lotusmedia 2.0

Why do I mention it? Well neither of my brilliant proposals for sessions at South by Southwest Interactive 2007 were accepted, but I really, really want to go. It’s a lot easier to ask my organization to foot the travel bill if I can get a free registration and a little good publicity for our many good ideas.

Also, I want to bring my husband who is even less likely to get his employer to pay for it. If I am already covered, I can better help pay for his registration. We already have a free place to stay with my grandmother who lives in Austin.

So if you are putting together a panel for next year, please consider what a fun and informative speaker I can be. People said I was the highlight of my SXSW panel last year in spite of being the least famous person on it.

Here are the two panels I proposed, but I can talk - at length - about just about anything. (Just ask my husband. )

• If All Politics is Local, Why Are you Still Reading DailyKOS?
  In the small ponds of city and county politics, bloggers can be very big fish. Just like the much-celebrated national bloggers that aim to set the tone in Washington, local blogs are increasingly influential. Like their national counterparts, local blogs also have the eyes of the media, elected officials, and even voters. Local political blogging can arguably be more powerful than national blogs - join us to discuss the potential and the reality.
• Advocacy 2.0: Movement-building in the Age of Connectivity
  The technology shifting our culture is also changing the context for political and issue organizing. Nonprofits and community groups have been getting on the cluetrain. New organizing strategies leverage today’s tools to empower and connect activists and volunteers to each other and action. Call it user-oriented, bottom-up, network-centric, or web 2.0. Campaigns must encourage their supporters to express their voices or they’ll take their time, opinions and dollars elsewhere.

Other things I would kick ass talking about include:

• Second Life, especially advocacy and social change work therein
• Nonprofits, how they do and don’t use technology, what they need, and what they want
• Social networks, mapping and analysis, tools, use in community organizing
• Blogging and community, both virtual and not, blogger outreach
• Local advocacy, municipal and county politics, city planning, growth management, local candidates and campaigns

South by Southwest is inviting folks to help them select the panels for their 2007 Interactive conference. I put in two proposals: “If All Politics is Local, Why Are you Still Reading DailyKOS?” and “Advocacy 2.0: Movement-building in the Age of Connectivity” (featuring Marty Kearns). Both are listed in the politics/social activism category. There are 173 proposals so I recommend using categories to navigate, even though they are kind of silly.

Offical announcement from the wonderful and talented Hugh Forrest after the jump…

Keep reading Help pick SXSWi 2007 panels »

For the first time in 15 years - if not ever - I made the honor roll! South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) has published a list of the best sessions from 2006, according to the participants. The panel I was on, “Election 2008: Revenge of the Blogs” scored a 4.32 out of 5.

Keep reading Honor roll »

One of the several SXSW “parties” that I attended on Sunday was hosted by folks working for former Virginia Governor Mark Warner. He’s been making presidential noises, and he has a John-Edwards-like ability to talk about his Christian family values, etc, etc. Personally, I don’t have any reason to favor him over Edwards in ‘08, but that’s a long way away.

Anyway, in the above picture from that event I am hanging out with Joi Ito, Halley Suit, and Doc Searls. Doc is an old old friend from when we lived in a little hippy community outside of Chapel Hill in the 70’s. In those days, he was called “Doctor Dave” and was known for his clever quips, some of which mimeographed and posted on everyone’s fridges.

What would make someone wear a foot-wide nametag? Chris Pirillo is one who does not have to prove his prominence online or his geekitude. What gives?

(Photo by Doc.)

Today’s SXSW panel “Revenge of the Blogs” - organized by Henry Copeland and featuring me, Markos Moulitsas, and Mike Krempasky - turned out very well. We struck a good balance between talking about the influence of local and national blogs, and some people even began to draw a connection between the two. Judging by the people who came up to talk with me afterward, I think I must have said some interesting and useful things.

I used the issue of red light cameras in Chapel Hill (thanks, Will) to illustrate how Orange Politics has had concrete impact. I also referenced an insightful comment from an earlier conversation with the Independent’s Kirk Ross to talk about what happens when journalists start blogging. It’s a new challenge for them to suddenly put themselves in the story which they’ve been trained and ingrained not to do as reporters.

One audience member asked Markos what he was doing to help his readers who might live near each other to find each other. He wasn’t very interested in this very good idea, which is disappointing especially considering the great number of free tools which can do exactly this. I think the panel might have been better attended if Markos’ presence had been advertised better (see below) but maybe that’s for the best.

There were lots of good ideas discussed during and after the session and I just have to thank Henry Copeland again for inviting me. I hope it’s not my last trip to SXSW. And now, on to the parties….

I have seen various descriptions of the panel I will be on this afternoon at South by Southwest. They all list me and Mike Krempasky (RedState .org), as well as our facilitator Henry Copeland from BlogAds.com. But only a few of them listed Markos Moulitsas of dailyKOS.com which has been the movement central of countless thousands of online liberal activists since 2004.

It’s official, Markos blogged that he’ll be there, and he even generously dropped in a link to OrangePolitics.org. Thanks dude! See you soon…

Jason Fried’s opening remarks sound just like advice that I often give to visionary friends who are always dreaming up great new ideas but waiting for all the stars to align before they make them happen.

Jason says that it’s great to start thing up “on the side.” This is how 37signals started Basecamp. He points out that obscurity is good for getting started so you can screw up & learn from it before every one is watching.

He says “less” is an asset.
1. Less time. You’ll just waste it anyway.
2. Less money. See above.
3. Less software. Keep it simple “Clever stuff” gets in the way.

On my flight from NC to TX yesterday (4th plane of the day) I sat next to a guy who happenned to also be going to SXSW. He was from New York, but had just given a talk at Duke. His name is Bob Stein and he works for a think tank focused on preserving books.

He is now sitting on this panel about book digitization, between the guy from Google Books and a woman from Microsoft who is developing a similar service. I’m just very glad he’s there as Bob is the only person up there who seems to not think that corporations making money or even surviving is the highest goal.

Bob is not getting much of a chance to talk, but the moderator Liz Lawley has made some good points as well.

I’m here at my first South by Southwest panel, it’s called “knitting tag clouds for grandma.” There’s a lot of discussion about what it will take for large numbers of people (ie: regular people, not geeks) to use tags and folksonomies.

Someone in the audience made a great point: any one creating folders on their personal computer is making a folksonomy!