Category: Tech

community application of technology for public benefit

Let’s go to BlogHer

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BlogHers Act Today is the first day of the third annual BlogHerCon, and the third year that I have been unable to attend. But this year something is different: BlogHer is happenning in Second Life as well as in real life!

The published a schedule of SL events. I’m going to go check in right now, and you can find me there on a panel with two of my favorite avatars – In Kenzo and Glitteractica Cookie. We’ll be talking about online activism at 5:30 pm EDT. Here’s a link directly to the conference hall in Second Life. Hope to see you there!

Update: Here’s a description for our panell…
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Nonprofits at SLCC

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More good news for nonprofits in Second Life: this year’s Second Life Community Convention (SLCC) will have a “nonprofit and philanthropic” theme thanks to the MacArthur Foundation, who is spending a year exploring the role of philanthropy in virtual worlds. I have to admit, this makes the SLCC much more appealing than it has been for me in the past. Still, I am having a crazy summer and I just don’t think I can handle much more travel.

(Random: Funny how many conferences are in Chicago this summer: Yearly KOS (which I am attending some of, because I got invited to be on a panel), BlogHer Con (I will participate via Second Life), and SLCC. What gives?)

I can’t find this press release on the web, so I’ll post the entire thing below.

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BlogHer comes to Second Life

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I was very pleased to hear from my friend ‘Vivienne Cassavetes’ that the annual women’s blogging conference BlogHerCon will also be in Second Life this year. I’ve always wanted to go to BlogHer, but it’s usually held at a bad time for me when I’ve either been in-between jobs (ie: no money for travel) or getting married (when I’d rather be honeymooning).

BlogHer '07 I'm Going in Second Life This year, it’s scheduled in between two other trips I will be making and I really need to come home to maintain my sanity once in a while. 😉 But thanks to their Second Life effort, I can still participate.

I do wish they would invite me to be on a panel or something, that would make it much easier for me to justify the time and expense, especially since the event seems more focused on commercial interests than nonprofit work. Maybe next year…

Social Forum in Hotlanta

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I’m getting ready to pick up some colleagues and head south to the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. It promises to be an amazing event with over 10,000 progressive activists coming to together to address the many challenges facing American society today.

USSF

Most anything that happens this week I will blog at http://FORpeace.net, but if it seems relevant I will post here as well. And there’s always Twitter. Have a great week with lots of justice and equality!

Welcome to politics, Dr. Lessig

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This is pretty exciting news. Lawrence Lessig has been the leadership driving the Creative Commons and “free culture” movement. He is brilliant and widely respected in geek circles. Last week he announced that he is shifting his research and advocacy away from intellectual property issues and toward the corrupting influence of money in politics.

I suggest he look up my friends at Democracy South as well as other grassroots activists who have been working on this issue for many years.

Rally for Habeas today, anywhere

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Today is the ACLU’s Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice. Activists will gather in Washington, DC to rally and lobby to fix the Military Commissions Act and to restore Habeas Corpus.

If (like me) you can’t make it to DC for the main event, come to a simultaneous rally in Second Life!

Tuesday June 26, 2007 8:00 AM to 10:30 PM SLT (Pacific Time), concurrently in Second Life and in Washington DC!

T-shirts and signs at MoJo Fields [Second Life: Mojo Fields (86, 88, 519)], and then teleport to the rally at the Washington Mall in Second Life, where you can also watch a live webcast of ACLU’s Day of Action from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

A great leap forward

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Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation were all founded between 1915 and 1920. I usually refer to organizations this old as “dinosaurs” due to the incredible inertia that comes from being so big and being around for so many decades. I am really impressed with my colleagues at the FOR. They are really open to innovation and change. In my first week on the job, we began a blog and secured a space in Second Life!

I won’t have time to do much in SL this week because I will be traveling with about a half-dozen FOR colleagues to the US Social Forum. You can follow our exploits by way of our new blog: http://FORpeace.net !

If you want to see more dinosaurs evolving into full-fledged 21st century organizations, please support this effort by commenting on the blog, linking to us, or even giving money through our Change widget (right). Next on tap: social networking, RSS feeds, a whole new web site, and about a dozen internal improvements to get us really cooking with gas. It’s going to be a busy year. 🙂
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Getting organized to organize

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It’s my first day on the new job, and I’m trying to figure out a short-term solution to a long-term problem. I want to set up a way to track and share my own to-do list, text notes, and maybe calendar, but preferably in a way that will be forward-compatible with a more comprehensive, organization-wide system that I will figure out and implement later. I’ve stored some running lists of groupware and self-organization tools, but I don’t know which ones (if any) support open standards or some other way to get data out.

One interesting tool is http://Grou.ps which seems to be a collector/aggregator for other services. Anyone used it? Should I just give up my resistance to the Borg and use Google?