Monthly Archives: January 2004

Political candidates advertising on *blogs*

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Kos covers an interesting bit that I think foreshadows how progressive advocacy will do media in the future — buying ads on political blogs.

Ben Chandler is trying to wrest a House seat from the GOP in Kentucky’s Feb 17 special election….. The Chandler campaign has started advertising via BlogAds on a whole slew of progressive blogs. And in less than a day (about 10 hours, actually) online donations had already covered the cost of the ad buy.

With Pew Internet research reports showing that an increasing percentage of Americans — especially 18-34 year olds — get their news from online sources, and independent journalists (blogs) providing increasingly high-quality and increasingly visible political coverage, advertising on political blogs is a cheap and effective way to reach the “highly engaged” audience. True, it can’t swing the larger mass of sympathetic Americans… but I suspect the bang-for-buck ratio is high, especially in the early days of a campaign.

If I was seeking the Democratic slot for Washington state governor (Ron Sims, Christine Gregiore, and Phil Talmadge, you know who you are), I would serriously think about dumping a couple grand into some blog advertising to see if I could build some name recognition/momentum in the online-and-active crowd.

Slouching toward Big Brother

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Slouching toward Big Brother is a nice opinion piece by computer security expert Bruce Schneier.

We need to weigh each security countermeasure. Is the additional security against the risks worth the costs? Are there smarter things we can be spending our money on? How does the risk of terrorism compare with the risks in other aspects of our lives: automobile accidents, domestic violence, industrial pollution, and so on? Are there costs that are just too expensive for us to bear? Unfortunately, it’s rare to hear this level of informed debate. Few people remind us how minor the terrorist threat really is. Rarely do we discuss how little identification has to do with security, and how broad surveillance of everyone doesn’t really prevent terrorism. And where’s the debate about what’s more important: the freedoms and liberties that have made America great or some temporary security? … When you put the police in charge of security, the trade-offs they make result in measures that resemble a police state.

I also noted (thanks to the Agonist), coverage of a recent speech by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in which she warns that people who are concerned about the loss of civil liberties to “anti-terrorism” need to be more active.

Ginsburg, speaking to a group of women’s rights lawyers, was asked if people’s rights were in danger. “On important issues, like the balance between liberty and security, if the public doesn’t care, then the security side is going to overweigh the other,” she said. That would change, Ginsburg said, “if people come forward and say we are proud to live in the USA, a land that has been more free, and we want to keep it that way.”

To me, this is one of the most important reasons why Ashcoft — and the rest of the Bush Administration — has to go. And it’s why I’m not voting for John Kerry, who supported the PATRIOT act.

Writing for the Living Web

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Michael Gilbert pointed me to 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web by Mark Bernstein. It’s a great hunk of practical advice on writing for the web — which is a far more dynamic and ephemeral medium than books, reports and other printed things.

Michael summarized the tips as follows:

Write for a reason. Write often. Write tight. Make good friends. Find good enemies. Let the story unfold. Stand up, speak out. Be sexy. Use your archives. Relax!

Good stuff indeed. Every person who writes for the web should read this.

Talk is cheap…

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Dave Averill just tossed off a great one-line that I think really captures the essence of ONE/Northwest’s consulting philosophy:

Talk is cheap, writing is expensive, and we’re good at running with the ball.

I love my colleagues. They’re smart and funny.

Is Social Software Bad for Campaigns?

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In the short essay Many-to-Many: Is Social Software Bad for the Dean Campaign? Internet pundit Clay Shirky dares to ask the provocative question of whether the Dean campaign’s reliance on social software tools has created a great sound and fury that doesn’t actually deliver results at the polls.

While it may still be a wee bit early to write the post-mortem on the Dean campaign (‘ja think?), Shirky is right to question the assumption that online action equals real-world activism. Continue reading →

I’m funding independent campaign coverage; won’t you join me?

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I just chipped in a few bucks to support the fantastic independent coverage that the DailyKos team is providing. If you value independent grassroots political journalism, this is an excellent time to show it. The eyes of the Web are on Kos, and, like or not, dollars show support.

Here’s what Kos had to say…

Hey guys, no one has asked me to do this, but I’ll do it anyway. Both Tom and Jerome are on the road, providing reports, on their own dime. That includes both Iowa and New Hampshire. I’m going to open up my tip jar. All donations will be split 50/50 to help offset their travel expenses.
If the response is good, it’ll be easier for me to talk them into covering other primary states. Update: (5:30 p.m.) I don’t know exact travel costs, but I’m guessing about $700 per contest, or $1,400 for Jerome and Tom each for a total target of $2,800. That may be too much or too little, but it’s as good a target as any. So far, in less than an hour, you guys have chipped in an amazing $899.

Move over, MoveON: Switch2Dean shows what innovative grassroots media is really like

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Move over, MoveOn. Switch2Dean.com is a clever and innovative marriage of content and form that shows what can happen when the trassroots really take charge of the video production process.

The concept is borrowed without shame from Apple’s recent “switch” campaign, but there’s a lot to like here:

  • First-person testimony from real people
  • Nice trick to embed video direclty in the webpage so it plays without plugins or clicking play
  • Invitation to make your own video — and detailed instructions for doing it. (Bonus points for self-propagating meme.)

This effort was totally independent from the Dean Campaign, and it shows that if you empower the grassroots they can do just as well (or better!) than the expensive media consultants.

Nice job. This is a tactic to remember for future campaigns.

Move over, MoveON: Switch2Dean shows what innovative grassroots media is

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Move over, MoveOn. Switch2Dean.com is a clever and innovative marri age of content and form that shows what can happen when the trassroots really t ake charge of the video production process.

The concept is borrowed without shame from Apple’s recent “switch” campaign, bu t there’s a lot to like here:

  • First-person testimony from real people
  • Nice trick to embed video direclty in the webpage so it plays without plugins or clicking play
  • Invitation to make your own video — and detailed instructions for doing it. (Bonus points for self-propagating meme.)

This effort was totally independent from the Dean Campaign, and it shows that i f you empower the grassroots they can do just as well (or better!) than the exp ensive media consultants.

Nice job. This is a tactic to remember for future campaigns.

Experiences with a wifi laptop at home

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A year ago, I was proud to call myself “the least wired technology consultant I know” because my home computer was a Pentium-200 box with a dialup modem. I could get online, but only if I had to. And mostly, I didn’t.

Since then, my sweetie Molly moved in. Because she was taking a GIS class, we got an up-to-date PC, DSL and a wireless base station. (Phone jack and office are not particularly near each other, and my 1938 house isn’t that conducive to wiring projects. Plus, I’m lazy.)

About a month ago, we got a gently used iBook from Molly’s brother. Although I’ve had laptops at work for a while, having one at home has really changed the way I relate to the Internet in my day-to-day life. Continue reading →

Great list of inline HTML editors

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Paul Browning at the University of Bristol (UK) has pulled together a fantastic list of “through the web” WYSIWG HTML editor widgets, with technical notes on each. This should be a valuable resource for anybody building content management systems. (You know who you are.)

Update July 2006: looks like that resource is gone.   A more recent resource is Peter Krantz’s evaluation of WYSIWYG editors.

Dogwood Initiative: a great model for grassroots environmental group web

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I’m very proud to post a link to the new website of Dogwood Initiative, who have firmly established themselves as leading-edge communicators in the Northwest environmental movement by creati ng a website that focuses on publishing original news and analysis about enviro nmental issues in BC.

Will Horter, Michael Begg and the rest of the team at Dogwood really understand the advocacy power of making news, and commenting in real-time on breaking new s. And they’re putting that understanding into action. Check out what they’re doing — I really think it’s a model for small grassroots advocacy groups.

h4. What they’re producing

They’ve defined five issue areas (“beats”) that they’re covering: “Democracy”

:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/democracy, “Forests”:http://www.dogwoodinitia tive.org/forests, “Energy”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/energy, “First Nati ons”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/firstnations and “Community”:http://www.d ogwoodinitiative.org/.

For each issue area, they’re producing several types of content:

  • “Dogwood Bulletins”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/Pages/newsroom/bullet in.php — short, original, informally-written analysis and opinion pieces. Plu s occasional “breaking news.” (Will is one of those people who occasionally re ceives unmarked envelopes from “inside sources.”) This is the really innovativ e stuff — it’s a kind of writing that most enviros simply aren’t doing. It bo rrows heavily from the ideas of blogging, and applies these ideas to an issue-a dvocacy context.
  • “News Stories”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/Pages/newsroom/newsstories .php — Short summaries of news stories from the mainstrem media.
  • “In the News”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/Pages/newsroom/inthenews.ph p — news clips specifically mentioning Dogwood Initiative.

    Every month, they pull together their “greatest hits” into an email newslette

r titled “Make Waves”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/Pages/features/makewaves .php.

They’re also doing “the usual” kind of advocacy writing: occasional reports,

action alerts, etc.

h4. How they present it

We worked long and hard with Will and Michael on figuring out how best to prese nt their stuff. While I don’t think we nailed it perfectly, there are a few ke y ideas that I think are worth calling out:

  • They really tried to focus on the Dogwood Bulletins. That’s the original, ho t news. We put Bulletins in the right-hand column of every page “above the fol d.”
  • They prominently feature the “Make Waves” email newsletter signup on every pa ge — Dogwood really wants to gather email addresses in order to identify and b uild relationships with readers.
  • In addition to featuring issue-specific content on each issue page of the sit e, they pull all of the content together into a single “Newsroom”:http://www.do gwoodinitiative.org/Pages/newsroom/newsroom.php that provides a one-stop archiv e of everything they publish.
  • All of the news content on the site is also made available as a “syndicated R DF feed”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/index.rdf so that other websites, con tent aggregators, and people who like to use RSS newsreaders can easily republi s, redistribute and otherwise propagate Dogwood’s memes.

h4. Technical details

There are lots of ways to build a site like this. We chose the popular bloggin g software MovableType, mainly because its writing interface is incredibly well -designed. Each content type has its own blog, and each blog has the same set of issue categories.

“Andrew Burkhalter”:http://blogs.onenw.org/andrewb, ONE/Northwest’s main Web Du de, threw together a handful of basic MovableType templates that created “conte nt chunks” which could then be included via PHP includes in the basic page temp lates. One of our amazing volunteers, Jesse Lee, hacked together some quick PH P code that drew issue-specific content from the different blogs for the Newsro om page. We subcontracted the design work to the talented “Brad Hornick”:http: //www.bradhornick.com. Dogwood will be using either DreamWeaver or Contribute to maintain the non-dynamic content, which they don’t expect to change much.

The email newsletter is powered by ONE/Northwest’s “email list hosting service” :http://www.onenw.org/bin/page.cfm/secid/6.

Other tools we could have used — and may well use on future projects — includ e “pMachine”:http://www.pmachine.com, “Plone”:http://www.plone.org, and “Drupal “:http://www.drupal.org, among many others.

h4. Still a work in progress…

While I think the site is a great model in many ways, like any project, there a re definitely a few things I think we and Dogwood could do better and/or got pu t off until “phase 2.” Among them:

  • Dogwood hasn’t yet turned on MovableType’s comment features. I hope they do soon, because an important part of the power of online grassroots journalism is the community of feedback and commentary that you can start to create. In a f uture version of the site, I could also see letting site users write their own articles in separate “Diaries” ala “DailyKos”:http://www.dailykos.com. But tha t’s a pretty major undertaking, and will require a whole new backend system.
  • Some of the features that are under development, but not quite there yet, inc lude: an image library; an online activism center (that’s “centre” if you’re Ca nadian); site search; and issue-specific RDF feeds.

Dogwood Initiative: a great model for grassroots environmental group websites

3 Replies

I’m very proud to post a link to the new website of Dogwood Initiative, who have firmly established themselves as leading-edge communicators in the Northwest environmental movement by creating a website that focuses on publishing original news and analysis about environmental issues in BC.

Will Horter, Michael Begg and the rest of the team at Dogwood really understand the advocacy power of making news, and commenting in real-time on breaking news. And they’re putting that understanding into action. Check out what they’re doing — I really think it’s a model for small grassroots advocacy groups.

h4. What they’re producing

They’ve defined five issue areas (“beats”) that they’re covering: “Democracy”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/democracy, “Forests”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/forests, “Energy”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/energy, “First Nations”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/firstnations and “Community”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/.

For each issue area, they’re producing several types of content:

  • “Dogwood Bulletins”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/Pages/newsroom/bulletin.php — short, original, informally-written analysis and opinion pieces. Plus occasional “breaking news.” (Will is one of those people who occasionally receives unmarked envelopes from “inside sources.”) This is the really innovative stuff — it’s a kind of writing that most enviros simply aren’t doing. It borrows heavily from the ideas of blogging, and applies these ideas to an issue-advocacy context.
  • “News Stories”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/Pages/newsroom/newsstories.php — Short summaries of news stories from the mainstrem media.
  • “In the News”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/Pages/newsroom/inthenews.php — news clips specifically mentioning Dogwood Initiative.

    Every month, they pull together their “greatest hits” into an email newsletter titled “Make Waves”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/Pages/features/makewaves.php.

They’re also doing “the usual” kind of advocacy writing: occasional reports, action alerts, etc.

h4. How they present it

We worked long and hard with Will and Michael on figuring out how best to present their stuff. While I don’t think we nailed it perfectly, there are a few key ideas that I think are worth calling out:

  • They really tried to focus on the Dogwood Bulletins. That’s the original, hot news. We put Bulletins in the right-hand column of every page “above the fold.”
  • They prominently feature the “Make Waves” email newsletter signup on every page — Dogwood really wants to gather email addresses in order to identify and build relationships with readers.
  • In addition to featuring issue-specific content on each issue page of the site, they pull all of the content together into a single “Newsroom”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/Pages/newsroom/newsroom.php that provides a one-stop archive of everything they publish.
  • All of the news content on the site is also made available as a “syndicated RDF feed”:http://www.dogwoodinitiative.org/index.rdf so that other websites, content aggregators, and people who like to use RSS newsreaders can easily republis, redistribute and otherwise propagate Dogwood’s memes.

h4. Technical details

There are lots of ways to build a site like this. We chose the popular blogging software MovableType, mainly because its writing interface is incredibly well-designed. Each content type has its own blog, and each blog has the same set of issue categories.

“Andrew Burkhalter”:http://blogs.onenw.org/andrewb, ONE/Northwest’s main Web Dude, threw together a handful of basic MovableType templates that created “content chunks” which could then be included via PHP includes in the basic page templates. One of our amazing volunteers, Jesse Lee, hacked together some quick PHP code that drew issue-specific content from the different blogs for the Newsroom page. We subcontracted the design work to the talented “Brad Hornick”:http://www.bradhornick.com. Dogwood will be using either DreamWeaver or Contribute to maintain the non-dynamic content, which they don’t expect to change much.

The email newsletter is powered by ONE/Northwest’s “email list hosting service”:http://www.onenw.org/bin/page.cfm/secid/6.

Other tools we could have used — and may well use on future projects — include “pMachine”:http://www.pmachine.com, “Plone”:http://www.plone.org, and “Drupal”:http://www.drupal.org, among many others.

h4. Still a work in progress…

While I think the site is a great model in many ways, like any project, there are definitely a few things I think we and Dogwood could do better and/or got put off until “phase 2.” Among them:

  • Dogwood hasn’t yet turned on MovableType’s comment features. I hope they do soon, because an important part of the power of online grassroots journalism is the community of feedback and commentary that you can start to create. In a future version of the site, I could also see letting site users write their own articles in separate “Diaries” ala “DailyKos”:http://www.dailykos.com. But that’s a pretty major undertaking, and will require a whole new backend system.
  • Some of the features that are under development, but not quite there yet, include: an image library; an online activism center (that’s “centre” if you’re Canadian); site search; and issue-specific RDF feeds.

Interesting conference: Digital Democracy Teach-In

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Uber-tech publishers O’Reilly are putting on a Digital Democracy teach-in in San Diego on February 9th. ]

Internet technologies are putting power back into the hands of the people. Using blogs, MeetUp, cell phones, websites, and plain old email, citizen activists have already altered the face of the next US presidential election. In a less-noticed but potentially seismic shift, concerned citizens are using the same tools to have more say in the day-to-day tasks of governing. Are we on the verge of a fundamental shift towards truer democracy, or will these new Internet-fueled tools be co-opted to maintain the status quo?

Update your advocacy strategies!

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This is a a particularly great rant from Marty Kearns on how “the advocacy movement need[s] to update our basic advocacy architecture and campaign strategies to adopt to a much more dynamic political landscape.”

Worth a read — it distills a great deal of thinking Marty has been doing over the past few months in to a focused, realistic piece.

Expert review finds Internet absentee voting too insecure to use; Pentag

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The New York Times has an incredibly important story that need s an activist push.

The government asked a panel of experts to review its proposed electronic votin g system which it plans to test in the 2004 election cycle with real live voter s. The experts concluded that the system was fundamentally insecure and could not be made secure enough to use. The government plans to press ahead anyway.

The panel said, “There really is no good way to build such a voting system with out a radical change in overall architecture of the Internet and the PC, or som e unforeseen security breakthrough. The SERVE project is thus too far ahead of its time, and should wait until there is a much improved security infrastructur e to build upon.”