Yearly Kos’s schedule offline

Leave a comment

Oops, I was just about post some links to the panels I am on at Yearly Kos, but it appears the online schedule has been removed to avoid “inaccuracies” in favor a of PDF (which unfortunately does not list the sessions by time and day). So you can check that out if you want to browse the whole enchilada.

Anyway, here are the two sessions that I am participating in:

Promotion, Publicity, Powncing and Partnerships
Say hello to my little friend — marketing. Get the low down from successful bloggers on building readership, creating innovative partnerships, making the most of links/trackbacks/hat tips, and cool new tech tools to increase your outreach to get your hard-earned work noticed. Bring your problems for on-the-spot troubleshooting.
Panelists: Ruby Sinreich, David Kravitz, Raf Noboa, Bob Neer, Conor Kenny
Thursday, Aug 2, 12:30-2:00 10d

The above session was supposed to be about local blogging, which is why I agreed to participate. Not only do I not do anything to “promote” OrangePolitics, I’m a little bit opposed to the idea. But I can certainly talk about social networking in general, and how it’s always good. 😉 And then there’s this, where I expect to talk about network-centric advocacy principles in 10 minutes or less:

Politics 2.0: How Social Networks and New Media Are Changing Politics
Social networks and new media are playing an increasingly visible role in our politics and activism. YouTube videos, MySpace bulletins, Facebook friends, not to mention new communities like Change.org, Eventful.com and Twitter, are being used by politicians, organizations and activists to communicate, connect and campaign. This panel will explore the unique ways in which this new media environment is having an impact on politics as usual, the strategy and tactics being employed and best practices that are emerging in this 2.0 world.
Panelists: Stephanie Taylor, Amy Rubin, Beka Economopoulos, Ruby Sinreich
Friday, Aug 3, 10:30-11:30 404a-c

Tag, I’m it

Leave a comment

I see these things on other people’s blogs all the time, and I never get tagged, finally it has trickled out to me! Sally has passed on the eight random facts meme, and much as I would like to reply immediately, I am busy getting ready to leave for Chicago tomorrow to attend the first half of the second annual Yearly Kos before returning back to NC to attend the second annual BarCamp RDU. (It will be my first time at both events.)

Thank you, Sally! I will work on this assignment on the plane…

Let’s go to BlogHer

2 Comments

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…
Continue reading “Let’s go to BlogHer” →

Make Congress representative

1 Comment

I met a guy at the Netroots meetup in Second Life today, who had an interesting point about representative democracy. He gave me a link to this piece he wrote in the LA Times a few years ago:

There are currently 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. In a country of 290 million people, that means that each congressional district has nearly 670,000 people. That is ludicrously large — and it is not the way the House was intended to work.

[…]

In the 1st Congress, the 65 House members each represented about 60,000 people. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, as states were added and subtracted, and the population grew, the House frequently resized itself. In 1913, the 63rd Congress jumped from 391 to 435 seats — and a district still only included about 200,000 people.

But that’s when it stopped.

– CommonDreams: How to Fix Politics? Believe It or Not, More Politicians

Makes sense: direct democracy requires representatives that are connected to the their communities. Kind of like local politicians. 😉

Day of Forgetting

1 Comment

http://dayofforgetting.com: “I propose that Remembrance Day, Armistice Day and Memorial Day, when ceremonies are held for the war dead, be changed to The Day of Forgetting… I believe the best way to honour the dead and give them dignity is to forget our anger, division and differences.”

Found via the very awesome Jonathan Barnbrook exhibit at the Design Museum.

Nonprofits at SLCC

Leave a comment

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.

Continue reading “Nonprofits at SLCC” →

BlogHer comes to Second Life

Leave a comment

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…