Capital‘, whereby social networks that are built on trust and cooperation have economic and societal worth, I am showing the weaknesses of this theory and providing new guidelines for how to support and improve network relations for the common good. By focusing on inclusive, cooperative, power-sharing networks that encourage civic participation and values for the public good, government and organization investments in community development will be more effective and sustainable. - hopefully you got all that - I call this refined conception Civic Capital.

I’m currently reworking the last chapter, which discusses how to create policy to support and invest in civic capital. The first time I wrote this chapter it was a pie-in-the-sky runoff of recommendation after recommendation - not exactly the best way to go. I’ve honed the concept to focusing on a few key features of civic capital developers (education and cooperative orgs), which will make the whole thing shorter, more concise. Once this is all written, I just have to slap together a few pages for conclusion and pass it in. Hopefully the feedback will be fairly positive and I can proceed with the next phase - my defense.

I’m really looking forward to being done…

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