My first live report from Planetwork 2004.

I’m sitting here in the “Future of Environmentalism” panel discussion, featuring Alex Steffen, Gideon Rosenblatt, and Chris Davis. Markos Zuniga was supposed to attend as wel.

Here are some stream-of-conciousness notes. Gideon empahsized the importance of networking people, not networking computers, the importance of trust between people, and the need to do a lot more experiments that connect online organizing and offline actions.

Chris Davis spoke of CommEnSpace’s evolution from visualizing traditional geographic data towards visualizing private data sets (e.g. membership databases, etc.) Importance of getting data into a context that allows for richer analysis.

Example: Washington State Protected Lands Database — attempt to combine lots of information from many small local land trusts and combine it with state/federal information to get an accurate big picture. No one organization can do this alone. — too many small groups doing small projects. CommEnSpace is trying to convert GIS dataset into a web database — to allow folks to upload their information to that database. Collaborative GIS!

Challenge: dealing with archival data, analyzing changes over time. Projecting changes into the future — at what rate will further degradation (or protection) occur?

Alex Steffen briefly described the Scoop publishing system that powers [DailyKos}(http://www.dailykos.com). Alex asks: "what comes next after blogs?" They're great for coalating what's already out there, but what tools do we need to really produce new ideas?

Questions/comments from the floor?

Q: How does CommEnSpace scale its work to international issues?

Chris Davis: We're most effective when we really understand the information we're working with. When we move outside of our bioregion, our knowledge of context decreases. Which is why we focus our work pretty tightly. One exception: when you develop new techniques for analysis -- e.g. work we've done on deforestation and remote imaging. That's very transferrable.

Q: Need to make the distinction between networks of people (blogs) and networks of organizations. Very hard for groups of people to coalesce into organizations. And organizations are slower to adopt these new tools. Will self-forming groups make organizations irrelevant? Need to imagine how to transform organziations! What kinds of organizations should evolve, and is this transformation happening?

Gideon: Yup, almost all of ONE/Northwest's work is organizational. Marguerite Casey Foundation is trying to move all of their work with low-income families towards empowering these communities through networks. This is a sign of hope for organizational change.

What inspired Movement as Network was frustration with groups' preoccupation with fundraising. Too much "capacity building" training focused on one "standard" organizational model -- build membership base via direct mail. Groups need to be more specialized, more differntiated, and more integrated across the movement. Brief description of Resource Organizations, Solution Organizations and People Organizations. (This is detailed out more on the Movement as Network website.

We don't have organizations that can mobilize large numbers of people for regional-scale environmental issues -- too many issue-focused groups with tiny membership bases that can't aggregate their power.

Q: What might a People Organization look like?

Gideon: Honestly, I'm not sure. It probably looks a lot like MoveOn. An entity that can build a strong brand (in the simple sense, a logo that is tied to values, not as it's been distorted by corporate marketers) that represents a way to align day-to-day life with deeply-held values. One core aspect is that it is "of service" to its members. Focuses on listening. Has some independent editorial attitude and a point of view. E.g. a Washington State group that broadly represents "the environment" to a broad public. Aggreates information and services from many organizations, personalized. Focus on both civic and economic actions. Solution Organizations need to feed.

Too much energy is going into fragmented development/fundraising efforts. But, admittedly, the financial realities around this are really tough.

Q: What if People Organizations can financially support Solution Organizations?

Gideon: That's the hope.

Randy Painter (Care2.com): Some national organizations are already launching social networks using Care2's new social network solutions. Viral marketing.

Q: Picking up on idea of fragmentation of groups (Jim Fournier mentioned this in opening session). Metcalfe's law. Huge value in connecting groups and letting people interact more with groups. Most groups are still in "broadcast" mode. How much economic engagement is there in social activism?

Alex Steffen: Our organizational practices haven't evolved to keep up with new tools. How can we create an culture of interactive content creation & distribution. How can organizations evolve their existing content for new publishing formats? e.g. Meme that the progressive community needs more "public intellectuals." But public intellectual idea is a broadcast, non-interactive idea. Maybe not relevant in a networked age. What would a newtorked intellectual look like? [Jon: this is a key idea. Facilitators, not speakers!]

There may be better ways to organize than blasting out messages, either online or offline.

Gideon: What you’re talking about is “structural equivalence” — too many nodes in the network playing roles that are too similar — leads to competition! Ego loves to be at the center, have control of the network.

“Union strategy” — goal is to link the nodes in the network to each other. Takes a lot of guts to do connect the membership to itself?

Q: As an average person who cares about many diverse issues, how can I get networked in and participate in many issues effectively?

Gideon: Exactly. “Environment” may be too narrow. (Recommended reading: Cultural Creatives.) Bigger opportunity is broader in nature. Networks have to scale from small to large issues, and from local to international geographies.

Phil Klein: Wanted to come back to idea of differnet types of networks (networks of people vs. networks of orgs vs. networks of data vs. face-to-face networks). More work necessary to identify the qualities of these networks, and think about how to better connect them.

Q: Civil society organizations are trying to coalesce globally. Need more focus on global scale at which civil society is evolving.

Q: Just had a conference in Australia addressing some of these issues. We think solution for funding is to have gov’ts and corporations as clients for these tools. Joint ventures between foundations and technology providers that have “dual use” in nonprofit and govt/for-profit sectors.

Gideon: Claire Gaudiani writes about this. How philanthropy can fund things that are too risky for the private sector.

Q: Coming back to “What does a people organization look like” I think that it really has to be stronlgy centered in values. Even though this is an anathema work to much of the Left. We are too fragmented by issue, need to unify around values. Reference to George Lakoff’s book “Moral Politics.”

Brian Webster: Union vs. hub reminds me of Howard Dean campaign. Supporters connecting to and supporting other supporters. E.g. their “virtual ad agency” that wasn’t under central control, nobody asked them to do it.

Alex: Uptake of these tool is just beginning. Republicans have perfected a top-down Internet strategy. Dems are trying to evolve a bottom-up/side-to-side strategy. (See Smart Mobs vs. Amway for more on this.) We’ll see whether this works.

Q: Gotta be careful about oversimplifying. Republicans are doing some bottom-up stuff. (e.g. www.freerepublic.com). (Gotta jet, my battery is draining). Session is almost over.