Last night, Nicco and I attended the New Leaders Council's 40 Under 40 Leadership Award Ceremony here in Boston. more

Photo by Flickr user prometheusradio

Two weekends ago I was lucky enough to get to Detroit for the 2010 U.S. Social Forum. The USSF is a gathering place for more than ten thousand activists & organizers from all over the country to meet and learn from from each other - and attempt to chart a course forward for the many U.S. social movements represented there.

The USSF started as a result of the first World Social Forum in 2001, which was itself set up to be a counter-balance to the elite-centric World Economic Forum. 2010 was USSF's second incarnation (the first was in 2007 in Detroit).

Having been to both U.S. Social Forums, there are quite a few differences, though all pointing in a positive direction. Here are three: more

The time has come, I'm buying an iPad. I am writing to tell the world of my transition in thought, from Luddite to Early Adopter.

I am perhaps the last person who owns a dumbphone. Yes, I have reveled in my un-wired-ness. I was the last person I know to get a cellular phone. In college, I developed for a Java class on a computer without internet. I have not owned a TV since I threw mine over the balcony in a symbolic (drunken) ritual at age nineteen. (We had to throw it off several times until we were satisfied.) more

There’s an obvious appeal to having a large email list: you have the ability to reach many people with one click. But recently I’ve begun questioning the value of large email lists, and the effectiveness of bulk email in general, specifically for the types of clients EchoDitto works with – non-profits, progressives, NGO’s, etc. more

For those of us plugged into tech news, the development of Diaspora is a promising one: true decentralization of social networking.

Diaspora is a grassroots-funded open-source project started by four NYU students. The idea? Instead of hosting photos, links, messages, and friend connections on a centralized server, host it on your own computer. Each person's host is called a "seed" in Diaspora lingo, a borrowed term from bittorrent. more

So we've been doing some thinking. And some talking. Which can mean only one thing: trouble.

Our work is about technology and social change, coming through a variety of vehicles, from politics to products. But we started to run into a curious challenge: for many organizations, technology means tools, without a lot of thought about culture or organizational structure. more

Cross posted from Care2's Frogloop

Going to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen (COP15) was the closest I've come to a good strong punch in the gut -- the type that makes you question much of what you once believed to be true. But it was also one of the best wake-up calls I could have asked for. more

Cynicism is for cowards.

Someone I don’t even know very well recently challenged me to name three leaders who were true to “public service”, suggesting there weren’t any and that “those who might have the ability and resources to "change our world" put their professional and personal agendas before the need of those they might help, and therefore the world is screwed and there is no reason for anyone to think they can make a difference.” more

In December of 2007, I spent 10 days in Haiti. Most of my time was spent up in the Central Plateau in a town called Thomonde, near Hinche. I spent a day or two on either end in Port-Au-Prince. I was working on a solar power project with the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, which had paired each church in Diocese with a church in Haiti. more