EchoDitto - Grass Roots

National Presidential Caucus set for December 7th - posted by Cristen Perks

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:46:27 -0700

Just when you thought your entire political life had moved online...reading news, scouring blogs, researching candidates... the National Presidential Caucus (NPC) launched a site today aimed at bringing those conversations back to the real world at a National Presidential Caucus on December 7th.

Never fear, EchoDitto and NPC haven't lost faith in the power of online organizing - quite the opposite actually. We both recognize the importance of harnessing these tools to facilitate one of our nation's most important processes -- choosing a President.

In 2004, about 5 million people organized online to participate in face-to-face political Meetups, town hall meetings and the like. This momentum sparked an idea that has now come to fruition as National Presidential Caucus - a day of face-to-face meetings with your friends, your neighbors, your community, and your country deliberating the issues that matter most - organized fully online. Working with NPC has been really exciting. I'm anxious to see what happens next.

Internet For Everyone - posted by Brian Reich

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 05:47:41 -0700

Earlier this week, at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York, a coalition of media, policy, and advocacy experts launched a new initiative that calls on Congress and the president to act in the public interest by enacting a plan for the wired and wireless Internet built upon the following principles. The project is called Internet for Everyone (http://internetforeveryone.org/)

NOTE: The organization that launched this project, Free Press, is a client of EchoDitto -- but we do not currently play a role in this initiative.

I won't try and summarize all the important points made during the session. Andy Carvin from NPR did an excellent job of capturing everyone's remarks, so you can see as close to a transcript as you'll find on his Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/acarvin) - look for the #pdf2008 tag, and keep digging because he transcribed much of the content from the conference.

Let me quickly summarize the project:

An open, free, and accessible internet is critical -- not just to those who do things online (like myself) -- but to all aspects of our economy, our governance, and similar. The future of the internet is the future of all media. It is also the future of education, commerce, philanthropy and politics. And it is pretty clear (to me anyway) that leaving the development of a national broadband policy to the cable and telecommunications industry, who have controlled much of the policy making around this issue, is not a good idea.

The initiative is trying to get this point across through four critical points:

Access: Every home and business in America must have access to a high-speed, world class communications infrastructure.

Choice: Every consumer must enjoy real competition in online content as well as among high-speed Internet providers to achieve lower prices and higher speeds.

Openness: Every Internet user should have the right to freedom of speech and commerce online in an open market without gatekeepers or discrimination.

Innovation: The Internet should continue to create good jobs, foster entrepreneurship, spread new ideas and serve as a leading engine of economic growth.

They haven't agreed on the specifics of the policy behind this yet -- and probably won't for a while -- but a broad, bi-partisan, multi-disciplinary group of experts from business, policy, entertainment, and more have come together to help support the effort. For starters, look at the group that they pulled together for the announcement:

Josh Silver, Executive Director, Free Press
Brad Burnham, partner at Union Square Ventures
Robin Chase, CEO of Meadow Networks, co-founder Zipcar
Van Jones, president, Green for All
Michael Winship, president Writers Guild of America - East
David All, co-Founder Slatecard.com and TechRepublican.com
Tim Wu, Columbia Law professor
Jonathan Adelstein, FCC commissioner
Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
int Cerf, chief technology evangelist of Google
Larry Lessig, Stanford Law professor

Going forward, the group will be hosting public forums across the nation to get citizens involved. They will be highlighting the challenge that real people face in rural (and other) areas where they don't have access to broadband. And they will be soliciting input and inviting supporters to take ownership over aspects of the campaig, so that this becomes a true citizen movement.

This is a tremendously important issue. This initiative deserves national attention - not just within policy circles, but at kitchen tables, in schools and libraries, and among friends over a beer or coffee. This will be the darling of the wonk establishment, and the media (ironically) will almost certainly help carry the torch. But, more needs to be done.

This issue is complex. People don't make an association between this issue and their daily lives. The people who don't have access to broadband probably don't fully realize why its such a big deal. And the people who already have it take it for granted.

So, for this effort to be successful, we have to own it. By we, I mean the people who appreciate the opportunities created by free and open access to high speed internet. The people who recognize and value a spirited exchange of ideas, the opportunity to grow community and conduct business from anywhere, anytime. By we, I mean you.

We can't leave this cause to the groups already immersed in this issue, the professional organizers, nor the legislators who will ultimately craft the specific policy. If needed, we should go door-to-door, recruiting our neighbors and friends. We must take responsibility for answering all the questions that people have and pushing content out - online and through traditional means - so that word spreads and people make this issue their own. Most importantly, we can't fall into the trap that so many organizations have fallen into with the rise of the internet, where the activity happens online (but never reaches the real word), we focus on the tools (blogs and wikis and such) and not on the outcomes, and where the same people are talking to each other as they always have (and few new voices finding a place in the discussion).

I'll make that case to my clients, colleagues, friends, family, and really anyone else who wants to listen. I hope you will also.

NOTE: This was cross-posted on my blog at FastCompany.com (http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/24266)

Is anybody out there? Connecting with MeetUp Alliance - posted by Anne Keenan

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:53:06 -0800

During my spare time, I serve on two very small Boards—one is the Board of my co-op, and the other is the Board of a tiny local abortion fund. Unsurprisingly, I am the tech person/online groups admin/email troubleshooter/”why isn’t this file uploading” contact on both boards, so I’m always looking for ways to make our lives easier through technology. For the abortion fund, we’ve used a YahooGroup and for the co-op Board, I tried something new and started a GoogleGroup.

My experience in both groups is inspiring, satisfying, and frustrating in pretty equal measure. But the frustrating part at both meetings maybe isn’t what you’d expect. It’s not lack of snacks, any deficiencies in my fellow members, or the political climate. Nope, it’s the sense that there are probably a hundred groups out there dealing with the same issues at the same time.

Whether we’re debating the merits of rebuilding our front steps (“I don’t know, do you think we really need to demolish them and start from scratch?”), trying to figure out if we should get Board insurance (“just wondering, do you think someone could sue me for all I’m worth?”), or debating best practices for distribution of funds (“well, we could make a case to do this one of several ways…”), I’m always struck by the thought that someone, somewhere must have debated/researched/resolved this issue already. Right? Probably the board next door is dealing with the exact same issues, and we could learn from them.

So I have to admit I was pretty excited to attend last night’s launch of MeetUp Alliance. In essence, MeetUp Alliance is a tool that lets groups band together to achieve goals, share best practices, and connect projects across geographical space. The tool is platform agnostic, so my abortion fund can keep its yahoogroup and connect to other funds that are using googlegroups, facebook groups, myspace groups, whatever. Which is great—because now that I’ve taught everyone how to use the YahooGroup, nothing is going to get me to switch.

There are still lots of things to figure out (Phil reminds me “it’s in beta”), such as:

Can alliances be private/password protected?
What if the person who is running the alliance is terrible? Can you impeach them?
If it’s a group with a national presence already, how does the online alliance mimic/differ from that structure?

But still exciting.

In the meantime, does anyone know anything about board insurance? Just wondering, do you think someone could sue me for all I’m worth…?

Who Wants to Storm the Men's Bathroom with Me?* - posted by Gisele Toueg

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:11:45 -0700

*Overheard while waiting in line for the ladies' room at BlogHer 2007

The third annual BlogHer conference kicked off on Friday at Chicago's Navy Pier. As BlogHer founders Jory Des Jardins, Lisa Stone and Elisa Camahort told a packed auditorium during the opening session, this year's conference drew 800 particpants, making it the largest gathering of bloggers ever (regardless of gender). Wow. And what a gathering it was. Bloggers from all over the country and around the world came together to discuss the latest trends in technology, the art of self-promotion, effective strategies for building community online, and how blogs help all of us express ourselves and explore our personal and professional identities.

Personally, I was amazed at how many nametages belonged to people whose blogs I'd read before. In fact, the first breakout session I attended, called "The Life Stages of Online Communities," was moderated by Betsy Aoki, one of my former freelancers from my days as an editor at Amazon.com. Betsy founded the Seattle chapter of Webgrrls back when there weren't too many of us in this space. It was so inspiring to hear her and Webgrrls founder Aliza Sherman speak to a packed room of women (and a few men) about how to grow and nuture a successful online community.

Other BlogHer highlights included a session where participants worked together to create a voter manifesto for the upcoming presidential election, moderated by Morra Aarons, a track devoted to helping bloggers hone their public speaking skills and gain recognition as experts in their chosen fields, and a parralel conference in Second Life. Personally, I really enjoyed strolling through the exhibition hall, where I picked up a Butterball potholder and a t shirt from scrapblog, a very cool new company that brings the fun of scrapbooking to the Web. Oh, and I would be lying if I said I didn't eat four tins of free jelly beans at the Yahoo-sponsored Internet Cafe.

All-in-all, BlogHer 2007 was a rousing success, and totally worth spending twelve hours stuck at JFK and O'Hare airports, waiting for the weather to clear up and planes to depart. For those of you who couldn't make it to the conference, check out blogher.org, which is filled with posts from partipants detailing the events of the weekend.

Are you a carbon conscious consumer? - posted by Cristen Perks

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:10:15 -0700

Earlier this month, the Center for New American Dream launched a six-month Carbon Conscious Consumer (C3) campaign that "challenges individuals to establish climate-friendly daily habits and inspire their friends to do the same."

In working with this campaign, I've personally learned an immense amount about carbon emissions. I'm amazed by the stats. For example, did you know...

Food in the U.S. typically travels 1500 miles and generates 5 to 17 times more carbon emissions than food grown locally.
For every pound of local food you add to your weekly shopping list, you'll keep 13 more pounds of CO2 out of the atmosphere per year.

If reducing carbon emissions isn't motivation enough - every month of the campaign will feature a different pledge with a unique prize for the individual who has the largest impact. Please sign the pledge and pass it around: http://c3.newdream.org/. To find a local market near you, visit the Local Harvest website.

The Flattening of Politics - posted by Sofie Leon

Wed, 23 May 2007 12:40:56 -0700

The theme for this year’s Personal Democracy Forum was “The Flattening of Politics” but the agenda was anything but flat. I was thrilled to attend and really excited EchoDitto was a sponsor. The whole day was full of excellent speakers and really interesting applications of technology to the political world. By lunchtime, we’d already heard from Larry Lessig, Thomas Friedman, Eric Schmidt, and a host of other key actors in the conversation about the role of technology in flattening the political conversation. (Seth Godin was fantastic speaker. Very engaging and certainly the best person to slot in before lunch!)

As Phil twittered away, I felt rather un-techie writing in my little Tibetan store notebook… but then I gave in and opened up my computer too, checking out the live chat where attendees were commenting on the speakers real-time. By lunchtime I was most excited about danah boyd’s Digital Handshakes on virtual receiving lines, where she suggested politicians block out time to make the one-to-one connections online—they set aside time to make phone calls, go to people’s homes and shake their hands in person, so why not reach out to the under-30 crew and make them feel special, crossing the rope line online too? We expanded further on the presidential campaigns in the afternoon as PDF closed with e-campaign directors for 5 of the presidential candidates! Will the next person in the White House be a tech president…and what does that mean? From the audience there were calls for authentic connectivity with the candidates…and questions were posed about the extent to which the future president of the United States will be active online. Joe Trippi gave us examples from the Dean campaign (e.g. the tuna fish example), and as people clamor for moments to get to know candidates’ genuinely, it made me think of Rosie O’Donnell’s video blogs.

Other highlights included Brian Dear talking about organizing on eventful, Ben Rattray gracefully handle a few technical difficulties (he was on a PC and not a mac, of course) as he presented on Change.org. I was personally really excited to see Gina Glantz presenting on Qvisory.org (seeing the live chat comments about Qvisory up on the big screen behind the presenters was pretty cool, though slightly distracting). I’ve been working on Qvisory and was pretty stoked to see the video EchoDitto made for the new website.

Till next year’s PDF, I’ll be visiting TechPresident and the PDF site often.

P.S. I won a 2 year free subscription to TypePad at the breakout session on Race, Ethnicity, and Identity Online. Rad :)

Mother's Day, Pre-Hallmark - posted by Sofie Leon

Sat, 12 May 2007 20:51:34 -0700

Even if you look past the jewelry, perfume, chocolates, flowers, and puff-paint frames, no one argues that celebrating your mother is not important. I love making my mom breakfast in bed and officially commemorating her daily selflessness and fabulousness....but this Mother's Day, I'm looking beyond my mom and my grandmothers. I am thinking about all of the mothers who have a son or daughter fighting in a war-- and Mother's Day as a call for peace. I just recently learned that Julia Ward Howe wrote her Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, thinking of the carnage of the American Civil War (and the Franco-Prussian War). Howe was calling for disarmament and her Proclamation was tied to her feminist belief that women have a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.

Even back then, Howe understood that mothers possess the right and also a duty to influence policy decisions on a range of issues - from war to social justice. Howe would certainly be in support of International Women's Day (March 8th) and the thousands of organizations working to combat sexism, unequal opportunities, and issues like domestic violence. One such organization is Mom's Rising. Mobilizing an exciting online grassroots movement against hiring discrimination and raising awareness about family-friendly politics on various issues (healthcare for all children, childcare, maternity/paternity leave, fair wages...), Mom's Rising is also making the link between poverty and discrimination against mothers very clear. When you're online this Mother's Day, before you send your mom an e-card because the snail mail card is going to be late, go sign the Mom's Rising petition to end discriminatory hiring practices...and then send the link to your mom!!

Presidential 2.008 Site Analysis - posted by Cristen Perks

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:44:18 -0800

So, the election is a full 21 months away and there are already a number of campaigns in "full gear." Being the DC nerd that I am, I went searching for the cool, hip, new features and functionality that campaign sites have for the election.

I was surprised by some of the stuff out there so I ended up doing a review of campaign sites for the 2008 Presidential election. My chart makes it pretty easy to see which candidates recognize the importance of their web site, and have already committed to using the site as a tool to be elected.

I've reviewed all the major players who have official sites (not PAC sites or grassroots supporter sites). I'm assuming that some of these folks have an amazing online strategy including the features listed on my sheet, however to save myself from drowning in my inbox at this time next year, I didn't subscribe to every list and instead based the comparison on what's "promoted" on the site. I'll try to keep this chart updated throughout the election cycle.

Highlights of the review:

Someone in Hillary's camp obviously read about the lessons learned from the '04 cycle. She took a page from Bush's handbook and is using the site to organize offline. Great idea to start early. Let us know if it works.
Barack, "Where's your blog?" You're the only D without one.
Granted John Edwards has a lot of content on his site from his PAC site, but he also has an awesome Mac OS X Widget. (I realize my "nerd level" just increased) If you're a blogger you can sign up to help him too, or grab a badge to put on your site.
While Kucinich's site is pretty blantantly drupal, he does have some pretty neat user tools including a supporter map.
Mitt Romney is leading the pack for the R's. He's highlighting videos on MITTtv. You can grab the code to embed the videos too.

Please let me know what you think of my review. If you have any suggestions, let me know and maybe I'll build them into the next version.

RootsCampDC: A WikiConference - posted by Jason Rosenberg

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 13:47:51 -0800

Michael and I attended RootsCampDC this weekend. It was an amazing conference with an equally exciting vibe. The attendees were all remarkable people with great stories and experiences to share. They included 2006 campaign workers fresh off the trail, a candidate for U.S. Senate and leaders of the netroots community.

The idea of the conference was to bring these ideas together to progressive ideas to reality, and I think it really worked. The sessions I attended were filled with lively discussion and some great ideas were shared.

Everyone I spoke with told me that this was one of the best conferences they've attended. One person told me the reason they enjoyed RootsCamp so much was because this conference didn't have a room full of vendors trying to sell their services. This was a conference of ideas not of products.

What I found the most interesting was how the sessions were formed. On one of the floors of the building was a giant cork board. People that wanted to host a session could simply post a piece or paper with the vital information: Name of event, topic, time and place. The conference was truly a wikiconference.

RootsCampDC was a great success and should serve as a model for other progressive conferences.

Check out RootsCampDC's Flickr pics.

NOI/RootsCamp modeling good organizing (of course!) - posted by Michael Silberman

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 14:40:31 -0800

I shouldn't be surprised, but I can't help but be impressed with how we heard back from the RootsCamp DC organizers only moments after signing-on as sponsors. It wasn't just the typical 'thank you' that you might expect. Instead Roz told us exactly who we were enabling to attend through our sponsorship -- the real name of the real internet director coming off a campaign in CA who wouldn't otherwise be able to participate in this post-election debrief.

The email we received is exactly what we try so hard to emphasize across all of our projects and client work: making clear the true, real-world impact of every action or contribution that we ask of others. And following-up as quickly as possible to close the loop and show how every person's contribution is part of something larger than themself. So Roz's note brought a smile to our--ok, my--face.

RootsCamp, if you haven't already heard, is a post-election debrief happing in cities across the country in the very un-conference bar-camp tradition. Ours in DC is happening this weekend. Bar camps are open-source, self-organized geek gatherings organized online to take place in real-space, usually around big tech convergences like SXSW, and organized transparently via a basic wiki.

Needless to say, this is right up our alley, so we're psyched to be involved. Between politics, online organizing, and the open sourcing of technology and ideas, RootsCamp is essentially the perfect merger of our greatest obsessions. (There's even one happening every Wednesday in the SecondLife metaverse!) See you this weekend!

I totally just crowdsourced! - posted by Justin Miller

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 09:48:05 -0700

Fresh off of last night's NetSquared MeetUp featuring Marty Kearns of Green Media Toolshed, I totally just crowdsourced!

Marty spoke briefly (and compellingly) about crowdsourcing tasks to help the general environmental movement, as well as crowdsourcing in the general progressive world. Crowdsourcing is an idea where an organization can use the wisdom of crowds to accomplish small tasks within a larger goal.

In my case, the goal wasn't very high and lofty, but it was something that was proving to be out of my reach. For those who don't know, I maintain a shareware program called Pukka and occasionally it gets written up here or there by a blogger. Frequently, the posts are in a foreign language, so I make regular use of Babel Fish to translate them. Today, I noticed a post written in Swedish, however Babel Fish does not provide a Swedish translation service. I figured it would be an easy task to Google up a service that did, but it actually proved quite difficult and I came up blank -- most people wanted to sell me either translation products or translation services.

With a suggestion from Echo-alum Emily, I turned to Yahoo! Answers. I asked my question and within several minutes I had a great answer among several. Read the Swedish post, my question, and the service I ended up using.

While admittedly a relatively meager use of crowdsourcing, it really drove home the points from last night. The challenge is for organizations to stop thinking about members as merely donations or emails on a list and more about how to harness their power and collective wisdom to move the organization's goals forward. For example, GMT is creating useful media tools, such as how to get such-and-such reporter to write a story about your campaign or what the most effective email address to contact a certain press outlet is. Volunteers, often anonymous, will come to the site, participate for a short while, and may be never heard from again. Cross-verification between volunteers can weed out the bad results and the net result is that larger benefits can be constructed out of the work of the collective.

For my experiment, the aggregate time spent asking the question, getting answers, and translating the article was probably less than the time it took to write this blog post. But the potential is there for organizations to put to work millions of volunteers on the internet. As Marty said, what would you do with 10,000 people for ten minutes? Or as I like to say, a million monkeys banging randomly on a million keyboards for a million years will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare -- isn't it time you harnessed that power?

Who Do You Drink With? - posted by Matt Stempeck

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:49:40 -0700

Do you throw back beers with the same few buddies at the same dive bar? Or do you spend your weekends on the house party circuit, sipping appletinis and trying to remember names?

No, I'm not already dreaming of Friday. Believe it or not, the answer to this question is an excellent indicator of your social network - and extremely relevant to nonprofits, campaigns, or anyone else who wishes to send a message through this network.

At last week's Internet Advocacy Roundtable, Harald Katzmair of FAS.research gave an enlightening presentation (podcast - 83mb) on social network analysis and how it can help nonprofits do more with less.

Take the first scenario: your bar buddies. You have a small group of friends you identify very closely with. You spend time with them very frequently, not because they provide you opportunities, but because they reinforce your identity and you feel comfortable with them. This type of network is called a frozen network.

Its antithesis is the liquefied network, or the appletini sipper. You have a much wider group of friends and acquaintances, but you don’t associate them as closely with your own identity. You probably force conversation with some people you don’t necessarily like. In return, you gain economic value in the form of opportunity.

The reason this comparison is important to nonprofits and campaigns is that whether online or off, social networks exert pressure to conform to certain behaviors and values. A nonprofit with limited resources can benefit enormously from knowledge of a targeted network.

For example, people in close, frozen networks are much less receptive to mass media campaigns. Outside information is filtered through the group. This knowledge could spare a group an expensive, ineffective mass media campaign.

Conversely, people in liquefied networks form their opinions on a more individual basis and are easier to convert with mass marketing campaigns, but as a result their behavior patterns are less stable and predictable.

Groups can look to successful elite networks for inspiration. The corporate boards of the world’s biggest companies are often cited as examples of successful, heavily-interlinked social networks. There is considerable overlap between many major companies’ board members. These links are great for cooperation and trust between members of the network. Furthermore, the more intertwined members of the network are, the less likely they are to be converted to a set of values or actions that contradicts those of their network.

These findings support the aims of online organizers and social networking tools. By facilitating the interconnection of your members, you reinforce their dedication to the network and the values it represents.

Harald showed us an interesting simulation of a fire starting in a forest. The fire is your message and the trees are interconnected people. If you start the fire in the right place, such as with online influentials, it will spread efficiently until it burns out. But if you connect the people in the group, or even slightly increase the density of the trees in the simulation, you can reach a critical threshold where a single spark will set the forest ablaze.

FDA Approves OTC Sale of Morning After Pill - posted by Gisele Toueg

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 09:11:10 -0700

At 9.20 this morning, the Food and Drug Adminsitration approved the over the counter sale of the morning after pill to women, and men, over eighteen years old. According to the FDA's website, "Today's action concludes an extensive process that included obtaining expert advice from a joint meeting of two FDA advisory committees and providing an opportunity for public comment on issues regarding the scientific and policy questions associated with the application to switch Plan B to OTC use."

In addition to praising Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) for their overwhelming support, NARAL Pro-Choice America, a leading advocate for privacy and a woman's right to choose, praised the FDA for standing "up to the Bush administration and its far-right base to help women prevent unintended pregnancy by guaranteeing greater access to the 'morning-after' pill." Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said in a statement today, "We hope the FDA decision will go a long way toward improving the health of adult women."

NARAL, and allied organizations like Planned Parenthood, have focused a considerable portion of their online outreach efforts on helping to make sure Plan B is available without a prescription. As of 8.49 am today, 18,659 people had signed NARAL's petition to support this action.

To everyone who signed this, and similar peitions, thank you. And to everyone who feels like we can't make a difference, we can. We did, and we will continue to do so.

Where are the Gay Netroots? - posted by Terrance Heath

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 17:46:19 -0700

So the discussion during the LGBT caucus at YearlyKos was about what I expected. There was a lot of discussion about the direction of the Democratic Party on gay and lesbian equality, which which was pretty much a review of the complaints voiced recently, from the Dean's appearance on the 700 Club to what is or isn't happening on the local and state level.

People were, of course, all over the place in terms of what they thought the party leadership should or shouldn't be doing on gay & lesbian equality issues. But what it all boiled down to for me is this: the party is not going to lead on our issues. So, if we're on our own in that regard how do we organize the LGBT netroots on our issues at the national, state and local levels, In fact, where are the queer netroots?

Well, we're not all in one place. There are, of course, several high profile gay political bloggers, like John Aravosis or Andrew Sullivan just to name a couple. (And much more than that if you broaden the scope beyond politics to include, say, popular culture.) We're diarists and commenters on community sites like DailyKos or MyDD, where our voices get blended with lots of others on lots of different issues.

Or do we get lost in the shuffle? I mean, it's a good thing to have high profile gays & lesbians in the mix. It's wonderful that our voices are in the mix on high profile progressive netroots sites. But where is the LGBT netroots space online? Should there be one, separate from the other progressive netroots sites that already exist?

I say yes. Here' s why.

Like I said before, it's great that there are some high profile gay bloggers out there, but it doesn't amplify our voices so much as those individual voices. And it's great that so many of us are actively participating in netroots sites. It's important that our voices are heart in those communities, but even those sites don't amplify our voices or organize our community. That's something that doesn't really exist, and it needs to be built because if it's built we will come.

Look at the websites of the major gay organizations, and you'll find most of them have action centers, but don't have blogs or sites where their members can communicate with each other, organize themselves and talk back to the leadership of those organizations. And maybe some of those organizations wouldn't readily embrace a more "bottom-up" form of organizing message creation. And that's a shame because evidence suggests that the community is primed and ready for it.

Gays are all over the web. Just look at the Simmons study from last years, which showed that gays and lesbians are quick to embrace new technology and are heavy users of the internet. If you believe that then it shouldn't come as a surprise a Harris Interactive poll found that gays are more likely to read blogs than non-gays.

Sitting here at the YearlyKos conference, I can't help thinking about the potential of something like this. Imagine a gay-focused netroots site that eventually lead to a convention like this one, where people can network, hash out agendas, pick up skills, etc., and then take all that back to their communities; and where candidates and policy-makers come to reach out to our communities.

So, why isn't there a central gay netroots site? Maybe it's too intimidating a task to take on, especially for someone in the community to start and support. Maybe it's because it might have to be non-partisan to be effective, but most of the leading gay organizations are either decidedly partisan or more partisan than they'd like to admit, and our communities are not monolithic in terms of their politics.

Regardless of all the above, though, there has to be a model to build something like this; something that perhaps all the various organizations can support without necessarily controlling the content or being heavily identified with it. It's clear there's a need for it, and that there's a community that will probably readily embrace it.

It just needs to be build. Like, yesterday.

What new technology means for good old fashioned organizing - posted by Michael Silberman

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 22:47:56 -0700

I started this post last week at Net2, in an attempt to summarize my talk after our Activism panel ended. Instead, I sat there listening to the Gender and Social Web panel, wondering why we didn't ditch our stupid powerpoints in the previous panel and just host a really informed conversation, as these women were doing. Because there's no way that I successfully communicated anything useful in my 10 minutes about integrating online and offline organizing or the future of real-world activism.

Thanks to the invitation of our friend Alan Rosenblatt (aka Dr. Digipol), however, I had plenty of time last night to hit the key points for the students taking his class at AU. It was fun -- Along with Roz LeMieux of MoveOn, we talked about all sorts of iterations of online/offline organizing and really dug into the core differences between MoveOn's mobilizing strategies and our approaches on the Dean campaign, especially in terms parsing bottom-up vs. top-down strategies.

So, here they are... The Key Points -- What technology means for organizing and activism:

(1) Now anyone can become a community organizer or fundraiser. We keep hearing that this new social web, or "Web 2.0", enables anyone to become a publisher; to create and post content online -- something traditionally reserved for the pros. The equivalent is now true for organizing events, actions, and fundraisers. And it's already happening. With more than 250,000 events organized on Evite.com each month, it's hard for many of us to imagine attending a real-world event that wasn't in some way organized online.

(2) This is not new -- it's just different. Successful online organizing relies on the same core community organizing principles that have been around for decades. The difference is that the 'net and mobile technology enables us to amplify, accelerate, and (in most cases) simplify the process -- and for less money. You can apply the same principle to blogs, which are just a powerful new twist on old-fashioned word-of-mouth.

(3) The social web and new technology revolutionizes traditional, real-world activism by...

Creating a realtime, transparent feedback loop that shows people how they're part of something larger than themselves. For instance, photos and stories can be shared and live for the world to see before the same event has ended. Or we can find out how close we are to hitting a national fundraising goal before leaving the house-party fundraiser.
Enabling organizations to get realtime feedback and instant data reports from actions or events taking place anywhere on the planet
Putting power in the hands of local grassroots leaders and volunteer organizers that traditionally would have been reserved for professional or paid staff
Encouraging massive, self-organized actions and mobilizations to take place independent from traditional organizations or structures (e.g. last month's immigration protests)
Enabling programs to scale more quickly and efficiently than they previously could have with equivalent resources

Exciting times as far as I'm concerned. So, how to get started and be successful at this as an organization? Check out our latest insights paper: Moving From Online Activity to Real World Action