Politics, the environment, technology, activism. And stuff.
Posted in General on Jan 28th, 2010
I’ve been thinking a bunch about the challenges of making cultural transformation in the organizations I work with here at Groundwire. It’s a tough challenge. The first step, it seems, is about naming the changes we want to help folks make. Here are some rough notes that popped out as I was gathering my thoughts for [...]
Posted in General on Jan 24th, 2010
Center for a New American Dream has a nicely done “Alternative Gift Registry” tool (currently the #4 Google result for “gift registry”!) that allows you to create gift registries that de-emphasize consumerism (used goods, donations to charity, experiences rather than stuff, etc.). This is a great example of a nonprofit advocacy group coming up with [...]
Posted in General on Jan 12th, 2010
It occurred to me yesterday that the real challenge we[1] face is not the question of “how do we apply technology tools to organizations?” but more “how do we help organizations & people transform themselves so that they are more able to harness the power of technology?” [1] “we” = those of us standing astride the [...]
Posted in General on Sep 30th, 2009
From Marshall Ganz’s lectures on organizing: Stories of “now” articulate a challenge we face now, the choice we are called upon to make, and the meaning of “making the right choice”, in particular the hope that may be there. Stories of “now” are really stories set in the past, present and future. The challenge is now; [...]
Posted in General on Aug 27th, 2009
Stumbled across an interesting, resonant paragraph from Vinnie Mirchandani that worked best for me out of context: My concern with Social CRM is we will build better antennae and pick up even more… signals. But unless we have passionate (and empowered) employees who can follow up and do something about it, we will gradually turn off [...]
Posted in General on Jul 15th, 2009
Here’s a nice little online engagement tactic from our friends at Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families: when you build a “thank you” page for online donations or online activism, include Facebook Connect widget that invites people to become a Fan of your org. Nicely done!
Posted in General on Jul 11th, 2009
Brilliant manifesto, or reheated marketing pap? (David Eaves says the former, I’m less sure.) What’s your take?
Posted in General on Jan 18th, 2009
It will be very, very interesting to see how Obama’s new “Organizing For America” effort, run through the DNC, plays out. The new group, called Organizing for America, will be a “special project” of the Democratic National Committee, according to Obama transition spokesman Ben LaBolt, and it appears to be the primary vehicle for issue advocacy for Obama’s [...]
Posted in General on Nov 27th, 2008
Allison Fine throws some common sense on the fire in assessing post-election “crowdsourcing change” efforts. I’m going to shamelessly quote it at length because the message is worth amplifying and repeating. Oh, the sacrilege of criticizing well meaning crowd sourcing!! Shouldn’t citizens be allowed, nay encouraged!, to throw do-goody ideas against the wall so that we can then [...]
Posted in General on Jun 20th, 2008
The always-insightful Mark Schmitt has some interesting thoughts on the significance of internet-enabled low-transaction-cost issue organizing: Low transaction-cost organizing will present many challenges to the way we think about politics and how to regulate it. Much of the regulation of money in politics, for example, is based on limiting organized money (PACs, bundling) because some people can organize and [...]
Posted in General on Jun 19th, 2008
Kevin Kelley rolls a great little neologism, “Scenius”: Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is [...]
Posted in General on May 1st, 2008
Zephyr Teachout waxes eloquent about May Day: May Day is not about people in the streets. I like streets as much as the next person, but streets, like the internet, are only tools–in 1890 they were powerful tools, and the right tools to use, but if you confuse the image with the action, you can spend [...]
Posted in General on Mar 19th, 2008
[18:00] I’m liveblogging from the event ONE/Northwest is hosting tonight, titled “Political Campaigns and Technology.” We’ve got about 50 people in our office here in Seattle, gathered together for a fast-paced peer-to-peer learning session in which we’re going to explore the various ways that political campaigns are using technology to build and sustain relationships, [...]
Posted in General on Jan 26th, 2008
New research suggests the Malcom Gladwell-popularized theory of “Influentials” (or Gatekeepers) doesn’t hold water. Really interesting article in FastCompany about research Duncan Watts: Watts, for one, didn’t think the gatekeeper model was true. It certainly didn’t match what he’d found studying networks. So he decided to test it in the real world by remounting the [...]