Interesting writeup of how MoveOn is using Flickr as a distributed photo sharing application.
And of course, in typical MoveOn style, they’ve invented what sounds like a useful add-on — tools for email-based submissions of photos and for allowing a distributed network of users to review and approve photos — but are not sharing those tools with others.
As the Seattle PI reports, Washington State is about to launch its new, federally-mandated, statewide voter registration file. This is good news for grassroots activist groups who might want to “enhance” their membership databases with information from voter registration files in order to do a better job of encouraging their members to get out and vote.
The creation of uniform statewide voter registration files is one of the few bits of good news to come out of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which otherwise seemed to be mainly about helping Republicans steal elections by funding inseucre electronic voting machines for many states. (But that’s another story, I suppose.)
I’m hopeful that these new voter files will make it far easier and cheaper for lots of different groups to use voter file information. For example, imagine being able to enter a person into your membership database, and immediately learn whether or not that person is a frequent voter — so you can figure out whether it is worth the time and effort to phonebank them at election time.
I’m also hopeful that this development will help break the strangehold that a few private data companies have managed to establish on statewide voter file information, which previously had to be patched together from a mishmash of often-low-quality county records.
What a pile of crap, name calling, bullying and lies. Note the great use of “some people” straw man, the neat metonymy of “collectivism” for “communism” and other typical right-wing propaganda techniques. The topic at hand is drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but really, does it matter?
For some people, environmentalism is collectivism in drag. Such people use environmental causes and rhetoric not to change the political climate for the purpose of environmental improvement. Rather, for them, changing the society’s politics is the end, and environmental policies are mere means to that end.
The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society’s balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism — of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America — is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals’ lives. This is done in the name of equality.
People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.
Therefore, one of the collectivists’ tactics is to produce scarcities, particularly of what makes modern society modern — the energy requisite for social dynamism and individual autonomy. Hence collectivists use environmentalism to advance a collectivizing energy policy. Focusing on one energy source at a time, they stress the environmental hazards of finding, developing, transporting, manufacturing or using oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.
A quarter of a century of this tactic applied to ANWR is about 24 years too many. If geologists were to decide that there were only three thimbles of oil beneath area 1002, there would still be something to be said for going down to get them, just to prove that this nation cannot be forever paralyzed by people wielding environmentalism as a cover for collectivism.
Amanda “Bee” Hickman offers a great little rant titled The Great Database Caper:
There are great databases geared towards non-profit, membership organizations, but there is a catch: most non-profits use their databases (and their members) primarily to raise funds. Organizations that prioritize member engagement want to use their database to look at members as more than deep pockets and eventually they’ll hit a wall using a fundraising database to do that. And most non-profit membership database packages are essentially fundraising databases. There are some great examples of organizing databases out there, but not one of them is perfect.
Perhaps even more interesting than Amanda’s sharp insights is the nonprofit database coders’ pile-on in the comments.
At ONE/Northwest, we’ve been doing a bunch of experiments with different techniques for managing ourselves and our work, techniques designed to help us continue to be a nimble, flexible, effective and happy team as we have grown from 8 to 12+ over the past couple of years.
We’re using tools and techniques like instant messaging, VOIP, Wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, Today Messages, Weekly Plans, dotProject, Getting Things Done, Salesforce and more. Not to mention good old fashioned face-to-face meetings
But the biggest thing I’m learning from all of these experiments is how much there is to learn about how to work effectively in a complex network of poeple and information. And I’m realizing that progressive movements are going to need to invest a LOT more resources into teaching our people how to work effectively in this new kind of environment. It’s not obvious, it’s not intuitive, and while the tools are powerful, it takes some experience to wield them.
Update: More on our experiments coming soon, I promise. In the meantime, feel free to chime in with your collaboration frustrations. What keeps you from working most effectively with your colleagues, both within and outside your organization?