This year, I have worked with the conference organizers to develop a hybrid format. I have seen hybrids work well, and I’ve seen them fail badly. I think we have come up with a structure that is truly the best of both worlds. This new approach gives us some reassurance in advance that there will be some great sessions to attend, but also allows the attendees to shape the event into whatever they want and need. Many participants don’t think of themselves as leaders but just as everyone has something to learn, everyone has something to share as well. This event allows all of us to do both.

So check out the schedule. Do you see something you’d like to learn? Do have an idea about what is missing? Add it on the wiki. Once we get the conference started, both the pre-selected speakers and the people thinking up emerging proposals will all have the opportunity to “pitch” or explain their session the participants and get added to “the grid.” What happens next is up to us! (For more about this process, see my blog posts from previous unconferences.)

Come on out May 4th – register by Friday the 27th to get the $75 early bird rate – and help us make this the event that you want and need!

Bridging The On-Line Real-World Gap: An Interview With Ruby Sinreich Of Netcentric Campaigns

Ruby Sinreich is the Web Maven at Netcentric Campaigns, a division of Green Media Toolshed. She is also the founder and editor of OrangePolitics.org, a progressive multi-author blog about politics based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Previously, she was the Online Organizing Manager in the Public Policy Division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.Ruby and I talked in the following interview about Netcentric Campaigns and building an effective on-line strategy to support off-line, real world political organizing.

Ruby:

Network-centric advocacy is based on a philosophy of empowering the grassroots, your supporters, the “network.” We try to build strong networks between activists so they collectively form an effective movement. There are five aspects that we think are necessary for effective social networks

1. You must have strong social ties so that the members trust each other and know who (with what skills) is in the network. Friendster/MySpace/Orkut/etc. are one way to build social ties, but so are in-person gatherings. Happy hours can also build your movement.
2. There needs to be a common story that ties members together. They should have a shared sense of what the problem or what the goal is. This can vary widely, it might be a generally shared value, or it might be a mutual bad guy.
3. There has to be a dense communication grid so folks have many ways to meet and communicate with each other. Blogs and social networking tools are a part of this, so are instant messaging and face-to-face gatherings.
4. The members should share resources with each other. This could be money, space, information, etc. Like a directory that members can access, or sharing expertise.
5. Finally there should be a sense of purpose so the network members know what the network is for. So they think of it as a tools for collective action or whatever the goal is.

Marshall:

It seems that there has been work to bridge the online world and the offline world for progressive causes for at least a few years now. Are there specific lessons that have been learned that have changed the way that you now advise organizations to, for example, build strong social ties with online and off or build a common story?

Ruby:

I don’t really think much about the distinction between on- and off-line. When we know our goal and our strategy, that leads us to tools which may or may not be online. We want to use a lot of online social networking and self-publishing because it’s very supportive of the kind of ties we want to build.

The internet itself is very network-centric (at least right now) so it lends itself to organizing in this way.

Marshall:

How do you advise people to use those tools to build ties in light of age and tech comfort level differences?

Ruby:

I try to connect new tools to old methodologies.

Marshall:

Can you give me examples of new tools/old methodologies that have made the most sense to people new to tech but familiar with old methods of political organizing? Analogies perhaps?

Ruby:

For example, I think Saul Alinsky was a great and strategic community organizer. Baby boomers are more familiar with him. So I talk about how his goal was to build local leaders that would speak out on behalf of themselves instead of doing it for them. Helping your supporters blog about your issue is that same thing – you are raising up their voice to advance the cause and empower them at the same time.

Marshall:

Are there opportunities afforded by these new tools to respond to some of the problems of traditional organizing? Like loud voices having undue influence or male dominance of planning?

Ruby:

Yes, but the digital divide makes new problems. In some ways, the Internet is a level playing field, but only if you are there.

As the New Yorker cartoon quipped “on the internet, no-one knows you’re a dog.” or a lesbian, or disabled, or African American, or an immigrant. BUT…There are still cliques that form, and sometimes they can be insular groups of straight, white guys.

But sometimes they’re not. It really depends on who listens to who. Does the media mostly read the authoritative-seeming blogs of the power elite? Or do they read the blogs of regular folks, activists, people who are just as authoritative but may not have as high of a Technorati ranking.

Marshall:

How do you, or how do you advise others to, change this dynamic of who gets read?

Ruby:

Well to some extent the machines that confer authority (like Google and Technorati) are neutral (ie they don’t know or care that you are a dog), so if more “outsider” voices use the tools that sway them, like hyperlinking and tagging, they can promote the voices they choose.

But I also think we should be building our own networks. Like, do I have to care about myTechnorati ranking? There are more important factors than just numbers of readers.

On my local politics blog (orangepolitics.org) I care much more about the quality than the quantity of readers.

Are the folks YOU want to talk to reading your blog? If not, what are they reading? Try to hang out at the sites they hang out at.

Marshall:

How other than readership numbers and numbers of inbound links can a person quickly evaluate the credibility/authoritativeness of a blog they discover?

Ruby:

It’s also about trust. I usually discover a blog because someone else links to it. If a lot of people I like link to it, or if I personally know and trust the person who links to it, I trust that blog more. You can also look at how much commenting is going on, but that’s not always a good indicator. You have to decide for yourself ultimately.

Marshall:

That sounds realistic for sure. Can you provide me another example of old political methods and new communication tools working together beyond building local voices through blogs?

Ruby:

Door-to-door canvassing and phone banking are old methods. Increasingly folks do not want to be bothered at home, and are turned off by what might be perceived as an intrusion. The new methods are house parties and viral e-mail. Note that both of these come from your own social network, not just a stranger who wants to talk to you.

I trust the people I know more. If they tell something is important, I believe them. If the TV tells me… not so much.

Marshall:

So this new era of communication technologies is actually re-emphasizing the importance of face to face connections?

Ruby:

It’s emphasizing social connections which are often built in person and can be enhanced online.

HASTAC is joining with others around the U.S. and globally on the Internet to protest the outrageous SOPA/PIPA bill that – yes – is still making its way through Congress right now. Major organizations such Wikipedia,Mozilla, and many others are participating in a one-day black out, while others including Google, are using their home pages, as are we, to protest and inform about these frightening bills that would have a chilling impact on intellectual freedom and digital interaction. We were heartened by the news that the Obama administration is opposing the bills and so we chose to to stay online but with a banner on the site, but clearly the debate is far from over. The potential implications of this corporate and politically-motivated censorship upon academic freedom, especially digital scholarship, are simply staggering.

So many others have covered the issues around SOPA/PIPA so well (and my own understanding of the legislation is so comparatively tiny) that I won’t bother to rehash them but will link to some of the best below. Thanks to HASTACers Gerry Canavan for posting about SOPA last month and Alex Leavitt for today’s post about how SOPA opposition galvanized on Reddit. I highly recommend this 4-minute video that explains the legislation, including an important update at the end.

Link fest:

• Wikipedia’s anti-SOPA backout
  http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout
• Reddit: A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP
  http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html
• Artists and musician oppose PROTECT-IP http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa
• How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa
• danah boyd: We need to talk about piracy (but we must stop SOPA first)
  http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2012/01/17/stop-sopa.html
• Slate: The Internet’s Intolerable Acts
  http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technocracy/2011/12/ stop_online_piracy_act_and_protect_ip_act_a_pair_of_bills_that_threaten_ internet_freedom_.single.html
• Quite a lot of excellent posts about SOPA from Cory Doctorow  http://boingboing.net/tag/sopa
• The White House: Combating Online Piracy while Protecting an Open and Innovative Internet
  https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#/%21/response/combating-online-piracy-while-protecting-open-and-innovative-internet

Here’s a live streaming video from the street, below this I’ll post some more links.

Just heard on the live stream from a protester named Lizzie, who just finished telling the story of her arrest: “You don’t need to be here (on Wall Street), light that fire in your own community.” A lot of my friends have been pointing out the difference between how this is (or isn’t) being covered compared to your average Tea Party protest. Can you imagine if a bunch of Republicans took an action this dramatic, or were treated this inhumanely? Not just FOX but CNN and even MBNBC would be en fuego.

• Occupy Wall Street
• Occupy Together (for folks outside NYC)
• Adbusters
• Open source occupation guide (a wiki for demonstrators)
• Anonymous
• #OccupyWallStreet & @OccupyWallSt
• Updates from my friend Liza Sabater who went down to visit the protesters last night

We have been working to improve and then replace this web site almost since I started working at HASTAC two years ago. Late last year, we put out the call for developers to help up build a new site, and we hired a wonderful group called Message Agency who were ready to engage this formidable task.

The new site will be built on Drupal, just as this current one is, but it utilizes the community architecture of Drupal Commons, which I like to describe as a bit like an open source Ning on steroids.  I hope to be writing a lot more about the new site in the next few months, but right now I’ll tell you about two of the biggest improvements:

The site will be organized around groups which can be created by any HASTAC member as wella s official groups for HASTAC programs such as the Digital Media and Learning Competition and HASTAC Scholars. Groups allow people to self-organize to share information and collaborate on a variety of different types on content, including wiki pages.

The new HASTAC.org will also have site-wide categories so that you can search our vast archive of content by your own interests and research areas. I’m still concerned about how we will get our approximately 5,000 nodes (units of content in Drupal) into the proper categories, but we will be working with our developer to figure this out as part of the migration process.

Cross posted at http://www.hastac.org/blogs/ruby-sinreich/hastac-40-taking-shape

I just read a great piece by author/activist Cory Doctorow on what he calls “Techno-Optimism” in Locus Magazine. He addresses a question that is often confronted by those of us who aspire to somehow use technology as a tool for social change: does the tool matter, or just the results? For example, if it’s easier to reach your target audience of young people who care about software freedom via Facebook, does the end justify the means? Or should we hold ourselves to a more idealistic standard and use an open source tool that lacks the critical mass of users?

In other words:

As a techno-optimist, I was heartened to see the role that networked technologies played in aiding activists in Iran, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and other middle-eastern autocracies to coordinate with one another. But as a techno-pessimist, I was horrified to see activists making use of unsecured unfit systems like Facebook, which make it trivial for authorities to snoop on and unpick the structure of activist organizations.

Doctorow concludes:

The trick for technology activists is to help activists who use technology to appreciate the hidden risks and help them find or make better tools. That is, to be pessimists and optimists: without expert collaboration, activists might put themselves at risk with poor technology choices; with collaboration, activists can use technology to outmaneuver autocrats, totalitarians, and thugs.

As I like to say: the path IS the destination. How you get there is every bit as important as where you go. I already use a lot of open source software such as Drupal (this site’s platform), Firefox and Thunderbird (which I couldn’t work without), and Ubuntu (on my personal computers at home). I’m going to redouble my efforts to support software and systems that themselves support my own (and HASTAC’s) values of freedom, democracy, and security.

Read the full article at http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2011/05/cory-doctorow-techno-optimism/

http://igniteshow.com/videos/ruby-sinreich-think-network

You might have gotten an e-mail or a tweet recently about something called the “NCTech4Good Unconference.”  You are probably wondering whether it is worth one’s time on a pretty Saturday to sit inside with a bunch of nerds, especially if (like me) this is how you already spent most of your week.

Well, let me tell you why I’ll be there.

As a geek, I’ll get to learn about some of the newest tools and interesting ideas percolating up. I’ll also get an opportunity to hear how my skills can be used to serve the community and make connections that might lead to my Next Big Project.

As a nonprofit professional, I’ll get to hear about some of the emerging technologies that I need to use in my work, and even form personal relationships with the experts in my field. I’ll also get a chance to tell my story to people who can commiserate and/or learn how to better serve organizations like mine.

As an activist, I’ll get a chance to evangelize. I can tell people why I think a certain technology or strategy is the very best, and help them see how it can be useful in their own work. I might even recuit new allies and advocates for my cause!

On some subjects I am a newbie, and I will learn from experts. On others, I am the pro and will show off my knowledge. One of the guiding rules of unconferences is this:

Whoever comes are the right group of people.

I hope some of you readers and friends are the right people, and that you’ll make this the wonderful event that YOU envision! Learn more at http://nctech4good.org/wiki

The history of this idea is less important than how it’s done, but it’s quite interesting and worth mentioning here. This idea was first conceived in the 1980′s as Open Space Technology – a way for participants to organize and conduct their own conferences. The first BarCamp (essentially an unconference for geeks) was held in 2005 in response to the elite FOOCamp  that was hosted by tech media mogul Tim O’Reilly. I believe BarCamps were also inspired by the BloggerCons of the early 2000′s which aimed to bring a blog-like dialog into real-life meetings. So that’s enough history, see this Wikipedia entry for lots more fascinating background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology .

There are a few specific things that I think are key to a successful unconference:

• There is no agenda before the meeting, but there is a schedule. Some unconferences do kick off with a speaker or panel to spark discussion. It is important to begin the day with someone who can clearly explain the process and lay out the goal of the gathering.
• Broad participation is key. After kicking things off, anyone who would like to hold a session stands in front of the room and gives a very short “pitch” for their topic. These can be as formal as presentations or as information as a conversation. The proposer does not need to be an expert on the subject, but has to be willing to facilitate the conversation if no-one else wants to. It’s not uncommon for half the people in the room to offer some kind of session.
• All of these session ideas are written on cards and posted on The Grid. This is a chart showing your available meeting spaces on one axis and time slots on the other. After all the pitches are posted (or while they are being made) the participants should be prompted to show a general sense of interest (applause, dots, whatever) to help indicate which sessions need bigger or smaller rooms. Then everyone who cares to can have at The Grid – moving and combining (or separating) sessions until everyone’s varying needs are met.
• In the sessions, The Law of Two Feet is in effect. That is “If at any time you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing: use your two feet and go someplace else.”
• Another principle is to strongly encourage public documentation of the event. This can be done via blogs, wikis, Twitter, Flickr, etc. This varies depending on the group, but it’s very common that an unconference will have already posted a wiki to collect ideas before the event, so this is a great place to post notes from the sessions.
• Oh, make sure to provide lots of food and coffee, and have fun!

Registration for the NCTech4Good Conference and Unconference has been held open until Friday April 8, please go sign up now at http://nctech4good.org .

If you haven’t heard enough about unconferences, I strongly recommend the blog of facilitator Kaliya Hamlin. Start here: http://www.unconference.net/unconferencing-how-to-prepare-to-attend-an-unconference/ .

I also recently discovered a wonderful article about teachers using unconferences: http://plpnetwork.com/2011/03/07/unconference-revolutionary-professional-learning/ .

(Also posted at hastac.org and nctech4good.org.)

Not content to rest on her pioneer laurels, Judy has continued to create and organize for the past two decades. The newest of her endeavors is NCTech4Good, a network that ties together the growing nonprofit tech community in North Carolina, and also hosts the annual NCTech4Good Conference. After last year’s conference, a number of people (including myself) suggested the addition of an unconference after the formal one-day conference. After careful consideration, Judy and other organizers agreed.

All of the above is my longish way of telling you how excited I am that HASTAC is hosting and helping to lead the first-ever NCTech4Good Unconference! We will be using the wonderful facilities here in Duke’s Franklin Humanities Institute (where we also hosted THATCampRTP last fall) and I will be serving as the facilitator, working to make order out of the chaos!

As you may know, I am huge fan of unconferences. In addition to the above-mentioned THATCampRTP, I also used this structure to lead a gathering of our Digital Media and Learning Competition’s 2010 Learning Lab winners, and also employed it at HASTAC’s innovative Peer-to-Peer Pedagogies Workshop last year.  In a future post, I hope to write more about what unconferences are (and aren’t), and how they can form what the brilliant Ann Balsamo calls the “scaffolding” that can support the small or quiet voices that sometimes get drowned out by the crowd.

For now, please check out the web site nctech4good.org (if you live in or near North Carolina) where you can register for the conference, reception, and/or unconference. I hope to see you here!

(Also posted at hastac.org and nctech4good.org.)