EchoDitto - International

Empowering Nigerian Women Online - posted by Meaghan Lamarre

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:35:30 -0700

It's no secret, I think, that I have a particular interest in gender in technology -- I came to EchoDitto from the National Organization for Women, after all. I started my computer career with computer camp during my elementary school summers, where one of the women physicists in the building (thanks, Dr. Minichino) took all the girls to lunch one day each summer to give us a little extra encouragement about sticking with the tech stuff. Lucky for me, the lesson took.

So I'm really excited to be able to repay the favor this week as I'm participating in an online mentorship program called Networking for Success. Organized by the Women's Technology Empowerment Centre in Nigeria, the project is designed to encourage Nigerian women in technology to learn more about technology and to use online tools more effectively. Through the Networking for Success blog, I am part of a group of experts who are sharing our experiences and lessons learned about online technology with a really excellent group of participants. Thanks go to Beth Kanter, a fellow mentor, who introduced me to this project via her blog.

There are some really interesting conversations going on and I hope you'll check it out: http://www.w-teconline.org/nfsblog/

At the Risk of Sounding Old-Fashioned... - posted by Gisele Toueg

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 10:27:00 -0800

The summer after I graduated from high school, my friend Tracy and I took off for a six week adventure through Europe. This was 1994, and the word "Internet" and "cell phone" were most definitely not part of our vocabulary (although I would guess that some of my co-workers were already online at this point, being the forward thinkers that they are). Armed only with a "Let's Go Europe", we treked our backpacks from hostel to hostel, occasionally calling ahead from a local pay phone to reserve a room at our next destination. Each week, I'd call my parents collect to let them know I was still alive, and to catch up on the news from home. Sometimes I dropped postcards in the mail, many of which arrived long after I returned from my trip.

Fast forward 13 years (I am ancient!) to December, 2007. My husband and I just returned from a two week trip to Argentina, and although I've traveled internationally since that trip to Europe so long ago, this was the first time I really noticed how different communications have become. When we landed in Buenos Aires, I sent my mom a text message from my iPhone to let her known we were safe (I taught her how to text the day before I left in an attempt to keep her from running up the international roaming charges on my phone), and pulled up the hotel confirmation info on my husband's blackberry. Once we got to our hotel, we fired up our laptop, connected the international wireless card, and within minutes, we had found a place to eat for dinner using chowhound.com, booked a walking tour of Buenos Aires, and found a fantastic place to stay in Bariloche with the help of tripadvisor.com. Throughout the trip, we snapped photos on the blackberry and immediately sent them home to friends and family, sent text messages from the tops of mountains, kept up with favorite blogs and even participated in a beta test for a new mobile GPS application. In fact, on our walking tour of B.A., the guide stood in front of a building, and told us that when we got home, we should pull up the location in Google Maps and check out the surprise on the roof of this particular building. He was a little freaked out when we pulled out the blackberry and told him it was a racecar track!

Technology certainly makes it easier to do almost everything, and it gave me a lot of peace of mind to know that my family could get in touch with me at any time, if necessary. Still, I must admit I kinda missed the thrill of being far, far away, and having complete control over how and when I connected to the world back home.

Happy and healthy New Year everyone!

Sticky Rice - posted by Anne Keenan

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:56:42 -0700

So this is my first week at EchoDitto, and one of the most important things you should know about me is that I love rice pudding. And I’m not picky. Kozy Shack? Yes. Kheer? Yes. Homemade? Yes. The kind at the bodega with a half cherry on top? Absolutely.

Which is why the email from my friend Phillip with the subject “Rice Pudding” probably caught my eye. And the URL was www.freerice.com. Free rice pudding? Sign me up.

Well… I don’t want to ruin it for all of you, but it’s not free rice pudding. Instead, it’s a vocabulary game that donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program for every word that you get right. Amazing. (My nerdy love of word games took the edge off my rice-puddingless-disappointment.)

And now I can’t stop. The trick is that for every three words you get right, you go up a level. For every word you get wrong, you go back a level. There are 50 levels. I’m hovering around 43, and the FAQs say it’s nearly impossible to get above 48, but that won’t stop me from trying. And it’s not just my competitive spirit—how do you stop when you know the answer? And how do you stop when you don’t? Won’t it bug me all day if I don’t know what “bole” means?

I think what’s genius about this site is the way the game gets you stuck to the cause. For all of the time I’m thinking about arcane vocabulary words, I’m also thinking about how to address world hunger. So, maybe less delicious than rice pudding, but more satisfying? Satiating? Gratifying? Pleasurable…?

¡Viva la Barça, y Viva la Drupalcon! - posted by Phil Lamb

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:10:22 -0700

I just flew in from Barcelona, and boy are my arms tired!

Well, not really - actually I got back about two weeks ago, but what with finalizing development and launching President Clinton's newest site and the Bears beating the Packers, I haven't had a lot of time to collect my thoughts and set them down via an interblag. Well, now that things have calmed down slightly, I figured I'd give it a shot.

First of all, Barcelona is an amazing city. It's incredibly metropolitan - sort of like New York on a smaller scale and with more spanish, although most people with whom I interacted spoke great English. It's really easy to get around, which was good since the conference was taking place at CitiLab Cornélia, on the outskirts of the city.

The overnight flight was not nearly as sleepy as I would have liked. Older planes apparently don't cool off much during flight, which is bad for me, as I really prefer to sleep in a cold room with lots of blankets. I also prefer to sleep lying down, which, as any of you who've experienced transatlantic travel in coach know, is basically impossible in a 747.

Anyway, what that all amounted to was me getting in at about 9:30 and wishing I could have slept. Thankfully I was able to adjust fairly quickly to the new schedule, and things were aces from there.

It was interesting to meet in real life so many of the people with whom I had interacted via IRC and forums. A lot of them were really cool people, which was great since I had come as the sole representative of EchoDitto and didn't exactly have any guarantee of social interaction. About two days into the conference I met up with ExoDitto Justin Miller, who was there with a group of people from the DoD. They're doing some really cool open-source stuff which I'm not sure I can talk about here, but needless to say the move towards open-source is one which I think would benefit a number of existing government agencies.

The days were PACKED and to my chagrin a number of talks I wanted to attend were scheduled for the same timeslot, but someone had the brilliant idea of recording most of the sessions and posting them online, and I'd definitely recommend checking them out.

It wouldn't be feasible for me to talk in depth about every session I attended, so instead I'll just focus on the one that interested me the most: the Agile Development method.

Why did this one strike me? Well, for the most part there weren't many technical surprises at DC07, with maybe the exception of Dave Cohen's presentation on Drupal for Facebook, which shows some real promise for melding the two platforms. One of the reasons I was sent out to Barcelona was for self-improvement, and as many developers out there know, getting a great development process going is one area where many people find themselves stuck. The Agile process, to me, represents a great solution - one that will almost certainly keep the client happy and the developer sane, and that combination leads to faster development, less overhead, and more client leads.

Here's the general idea behind Agile software development:

Customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software
Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
Working software is the principal measure of progress
Even late changes in requirements are welcomed
Close, daily, cooperation between business people and developers
Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication
Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
Simplicity
Self-organizing teams
Regular adaptation to changing circumstances

- wikipedia

EchoDitto's development process is already composed of some of these ideas, but lately we've been starting to take a look at adopting a majority of them.

All in all, DC07 was an incredibly beneficial experience, reinforcing things I already knew and teaching me things I didn't. I'm not entirely sure where the next DrupalCon will be held (some are saying Stuttgart), but if you get the chance - GO!

Follow in Al's Footsteps - posted by Cristen Perks

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:10:43 -0700

As everyone was finalizing their weekend plans last Friday, it was announced that Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his "efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change."

Feeling left out? Want a piece of the action? Well, he can't do it all by himself. Check out one of our recent projects and do your part today to take action to solve the climate crisis - take the 7-point pledge - created by the Alliance for Climate Protection. If you haven't heard of the Alliance, find out more while listening to Gore speak about his award.

Al Gore being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is amazing and inspiring. So is the current movement to bring the environment to the forefront of issues being tackled by our leaders. Today, I've written this post as part of a coordinated effort of almost 20,000 blogs called "Blog Action Day" to help spread the word about the current climate crisis.

President Clinton, Martha Stewart, and our newborn: MyCommitment.org - posted by Michael Silberman

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:22:38 -0700

Quick! Got a TV near you? Our latest project, MyCommitment.org, is going to be on TV today! Oh, and President Bill Clinton will be introducing it. Along with Martha Stewart. On her TV show. For almost a full hour. I'm not kidding, and, as you can imagine, it's making all of us a bit giddy.

MyCommitment.org launched this morning in conjunction with the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York City. The idea is simple: Global leaders, CEOs, organizations, and heads of state all come together each year to make massive commitments to help solve the world's greatest problems. But rather than letting the big whigs have all the fun, MyCommitment.org invites everyday citizens to participate in the pledging process with their own ways to make the world a better place. And just like at the CGI summit, every commitment that an individual makes must be specific, relevant, and trackable.

Find out when The Martha Stewart Show airs in your area today so that you can watch President Clinton explain the MyCommitment.org project along with his new book, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World. (We also had the honor of developing and launching the website for Giving earlier this month. Check it out here.)

It's not every day that global institutions—especially ones as influential as the Clinton Foundation—decide that the potential benefits of multiplying the reach and impact of their work far outweighs any risks associated with opening their doors to everyday citizens. Given the levels of true participation that MyCommitment.org is inviting and enabling, we see this project as a pretty bold move for President Clinton, his foundation, and CGI -- and we couldn't have had a greater privilege than to work on developing and implementing this campaign with the President's team.

Let us know what you think! (That is, of course, after you make your own commitment and rate some of the others.) Like almost everything on the web these days, this is only the first phase, so please drop a comment here or on the campaign blog with any ideas you have for the next evolution.

And if you think that both the MyCommitment.org and Giving sites are looking especially good, you can pay a compliment to our good designer friends over at BiroCreative; they're responsible for making it all look so slick, and I'm sure they'd love to know what you think as well.

UPDATE: Watch President Clinton announce the launch of MyCommitment.org at the CGI meeting:

Forget Shock and Awe... - posted by Gregory Cooper

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 08:23:51 -0700

So at one point or another, we’ve all heard the maxim that the digital revolution is going to change the way we do everything. Well... once again it has been proven right.

The next victim of the digital age? Ironically, it may be the art of war.

For a moment, forget Operation Shock and Awe and all the recent advancements in military technology… states have been getting better at killing people and blowing stuff up for the last hundred years. Much more novel is the concept of states engaging in “cyber-warfare", and what the implications of such actions might be. There is little doubt that an IT-savvy state could engage in cyber-warfare, but would it constitute the next ‘shot heard round the world?’ How should a state react when its websites are being shut down by another state? Complain? Crash their parliament website? File a brief with the International Court of Justice? Or maybe just bomb the bastards to hell.

Transition to a real world scenario:

Tensions recently flared up in Eastern Europe: Estonia, one of the Soviet Union’s former satellite states, moved a Soviet soldier memorial out of the city center of Tallinn. The Russian government was infuriated and provoked strong and forceful denunciations of Estonia by Russian ministers, who claimed that the removal of the statue discriminated against ethnic Russian citizens. Looting in Tallinn by Ethnic Russians ensued, and so… things got worse.

A basic international dispute over a policy slight- nothing new there.

Except…

On April 27th, a massive month long cyber-offensive began on the websites of Estonia’s banks, parliament, ministries, newspapers, and broadcasters, forcing many of them to shut down. Estonia is highly modernized and relies heavily on IT, and so the attacks remained serious problem. All eyes looked to Russia as the culprit, and the Estonian Foreign Minister even went on television to claim that one of the virus origins was from a computer in the Russian Presidential Administration and several from government computers. Nonetheless, many tech savvy Russian citizens found helpful instructions on how to conduct DDoS attacks on their own, and Estonia has been hammered now for nearly a month.

Whether or not Russia is actually ‘guilty’ is almost irrelevant given the nature of cyber attacks (they are just plain difficult to trace). I think what is most troubling is that there is still no clear idea in the international community on how to respond should a state be caught engaging in such an attack. The Economist was fortunate enough to quote a senior NATO official in Brussels: even

“If a member state's communications centre is attacked with a missile, you call it an act of war. So what do you call it if the same installation is disabled with a cyber-attack?”

Cyber-warfare is not going to replace regular warfare or change the entire international balance of power, but it does pose a new problem to an already troubled international system. As countries continue to modernize, it creates new weaknesses and vulnerabilities that can be taken advantage of… especially in cyberspace.

My hill of beans. - posted by Sofie Leon

Thu, 03 May 2007 12:52:16 -0700

It’s been seven months since the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2006 Annual Meeting, but I find myself coming back to President Clinton’s closing session remarks frequently:

Bishop Tutu reminded us that the essential wisdom of Africa about the human condition is captured in the word ubuntu. He didn’t give you the literal translation because it is almost mystical. The literal translation of ubuntu, in English, is “I am because you are.”

He was the first person to introduce me to ubuntu, though the Bantu word has now spread far beyond Southern Africa (i.e. an operating system). It was very humbling to be standing 20 meters from Bill Clinton as he conveyed the importance of our connectivity, expressing an ideology that you belong to a greater whole; your humanity, your being is thought believed to be diminished when others are humiliated, tortured or oppressed.

Fast-forwarding to the present, I’m pinching myself, trying to come to grips with the reality that May 2007 is here. As universities across the country will be holding commencement ceremonies sending out a new class of graduates in the next six weeks, I’ve been reflecting on my own commencement ceremony. Tom Brokaw mused on his perception of global realities, comparing the almost instantaneous access to information we’ve been afforded, with the internet with increasingly complex political and social problems we’re currently faced with:

…welcome to a world of perpetual contradictions, welcome to a world of unintended consequences and unexpected realities. Welcome to a world in which war is not a video game, … in which genocide and ancient hatreds are not eliminated with a delete button. You won't find the answer to global poverty in Tools or Help. You cannot fix the environment by hitting the Insert bar. You cannot take your place in the long line of those who came before you simply by sitting in front of a screen or at a keyboard.

One of the biggest reasons I joined EchoDitto was that we mobilize online for results that make an impact offline too. As we collaborate with clients who don’t work on issues with quick fixes, as we strategize with them to approach complex, substantial, world-changing issues with Web 2.0 technology to drive results I can’t help but get excited. I’ve been trying to steer away from being trite in my commentary, but as widgets and instant messages help the transfer of information feel easy and simple, getting people engaged all over the world is a reality (at least more than ever before)! I know I’m not the first one to comment on our interconnectedness and globalization’s relationship with the internet – but its my first blog post! I feel like it’s a rite of passage.

…remember ubuntu. If we were alone on this planet, alone, and we were the most beautiful, the most brilliant, the most powerful, the most wealthy, and the longest-lived person ever to exist, if we were alone, we would not amount to a hill of beans. And if we did, nobody would know it.

So, ubuntu. For us, it means the world is too small, our wisdom too limited, our time here too short to waste any more of it winning fleeting victories at other people’s expense. We have to find a way to triumph together. And so you have here.

No Citizen Journalism, Please. We're French - posted by Terrance Heath

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:45:31 -0700

Imagine this. You're standing, waiting for a bus when you hear a commotion; screaming, yelling, gunshots, etc. You turn around and witness someone being dragged in to a van-- kicking and screaming -- by several armed, hooded individuals.

Instead of diving for cover, you whip out your mobile phone and start capturing video at the precise moment one kidnapper shoots a security guard and foolishly rips off his mask before jumping into the van as it speeds away. You have his picture. You have video evidence of his crime. Being a good citizen, you take your video of the crime to the police, and they arrest you. Because what you did is a crime. Or it could be, in France.

That is, if France criminalizes citizen journalism.

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

Appropriately enough, the council's announcement came on the anniversary of the Rodney King beating; a watershed moment in American life, stemming from the increased availability of video cameras, which became a powerful media tool in the hands of citizens who took them into the streets to "police the police." Had the proposed French law existed in the U.S. then, George Holliday -- who captured the incident on video -- would have been a criminal. (But not Bob Tur, the reporter who captured video of Reginald Denny being attacked during the riots that erupted when a jury failed to convict four officers for the King incident, and later sued YouTube for copyright infringement when the video was posted on the site.)

Of course, then even if you had video it wouldn't see the light of day beyond your living room unless you found a television station willing to air it. Fast forward to the present, when even more of us have the capacity to capture video, and it seems like every day there's a new website where we can upload, edit and broadcast that video without having to persuade a producer or station manager.

How has it changed our culture? It's an old story, and we're just living in the latest chapter.

Forty years ago last Monday, Americans saw television footage of the attack on civil rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. It became known as "Bloody Sunday," and so incensed Americans that demonstrations were held in 80 cities within 48 hours, and Martin Luther King Jr. led thousands on a march across that same bridge two days later. Had ABC not interrupted Judgment at Nuremberg, most Americans wouldn't have see it what happened in Selma that day. That was the power of media then.

Television footage from the Vietnam brought war into America's living rooms, given them a view of the battlefield most would never have seen otherwise. It's said to have been a major factor in turning the tide of public opinion against the war.

No, the great difference between the Vietnam War and its predecessors lay not in its conduct, but its perception, an image that was shaped by a powerful new influence-- television. It was this medium, more than any other single factor, which was instrumental in the shift of American public and Congressional opinion from a position strongly supporting to one strongly condemning the American defense of South Vietnam.

...As the size of the media in Vietnam expanded, so did its impact back home. In 1963, NBC and CBS doubled the length of their national news coverage (from 15 to 30 minutes) and in that same year Americans reported that, for the first time ever, most of them received the majority of their news from television instead of newspapers and magazines.12 Technology kept pace during this period also, with a steady increase in the number, size, and quality of color television sets in American homes. Transportation time of news footage was originally about twenty hours from Vietnam to New York, although this would be decreased dramatically with the availability of communications satellites later in

the war.

That, too, was the power of media then.

The King video gave Americans a look at the kind of violence most wouldn't have seen otherwise, and that wouldn't have been reported beyond its locale -- if at all -- had there not been a citizen with a video camera nearby. Last November, cell phone video footage of a UCLA student being repeatedly tasered by campus police was posted to YouTube. It became one of YouTube's most discussed videos of all time, rocketed around the blogosphere, and caused an outcries against police brutality both online and on campus. Video of Los Angeles Police arresting William Cardenas helped launch an FBI investigation after it was posted online. In another time, news of these incidents wouldn't have spread very far, let alone video footage.

The trend is not limited to the U.S. A video of Malaysian police humiliating a young woman (recorded by another policeman, on his cell phone) also found its way online, causing citizens to demand an investigation.

The clip began circulating phone to phone, e-mail to e-mail. Eventually it was posted on YouTube and other Internet sites, to be viewed by millions. What started as cheap voyeurism escalated into an unstoppable cyberspace phenomenon, which forced the prime minister to establish an official inquiry that led to changes in police practice. The episode also underscored the growing power of amateur video, shot on cellphones and ever-tinier digital cameras, to hold the powerful to account.

The digital revolution is helping to throw light into some of the world's darkest corners. The photos of naked and shackled Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison -- images taken on soldiers' personal digital cameras and made public in 2004 -- focused a global spotlight on abuses there. Ordinary people going about their daily lives are now the first to document historic events.

That is the power of media now, in the hands of "ordinary people."

Beyond crime and acts of violence, the political implications of the kind of law proposed in France should be obvious by now, to anyone who's heard the word "macaca" or seen Michael J. Fox's campaign ads, both of which made APs "Top YouTube Videos of 2006" list.

The case of blogger Josh Wolf is another example. Wolf was jailed in July 2006 for failing to turn over video footage he shot of a San Francisco protest against the G8 summit 2005. In an interview last month, Wolf explained his refusal to comply with

Amy Goodman: On Friday, we spoke with Josh Wolf from his jail cell in Dublin, Calif. I began by asking him why he's in prison.
Josh Wolf: I'm here for refusing to comply with a subpoena demanding that I both testify and turn over a tape of a protest that occurred on July 8, 2005.

AG: Why are you refusing to comply?

JW: Well, there's a number of reasons. It's been viewed that the tape is central to the issue, but it's also the testimony. Essentially, what the government wants me to do, as we can tell, is to identify civil dissidents who were attending this march, who were in mask and clearly did not want to be identified, but whose identities I may know some of, as their contact that I've been following in documenting civil dissent in the San Francisco Bay Area for some two and a half years now.

Meanwhile, CNET Editor Charles Cooper suggests another reason why Wolf's incarceration isn't getting the as much attention as, say, the jailing of New York Times reporter Judy Miller.

Civil liberties-minded folks are upset about the press freedom issues raised by Wolf's imprisonment. But Wolf's self-proclaimed status as a video blogger also opens a Pandora's box the fourth estate would just as soon see remain shut. More than any case I can recall, the Wolf case reflects the changing way journalism is being practiced in the age of Internet bloggers.

Changing the way journalism is practiced, by essentially making journalists of any anyone with cell phone and a broadband connection, has the potential to change much more. It did in South Korea where OhMyNews -- which daily posts tens of thousands of articles by citizen journalists -- was credited with influencing the election of a president. Founder Oh Yeon Ho described the site as a powerful space to coalesce "people power."

“OhmyNews is a kind of public square in which the reform-minded generation meet and talk with each other and find confidence. The message they find here: we are not alone. We can change this society.”

By contrast, the French law would establish government-approved sources of information and bar most citizens from contributing.

The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said Cohet. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.

The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists’ organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.

"Freedom Fries" aside, it's no stretch of the imagination to consider how much folks on this side of the Atlantic might appreciate a law like this one. In fact, the French law might not go far enough. After all, national security could be at stake and suppressing some of the stories mentioned above would have spared some powerful people a bit or grief, and maybe even helped them hold on to that power.

But that probably wouldn't happen here without some protest. That is, if anyone would risk reporting it.

EchoDitto Does Webvideo - posted by Jason Rosenberg

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:08:11 -0800

Every 30 seconds a child dies because they contracted malaria from a mosquito bite. The United Nations Foundation, NBA Cares, the United Methodist Church and a host of organizations have banded together to see to it that families in Africa receive mosquito-repellent bed nets to protect themselves from contracting this killer disease while they sleep.

In our first major venture into webvideo, EchoDitto produced two videos on behalf of the United Nations Foundation. The first video premiered at the NBA store in New York City during the Nothing But Nets press conference.

See the video here.

A shorted version of the video was shown during the New Jersey Nets-Chicago Bulls game.

See the video here.

For just $10 you can buy a net that may save a life.

Visit the United Nations Foundation’s website to learn more about the Nothing But Nets program and all of the great work the United Nations Foundation does.

21st Century War Diaries - posted by Gisele Toueg

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 19:43:15 -0700

War is often associated with the technological advances of the era (eg. Vietnam was the first "television war"), and the current conflict in the Middle East, as well as the war in Iraq, are certainly part of the "Web 2.0 Wars."

The New York Times recently published an article about how Israelis and Lebanese are using blogs and vlogs to chronicle their wartime experiences, and to connect with each other across borders. Gayla, a fifteen year old Israeli, uploaded a clip to YouTube last week that she shot as she ran through her home to her family's bomb shelter, while Lebanese bloggers deliver daily reports from damaged neighborhoods throughout their country.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the article was its title: Anne Frank 2006: War Diaries Online. The Diary of Anne Frank was first published in 1947, two years after Germany surrendered and the war ended in Europe. By then, Anne, her mother and her sister had already perished in the concentration camps. What would have happened if Anne, and others like her, had been able to access sites like YouTube or blogspot? Would the rest of the world have responded sooner, or would the Nazis have stumbled upon her blog and discovered the Frank family's hiding place earlier than August 4, 1944?

There is, of course, no answer to these questions. Even as we watch Gayla's escape to the bomb shelter or read Mana's blog from Lebanon, war rages on in the Middle East. But we have a better sense of what it feels like to be in the middle of it.

The Meaning of "Never Forget" - posted by Gisele Toueg

Wed, 31 May 2006 09:49:37 -0700

In the May 19th edition of Canada's National Post, Amir Taheri wrote about a new law recently passed by Iran's Islamic Majlis (Parliament). According to Taheri, "The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear 'standard Islamic garments' designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate 'the influence of the infidel' on the way Iranians, especially the young, dress."

The law "also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct color schemes to make them identifiable in public."

Sounds terrifyingly reminiscent of the Holocaust, where Jews were forced to wear yellow stars as early as 1939. News of this latest affront spread like wildfire across the world, and Jewish leaders quickly reacted, calling upon Kofi Annan to protest the law, and pressure Iran into dropping the law.

Since the news broke last weekend, the blogosphere has gone nuts, from researching Mr. Taheri's background (apparently he's employed by Bender Associates, a right-wing p.r. firm) to debating the validity of the story. Iranian officials denied the law's existence, and the National Post eventually retracted their story.

But where does all this back and forth really leave us? The reality is that many, many people, myself included, were willing to believe this law was real, that the remaining Jews in Iran were going to be forced to identify themselves in the same way German Jews were forced to over 60 years ago. What does that say about the state of the world today? Are we too quick to believe what we read, or are we justified in looking for reasons to get scared and angry about what's happening?

When I first heard this story, my initial reaction was outrage, and disbelief. Growing up, we were taught to "Never Forget" the Holocaust, so it would never happen again. As the news sunk in, my thoughts turned from anger to fear--Schindler's List and The Pianist took home Academy Awards, and Oprah Winfrey visited Auschwitz with Elie Wiesel, but even if we remember the murder of six million Jews, can that prevent it from happening again? I started thinking about what I, as one person, could actually do to change this. And in many ways, I was comforted by the fact that individuals are making a difference these days, thanks to technology, and online advocacy, and tools that allow us to connect with others across the globe in ways that were unimaginable in 1939.

However, when all is said and done, no matter how good the tools and the technology may be, the ball is still in all of our courts. Freedom to act, speak and do is a right, but also a privilege. Whether we're taking action against injustice, or trying to decipher truth in media reports, we must "Never Forget" this right, or this privilege.

IYVS, and the Online Advantage for New Initiatives - posted by Michael Silberman

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 12:09:54 -0800

Greetings from the Northwestern University campus in lovely Evanston, IL. I'm here at the International Youth Volunteerism Summit (IYVS), which was organized by an impressive group of students who corralled the money and interest to invite a select group of applicants from more than 20 countries and 30 universities to explore the "pitfalls and potentials of international engagement." Take a moment to check out some of the delegates' project plans and proposals to get a sense of the optimism and entrepreneurship permeating throughout this place.

Yesterday, I led the Integrating Internet Technology workshop for about 20 of the delegates, and one of the participants already blogged a summary. We talked about how the web and new technologies are changing the landscape for smaller, emerging organizations and, more importantly, how this generation's hard-wired understanding of online word-of-mouth gives them an advantage over larger, more traditional organizations that are still adapting to the internet as a two-way, conversational medium (versus just another broadcast tool). After an impromptu exercise on crafting messages and narratives compelling enough to sustain viral distribution and short attention-spans, we reviewed some of the free and inexpensive online tools that Jen and Mike also outlined here.

It was also refreshing to spend time with some of the other organizational reps, most of whom are successful social entrepreneurs working from shoestring budgets and with tiny staffs. At EchoDitto, we seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time thinking about and partnering with organizations or efforts that have the luxury of a budget for online operations or access to the necessary resources.

The internet and Web 2.0 clearly has a great democratizing effect on smaller or new efforts looking to quickly generate interest and build momentum. But after some conversations with groups looking to bolster their initial successes with additional online infrastructure, I worry that the playing field starts to grow uneven after you reach a certain level of success.

For example, I spoke with two groups whose young leaders have successfully transitioned a project/campaign vision from concept into reality, but they now realize that it's time to take the internet component of their campaigns to the next level. Mark Hanis, founding director of the Genocide Intervention Network and Michael Poffenberger, co-founder of the Uganda Conflict Action Network, both started off using readily available online tools to build significant interest in their projects and even to organize real-world action.

When Mark spoke to the group at an opening panel on Friday, he practically glossed over the critical role that the internet played in his ability to rapidly organize 400 of fellow students last year to travel to Washington, D.C. and lobby elected leaders on America's role in ending the Sudan genocide. It was fairly simple for Mark and his non-technical friends to spread the word about his project and build momentum using every tool available to them -- not least of all by getting friends to spread the campaign URL from Facebook profile to Facebook profile.

There are a slew of free tools available to start-up groups, like Mark's was—from setting up a website on blogger.com to keeping people connected via email on Google or Yahoo groups, to generating buzz and interest via online communities like Facebook.com and MySpace.com. But after successfully going 60 MPH online and realizing success with free tools or basic technology, it seems almost too easy for groups to hit a wall when they realize they need a new engine, or something as basic as a supporter database.

With the exception of web packages like Democracy in Action and Orchid, there aren't many complete offerings for small organizations that realize the need to add a basic email signup box to their homepage or launch a simple an online fundraising campaign.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that there aren't great resources out there for nonprofits seeking tech advice. In fact, we refer people to TechSoup and N-TEN all the time. Rather, I think it's worth reminding ourselves of how far entry-level internet tools have come in leveling the playing field for new or emerging efforts looking to generate interest while entering the second level of internet campaigning can be confusing and daunting. This is especially true for younger generations of campaigners who are accustomed to being able to do or create almost anything on the web on their own. With the speed at which new, useful tools, like bulk-email systems, are becoming available to non-technical users, I don't think we'll have to wait long until the gap is closed. And hopefully we'll be able to play a role in helping to speed up that learning process for efforts and campaigns as worthwhile as those I met this weekend.

Homemade WiFi - posted by Deepak Madala

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:14:46 -0800

No computer store nearby? No problem. Apparently all you need is plastic water bottles, used motorcycle parts, window screens, and coaxial cables and you are ready to connect to your wireless network.

This ingenious solution is profiled on the USAID website and was designed by Geekcorps to provide rural areas of Mali with access to the Internet.

The do-it-yourself antenna design satisfies the needs of a WiFi network and uses materials found in rural areas. It only costs $1 to produce but is equivalent to low-end commercial antennas that cost about $40 in the US. This creative solution was designed to help rural areas around the world begin connecting to the Internet.

MobileActive Convergence - posted by Michael Silberman

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 12:11:30 -0800

Toronto -- I'm here for MobileActive, which is shaping up to be one of the best conferences i've ever attended -- billed as "the first global strategy meeting of activists using mobile phones in campaigns and public interest work." No boring panels, just good old-fashioned knowledge-sharing and collaboration among an impressive group of 30-odd practitioners from the Congo, Philippines, Argentina, the U.S., South Africa, the U.K., among other places.

I had a vague sense prior to arriving that this was going to be a unique experience, and that's turning out to be true Marty Kearns's endorsement was all i needed beforehand, knowing that he has a knack for avoiding the fluff and getting straight to the heart of some critical issues surrounding network-centric organizing and the environmental movement, two shared interests of ours. (I later learned that this entire event was Marty's brainchild, from his home at Green Media Toolshed).

Some of my major interests here are...
-- Figuring out how to measure/track the viral, p2p spread of information over a mobile network
-- Overcoming global interoperability re carriers, short-numbers, and photo sharing
-- Improving understanding of society/individuals' natural behavior and use of mobile medium compared to internet

We're lucky enough to be working with some quality event facilitators from Aspiration -- Katrin and Gunner are an eccentric, energetic, and appropriately confident pair who have done an incredible job managing logistics and setting the right tone for these 3 days.

Some fascinating people doing incredible things here. More on that later, but i'll note now that our friend, Eric, of DevelopmentSeed is here as well as Emily from WorldChanging and Ben from MobileVoter.

Two more very full days ahead of us, so if you want to follow along...
• Proceedings and meetings notes
• Photos
• Blog posts
• Technorati tag