community application of technology for public benefit
I tweeted at the Nonprofit Technology Conference last year, but not many people were even aware of Twitter then. This year, way more folks are tweeting. We are having great conversations. Plus you can follow the #08ntc hashtag and see it collected even if you don’t follow each person who is tweeting the conference.
Kudos to Holly Ross and the NTEN posse for the best NTC yet! (Of course, I still have a few suggestions… 😉 )
Yesterday I gave a talk to an undergraduate class at UNC (COMP 380, Computers & Society). Thanks to Robert Peterson for connecting me with professor Jeannie Walsh. I spoke about my two favorite topics: network-centric advocacy, and OrangePolitics.
Here is a video of my talk (warning, it’s 75 minutes long), and below are the two parts of my presentation:
Oops, I haven’t blogged in almost a month! I blame Twitter. Anyway, here’s a widget for us nonprofit “techies.”
FYI, I’m blogging about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and teh Fellowship of Reconciliation today over at http://forpeace.net/tag/mlk
Please come visit!
And here’s the proof: Marketplace: Giving goes online, too
I thought Janet Babin’s story was quite good, and she effectively got the point across that nonprofits need to do more to put their supporters in the driver’s set. She even pronounced my name right! I have just two small clarifications:
1. I am not a consultant, but in fact a full-time employee with benefits, etc. at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and
2. In the second clip, I was not saying that “we” FOR don’t get this, but that “we” nonprofits in general don’t get the need to open up and trust our supporters.
Overall an excellent story, and I hope I get the chance to work with Janet again! Read on for a transcript, or click here for an MP3 of the segment.
Continue reading “Why yes, you did hear me on your NPR station last Thursday!”
Tomorrow a large coalition of activists is organizing a series of events in Second Life to raise awareness about preventing a war with Iran. I’m really excited about it and I will be there most of the day helping out as a media contact. This event also inspired me to add some Iran info to the virtual office for my organization the Fellowship of Reconciliation (seen at left).
There is a whole day of events, but if you don’t want to be there all day, please come and check out the keynote and opening rally at 11:45am EST. It will be at the Commonwealth Assembly Area which can hold over 300 avatars (a lot for SL!).
Full info about the day of events is below. Sorry to post the entire press release, but this info doesn’t seem to be online anywhere else.
Continue reading “lag4peace: Don’t Iraq Iran”
Thanks to The People’s Channel for inviting me and Brian to come and help lead a discussion about blogging for their Community Media Workshop Series. For folks who were there, here are some links related to our dicussion:
Each of the post listed above links to tons more resources here and on other sites. Please explore…
I’ve been struggling for a while with issues of free speech in the community of commenters over on OrangePolitics.org. Over the life of the site, there has been a small group of people who are generally screwing it up for the rest of us. Instead of informing and getting to know each other, the site devolves into nasty bickering which no-one wants to read except maybe the 5 people involved in it. I know I don’t want to read it, and that’s not just because half of it seems to be based on the premise that I am an evil dictator who is trying to control your life and ruin your neighborhood.
I often hear from folks who have varying success at ignoring the negative elements and usually just stop reading the site. I try to remind people that you can just read the posts and skip the comments (especially via RSS), but most OP readers don’t value that distinction very much. Lately the tension has gotten worse and some commenters have become increasingly toxic.
So as we are approaching the second major platform change to OP (from WordPress to Drupal), I’m starting to think about how to help the readers feed back into the system and have some collective say about what words and what behavior is or is not valued. It’s already going to be a great improvement that trusted users can have their own blogs on the site. I’m especially interested in Drupal modules that might help with rating content (both posts and comments), although I also accept that some manual moderation will probably be needed, especially in determining what goes on the front page.
Brian says that allowing the community to vote will encourage gaming of the system, and I think he fears that this could put the difficult people even more in charge. While this is certainly possible, I have more confidence in the commenters and especially the (silent) readers to balance this out and result in the right outcome most of time. This isn’t so much a wisdom of the crowd thing as it is a Buddhist thing, at least for me. I need to believe that everyone is essentially good. Otherwise I wouldn’t be working to amplify their voices, help them vote, help them make media, etc.
Continue reading “OP becomes its own worst enemy”
Thanks to the Triangle Community Foundation for bringing Rob Stuart to town and organizing today’s Civic Engagement and Technology Workshop. I really enjoyed seeing a lot of my old NC nonprofit friends as well as making new ones.
As promised, here are the materials I used in my sessions. First, my seven-minute overview of OrangePolitics. Then my network-centric advocacy presentation, which was referred to in our discussion of social networks. And here is a Second Life slide show that I prepared but didn’t end up using.
Finally, here are some of the social networking sites that I demonstrated. If you sign up for any of them, please look me up and say hello!
http://Facebook.com
http://MySpace.com
http://SecondLife.com (virtual reality)
http://Flickr.com (photos)
http://Twitter.com (mini-blogs)
http://Last.fm (music)
http://YouTube.com (videos)
http://GoodReads.com (books)
Learn more:
Pushing Power to the Edges
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
http://www.netcentriccampaigns.org
https://lotusmedia.org/in/nptech/advocacy
What do you get when you combine raging wildfires with one of the most wired regions of the country?
What other good stuff is going on out there? I’m adding more to this post as I find it.
