NTEN: The Future of Distributed Activism

<p>The Panel has grown to include Jo Lee from <a href="http://www.citizenspeak.org/" target="_blank">citizen speak</a> and Kaliya Hamlin <a href="http://www.integrativeactivism.net/" target="_blank">Integrative Activism</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.network-centricadvocacy.net/" target="_blank">Marty Kearns</a> from <a href="http://www.greenmediatoolshed.org/" target="_blank">Green Media Tool Shed</a></p> <p>Dan Robbinson of <a href="http://www.civicactions.com" target="_blank">CivicAction</a>.</p> <p>Marty Kearns: Things are connected. Society is changing, suspend some of your assumptions. Social networks are not new. The strategies and the AMOUNT of connectivity is new. We can "play with networks" now, because we can really see them and analyze and computer model them. </p> <p><a href="http://forwardtrack.eyebeamresearch.org/" title="http://forwardtrack.eyebeamresearch.org/">http://forwardtrack.eyebeamresearch.org/</a><br /> soft credit for petition signing. this is an open source application for petition collection.</p> <p>Kaliya: <a href="http://kaliyasblogs.net" title="http://kaliyasblogs.net">http://kaliyasblogs.net</a> One time in person connections that can lead to ongoing online activities. Tolls can increase capactity, they are not the end, they are a means to the end. We cannot forget that we are human. Think about distributed work teams: virtual organizations. Creating social connections of verime ans space will build familiarity trust and cooperation leading to action. RSS Feed Aggregators (post some info to the wiki)</p> <p>Doc Searls: the Cluetrain manifesto (the end of business as usual)</p> <p>Dan Robinson is moderating a discussion about the feaer of adopting the new technology, or testing out the technology. Rubey S talked about Planned Parenthood and message control in terms of blogging.</p> <p>Citizen speak was fundamentally in the center of the action. The systems is now being freed up<br /> Jo Lee: Citizen speak is a distributed activism tool.<br /> It is a moveon like system. allows the organization to create an online "campaign" with a target. people visit the site, add tehir info and send off a message "Re-ignite a culture of local activism"<br /> "on ramp to advocacy"</p> <p>Citizen Speak is now undergowing an upgrade. it is going to be open sourced and ported over to teh CivicSpace/drupal platform.<br /> "Open source has made citizen speak possible"</p> <p>Ok, this is me talking now: wow, this is so exciting. I have always admired Citizen speak from afar, never really been able to use it, but i am excited that it will be part of civic space.</p> <p>Dan just called attention to a major problem in the political campaign expenditures: millions for a media buy, but $10k for hardware is a huge deal.</p> <p>The private sector is not really great at innovating technology "I want want he has, build it for me"<br /> There is no strategic advantage to any organization "owning" an ecrm system. From a technologist product point of view, this sector is a mess.</p> <p>I started recording Dans presentation so i can cut it up and podcasting it so my notes dissapate.<br /> here are a few links he mentioned:<br /> <a href="http://www.despair.com" title="http://www.despair.com">http://www.despair.com</a></p> <p>Bono's organization<br /> <a href="http://www.data.org/" title="http://www.data.org/">http://www.data.org/</a></p> <p><a href="http://del.icio.us/drob" title="http://del.icio.us/drob">http://del.icio.us/drob</a></p> <p>this is an aggregator of progressive mailing list<br /> <a href="http://www.ppipes.org/" title="http://www.ppipes.org/">http://www.ppipes.org/</a></p> <p>"Distributed networks can create powerful emotional content" -Marty Kearns</p> <p>There is a lot of interesting stuff going on and we need to expderiment with it. We can get our photos from flikr (from the edge of the network)</p> <p>Enable others to determine the message – Jo Lee</p> <p>Google lets programmers spend 20% of their time on things they want to program. How can we harness that. Google is also open sourcing their code.</p> <p>One think that is interesting about this session is the speed, the clip with which it is moving along. Dan is doing a great job of keeping the converstaion moving, and it seems that the participants in the room feel the urgency to get their comments and questions in, there is no lingering.</p> <p>Look for a later blog entry about a method for tracking data about legislators and elected officials in relation to people's addresses.</p>