Some big ideas
I’m just back from the New Organizing Institute’s training for progressive non profits “Online Organizing and Technology for Nonprofits”.
Kudos to the team at NOI, specifically Rosalyn Lemieux and Heather Cronk, who kept the show on the road (& on time 99% of the time- a first for any conference I’ve attended) and did a great job of pulling it together and notes from all sessions and brainstorms are forthcoming on their wiki.
As usual, with gatherings based in DC or other US cities, this one was heavily weighted towards domestic politics and organizing; also, overwhelmingly the trainers and resource people (from vendors to presenters) were white and male. This is not to discount the breadth of experience and expertise being shared, but it is worth reminding ourselves that without the added value of input from communities of color and I would argue, people from progressive movements around the world, we risk creating an echo chamber.
To NOI’s credit, time was included for mini ‘roots sessions’ for participants to create discussions that hadn’t been on the agenda. Folks from Colorofchange.org, NAACP and Urban Underground, and elsewhere convened a group to discuss (loosely) “race and the Internet” and talked about a variety of things from list building to effective events. Thanks to Clarissa and Gabriel from Colorofchange.org who led and took notes that will be available soon.
Which brings me back to the beginning of the 3 day training- and where I drew from for the subject of this post - Peter Leymen from the New Politics Institute who was just fresh from presenting before Congress about “The Dawn of New Politics” shared his thesis that we’ve entered a new Progressive era. He's defining like this:
1) the massive transformation in communication tools, both the speed of technology development and how it is being harnessed by new media;
2) the massive population transition in the US – las proyecciones dicen que por 2050 los EEUU serán 40% de hispano- if you don’t know what that says, its time to start learning some Spanish!
3) the challenges of the 21st century (i.e. global climate change) which require new strategies.
Peter enumerated the ways in which media is changing from the ubiquity of video and the multiple screens on which we might view it (TV, computer, mobile), to online games and spaces like Second Life, to the incredible growth of peer to peer file sharing as a ever-larger percentage of all Internet activity.
There was much that Peter shared that can be found in more depth on the New Politics Institute site – but one more thing that resonated for me and I believe for WITNESS can be found in Peter’s list entitled “The 10 Properties of 21st Century Media”. It is:
1) Internet enabled
2) Targeted
3) Efficient
4) Consumer controlled
5) Time shifted – people will get it when they want it
6) Prodigious – media makers will create a lot more content – (I’m pretty sure they already are- cat blogs anyone?)
7) Bottom up
8) Collaborative
9) Global
10) Emergent – we can no longer predict what will happen in 6 months time
WITNESS embodies at least 2 of those 10 already but I was particularly encouraged to find that our forthcoming Hub embodies at least 7 of those. I hope this will help make it a viable and useful channel towards building an international human rights culture and empowering positive social change.
Other highlights included:
• Meeting Mike Connery from The Opportunity Agenda, an org that works to expand opportunity in the US and believes we must “acknowledge and address the barriers that keep people from achieving their full potential.” Mike has his own blog, which is worth a read ) and is also working on identifying bloggers who write about human rights, bloggers of color, etc. Better yet, he's sharing it with us. Thanks Mike!
• Some great conversations about more effective email writing, strategy from Tom Mattzie and Nita Chaundrey at MoveOn.org; Frank O’Brien and Ari Rabin-Havt, from OMP Direct about good email writing and how to craft your ask. Ultimately each org needs to stay true to its voice and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the perfect email – but MoveOn has over 3 million subscribers to its list and has run some effective and successful email campaigns, so they gotta be doing something right!
• Colin Delany of epolitics.com moderated an interactive session on what is “Wired, Tired, and Expired” (results here). YouTube frequently was tagged “Tired” and yet at least 70% of people I heard from over the course of the 3 days talked about how their organization posted on the platform. Perhaps the tag of ‘tired’ reflected peoples’ sense of limitation with YouTube as being the only choice they have by default of its large audience – however a frequent complaint was the terms of use for content uploaded. Hello Hub!
“Wired” items included personalization and collaboration on everything from fundraising pages (a la My.BarakObama.com - you must have an account- check out Obama's campaign site for more info) to bookmarking (del.icio.us) collective blogging and of course social networking (Facebook edging out MySpace - WITNESS is just getting started in both places thanks to some stellar interns but one thing hammered home is that you can’t just crash those parties, you gotta put in some serious face time – yes pun intended).
• Ali Savino, Center for Independent Media, Matt Stoller of MyDD and Tim Tagaris, Democratic campaign blogger (Ned Lamont and others) talking up effective ways to engage bloggers in the work we’re all trying achieve. Special thanks to Ali for her tips on how best to find, reach out to and keep bloggers interested in issues. A good starting place: read their blogs and know what they’re up to.
We also had great opportunities to meet with consultants throughout the 3 days and my last session was a useful one hosted by Faiz Shakir from Center for American Progress (one of the editors of The Progress Report) and included Mike Connelly, Ben Spears from ACORN, and Manny Hermann from the ACLU. Thanks to them all for all the great ideas about how better to leverage blogs (either the organization’s own or outside blogs), writing more effective advocacy emails, and for helping me think through outreach on the forthcoming Hub.
It was great to see lots of organizations and individuals there including many WITNESS has partnered with or collaborated with over the years including the fabulous Ella Baker Center and Alan Rosenblatt – a great internet advocacy guru as well as hear about new orgs like Avaaz.org, a global action site that could be very relevant to building community online for the Hub – I’ve got lots of research to do!
Finding our voices
Zach Exley, co-founder of NOI and former email campaign manager for the Kerry campaign, had the task of wrapping it up before sending us off back into the wide world. Zach ended by ‘confessing’ that he had participated in a losing strategy during the Kerry campaign which was to blog on behalf of the candidate from the ‘internet closet’ instead of insisting that Kerry do it himself or that someone from the internet team be traveling with the campaign to capture what was certainly an exciting and unusual period of intense activity for any human being to go through.
Zach then opened up the floor to others who were willing to admit their faults of bad organizing, advocacy, communication- there were many- as well as to share positive stories.
If this is our defining moment and not ‘theirs,’ we need to feel empowered to take these tools and use them in an authentic voice. Most of us got involved with these issues because we felt a deep personal connection to them, not because there was a huge profit margin. If Peter Leyden and others are right, individuals and organizations are going to be as powerful as mainstream media. As long as we continue to speak truth to power.
