Month: October 2006

Local blogs aren’t the only way they’re behind

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This weekend North Carolina’s leading right-wing think tank held a conference for bloggers in Greensboro, NC. Just in case any limp-wristed, peace-loving, liberal hippie bloggers might mistake it for something they would want to attend, it was called “Carolina FreedomNet.” Can’t you just hear the deep-voiced announcer?

Anyway. I know I am on the Locke Foundation radar because their Executive Director sometimes visits OrangePolitics. I’m proud to know that I am part of the lefty blogosphere that inspires this kind of concern:

“Local blogging communities will become, and are already in some places, really important to electoral politics and local policy,” [Mary Katherine] Ham added. “Both are of great importance to conservatives. You don’t want local left blogger down the road blogging up the need for a new granola-paved bike path and the need to use your tax dollars to pay for it, and not have your own message to counter him. If there’s a vacuum, they will fill it, and the right blogosphere tends to be a bit behind on these kinds of things.”
– Beltway Blogroll: All Blogging Is Local via Politics and technology: Right-wingers talk about the local lefty blogs

Yeah! Granola-paved bike paths for all!!! But seriously, there have been a few conservative local blogs here in Orange County, but they have trouble being coherent long enough to have an impact on much of anything.

Next week – also in Greensboro – ConvergeSouth. I can’t go as I’ll at be this awesome wedding, but it should be fun. If you go tell Ed and Sue I sent you.

Me too

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So earlier today, my friend Ed Cone’s blog brought my attention to online debate about Ms. Magazine’s upcoming cover story called “We Had Abortions.” Because the majority of commenters on Ed’s blog these days are right-wing trolls I got pissed off just thinking about what they might say.

After skimming the comments, I fired off this angry comment:

I had an abortion 18 years ago, and it was absolutely the best thing for all involved including my future children which I will be able to love, nurture, and support much more effectively.

Any of you who think what I did should be illegal: How many children have you adopted lately? How much additional taxes do you want to pay for public assistance for children and the people who take care of them? How many of you are even capable of getting pregnant?

And how many of you want me making decisions about YOUR family? Now please shut up and start acting like the Christians you claim to be.

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Reality check for grassroots organizers

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It’s so obvious, but nobody does it. We say we’re working for “The People” (or poor people, or immigrants, or women, or African Americans, or whoever) but do we really accept their leadership? Do we even listen to the voices we think we are empowering?

Zack Exley’s manifesto “An Organizer’s Guide to Trusting the People” lays out a network-centric approach if I ever heard one.

Those and other experiences like them gradually woke me up. I started approaching groups of workers with the assumption that they were, taken as a whole, savvy and strategic, not apolitical and apathetic. That opened the door to all kinds of great collaborations. I started assuming these groups of people were strong, deep, strategic and concerned — “even if they were” made up of Evangelical Christians, survivalists, muscle car drivers, trailer park dwellers, pit bull breeders, and anything else my Northeastern Liberal upbringing had taught me to ridicule.
– An Organizer’s Guide to Trusting the People

To me this isn’t just something that it helps to think about when organizing or to try to believe, it’s something that I must believe to be an activist and organizer. In fact, it’s fundamental to the whole idea of network-centric advocacy. The People = The Network. They collectively are the leaders, our job as organizers is create tools and infrastructure that allows them to do their thang.

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Online communication tips

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For all the wonderful people I met today at the Triangle United Way’s communication seminar for nonprofits, here are all the links mentioned during my workshop:

In each case, the hyperlinked ‘example’ will take you to my own personal page on that site. One of the important aspects of online social networking is that individuals can create and manage their own identity with which to interact with the community.

  1. blogging
    There are so many tools, and the right just depends on what your needs are. The most social one is Live Journal, the absolutely simplest is Blogger, the most powerful is Drupal. MovableType and it’s hosted version TypePad are also popular. I usually recommend WordPress because it is powerful and flexible without being difficult to use. Free hosted blogs are available at WordPress.com (example – one of my wordpress blogs)When you blog, your posts go into a standardized feed (see ‘bloglines’ below), which can be understood by other sites.
  2. Technorati searching blogs
    This site collects, sorts, and indexes millions of blogs. You can use it to search by topic and to give your own blog a wider audience. You can automatically ‘ping’ sites like Technorati and tag your posts when you publish so that more people will be able to find your blog. (example)
  3. del.icio.us bookmarks
    Save and organize bookmarks with tags, and browse the tags of others. (example)
  4. flickr photo & album sharing
    Upload and tag photos and add them to groups. Browse photos by personal contacts, tag, date, or “interestingness.” (example)
  5. bloglines aggregator
    Collect and organize RSS feeds. See how many other users subscribe to each feed. Now you can read (or at least skim) lots of blogs and other sites with feeds. (example)
  6. friendster the original social networking site
    Make your own profile, connect to friends, browse by connections, interests, geography, etc. Send announcements to your network, make matches between friends and colleagues. Facebook, tribe net, orkut, linked in, and my space are also popular with different communities. (example)
  7. wikipedia collaborative wisdom
    This is a great place to find information, on everything from global politics to new technology. You can contribute your own knowledge for public benefit, and even create new pages for topics you think are missing. (example – “nonprofit technology” entry)
  8. 43things sharing and supporting goals
    List your personal goals, find people with common goals and support each other. See also 43people, and 43places. (example)
  9. instant messaging
    As with blogging, there are many viable choices. For IM (instant messaging), get a multi-protocol client so you can use different systems with one application (Windows: Trillian, Mac: Adium or Fire). The different protocols or networks include: AOL, Yahoo, Google Talk.
  10. Internet phone
    VOIP (voice over IP) not only allows you to talk person-to-person for free, it allows for conference calling and other features. Skype is the most widely adopted, but Gizmo is also a good option.

With all of the examples above I have now given you 10 new ways to communicate with and relate to me and any of your potential clients, volunteers, activists, or donors!

Also, I did not spend much time on it, but I do highly recommend Jon Stahl’s suggestions for online communication planning. Even if you don’t use all of it, some will probably be helpful to spur new thinking.

Here is the “technology trap” that you should always keep in mind to help your organizations manage technological change:
The Technology Trap

And finally, here is a printer-friendly PDF of my presentation. Please enjoy!

Categories icon Tech