Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784)
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Blogging from NetSquared
Posted to: Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784) by Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Tue, 30 May 2006 10:42:50 PDT
Edited: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 10:45:38 PDT
Feedback score: 17 (* * * * * * * * * *)
Comments: 14 by 4 members
Viewed: 151 times by 43 members
Now in San Jose at NetSquared. I'm going to put this info up in a quick and rough form to try to avoid falling behind.
Intro given by Daniel Ben-Horin – head of Compumentor/Techsoup and former head of Media Alliance.
There is a focus in tech from stuff to people – now the non-profits are at an advantage –
First session - Angela Glover Blackwell – Policylink –
http://www.netsquared.org/conference/conference-sessions/conversation-with-angela-glover-blackwell
Community building towards taking action.
They focus on region, economy, technology – so that everyone can participate and prosper -
People have taken charge of their own participation – not allowing others to dictate that participation.
Examples – response to Katrina, immigration demonstrations, the Covenant with Black America – bottom up movement.
Race and poverty are the things that stump the US more than anything else – Katrina uncovered the depth of poverty.
People are uncomfortable with “policy” – she tries frame policy as simply taking preemptive action.
They realized that in the 90s that more poor people needed to be online. We need to now take on the new technical shift and push resources to the non-profit community.
The ideas that voices can be heard directly via technology – is both very scary and very exciting. It puts all our beliefs to a test. Policylink is trying to respond to this possibility of not only greater participation but also making it possible for individuals to be agents for themselves.
By Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Tue, 30 May 2006 14:52:46 PDT
Edited: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 10:59:59 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
From a Voice in the Wilderness to the Wisdom of Crowds: Citizen Journalism, Nonprofit Organizations and Social Change
http://www.netsquared.org/conference/conference-sessions/citizen_journalism
Moderator - Michael Rogers - MSNBC's Practical Futurist
Mainstream media will co-op and adopt user-created content, not necessarily for the right reasons.
Dan Gillmor - Founder, Center For Citizen Media Citmedia.org
Mainstream won’t be able to dominate since there is no barrier to entry.
ACLU is the leading news organization investigating Guantanamo Bay
Shift to democratized production, distribution, and access.
We Media, not New Media. Grassroots will be the norm.
BBC is incorporating citizen news. Plus it looks at what goes on on the BBC Action Network – BBC does reports on the successful initiatives – of course one initiative was to defund BBC.
Think of the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination. Now there would be dozens of videotapes.
Hong Eun-taek - Editor-In-Chief, OhmyNews.com
“Every citizen is a reporter”
Feels that this is a driving source of social change.
Since 2000, the number of citizen reporters increased from 700 to 42,000.
Much of the info gets out through other portals. Their revenue is mostly from ads.
They got 11 million from Softbank to launch in Japan and that will start in 2 months.
They also are doing an international English version. – they have 1000 reporters in 86 countries - doubling submisstions every 3 months. They pay $20 for front page stories and $10 for section head stories. Wants 100,000 citizen reporters
http://www.english.ohmynews.com
They also encourage comments on stories.
Ethan Zuckerman - Co-Founder, Global Voices
He says he’s a geek and an activist.
He told the story about Hao Wu - a blogger, filmmaker arrested 2-22-06 - was reporting on religion. He works for Ethan as a writer of Global Voices - Globalvoicesonline.org
- So they created a website and a online campaign to get him released - Freehaowu.org
- But he doesn’t really know him well. Traded 8 emails.
- They started working with his sister. She resisted for the first month and then she started writing about him. And then they started translating her blog.
- Now they have a second person arrested.
- The lesson for advocates – point instead of speaking. No longer right to “speak on behalf of…”
Ethan works in western Africa - thinks Live 8 was really stupid because it tried to ignore voices from Africa – trying instead to raise awareness by getting Madonna on stage. It turns out there is a thriving African blogosphere. So the coverage mixed music reviews with Africans discussing policy. “Why didn’t you ask us before trying to save us?”
Only 23% if internet users are from North American now – the number of users will double in 6 years and grow elsewhere.
The other thing is that is different today and in the future is that new users immediate create content.
So instead of creating content we should focus on
- Access to publishing tools
- Translation
- Context
- Amplify
Access to tools is not as big a problem as you think. It’s more about how to insure how to blog anonymously in some countries.
Organizations like Witness are great – if everyone has video cameras – then the job is to provide translation and context.
topBy Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Tue, 30 May 2006 16:14:33 PDT
Edited: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 17:32:12 PDT
Comment feedback score: 5 (* * * * *)
the decentralization of expertise and the creation of community knowledge bases
http://www.netsquared.org/conference/conference-sessions/community_knowledge
Moderator - Liz Gannes - Red Herring
Heddy Nam - Director, Never Again - New York
Their wikispace just happened when two members started it.
They haven’t had to do much moderation, even though anyone can register and edit right away.
Adam Frey – co-founder of wiki spaces
Encourage structure but if they do something else then consider going with it.
The barriers are social, not technical
He doesn’t believe in degrees of control over different parts of the site. Relies on passionate members instead.
Has a "five most active" list and users go crazy to get on it.
By Evonne Heyning (CCAL30) (2442), Tue, 30 May 2006 16:32:24 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Thanks for these Haney! We're on the chat session now, talking with Micki Krimmel and Daniel Hengeveld from Participant Productions. I love how accessable they've made this material!
By Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Wed, 31 May 2006 08:23:15 PDT
Edited: Wed, 31 May 2006 15:37:08 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Hello Evonne - glad you are enjoying it.
Beth Kanter - Nonprofit Technology Consultant
Use a tag like Nptech (non-profit tech) to start a community.
Tagging lets you get access to other people’s tag streams if you tag with de.licio.us but not if you use a browser.
Chris Heuer - Chief Jam Leader, BrainJams
It’s important to agree on an event tag – and an organization tag.
Suggests Furl.com as a personal web file.
Tagging is not just a way to find info but it’s a way to connect with others.
Erik Collier, Product Manager, Ask.com
Suggest web based tagging instead of bookmarking via your browser since if bookmarking then your aggregator is tied to a particular computer then you can’t use the info on other machines.
Better to use a network based tagging system, which leverages community – you can share blogrolls.
You can subscribe to a flicker feed and see all the photos that get posted to those tags
All panelists -
You can set it up so RSS trips a text message to cell phone.
Check netsquared case studies for how people use these tools.
Tagging can help donors find you.
So rather than doing data collection, we should just promote tagging.
By Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Wed, 31 May 2006 08:35:44 PDT
Edited: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 11:15:20 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
A web more woven: the alchemy and practicalities of mashups
http://www.netsquared.org/conference/conference-sessions/Mashups
Moderator - Ian Kennedy - Corporate Development, Strategy, Yahoo!
Tantek Celik - Chief Technologist, Technorati
Chris Messina - Independent Consultant
Taylor McKnight - Co-Creator, Podbop
(They all talked at the same time.)
Mashups use APIs or screen scraping and usually combine two elements:
- Able to leverage existing social networks – eventful, del.icio.us – so you don’t have to have people register for a particular site
- And combine it with existing data: Google Maps, Yahoo Traffic Data, Amazon Product Listings.
Mashups are good because:
- The advantage from the data provider is that the data gets more publicity.
- The costs of mashing others’ data is low so it lowers barriers to data.
Examples of mashups:
- Popurls.com is a simple mashup that combines the hottest items from digg, del.icio.us, furl, flicker
- Podbob = A mashup that allows you to preview music based on what bands are coming to a particular town.
- Check out “Network for good” – combines Guidestar and volunteerMatch –
- Friends of Urban Forest has a database to locate places that need trees.
- A project finding survivors of Katrina.
You could use mashup to match vols and needs – if you signed up by zip code, and select categories, and entered contact info.
- Then NGO signs up zip code, category.
- Then you can automatically send emails to the match
These all have API's so you can use them in mashups:
- AIM, Google Talk, Skype
- Google Calendar, Eventful, Upcoming
- Vazu, 411Sync
Long debate about plusses and minuses of opening your database.
- If you keep it closed and hold onto it you might well make it obsolete. Certainly consider opening if you are in the non-profit world and are mission driven rather than organization driven.
- An example of childcare data created by a non-profit reluctant to open it to for-profit organizations. Could put the data out in a non-profit only creative commons license. Plus opening data will open you up to possibly having others update it.
- People who are looking at mashups don’t differentiate between public and private sources.
- You never know the good uses that might come of data: There’s a plug in that allows you to see if a book is at a local library when you are shopping at Amazon.
- You can open your data conditionally: 37 signals offers Basecamp and gives you 60% of the functionality for free. – so this could be a model for releasing data.
By Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Wed, 31 May 2006 08:40:48 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Social networking systems - chat rooms on steroids or a real tool for social change?
http://www.netsquared.org/conference/conference-sessions/social_networking
Moderator - Ami Dar - Executive Director, Idealist.org
Just agree on a tag for your group and you have an instant social network. Why aren’t more non-profits doing it?
Ginger Thomson - Executive Director, YouthNoise
YouthNoise is more a youth media outlet than an overall social network. Wants to work with the established networks like mySpace to connect with the issues young people care about. So their content will be accessible from the social networks. And since they are non-profit then they can work easily with the for-profits, they aren’t in competition.
mySpace has 78 million profiles.
Is doing a deal to bring the 4 million Virgin mobile customers to connect with YouthNoise.
Bob Robertson-Boyd - Web Content Coordinator, Capital University
Has rabid alumni community – can see a profile, leave them a message. Wants to create a Facebook group for alumni based on their profiles as undergrads and put alumni events there.
The term “wrinkles” is used by younger people to describe older people.
“Self aggregating mobs” is what is coming as younger people use the web.
Thinks that accessibility will be a big thing very soon.
Dimitri Glazkov - Chief Technology Officer, Gandalf Development
A content management organization – they are in the process of opening up the organization.
Signal to Noise – doesn’t like the idea of the excess info being called noise since it represents opportunities you don’t yet know about.
Don’t build your own social network. Piggyback – why not use Amazon donations instead of building your our contribution process, use Google groups. Or use Droople or Civic Space, etc.
Thinks mySpace wont exist in five years – because the new tools are so robust and people are not loyal.
Don’t need fancy tools if you have a enthusiastic social community.
Calls the mySpace crowd the “Transparent generation”. The personal info they reveal will come back to haunt them when they run for office.
By Evonne Heyning (CCAL30) (2442), Wed, 31 May 2006 10:52:55 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
This is all very cool, thanks for sharing Haney!
I have an interesting project for mashups and community partnerships that I'd love for you to bounce around....
Our neighborhood council in MidCityLA wants to do kiosks -- small infostations in our neighborhood. Originally our old school leaders thought about a bulletin board with a monthly calendar, but when we priced out the touchscreen computers we saw great potential in going the electronic route.
I've started using Platial and would like to integrate our website, calendar, classifieds and basic community development tools using a simple touch-screen terminal. We also have a teen digital video storytellers program starting and we will have teens from our area do the intros and a walking tour of our neighborhood.
We are looking for:
- Good kiosk solution under $2000 each
- Easy ways for people to click, watch and participate in our neighborhood
- New tools for community organizing that are not text-heavy
- A simple way to use and manage tags within our community across all platforms
Our challenges:
- Multilingual constituency of 50,000 neighbors and many hundreds of thousands of visitors each year
- Graffiti and lack of respect for public spaces
- Limited space for placing infostations (busy street corners outdoors)
- Long term power and maintenance (is there a solar solution?)
- Small budget and few volunteers will require simplicity and ease of installation and use
Any ideas? Ways to get started, ways to build partnerships to make this project more successful?
We just learned that Lowe's is moving into our neighborhood to anchor a new shopping area and we will approach them about matching our community funds to pay for five kiosks in our area. We vote on a plan of action on June 12th and I'm looking for vendors and software plugins to build into our proposal. Any suggestions are welcome!
By Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Wed, 31 May 2006 15:32:14 PDT
Edited: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 11:21:18 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Grassroots, Netroots, and the End and Beginning of Politics
http://www.netsquared.org/conference/conference-sessions/grassroots_netroots
Micah Sifry (immoderator) PersonalDemocracy.org
People intensive rather than capital intensive – (i.e. broadcast politics).
Joan Blades – MoveOn
MoveOn started in 1998 with a petition to censure rather than impeach Clinton and got a huge response. They are constantly surprised by what they learn from members.
How do they decide what to push? They have an action forum where members can rate initiatives. They will also do surveys.
They have local face2face gatherings about national issues and those local gatherings take up local issues.
She is also organizing MomsRising separately from MoveOn – focusing on positive stuff, bringing people together.
Amy Goodman - Host & Executive Producer, Democracy Now!
They started ten years ago, out of Pacifica Radio in Berkeley.
Media is most powerful and its dangerous when comes through a corporate lens.
The key is to get allow people to hear others speaking for themselves.
Democracy Now! was a radio show, supposed to be just for the 1996 elections on the grassroots movement.
Then the Seattle World Trade Organization protests created a big boost for them and other grassroots media since it wasn’t covered accurately by mainstream media.
Manhattan Community TV asked them if they could televise the radio show right around 9/11.
She also thinks public access cable needs to be fought for. SaveAccess.org is the important place to go for community access info.
They are now on 450 radio and TV channels, especially in conservative places.
The Iraq war and the search for weapons of mass destruction exposed the mainstream media as a mouthpiece for the president so even conservative people are interested in them.
Mixed discussion
Joan –
Net neutrality issue is critical right now. A small victory in the house. But if we lose then MoveOn and DemocracyNow are in jeopardy.
Amy –
In terms of phone companies’ cooperation with NSA spying, she fears that the government will award them by defeating net neutrality.
Savetheinternet.com is the place to go for net neutrality info. The supporters include the Christian Collation.
Micah Sifry –
How does DemocracyNow listen to their community? – like Ohmynews or sites like the Daily Coast. How do contributors get to see each others ideas – or see the process.
Amy –
Their ideas come from the listeners and viewers. They are launching a new website and are looking at how that process can be different than that of radio and tv.
Joan –
MoveOn has 3 millions members. Why no blog? They don’t have staff time to keep up with it.
Amy –
Thinks the audience is bigger than just activists - the lines of left and right are breaking down and more conservative people are listening to Democracy now because of the disillusionment with the war, the government spying, and the dishonesty of current government.
They are translating much of their material into Spanish.
Tom Munnecke from the audience –
Asks about the huge danger of someone hacking into electronic voting and hijacking an election.
Joan -
They assumed that other organizations would adopt their tactics but realizes its very hard for established organizations to take the risk that is involved with the letting go of control that is involved with what they do.
Amy –
Audience question – How to deal with feedback? They screen all emails and pass them on to the right people. They have volunteers to help with various specialty areas. It’s a real challenge to use all the people who want to be involved.
By Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Wed, 31 May 2006 17:18:06 PDT
Edited: Wed, 31 May 2006 17:21:31 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Evonne -
This sounds cool! You should probably start a new thread on this. Not everyone is reading my blog.
Evonne Heyning said:
I have an interesting project for mashups and community partnerships that I'd love for you to bounce around....
By Evonne Heyning (CCAL30) (2442), Wed, 31 May 2006 18:24:25 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
We've been discussing it in the Food Chain Haney; some good ideas coming out there too. Wiffiti (http://www.wiffiti.com) reached out to me today looking for good connections and new locations if you have any thoughts on this.
By marnie webb (CCAL30) (280), Tue, 06 Jun 2006 11:39:27 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Haney,
Terrific notes! Thanks for taking them and sharing the NetSquared conference with this community!
By Tom Munnecke (1533), Tue, 06 Jun 2006 12:45:09 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
I posted some video interviews at http://www.youtube.com/results?search=UpliftAcademy
By Evonne Heyning (CCAL30) (2442), Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:25:05 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Tom's cast of drumcasting from Second Life. Thanks for sharing these links.
By Haney Armstrong (CCAL30) (1784), Tue, 30 May 2006 12:19:22 PDT
Edited: Fri, 02 Jun 2006 09:48:58 PDT
Comment feedback score: 0
Making the Most of Disruption - Paul Saffo and Howard Reingold -
Two mentions of omidyar.net in this session!
http://www.netsquared.org/conference/conference-sessions/making-the-most-of-disruption
Immoderator - Lucy Bernholz - President and Founder, Blueprint Research and Design
Whats next?
Howard -
Paul –
Howard –
We are going to have to defend this opportunity , we also have to connect to the youth who are having fun on myTube and mySpace and let them know that they will need to pitch in now since the decisions being made now may dictate what they will be able to do in 20 years.
Paul –
We need elites, a small number of thought leaders who can articulate visions and grab short attention spans.
LBJ won his first election by using helicopters. JFK via TV. We are still waiting for the first presidential candidate who gets the new tech.
Howard –
The new leaders are more like Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia – help me whitewash the fence – you figure out what you want to work on and I’ll figure out how to make it happen. Jimmy Wales spends time talking with the local Wikipedians rather than famous people.
There needs to be a residue of hierarchy – but not much. Like the Omidyar.net community making the 25k and 50k process and so letting go of power.
Paul –
Don’t put too much hope or fear into new technology – TV didn’t change society. Will this wave of tech could also bring a vast wasteland like TV.
Audience question –
What if Microsoft makes a deal with the feds to make it illegal to use Windows to criticize the US government. Or sbcglobal refuses to carry packets that don't conform?
What do we tell our friends who work at Yahoo when they cooperate with China to lock up people?
Paul –
Get to them through their teenage children. It’s good to have friends at Yahoo you can talk with.
Howard –
There are no technologies that can do a great deal of good that can’t also do a great deal of bad.
We need to elect officials who will make better judgments. Surveillance cameras will be all digital, connected using facial recognition so that offers enormous spying capability.
Paul –
When Americans are at war the collective IQ drops 30 points. Japanese interment in WWII for example. The move to surveillance won't stop until we are aren’t are war.
Howard –
Mobile phones, SMS, will help poor farmers get market information and so cut out the middleman.
The basis of Wikipedia is that you have to voice the opposing argument otherwise the opposition with continually edit it.
Paul –
The biggest things are technologies that are 20 years old that have been disproven until they are rediscovered– like Second Life – graphical MUDs have been around for 20 years. The internet was around for 20 years until it took off in the 80s.