lotusmedia 2.0

In my continuing series of turning advice e-mails into blog posts. I recently received this request:

I’m working on setting up a local-politics site for my area of the world. I was wondering if you had any words of wisdom on launching a local-politics site. What challenges have you encountered? What good/bad decisions have you made along the way? What kind of time/money is involved in running the site? Is this at least a break-even venture for you, money-wise? Any other suggestions or insights you may be able to offer would be great. Thanks in advance.

My reply:
Keep reading So you wanna start a local politics blog »

I spent yesterday at a class by information design guru Edward Tufte. The guy is brilliant, I recommend checking out his website if you’re interested in learning about effective quantitiative communication or especially in presentations.

Keep reading Tufte Talk »

I just sent the following message to mobile-support@google.com .

I love the new mobile-friendly homepage. However, I think it has one big mistake that could easily rectified.

Keep reading Letter to Google »

I am trying to use this trendy, new-ish organizational methodology called Getting Things Done (GTD). It’s been growing in popularity among geeks that I respect. I first discovered it through 43 Folders, a really great site for Macintosh and GTD geeks.

For the past 6 months, I have also been using a web-based tool called Basecamp that is pretty good for organizing projects and group communication. (And it’s free for very small accounts.) I really like Basecamp, and it has been especially helpful for tracking information so that my clients and I can both see it.
Keep reading GTD + Basecamp = ??? »

I have been having fun blogging over at the Reform the Patriot Act Blog. Yesterday I wrote about bloggers’ reactions to the current FBI “counter-terrorism” investigation of the ACLU as well as Greenpeace, MoveOn and other groups. Today I am looking at how librarians are reacting to the invasion of their patrons’ privacy.

Please check it out, link to it, and/or add some comments over there…

I’m happy to announce that the consulting project I’ve been working on for the past 2 weeks is almost complete and I can finally show off the fruits of my labor! And it’s about time the because the reauthorization is now racing through congress and there are some very bad changes to it that need to be stopped!

I have been working with the ACLU to encourage bloggers to write about reforming the Patriot Act and to advise them on creation of the Reform the Patriot Act Blog. Please check out some of the cool stuff we put together. This page for bloggers features RSS feeds, technorati tags, graphics, and a list of the many helpful documents and presentations that have been developed by the ACLU.
Keep reading Blog the PATRIOT Act! »

UPDATE: Notes and links from the class added 6/8/05.

Tomorrow morning I will be leading a presentation called “Your Nonprofit: Online” at BlueCross BlueShield of NC’s Healthy Community Institute. After the session I will post any additional notes, thoughts and links here on this page.

Here’s a PDF (3.2 MB) of the presentation.
Keep reading Your nonprofit - Online »

On Friday, Brian and I did a presentation at the annual RTPnet conference on Blogging and Podcasting. The conference brings together nonprofits and community technology advocates from around North Carolina. Brian’s got the PDF of our presentation up on his blog. All I want to add are these links that I suggest for more information:
Keep reading Community blogging presentation »

OK, here is last week’s presentation on Network-Centric Advocacy to participants in the Open Society Institute’s “Connect US” initiative. You can download the handout version - 1 MB PDF.
Keep reading Connect! »

The fine folks who started NPOblogs.org have decided that they cannot maintain the site, and I have offerred to host it here at lotusmedia.org .

Soon I hope to receive the files from Kathy and Carnet and start re-building the site.

Meanwhile, here is a post and discussion Announcing the launch of NPOBlogs.org (TechSoup.org).

And here is some more thinking about Non-profits and Blogging (Groundspring.org).