From Corante: snail mail as a digital campaign tool

From my blog on Corante: Anti-war e-activists have embraced one of the old standbys of pre-digital politics: snail mail. Bring Them Home Now is selling postage stamps with the “bring them home” symbol: a yellow ribbon super-imposed on a peace sign. BTHN is...

Community goes corporate

Boyd Neil of Hill & Knowlton has written a very kind and thought-provoking post in response to the launch of Social Signal. Boyd’s observation is that corporate communicators have a lot to learn from social movements and community activists about how to use...

Introducing Social Signal: collaboration for communities

I’m delighted to announce the launch of Social Signal. Social Signal’s goal is to support online communities and distributed collaboration networks — networks of communities that share content and relationships by using the latest generation of web...

10 ways RSS can help build online communities

Non-governmental organizations seeking to strengthen relationships with members. Governments trying to reach out to citizens. Businesses hoping to engage and win the loyalty of customers. These are the kinds of challenges that bring people to the field of online...

Coding for deliberation

One of my favourite organizations working on dialogue and deliberation challenges is the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD). They’ve done a great job of building community among people doing civic engagement, dialogue and deliberation work,...

Become an online engagement pro

This fall I’m teaching two e-engagement programs through Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. One of the programs is a TeleForum (a series of conference calls) so it’s accessible to participants anywhere in the world. Please let your colleagues and...

This sheep talks back

On my way back from this weekend’s meeting of the Online Deliberative Democracy consortium I had a chance to enjoy the ever-increasing vigilance of US airport security. At the end of my last US visit I ended up at the airport with a colleague who relayed the...

Where social software meets social activism

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,...