Monthly Archives: May 2005

Ed’s Hunches…

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Are usually pretty good ones, but these two hunches are, I think, especially solid. Drawing on a recent column by Michael Stein noting some trends in transactional giving for post-Tsunami relief, Ed theorizes:

  • Supporters don’t want to be members. As Michael noted, people are increasingly giving on an “as-needed basis,” and I think this stems from a desire to be helpful while protecting one’s privacy and identity. People who are happy to support your cause in a variety of temporary ways are reluctant to become permanently affiliated with your organization. As I said recently, “People want to give, but they don’t want to be on your email list, because they’re not going to read your boring newsletter, and they don’t trust you to keep their address out of the wrong hands.”
  • Don’t email them, they’ll Google you (or read your feed, or search for your tags.) Michael also cites “information overload,” and I think this is significantly eroding (or at least transforming) the value of email as a mass communication channel. Everyone’s Inbox is too full these days. Non-essential messages get deleted immediately. Email’s not going away anytime soon, but relying on it as the only online channel is going to yield diminishing returns.

    • Hand that man a cigar. Web publishing is becoming relatively more important as RSS and tagging “unlock” web content from its site of origin, and let it roam through the internets.

    Ubuntu Uses Plone

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    I was just checking out the website for Ubuntu Linux, which is fast becoming the “hot” Debian-based Linux distribution. At first I was merely admiring their clean and good-looking site design. Then as I clicked further, I realized they were using Plone as their CMS.

    I’m a little surprised that I hadn’t read of this before in the Plone community — Ubuntu is a high-profile site in the open-source community, and their choice of Plone is a big vote of confidene in the platform.

    I suppose it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, though. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth is also sponsoring SchoolTool an open-source calendaring-and-more toolkit for schools that is written in Zope and Python, which also power Plone.

    Still, it makes me realize that the Plone community can and should do more to toot its own horn. Which I know they’re planning to do as 2.1 nears release.

    On the other side of the coin, it appears that Ubuntu is using the commercial PHP product VBulletin for its user forums. It’s a telling reminder that Plone’s forum products still can’t touch the high-end power of a dedicated forums product like VBulletin.

    Playing around with Plone 2.1 alpha2

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    Being a curious sort, I got up the gumption to install Plone 2.1 Alpha 2 on my desktop box today, just to see how it’s coming along. Aaron at NetCorps, being even somewhat bolder, did this a couple of weeks ago and liked what he saw.

    I, too, am pretty excited. Plone 2.1 is currently heading for a late July/early August launch, and it’s shaping up to be a major leap forward that belies the “point one” (or “point oh-five”) version number increase.

    The things that I think will have a big immediate impact on the average ONE/Northwest website include:

    • Smart Folders — a total refactoring (and renaming) of the confusing-and-thus-not-very-useful “Topics” feature. Most importantly, Smart Folders has a great new UI that lets a non-technical user create dynamic listings of different types of content. It’s gonna be great for quickly creating flexible listings of events, news items, document libraries, etc.

    • On a related note, listings of items can now be instantly sorted without reloading the entire page. Really nice usability trick.

    • Short names for pages are automatically created based on the page title (rather than the date/time, which was really ugly). This means that users won’t have to think about this anymore. Hooray!

    • index_html is no more — users can choose whichever page they want to be the “default” page for a folder. I can’t wait not to have to explain that anymore to folks.

    • Top-level folders are automatically added as site tabs, which is a nice practice. (And can be disabled.)

    • Single items can be cut/copied/deleted from the object view — no more need to switch over to contents view. Again, a welcome usability tweak.

    The downside: Plone 2.1 Alpha 2 is (surprise!) still alpha-quality code, which means it’s definitely not ready for production use yet. There are quite a few bugs left to squash before it goes primetime. Andrew is trying to convince me to go up to the Vancouver sprint and I have to say, this is definitely inspiring me to want to go and try to help.

    “Collaborative Technology” or “Social Tools”?

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    Stowe Boyd thinks that metaphors matter when it comes to talking about collaboration technology, er… social tools.

    On one hand, it may seem obvious and sensible that we are talking about people collaborating: sharing information, coordinating activities, and posting messages. Working toward shared goals, in project teams, trying to get things done. All very straight forward, and, perhaps not so obviously, very corporate, very industrial.

    Superficially, there is nothing wrong with a focus on collaborative technology. But I believe that this perspective, this metaphor, is flawed. It stresses the wrong side of the coin.

    The collaborative technology metaphor highlights the machinery, the technology platform that underlies people collaborating, and underemphasizes what people are doing: socializing. And I don’t mean socializing, like gossiping, per se. But I do mean the creation, care, and feeding of social ties, the use of trust and reputation, and the application of digital identity.

    Genetically Engineered Food Not So Good for Rats

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    I’m shocked, shocked to learn that it appears that genetically engineered corn seems to be causing health problems in rats, according to secret research conducted by Monsanto and published by the UK’s “The Independent” newspaper today.

    Rats fed on a diet rich in genetically modified corn developed abnormalities to internal organs and changes to their blood, raising fears that human health could be affected by eating GM food.

    The Independent on Sunday can today reveal details of secret research carried out by Monsanto, the GM food giant, which shows that rats fed the modified corn had smaller kidneys and variations in the composition of their blood.

    According to the confidential 1,139-page report, these health problems were absent from another batch of rodents fed non-GM food as part of the research project.

    But of course Monsanto is holding back on the details:

    The full details of the rat research are included in the main report, which Monsanto refuses to release on the grounds that “it contains confidential business information which could be of commercial use to our competitors”.

    We simply can’t trust immoral corporations like Monsanto to be truthful about the possible consequences of their tinkering with our food supply.

    Email Traffic Analysis in the Enron Case — and Beyond

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    Interesting article about the use of email network analysis in the Enron case in today’s NYTimes.

    Scientists had long theorized that tracking the e-mailing and word usage patterns within a group over time – without ever actually reading a single e-mail – could reveal a lot about what that group was up to. The Enron material gave Mr. Skillicorn’s group and a handful of others a chance to test that theory, by seeing, first of all, if they could spot sudden changes.

    For example, would they be able to find the moment when someone’s memos, which were routinely read by a long list of people who never responded, suddenly began generating private responses from some recipients? Could they spot when a new person entered a communications chain, or if old ones were suddenly shut out, and correlate it with something significant?

    While it’s great that this technology can be used to track down corporate criminals, it also other applications:

    The scientists who are studying the Enron data said they assumed intelligence agencies are doing similar classified analyses on international e-mail traffic. Since World War II, a five-nation consortium of the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand have cooperated in a vast communications collection and analysis program called Echelon, for example, one that has assumed increasing importance since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    It’s not a big leap from there to domestic email surveillance and analysis, say of “eco-terror” networks or “anti-war organizers.” Kinda makes you start thinking about encryption, eh?

    Tools I Use

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    Michael Gilbert threw together (ha! Michael never really “throws” anything together) a nice description of his daily publishing workflow, and Sonny Cloward picked up the theme with “What’s In Your Toolbox.” Here’s my contribution to the conversation:

    OS: Windows XP

    Email/Calendaring/Task list: Outlook 2003

    Spam filtering (client-side): SpamBayes Outlook plugin

    Spam filtering (server-side): SpamAssassin plus whatever other magic Dean has cooked up

    Personal task management: GTD Outlook Add-in

    Word processing: MS Word

    Spreadsheets: MS Excel

    Collaborative time/project tracking: dotProject (heavily customized to integrate with our database)

    Web browser: Firefox

    RSS reader: Bloglines

    Bookmark management: Del.icio.us

    Blogging: WordPress and MovableType

    Web Content Mangement System: homebrew ColdFusion CMS, soon to be Plone

    Photo gallery: Gallery

    Photo editing: Macromedia Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop Elements

    Instant messaging: Gaim

    VoIP: Skype

    Online meetings: Microsoft LiveMeeting

    FTP: FileZilla

    SSH: PuTTY

    Anti-spyware: Spybot & MS Anti-Spyware

    Media player: iTunes

    Desktop search: Copernic

    Preferred web search: Google

    Virus protection: ClamWin

    Compression App: 7-zip

    Whew.

    George, Meet Michael…

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    Okay, I admit it. I played hooky on Friday afternoon to catch a matinee of Star Wars at the Cinerama. It was actually pretty good — if your expectations aren’t too high. The best line, and an obvious swipe by George Lucas at the war-mongering fascism of our Dear Leader George il-Bush:

    Darth Vader: You’re either with me or against me!
    Obi-Wan Kenobi: Only a Sith thinks in absolutes.

    Bumperstickers doubtless will be issued.

    Spatial Shopping Lists

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    Pure genius from my soon-to-be colleague Steve Andersen.

    One day it occurred to me to make grocery lists that matched the spatial layout of the store. When I am making a list of things to buy, I start by drawing a rectangle (the rough shape of the store) and as I think of items to buy, I write them on the rectangle, reflecting where they actually are in the store.

    Spatial Shopping List

    It can’t happen here? Yes it can. It is.

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    John Emerson at Social Design notes writes:

    After this weekend’s massacre in Uzbekistan, the government has sealed off the roads into Andijan. T.V.Journalists were forcibly removed from the city and unable to return, but so too is the news. The government is blocking foreign Web sites and broadcasts into the country by foreign news channels including BBC World, CNN and Russian network NTV. In its place of domestic coverage, the state run television has replaced its news broadcasts in the region with art movies, music clips, and nature photos.

    It’s not the first time we�ve seen the arts used as a deliberate means of stifling political engagement.

    It won’t be the last.

    From the New York Times, May 15:

    “Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday. The corporation’s board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations.”

    This disturbs me. And not just because NPR’s music shows pretty much suck.

    When the leaders don’t lead, others leaders emerge

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    Once again, Seattle is pointing the way forward towards sustainability. Seattle mayor Greg Nickels (who often seems to spend most of his time promoting the pet schemes of Paul Allen) has emerged as a leader on global warming, forging a coalition of 132 cities — Republican and Democrat, representing 29 million people in 35 states — to observe the greenhouse gas limits of the Kyoto Treaty.

    The New York Times covered the story this weekend.

    Although it won’t have a huge impact on global warming by itself, this kind of effort is great politics, and it really puts the lie to the Bush Administration’s politics of delay, denial and destruction.

    Perhaps not coincidentally, my friend John Mauro started working on this initiaitve about two weeks ago, so I can only assume that this sudden burst of coverage (and growth in the coalition) is the result of him kicking things up a notch down at city hall.

    The role of cell phone text messaging in state legislative advocacy

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    The use of cellphone text messaging (aka SMS, for short messsage service) in activism contexts has already been well documented by Howard Rheingold, among many others. But most of the celebrated examples have been drawn from the contexts of international national-elections and associated mass protests: the recent elections in Spain, the Phillippines, Korea, etc. A recent AP story noted that newspaper editors are starting to feel threatened by the ability of text messaging to provide instant news, opinion, and rumors far faster than traditional print & television media.

    I’ve been thinking a bit about how this technology could best be applied in the context of Northwest environmental activism. Of course there’s the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, but was really an international-scale protest event, rather than a local/regional-scale environmental campaign.

    The challenge is that most Northwest environmental issues are neither top-of-mind, a source of mass public outrage or particularly fast-moving. I’m also wondering how cell-phone text messaging could be most effectively used outside of a protest-organizing context. How can it be more of a news & information service?

    One thing I’m thinking is that it might be worthwhile to set up an instant messaging network to connect environmental lobbyists in Olympia with each other and with their colleagues back in the main offices in Seattle and elsewhere. While this is not a very “public-facing” kind of application, I think it may be very high-value. Why? Well, critical moments in legislation often happen very quickly, and require quick coordination among a bunch of busy people who are often hard to reach. These people already carry cell phones, but it’s often not practical to provide quick information updates via conversation.

    What I imagine is the text-message equivalent of an email listserv… where lobbyists can instantly post quick updates on conversations, deals, etc. to their collleagues. A way to improve our “operational intelligence” if you will. Also, this will help the lobbyists improve communication with their more distant collegauges — Executive Directors, Communications Directors and Field Organizers — back in Seattle and elsewhere.

    A service like this would be easy to get going — nearly all of the principles already have cellphones — although some might require upgrades to SMS-capable phones. The only other piece would be to establish a centralized list to manage the updates.

    First (?) massive use of cell-phone activism — responding to the “nuclear option” threat

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    People For the American Way are preparing a massive text-messaging action alert to be launched in the event that Bill Frist pulls the trigger on the Senate’s “nuclear option.”

    By giving us your cell phone number, we will text message you as soon as Senate Republicans trigger the “nuclear option.” Embedded in that text message will be a link to the Senate switchboard. With the push of a couple buttons, your call � along with thousands of others � goes right through to the corridors of power demanding preservation of the filibuster.

    This is a brand new technology, and this is the first time it is being used on a large scale.

    It will be interesting to see how well this works. The fundamentals are pretty simple — I predict it won’t be long before grassroots groups are doing this with open-source software like Asterisk

    Hat tip to my colleague Sean Pender.

    “Mr. Floatie” protests sewage dumping

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    When you name your organization POOP (People Opposed to Outfall Pollution), it’s pretty obvious that your mascot is “Mr. Floatie.” And Mr. Floatie don’t like untreated sewage, so he recently showed up an all-candidates meeting in Victoria to, um, raise a stink about it.

    He wanted to highlight Victoria’s daily dumping of 120 million litres of raw sewage, but when he was barred from the meeting he said the refusal left him “a little bummed out.”

    Well done.

    Rockridge Institute Spins Off the “Longview Institute”

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    I noted with interest — and some confusion — that George Lakoff’s Rockridge Institute has spun off (?) a new organization, the Longview Institute.

    According to the Rockridge press release, the move is intended to expand the capacity available to address the huge demand for framing-based consulting services.

    But, the distinction between the two organizations seems pretty unclear:

    The Rockridge Institute will extend George Lakoff’s linguistics-based approach to public policy, political communications, and framing. Its central mission will be to produce the Rockridge Progressive Manual, a detailed guide to progressive values, ideas, reasoning, and language spanning all major issue areas. In the Longview Institute, the senior founding fellows Fred Block, Jerome Karabel, Ruth Rosen, Larry Wallack, Carole Joffe, Kristin Luker, and Troy Duster will pursue broad issues of policy, politics, and values while developing an overall progressive vision.

    I wonder if this is more a story of organizational chaos and/or personality conflict? The vagueness of the press release, and the fact that Longview seems to include seven out of eight of Rockridge’s senior analysts makes me wonder what the backstory is here.

    Anybody out there able to shed some more light on this?

    Why blogs are useful, and probably shouldn’t be thought of as “blogs”

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    Ed Batista is on a bit of a tear about the strategic significance of blogging for nonprofits. It’s all about cultivating a human voice and engaging in a conversation. Right on, Ed.

    Blogs are fantastic tools for individual expression, and they’re also fantastic tools for an organization seeking to reach its online audience precisely because blogging tools enable conversations, i.e. authentic, responsive, individual voices.

    The significant common factor isn’t the underlying blogging technology, but how you approach your online audience. Do you hand down stone tablets from the mountaintop? Or do you speak in a genuine, human voice…and ask questions…and respond to questions asked of you? If your answer is “Yes, all of the above” then you’re engaged in an effective conversation with your online audience, and whether you’re using a “blog” or not is irrelevant. If your answer is “No,” then you’re irrelevant (or you soon will be) and a “blog” won’t save you from the scrap heap.

    Plone Desktop Update

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    Last week, our friends at Enfold Systems released Plone Desktop 2.0 Beta with a free-for-non-commericial use license. (I blogged it with with great excitement.)

    We’ve tested Plone Desktop 2.0 a bit since then. Good news and bad to report.

    UPDATE: The conflict with PloneArticle I describe below has been fixed by an updated version of the DavPack product. Thanks to Enfold for providing such a quick fix. Now if I only can resolve some client-side permissions errors, I think we’ll be in business!

    Continue reading →

    StoreWars

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    Alex over at WorldChanging leaks a pre-release version of Store Wars, the latest viral media piece from the folks at Free Range Media (you may remember their last piece, “The Meatrix”).

    UPDATE: Now it links to the final release.

    The lessons viral media-makers should take from this are:

    1) Timing. Hitch a ride on the massive media campaign of a big movie launch.

    2) Humor. Be funny. Really funny. It takes time and talent.

    3) Production values. Make it not look like crap. This also takes time and talent — and probably costs real money, unless you can get a design shop like Free Range to do a pro bono job for you.

    May the farce be with you.