EchoDitto - Organizing

Netroots Nation - posted by Brian Reich

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:15:11 -0700

Are you going to Netroots Nation?

Netroots Nation is America's largest gathering of progressive bloggers -- now in its third year (it was originally known as YearlyKos). This year the convention will invade Austin, TX from July 17-20 and feature more than 100 sessions focusing on how technology intersects with and is changing democracy in America. Here is a short list of the speakers: Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi, Van Jones, Lawrence Lessig, Darcy Burner, Paul Krugman, Harold Ford Jr., James Rucker, John Dean, Brad Miller, Rick Noriega, and of course Kos.

Go to www.netrootsnation.org for more information, and if you want to register (which I hope you will), let me know because I have a code that will get you a nice little discount.

EchoDitto will be there. And we are bringing a few of our friends and clients. Its going to be one of the big gatherings of the year. Hope to see you there.

Celebrate Earth Day with 1Sky! - posted by Meaghan Lamarre

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:04:17 -0700

In honor of Earth Day today, we at EchoDitto are joining with individuals around the world who are committing to do something to combat climate change. Most of us already walk, bike, or take public transportation to work; we're adamant recyclers; and we use environmentally-friendly cleaning products from Seventh Generation. But today we're especially proud to contribute to the fight against global warming with the relaunch of 1Sky.org.

1Sky was created in 2007 with one primary objective: to harness the power of the millions of Americans who are concerned about climate change in order to pass federal legislation by 2010 that can reverse global warming. Since its founding, 1Sky has built a platform of specific solutions, partnered with organizations and allies around the country, and activated a network of over 50,000 citizens who are actively lobbying for policy change and garnering support for the 1Sky solutions in meetings with their members of Congress.

1Sky's power is in its broad base and decentralized structure. It's a truly open-source collaborative campaign, uniting supporters from among traditional "green" activists, communities of faith, business groups and civil rights organizations. All of us have something at stake in the fight against global warming – and individuals are sharing their diverse stories through 1Sky's Faces of Climate Change campaign. Check it out and share your story!

It's been an exciting project for us here at EchoDitto as the site has some neat features that totally embrace our philosophy of building vibrant communities and allowing authentic voices to be heard:

The Faces of Climate Change campaign collects stories, photos, and videos from users and plots them on a map so you can see how climate change impacts people around the country.
The new blog, The Skywriter, features posts by campaign staff and guest posts from the field; complete with comments so readers can contribute to the discussion.
More to come!

We're thrilled to be relaunching 1Sky.org and handing it off to the dedicated folks at 1Sky to run with. More importantly, though, we can't wait to see how it grows as all of us who care passionately about ending climate change share our thoughts and stories with one another.

Unconferencing You In - posted by Anne Keenan

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:13:00 -0800

I have to admit that the idea of an “unconference” made me a little uncomfortable. No set agenda? No prepared presentations? No experts? What was there to prevent the entire thing from dissolving into chit chat about the best Woot items and JLo’s babies? The answer, I discovered, is a good-sized group of smart, thoughtful people with a variety of experience, who are willing to share new projects, discuss best practices, and admit to not knowing all of the answers.

So what did those smart people say? Here are 5 insights--one per session.

Session One: Online Communities for Social Change
This session started my conference with macro questions: how do people negotiate identities online, and how do these on- and off-line identities influence online activism? (It made me think a lot about Danah Boyd’s article on Friendster and negotiating complex identities in an online space that wants to flatten people into profiles.)

Also, when we’re building campaigns should we seek to aggregate activist campaigns into one central place (“I care about the environment and human rights and Darfur--and want one place where I can go for updates/action” or “We are building a Progressive Movement”) or should we continue to build separate online communities for each cause (“I care about the environment, but I’m a Republican and don’t want to be bombarded by leftist propaganda” or “we need a diverse group of supporters to pass this legislation”)? Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and every campaign requires different tactics.

Session Two: OpenID
This session was more traditional, with an expert and lots of questions. I have to admit it was my first time learning about OpenID and I spent a fair amount of the session searching for terms on wikipedia (RSA, SAML, etc.). My biggest take-away was the idea of switching from a Customer-Relationship Management (CRM) model to a Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) model where the user is the center.

For example--I move across the county and want to change my address universally. The current system makes me do all the work, changing my address with any number of companies. With VRM, I put the data out once, and enterprises I have relationships/accounts with can choose to pull this data in. In the future, users might broadcast their desires to companies, to be marketed to (“do you notice how much paper I’m buying? sell me paper at a lower cost!”). Read more about all of this at projectvrm.org.

Session Three: Social Shopping
In his amazing book, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, Paco Underhill reveals that the more time you spend in a store, the more you spend. And how do you get people to spend more time in a store? By making it a social experience--preferably with two women shopping together. (For more insights on the gendered dynamics of shopping, you should immediately buy this book with your Amazon Prime.) So how does this translate to the online world? Customer reviews, affiliate programs, facebook apps, and more. But, this was a moment when an expert would have been really handy. Who has data on the actual value of reviews? Do they really sell more things? Our consensus was that they must since Amazon pushes you so hard to review your purchases, but... maybe you know?

Session Four: Mobile Communities
After we went over the reasons why mobile technology is so mediocre in the US (no standardization, multiple platforms and providers, no widespread access to high-speed connections, carriers with veto power over content), this was a session for dreaming of what mobile could be. For instance, it could take advantage of all of the properties that make mobile unique: geographic data, voice access, and the sheer number of mobile devices: Travel services could hook you up with instant recommendations of places to visit, along with audio tours of them. Social networks could let you know if any of your friends were nearby. Billboards could be interactive... it’s all so amazing. In the meantime, we’ll have to content ourselves with this cool audio blogging site: http://www.utterz.com/

Session Five: Identify, Engage, Recognize
It was a long day, so thank goodness that the last session of the day was so amazing. Sean O’Driscoll gave a great presentation of Microsoft’s MVP program--how they find, recognize and reward their users. Something that struck me was his idea that there are three groups of people: “I like you” (satisfaction level) is 90% of your base, “I love you” (loyalty level) is 9% of your base, “I defend you” (affinity level) is 1% of your base.

So at Microsoft, he asked “what are the drivers that move people between these levels?” One of the answers that came back was that co-creation is one of the main drivers. The more people were engaged in the process of development, the more tied the felt to the outcome. I can think of, oh, about a million applications for this idea.

Phew! I really did try to limit it to one idea from each session, and there are still so many more things to talk about. Maybe I’ll host an unconference of my own. Maybe at my house. Maybe over dinner and wine. Maybe I’ll call it a dinner party. Who’s in?

The View from the Lower Ninth Ward - posted by Gisele Toueg

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:48:56 -0800

As many of you know, EchoDitto recently returned from New Orleans, LA, the site of this year's company retreat. We spent an amazing four days enjoying the grandeur of the Buckner Mansion, gorging ourselves on gumbo, jambalaya, po' boys and bread pudding, and of course, laying the groundwork for an exceptional year ahead. We come back to our offices in New York, Washington and Boston feeling smarter, stronger and excited to share our learnings with our incredible clients.

This year's retreat was a bit different from previous years in that it included a day of community service. At seven am Wednesday morning, we piled in our minivans and headed for New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood that was largely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2004. We were met by Britney and Melody, two amazing staffers from ACORN, which is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families. ACORN has been at the forefront of Katrina relief in the Lower Ninth Ward since the beginning, and, with the help of 15,000 volunteers across the country, has preserved more than 2,500 homes in New Orleans.

Our project for the day was to gut a church that had been destroyed by Katrina, and the ensuing floods. The entire neighborhood was a disaster, from the school across the street to the empty lots that once housed residents of the Lower Ninth Ward. Many of us were stunned to see how desolate the area remained, more than three years after the Hurricane struck New Orleans. In many spots, it looked like the levees could have broken the day before, the destruction was still so apparent.

After donning our goggles, gloves, respirators and tyvek suits, we set to work. All we knew was that we had to take apart the church, from the pews on the first floor to the baptismal bath upstairs, everything had to go. As most of our clients know, we're a pretty nerdy bunch, and spend most of our time attached to our MacBook Pros, not crowbars and sledgehammers. Still, we walked into the church and somehow, we just knew what to do. Together, we ripped apart benches, knocked down sheet rock walls, unhinged doors, broke apart wall fixtures, swept up countless piles of dirt and debris, and even tore apart the bathrooms. We were pretty much suited up from head to toe, and the respirators prevented us from being able to talk most of the time, so we were fairly indistinguishable from each other for most of the day. Tina described it as "a waltz," moving in tandem with each other, trusting one another to lead and follow when necessary.

Once we finished up at the church, Britney and Melody took us on a tour of the Lower Ninth Ward. Our first stop was the Lower Ninth Ward Village, a community center in the making that hopes to serve the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward as they attempt to rebuild their lives. We had the opportunity to speak with Mack McClendon, the center's owner, who described feeling "chosen" to lead this project. His faith, and that of the numerous volunteers and staff of the fledgling center, was one of the most inspiring parts of the day.

Residents are starting to return to New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, but in order to sustain vibrant community, they need schools, places of worship, community centers, businesses and social services to follow. With the help of countless staff and volunteers, the church we gutted last week will be rebuilt alongside a school and new homes. EchoDitto was honored to be a part of the effort, if only for a day. We return to our daily lives with a renewed sense of pride and focus on the mission of our company--to create vibrant communities and empower people through the use of emerging technologies.

Speaking of emerging technologies, check out our flickr feed.

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…?

Practicing what we preach - posted by Phil Lamb

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:26:25 -0700

I recently assumed the mantle of Chicago Bears event coordinator for my local (well, sorta) pub, The Gael, which meant that, with the season quickly approaching, I needed a system easy to rapidly deploy for getting the word out to Bears fans in New York. After the (amazing, fantastic) NFC Championship game back in January, one of the pub's owners passed around an email signup sheet (wonderful forethought on his part!) and invited anyone interested to give us their email address.

I managed the email addresses using Campaign Monitor, a cheap ($0.01 per subscriber) email campaign system, and set up a Drupal-based site for blogging and other user management (check it out here). We've now got over 100 fans subscribed, and have used the massive turnout to work with the owners of the bar to become the only place in New York City to serve Vienna Beef Chicago-style Hot Dogs and Polish Sausage, and Goose Island Beer - all imported from Chicago. The next step: Old Style, the classic Chicago sports beer. All in all, it's been a successful few weeks, and a lot of fun, and just goes to show that at EchoDitto we're great at what we do because we use this stuff in our daily lives.

Not Your Average Summer School - posted by Cristen Perks

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:52:05 -0700

Yesterday, following a week of advocacy training, 200 student activists came together on Capitol Hill in DC to put Congress on the "hot seat" about global warming.

Change it '07, a project of Seventh Generation and Greenpeace, is a week-long training designed to educate and empower dedicated students to become the next generation of leaders in the global movement for environmental change -- definitely not your average summer school. The students were, by no means, average students either - check out the participant profiles.

In the spring, over 1,200 18 - 24 year olds applied for the Change It '07 program. That's three times the number of applicants the program had last year!! Of the 200 inspired students who made the trek to DC, 10 of them were selected by an online voting community at the Change It website. To learn more about the site, check out the case study.

Wishing Change It training was around back in the day? You can still participate. Let the world know how you plan to make change in our world. Post your ideas for how you will Change It. As the site says, "Every small step you take to spread awareness about environmental and social justice issues is one step closer to solving the problem."

The Healing Power of Blogs? - posted by Gisele Toueg

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:15:24 -0700

My friend Mooki's son Toby is three years old. He's a beautiful child, with big brown eyes, and soft curls. We did a photo shoot together a few years ago, and I didn't want to let him out of my arms.

Tomorrow morning, Toby is having surgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. About two months ago, he was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare type of cancer that mainly affects children. Almost immediately after his diagnosis, Toby's friends and family rallied to his side. An email from Mooki's brother to 25 friends and coworkers inspired a friend to start a blog: http://tobypannone.blogspot.com, which has become the centerpiece of Mooki and her family's communication with loved ones.

Neighbors from the family's Park Slope community, classmates of Toby and his older brother Yoni, coworkers and strangers check the blog daily, looking for updates on Toby's condition and offering messages of love and support for the family. There's even a shared Google Calendar where people can sign up to offer rides, homecooked meals, and garbage disposal duty. Reading through comments on the blog, it's amazing to see a community of people from across the globe--israel, germany, new york--offering love, prayers and hope.

The internet is an amazing tool to inform, educate, and bring people together. Take a moment to check out Toby's blog, offer a kind word to Mooki and her family, and think healing thoughts for the little boy with the soft curls as he goes into surgery tomorrow morning.

Time to Meet - posted by Gisele Toueg

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 08:12:54 -0700

For me and my friends, Summer 2007 seems to be the season for weddings. In addition to my own August nupituals, I've got six weddings on the calendar this summer. Yikes! All those weddings mean six showers and six bachelorette parties. Doesn't leave much time for catching up on old episodes of 24.

That being said, the most challenging part of attending so many events is figuring times that work for most, if not all invited guests. I can't even begin to count how many group emails I've read and responded to in the past 2 months with the subject line: "Bachelorette Party Dates." What a pain to keep going back and forth, listening to people's family obligations, travel schedules, and roster of out of town visitors. It's enough to make me want to curl up in front of the DVD player and sit it all out.

But yesterday, a tip from EchoDitto's own Michael Silberman might have solved the problem for all wedding-related event planners around the globe. The solution: Time To Meet, an online calendaring solution that allows you to input your availability through a web-based interface. Event planners can invite a list of people to enter their availabilities on a common schedule. Time to Meet then finds the best times and lets the organizer confirm the final time. All invitees get an email with the meeting date and time, and you're done.

If only I had known about this sooner, I would have spent the past eight weeks complaining less and watching more Jack Bauer.

Facebook and Web 2.1 - posted by Phil Lamb

Wed, 30 May 2007 12:18:46 -0700

Remember when Facebook first hit the scene? I sure do. I had heard about the MySpaces, and had in fact set up a profile, but I was peeved with not only the overall quality of the pages, but also the length of time required to get profile pages to load. This, kids, is what happens when people with no HTML skills try to use spyware-laden tools to be creative.

And then, there was Facebook. And it was good: MySpace, with its heavy-handed marketing focus, was the annoying, belligerent 13-year-old screaming at everything and everyone that walked past, begging for attention. Facebook was the 20-year-old wunderkind waiting patiently to meet the King of Sweden.

I remember, specifically, the easy, intuitive nature of the Facebook interface, and was especially pleased with the fact that I didn't have to listen to some stupid Emo song any time I looked at someone's profile. And now, just three short years later, Facebook is about to make a quantum leap into coolness: they've debuted the Facebook Application platform.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington writes that with this release, Facebook is now the "Anti-MySpace,"(follow-up post here) but I think we're way past that. Facebook is moving from Social Networking into a new and different frontier, and can no longer be compared to NewsCorp's baby. What the new platform promises is a sort of "Web 2.1" that takes all of the awesomeness of Web 2.0 and puts it in one place, waters it, and lets it grow into something spectacular. Matt wrote about this occurring on a smaller scale a couple months ago when FB added its status feature, a Twitter-like add-on that allows users to keep friends up to date on what they're doing at any given moment. But now, the Status tool is outmoded, because Twitter itself has written an application for Facebook that can effectively replace the Status tool. (And, in an awesome display of Meta, Micah Sifry used the Twitter widget to say, "wondering whether Facebook just got feature creep.")

So now, the fundamental question raised by Facebook's move is, how is Web 2.1 different from Web 2.0?

I think the key to answering this question lies in nature. Web 2.0 applications like Social Networking Sites or youTube or Flickr are associated with viruses. Ask any marketing director what the hot new term for this decade is and they'll say "viral marketing." How did youTube get so huge? Flickr? Viral marketing. The concept is simple: "infect" people with what Seth Godin, during his talk at PDF a few weeks ago, called an "ideavirus" and, assuming you have something that people are interested in (a 100% infection rate), you get a very predictable exponential growth.

So you've got these ideaviruses. And they're out there in the ether, floating around and infecting people. You occasionally come across the equivalent of equatorial jungle with sites like BoingBoing teeming with Internet versions of Ebola, SARS and Small Pox - superbugs like Vote Different and LOLcats. But once they're out there, they don't change much; there are currently very few good examples of ideavirus mutation.

This is, I think, where Web 2.1 comes in. When you open up a platform and encourage development in the way Facebook has, you give ideaviruses a chance to mutate, a chance to become more efficient. Then, their growth is much more life-like. You can still have the exponential growth of infection, but with all of Web 2.0 in one spot, and with people being able to easily change or mashup multiple aspects of software, the genetics of these applications can evolve at the same time they replicate, and natural selection can occur online by people choosing to install the better application. A parent, like Facebook's Status app, can evolve into a more efficient app, like Twitter, and then, because of the greater appeal of its increased efficiency, spread more quickly. Suddenly it's no longer just an ideavirus but an ideaecology

Of course, there are drawbacks. Facebook has often been compared to the "walled gardens" of the early Internet - Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve - and with that lack of outside influence, the chances of mutation and improvement from cross-pollination are greatly reduced, and nature is echoed online. The real-world problem of Medieval monarchs marrying within the family and producing offspring with genetic defects might be seen on Facebook: five different versions of applications with different names that basically do the same thing. That's pretty boring.

Whatever the repercussions of this move may be, it's obvious that Facebook has done something really cool, and we're sure to see a lot more coming out of this in the future.

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!!

Eastern Market, Thanks for the Goat-Gouda - posted by Jess Paar

Fri, 04 May 2007 06:11:25 -0700

I opened the fridge door and peered in. Alone on the second shelf (yes, I need to go grocery shopping) sat a small, flat brown paper bag. There was no logo, no corporate tag line, nothing to distinguish it from any other brown paper bag. At 6am Monday morning, the bag was given new meaning…

It was about that time that I heard the terrible news that Eastern Market, one of my favorite spots in all of DC, had been damaged by a fire that raged for several hours, late that night and into the morning. I've heard the building structure will remain, but its contents are a total loss...and the market may never be the same.

But I consider myself lucky. As I usually do in the warm spring/summer months, I had just spent the day catching up with friends while wandering the booths, peering at handmade jewelry and antique furniture I can never afford. You can regularly find me hovering over the purses made from old books, the water colors and photography captured by local artists, taking apple samples from the produce section, trying to haggle the guy who makes those amazing chunky bead necklaces so they’re actually in my price range (never worked).

It was also that day that I felt inspired to introduce my friend to “the cheese guy”. The funny older gentleman in the market who wins you over with samples of wonderful cheeses (I’m partial to the sage cheddar), and let’s you sample a few before encouraging you to make a selection or make room for other customers. After at least three samples, I settled on a serving of an incredible goat-gouda. Wrapped in brown paper, I put it in my bag and moved on.

My sadness can’t even compare to the devastation facing the local artists and vendors who lost a part of their livelihood…their place of business. So I jumped at the chance to join Blue State’s own Clay Johnson, and others, to help support those who were displaced by the fire at Eastern Market. Using a Facebook group and EasternMarketRescue.com, we’re asking local bars and restaurants to donate proceeds next Tuesday (May 8th) to the Capitol Hill Community Foundation. So far the response has been great…but we’re not done yet. Have you asked your local watering hole to join?

It’s the least we can do to thank our market friends for the many gift ideas and fresh produce over the years…and for the cheese samples. I just can’t bring myself to eat that goat-gouda. As long as my roommate will let me, I may leave it in the fridge as a reminder to keep up the fight and protect the memory of our market.

Of Links, Blogrolls & Long Tails - posted by Terrance Heath

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 11:30:25 -0700

It was a bigger response than I expected, to a post that I almost didn't write. Two weeks ago I came across a post on Booman Tribune that made mention of a "blogroll purge." I didn't know of any such "purge" at the time, so I filed it away with a note to look into it later.

It it took me another week to return to it, and start researching to find out just what had happened and how. I took it all in, and wrote a post about it after debating with myself over whether I should or not. I'd spent the past few weeks at work putting together a blog training that included pouring over a lot of writing about the subject involved, and I decided it would make good material for a post.

I didn't think that a week-late post about a months-old event would get much notice or discussion. I was wrong.

There has been quite a discussion, with impassioned responses from all sides, which at the very least suggests there's still something important and worth discussing about the whole thing.

Digging through various search results on "blog purge" led me to a number of posts about Blogroll Amnesty Day, which took place back in February, according to a post by Jon Swift, and which ultimately ended up with some high ranking progressive bloggers deleting their blogrolls entirely and then rebuilding them. Bloggers who found themselves deleted from the blogrolls of these popular sites complained. There were still rumblings almost two months later, which is what I picked up on in the post mentioned above.

Reading through the numerous blog posts about "blogroll purge" and "Blogroll Amnesty Day" made me think about some of the material I'd reviewed for the blog training, and how it some of it might apply to the entire blogroll/linking discussion.

Right after that post, I wrote another about the state of the "Black-o-sphere," of African American bloggers, which was inspired by a post at Mirror on America about how African American bloggers made a difference in the case of Shaquanda Cotton. It reminded me of similar stories, some of which I'd participated in myself, that rocketed across the web and eventually made it to traditional media, powered by bloggers who will probably never be on a "top 100" list, but still had an amazing impact.

It illustrated to me something I think is relevant to the whole discussion of blogrolls and linking: that bloggers whose traffic doesn't necessarily qualify them for the "top tier" have more power than perhaps they realize. Call it the Long Tail, or the Magic Middle, they are highly influential in their particular niches (and many occupy more than one).

These mid-level have some noteworthy advantages. For example, they don't have the burdens of popularity that Clay Shirky illustrated in his much-referenced work, in an example of a blogger who has more readers than she can engage in discussion with, more emails than she can respond to, requests from more blogs than she can read, and who eventually "becomes a broadcast outlet, distributing material without participating in conversations about it."

By contrast, mid-level bloggers may have more time for all of the above. They have smaller readerships, but they are likely to have stronger relationships with their readers because they can get to know their readers better and engage in more discussions with them. That's probably why they get more of their readers' attention than some higly trafficked blogs.

More importantly, together they may also have more than some of the most popular blogs. Instead of spending time, energy, and bandwidth over the behavior and blogrolls of others, these "Magic Middle" or "Long Tail" bloggers (of which I am one), may discover they have the potential to do much more if they establish links and create networks among themselves than getting linked by a more popular blog could give them.

Or, for that matter, linking to those same blogs, and thus giving away their potential power.

Of course, the other end of the equation is getting more blog readers to look beyond the top of the curve, for bloggers who may be more responsive and communities where they can build relationships. When I'm not blogging about all of the above, that's something I'm going to be working on a lot more, at my "day job."

Yes Sir Officer, I Will Join Your Group - posted by Jess Paar

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:33:48 -0700

After living in the DC suburbs for a little over three years, I finally moved downtown to Capitol Hill. If you’re not familiar with the geography of our fair city, I’m in the Southeast corner near the wonders of Eastern Market, Union Station, Barracks Row and all the other exciting places The Hill has to offer. But with all of these great attractions and historical beauty also comes the threat of crime.

Much like my colleague, Chris, I too have been mugged. I’ve also had my car stolen and torched, and had my cell phone lifted on Christmas Eve. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not playing the victim. I know urban living is unique no matter what city you’re in.

So when an officer approached me this morning on my way to the bus stop, I was certain he was going to ask if I had been witness to some crime the previous night. Instead, he introduced himself and handed me a flier. Officer Holland of DC’s 1st District is using Yahoo Groups to create a “Public Safety Community Group” in my neighborhood as part of a new safety campaign. A self-professed “amateur internet junkie”, Officer Holland wants to incorporate new technologies to engage and inform the community.

I know my enthusiasm surprised him, but it struck me as such a cool example of how anybody can use the community-building technologies available in new ways. He knows that the groups functionality, if successful, can be a very powerful tool for sharing safety tips between neighbors while connecting residents to the District police. I'm signing-up and have encouraged my roommate to do the same. Stay tuned for updates!

Now if only I could trade industry advice for unpaid parking tickets….