From AdvocacyDev
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July 13th, 2005 by Alex
Today is the last day of AdvocacyDev II, a gathering of people using technology to support nonprofit and social change work. As promised by Mark Surman, it’s been a truly mind-blowing experience.
A big part of what’s amazing is the event organizing and facilitation methodology used by Katrin and Gunner of Aspiration, who organized the conference. Their approach is to bring a whole bunch of interesting people together and let them drive and structure discussions. No talking head panels here: session topics have emerged out of the interests and needs of the people in the room, and each discussion has been a mix of brainstorming, case sharing, strategy sharing, putting questions out for feedback, and coming up with really concrete ideas for projects and next steps.
The wiki helps set things on fire becuase it creates a concrete collective output from each discussion. While a room full of geeks are particularly well-positioned to make good use of the wiki dimension (if only because everyone here has a laptop), the wiki is easy enough to use for non-geek events. And while the wiki is great and useful I don’t think it’s essential to the chemistry of the event (though I’d be curious to hear what Gunner and Katrin think).
Anyone who is involved in planning or organizing a conference or event would learn a lot from participating in an Aspiration event. And if you organize events for people in the tech or nonprofit worlds, it’s a must: make sure to put one of Aspiration’s upcoming events on your calendar.
The demise of Technorati politics?
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June 24th, 2005 by Alex
What’s missing from the new and improved Technorati? It seems as if their overview ofpopular blog conversations still includes movies, books, and the top 100 — but where is their politics page?
Until the redesign, Technorati was home to a nifty slice of political debate on the blogosphere, organized by “conservative” “liberal” and “other”. It was one of the few places where you knew you could find blog comments that didn’t fall into Republican or Democrat camps, because that middle category was explicitly an “in between” group. Anyone where how to find it, or how we can get it back?
Where social software meets social activism
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June 22nd, 2005 by Alex
A lot of my recent reading and thinking has focused on how social software — community-building online tools like blogging, wikis and social networking — effect small-p political change by allowing groups to self-organize more easily and powerfully. Today, Wired has a story about how a wiki is being used to do big-P Politics:
A group of volunteers has begun using collaborative wiki software to expedite the process of perusing thousands of pages of complex documents related to detainees held by the U.S. government at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The group, which has coalesced through the influential liberal blog, Daily Kos, has taken it upon itself to vet documents about Gitmo detainees the American Civil Liberties Union received as a result of a 2003 Freedom of Information Act request. The organization has been slow to review the documents itself due to a lack of manpower.
Given that the ACLU has recently hired Jed Miller — one of the pioneers of online civic engagement — as its Director of Internet Programs, it will be interesting to see whether the ACLU finds a way to harness this grassroots venture.
The true hazards of blogging: beyond the EFF
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June 21st, 2005 by Alex
The EFF’s recent release of a legal guide for bloggers gives bloggers in the US a great tool for assessing and managing the legal risks of blogging. But as the EFF itself acknowledges, its guide only speaks to the US context:
This legal guide is based on the laws in the United States, where there is a strong constitutional protection for speech. Many other countries do not have strong protections, making it easier to sue for speech.
The possibility of getting sued for libel in the UK (the foreign example given by the EFF) is a minor headache compared to the kinds of penalties faced by bloggers in non-democratic countries. To get a picture of the legal risks that bloggers take on every day, check out the Committee to Protect Bloggers, a blog that spotlights persecuted bloggers around the world. The Committee’s advisory board includes Rebecca MacKinnon of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, as well as Syrian author Ammar Abdulhamid and Hossein Derakhshan, a Toronto-based Persian blogger.
The cases profiled on the CPB site are a reminder of why blogger rights matter. Visit the site now to sign a petition for the protection of Omid Sheikhan, an Iranian student who was jailed and tortured in response to his blog posts. Or join the list of signatories on a petition to Motjaba Saminejad, an Iranian blogger who was jailed for blogging about the arrest of fellow Persian bloggers.
The site is also a great reminder of why blogs themselves matter: because they really do constitute a challenge to existing power structures and information control. Governments don’t throw bloggers in jail so that they’ll have someone to keep notes on their correctional facilities; they throw bloggers in jail because the content and reach of blogs poses a profound threat to centralized authority.
So the next time you hear someone dismiss blogging as a waste of time, remind them that governments rarely crack down on time wasting — and that the real waste is that bloggers are doing time when they should be spending time writing.
Your dream job: Representative Apple
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June 10th, 2005 by Alex
If you love politics and you love Apple, have I found the job for you: Manager of Congressional Relations for Apple. That’s right, Apple is looking for a [wo]man in DC to schmooze and hobnob on behalf of the Maciverse. Let’s hope they get somebody great!
Pew Report on 2004 Campaign
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March 7th, 2005 by Alex
Shared bookmarks for del.icio.us user Alexandra Samuel on 2005-03-08
- Pew Report on the Internet and Campaign 2004:
The Pew Internet & American Life project released its report on the 2004 election campaign this week. Michael Cornfield’s pithy summary reports helps explain how this year’s buzzwords — like blogging and meetup — became the hallmark innovations of the 2004 election cycle.
Online training course for eModerators
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December 2nd, 2004 by Alex
The UK’s Hansard Society is offering a training course for eModerators. The course begins on January 17, 2005, and will take place entirely online. It runs over a five week period, during which participants will need to spend about 5 hours per week online. It will train moderators in the skills necessary to lead edemocracy forums, covering issues like how to recruit participants, how socialize participants into the norms of the group, how to manage and exchange information, and how to synthesize participant contributions. On successful completion of the course, participants will be certified as E-Democracy Coordinators.
Course instructors include Stephen Coleman, Irving Rappaort, Gilly Salmon and David Shepherd. Fees are (in UK pounds) 550 for central government and commercial participants; 450 for local government, union and educational participants; and 350 for voluntary organizations and individuals. They are also offering discounts for group bookings.
Government RSS, push and pull
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November 19th, 2004 by Alex
Wired has a story on how the US government is using RSS as a tool for communicating with the public. This is great news, since RSS is a nice way of bridging “push” and “pull” (remember how trendy that distinction used to be?) The Wired story links to RSS Gov, a web site that tracks government use of RSS.
But in a classic example of unintended consequences, my search for a nice tidy definition of push vs. pull turned up this web site about Internet evangelism, which announces that April 24 2005 will be World Internet Evangelism Day. How’s that for a concept? Anyhow could make for an interesting example of using the Internet as a mass mobilization tool. Stay tuned….
Bad sharers
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November 4th, 2004 by Alex
Looking for a snapshot of how the war against terrorism is hurting the Internet? Check out the letter that ran in the Circuits section of today’s New York Times.
Read more…