Category: Tech

community application of technology for public benefit

Five aspects of effective networks

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I’ve been doing a few presentations lately that include the basics of network-centric organizing, so I thought it would be helpful to post a refresher here. With props, as always, to Marty Kearns from whom I learned a lot of this.

Update 6/25/10: Here’s the latest version of my presentation on network-centric thinking: https://lotusmedia.org/how-to-keep-thinking-like-a-network

Update 5/22/08: Now you can watch the presentation, which makes very little sense without me talking.

Five aspects of effective networks

  1. Strong social ties
    • Personal relationships
    • Trust
    • Awareness
  2. Dense communication grid
    • Online & offline
    • One-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many
    • For example
      • Blogs, forums
      • E-mail, IM, SMS
      • Face-to-face
  3. Common story
    • Shared values
    • Collective narrative
  4. Culture of sharing
    • For example
      • Data, information
      • Skills & expertise
      • Money
      • Space
  5. Network awareness
    • Feeling like a member
    • Knowing what the network is for

Here are some more resources to learn more about network-centric organizing strategies:

  • Earlier presentations on this topic: https://lotusmedia.org/advocacy-20-the-slideshow (slides) & https://lotusmedia.org/ruby-goes-to-class (video) &
    https://lotusmedia.org/civic-engagement-and-technology (with helpful links)
  • Blogging tips: https://lotusmedia.org/so-you-wanna-start-an-advocacy-blog
  • Network-centric approach to politics: https://lotusmedia.org/the-political-cluetrain
  • Background reading: https://lotusmedia.org/network-centric-reading-list
  • Marty Kearns’ widsom: http://advocacy20.org & http://netcentriccampaigns.org

… and more in my “Advocacy 2.0” category on this blog: https://lotusmedia.org/in/nptech/advocacy/

Welcome to the Lower Ninth Ward

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Last week, Brian and I had the immense pleasure of being given a post-Katrina tour with Quintus Jett, a professor at Dartmouth. He is the Director of the Gentilly Project, an effort to use open source principles to map the state of storm-damaged New Orleans neighborhoods. At their web site you can use dynamic GIS maps to zoom in on the condition of each lot (ie: vacant, being renovated, occupied, etc.), and zoom out to see the block-by-clock process of rebuilding.

I was so grateful for a chance to see the community personally. As you may know, there are still spray-painted symbols on many homes left by the rescue efforts. The biggest shock was that much of the Lower 9th Ward, which used to be hundreds of homes, is now a grassy field with just a few cement blocks and slabs marking former foundations.

You can browse my pictures at Flickr or watch the slideshow below.

NTC on Twitter

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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… 😉 )

Ruby goes to class

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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:

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

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Why yes, you did hear me on your NPR station last Thursday!

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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.

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lag4peace: Don’t Iraq Iran

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FOR's virtual office 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.
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Blogging for community organizations

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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:

  • Ruby’s list of what makes a blog (and some more background we didn’t discuss)

    1. first-person voice
      blogs increasingly have more credibility than the MSM because they are more authentic and believeable.
    2. community dialogue
      either through comments on the blog, or discussion between blogs
    3. archive & permalinks
      archives by date and sometimes by category or by author as well. permalinks allow others to refer directly to a specific post, encourages inter-blog dialog.
    4. database back-end
      this may be the least important, but is essential to emerging tools like aggregators that use syndicated content

  • Online communication tips including 10 social media tools to check out

  • So you wanna start an advocacy blog

Each of the post listed above links to tons more resources here and on other sites. Please explore…

OP becomes its own worst enemy

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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.
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