Netcentric Advocacy

The next phase of social enterprise?

Here is an interesting clip from a conversation on the Omidyar network. There is an interesting thread running on the next generation of social enterprise. I am enjoying the banter around economic, behavioral and economic trends. The point that I am interested in pulling over here is the increasing interest on micro-scale enterprise connected via a dense web of communications (no surprise as the network stems from the E-bay vision). Thankfully, the ideas are stretching over to the discussion of nonprofit strategy.

This is a lot like the transition from the mini computer to the micro computer industry a few decades back. In the mini era, each company had its own vertical stack of activities, from making CPUs, disks, Operating systems, etc. The microcomputer came along and the industry became "layered" with Intel and AMD doing CPUs, Dell and Gateway doing boxes, Microsoft doing OS, etc.

This same "flip" could happen in philanthropy and social enterprise. Instead of creating 1 million+ "vertically integrated" non-profits (i.e. for which we need capacity building) there would be layers of services, into which service providers could seek their greatest value-added, in accordance with their vision. These layers, much like a protocol stack in communications networks, would be able to evolve independently. Maybe this is the third generation of social enterprise.

New angles on the network-centric approach to nonprofit work! I love the following story which is the heart of the need for a new approach. This same dynamic starts every day to address a huge set of injustices. It stems from three realities (lack of an easy connection to groups and others that may be working on the issue, lack of strategy by larger community to embrace micro agendas and empower local walk in campaigns and the cultural belief that the best way to get movement on an issue is to create a group)

I think that the biggest bang-for-buck for social enterprise would be to make it simpler for people with a vision to take action to make a difference. For example, I know of a family who lost a niece in a window-cord accident, and out of their grief, they want to start a 501(c)3 for child safety. Rather than starting a whole new organization for that purpose, wouldn't it be great if they could activate their vision, based on an array of off-the-shelf services?

A new network-centric strategy can address each of those motivating factors over time.

Forget the Mice..... New Networks Are Stampeding Herds

Here is a fantastic set of interview notes, interview quotes and research dumped into an article that pulls together some nice insights but falls a bit short on the conclusions.

The Chronicle: 7/22/2004: The Mice That Roared

I have clipped some of the interesting informaiton here

Each month, 5,000 to 10,000 people who regularly read the Heritage Foundation's news and opinion Web site meet in person in 150 cities to discuss current events with fellow conservatives and get to know each other.

More than six months after Mr. Dean's campaign fizzled, his approach to soliciting donors and organizing volunteers online continues to have an effect not just on the presidential campaign, but on charities and advocacy groups that are borrowing some of the campaign's ideas.

Jonathan Garthwaite, director of Townhall.com, the site operated by Heritage, says that after watching the Dean campaign, he realized he wanted to find a way to reach out to the site's readers and get them to organize local, in-person gatherings, in the hopes of building a grass-roots network of conservatives.

These people like other campaign networks are not getting babysitters, leaving home and running thru the rain to see a superstar or to meet Jonathan. They are getting together to see each other. Building a grass-roots network is really about lowering the barrier for people to connect and then stepping out of the way.

The most important thing he has taken away from this election cycle is a lesson that the Dean campaign drove home, says Mr. Garthwaite: "If you give your supporters a sense of ownership and the ability to give feedback, they will be your best salesmen."

Some big numbers of folks out there want ownership of their power. These supporters are not getting together to "sell" your opinion but to give voice to their own.

Observers in the nonprofit and political worlds say that, if nonprofit organizations are realistic in their expectations, they can learn a lot from the way candidates have used the Internet to attract supporters, build relationships, and raise money. The experts caution, however, that the short, definite time frame of political campaigns and the intense news-media coverage that accompanies them are important factors driving the presidential candidates' big online fund-raising numbers -- factors that charities don't often encounter.

Increasingly, it is safe to say that EVERYTHING with the ability to sway large portions of public opinion is hammered into a "definite time frame and an intense news-media coverage cycle". It will be difficult to pick 10 campaigns that moved the needle on public and policy choices that is not subject to an intense cycle of media attention and short window of opportunity to move the agenda. There is definitely important work that does not happen in public and huge things that happen in the dark of night or over a small kitchen table but I don't think they are moving the participation "needle."

This year's presidential race -- Dean's campaign, in particular -- has shown that online fund raising works when supporters feel they are an important part of the overall effort, says Phil Noble, founder of PoliticsOnline, an Internet publication. "It's the old, 'Get their hearts and minds, and their dollars will follow.'"

The Dean campaign didn't just ask for money online, it also solicited advice. In fact, Howard Dean decided to forgo federal financing of his campaign, and the spending limits that come with it, after putting the question to his e-mail list of more than 600,000 supporters.

McCurry seems to get the real shift. His quotes suggest that these new campaigns are not creating a sense or a feel of control. The new campaigns are listening and moving decision making power into the hands of the supporters.( Dean, Bushin30Seconds, etc.) ..."It's a call and response. I give you some critical piece of information about an issue that's important, and I ask you for your opinion back."

Then my favorite quote in the piece:

Veterans always say that soldiers go into battle for their fellow troops, not for their commanders, says Mr. Hlinko. "Why shouldn't the same be true for activism?" he asks. "Sure, there's a larger cause, there's a candidate, and you want to fight for him, but you're so much more likely to keep on fighting if you form close bonds with the people who are in that battle with you."

Disappointedly, the article refocuses on quickly into closing the loop on McCurry statements focusing the remaining paragraphs on implementation, fundraising and control.This all to familiar conclusion ends up with the "lets use networks to do the same old things we always wanted" conclusion.

The article and quotes from Nelson, Stuart and others clearly show that the timing, pace and behavior patterns are changing but the article falls short in recommending the proper next steps. The sector as a whole need to adopt a larger percentage of advocacy tactics and campaigns to the new tempos, behaviors and demands. While I think that Greg is absolutely correct in his closing remarks about the relationships Washington Toxics has cultivated. The very model traditional organizers employ has limitations. As Greg suggests traditional members would leave if they were exposed to the higher tempo of today's campaigns but most likely that new generations and a huge swath of Americans are not going to show interest in the old model in the first place.

As a sector, we need to think in terms of generational shifts and long term success because a huge percentage of Americans are being trained into a culture that fosters impulsive consumer behavior and on-demand everything. These new masses will win progress event by event, issue by issue but they are not interesting in joining a long term relationship. The looming disaster for our sector is to continue to demand we immediately get married to any potential activists when all they really want to do is date.

Speed of Disruptive Messaging via RSS and Blog Pings are Changing and new Rules of Engagement

"Talk Back" and back talk are the new fears of the big brands. In an interesting post from Global PR week a post discusses both a strategy and warning for advocacy movement. There are some great key concepts for campaign folks to consider.

These strategies play very well for decentralized network-centric advocacy efforts and less well for larger well known brands.

The Speed of Disruptive Messaging via RSS and Blog Pings are Changing the Rules of Engagement in the World of Micro Communications. Customers are actually starting to talk back to company brands through blogs (just as Cluetrain Manifesto authors, Doc Searls, Chris Locke, and David Weinberger predicted they would). One way of looking at the threat and why marketing techniques like “Brand Journalism” are arising is, as Elizabeth Albrycht of Corporate PR agreed, through the lens of political economy or power. "In the past, the company controlled communications. PR departments and employee relations (all backed by brand messaging) existed to spread the company vision. And, at the same time, these messages would assert the power of the corporation and its brands."Today, new technologies (such as blogging and RSS feeds) interrupt that power structure and its brand messages. Rather than being a technology of control (the press release, the corporate meeting, the annual report), blogging is a technology of un-control. On her blog, Albrycht said, "Blogging is one of those new technologies that makes the negotiations about power visible, vs. hiding them in a black box. Power needs secrecy and control to survive." Blogging threatens the power of brands and their message control because blogs facilitate

There are a few things that are controversial. I disagree with the general statement that "Power needs secrecy and control to survive". We are actually seeing the opposite effect. It all depends on the definition of power and "survive". All the trends in the age of connectivity are about freedom and speed. The power we are creating by trusting each others comments and other consumers is decentralized into many hands and therefore very redundant. It may disappear from the radar for a few days because it is fractionalize back into the hands of the masses but the ability for groups to quickly resyncronize is the new survivability of modern movements. Power that is distributed in the new dynamics of campaigns can not be controlled as effectively as in the past but it is still very real and very open.

The exact threat? The proliferation of RSS and related site syndication technologies have all rapidly given a voice to people who previously had no way of expressing their opinions. The Internet is no longer a closed-medium where knowledge does not affect or crossover into the offline, "real" world. Today’s viral marketing campaign can often alter opinions, change views, and sometimes lead to unforeseen consequences (the effect of the movie Super Size Me on McDonald’s being one of them). Combine these newfound customer interactive feedback mechanisms with an almost total lack of online censorship, and the general openness inherent in the Internet allows individuals and small groups the ability to take advantage of technology to reach, interact and amass with audiences in ways that no other media outlet has ever previously allowed.

But what exactly is it about a blog, you might be asking yourself that makes it so entirely different from the personal and corporate websites we all built extensively before the downturn in the economy back in 2001? Answer: blogs and RSS feeds are threats to brands. Because of their instantaneous and global publishing capabilities, blogs and RSS feeds (effectively customer brand touch points) can quickly catch brand managers and their strategies entirely off guard (making their current often static online website collateral seem non-responsive and old in comparison to the new global conversations now starting to take place). No worries. The next step is simply integrating blogs within websites. But, point is, on those blogs are conversations that need managing. By whom? PR. Why? Because disruptive messages that campaigns like Super Size Me and Fahrenheit 9/11 send out to audiences threaten brands (be it McDonalds or the Republican Party). But don’t think for a second that the “old” but effective approach to online marketing (sending out branded emails and canvassing highly-branded web sites with mind share banner ads) will work to effectively handle the new brand threat of blogging and talkback interactivity. Massive mindshare capture campaigns, while effective elsewhere, won’t help facilitate the conversation that corporate brands need to develop for themselves in the blogosphere. The previous approach, which ushered in the premise of our entire new online economy, was progressive and new at the time, but is seen as too "one-way" (and non-conversational) in the blogosphere. Monolithic marketing, atleast online, looks broken.

I like the idea of a online issue cocktail party.

“Brand Journalism” has been developed by a Fortune 100 company to meet the new brand threat. Even Seth Godin, the marketing guru behind several new economy books about e-marketing, praised McDonald’s for realizing that monolithic marketing is broken. But Godin pointed out though that the marketer doesn't get to run the conversation that Light is inviting. As Godin said, “It's not really ‘Brand Journalism’ that's happening, you see, it's ‘Brand Cocktail Party!’ You get to set the table and invite the first batch of guests, but after that the conversation is going to happen with or without you.”

Oh yeah! ...the big guys are going to need a lot of PR people. In fact the more connected that the global village becomes the more the connectivity will be come a pipline for voices that have been isolated from American markets. I am personally looking forward to the first company bbrand destroyed by a camera phone from a sweatshop worker pushing content into the global marketplace.

McDonald's and Seth Godin acknowledging that marketers are losing control of their brand marketing programs online? Who to put in charge to help marketers regain their online voices and direct their online conversations with customers? PR. This is a great opportunity for PR to take leadership of the strategic role of integrating the voice of the customer between corporate IT and marketing. Any Fortune 1000 company that has a threat (blogs) also has a need. PR people...fill that need. Company threats are met by the opportunities of other services. Conversations developing online should be answered. By PR.

Text of Clinton at the DNC

There are very powerful language and message tips. in Clinton's speech. I really wanted to make sure that I grabbed chunks of it for the language and the themes that they worked into the speech. I have grabbed the bits that I think are most interesting to share lessons with the advocacy community. I also pasted the full text below because of the power of the delivery, rhythm and cadence of the speech. It is a nice work focusing on message and returning to the core message again and again.

There are lots of lessons here: ( If you are looking for additional sources you can google -- I didn't want to link to political websites)

... all Americans value freedom, faith, and family. We all honor the service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.

We all want good jobs, good schools, health care, safe streets, a clean environment. We all want our children to grow up in a secure America leading the world toward a peaceful future. Our differences are in how we can best achieve these things, in a time of unprecedented change. Therefore, we Democrats will bring the American people a positive campaign, arguing not who's good and who's bad, but what is the best way to build the safe, prosperous world our children deserve.

Starts with core values. We all want shared things for our families and our community.

The 21st century is marked by serious security threats, serious economic challenges, and serious problems like global warming and the AIDS epidemic. But it is also full of enormous opportunities-to create millions of high paying jobs in clean energy, and biotechnology; to restore the manufacturing base and reap the benefits of the global economy through our diversity and our commitment to decent labor and environmental standards everywhere; and to create a world where we can celebrate our religious and racial differences, because our common humanity matters more.

Paints a positive vision.. People and movements can not be sustained without a better vision to work toward.

They think the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their political, economic, and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on matters like health care and retirement security. Since most Americans are not that far to the right, they have to portray us Democrats as unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America. But Americans long to be united. After 9/11, we all wanted to be one nation, strong in the fight against terror. The president had a great opportunity to bring us together under his slogan of compassionate conservatism and to unite the world in common cause against terror.

The speech acknowledges likely attacks language and works to discredit it before it can take hold. Notice the order these mistakes are presented from top to bottom. I would guess that the order is set by very expensive polling on the issues that resonate. (security for children, providing for families, responsibility to veterans then environment.)

They protected my tax cuts while:

-- Withholding promised funding for the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving over 2 million children behind
-- Cutting 140,000 unemployed workers out of job training
-- 100,000 working families out of child care assistance
-- 300,000 poor children out of after school programs
-- Raising out of pocket healthcare costs to veterans
-- Weakening or reversing important environmental advances for clean air and the preservation of our forests.

....

There is then some really nice rhythm building and core message work hammering home the positive Kerry vision. However, the speech wraps up with a connection back to values and the challenge of responsibility.

At every turning point in our history we the people have chosen unity over division, heeding our founders' call to America's eternal mission: to form a more perfect union, to widen the circle of opportunity, deepen the reach of freedom, and strengthen the bonds of community.

It happened because we made the right choices. In the early days of the republic, America was at a crossroads much like it is today, deeply divided over whether or not to build a real nation with a national economy, and a national legal system. We chose a more perfect union.

In the Civil War, America was at a crossroads, divided over whether to save the union and end slavery -- we chose a more perfect union. In the 1960s, America was at a crossroads, divided again over civil rights and women's rights. Again, we chose a more perfect union. As I said in 1992, we're all in this together; we have an obligation both to work hard and to help our fellow citizens, both to fight terror and to build a world with more cooperation and less terror. Now again, it is time to choose.

I thought the closing was a bit "over the top" with the boat and troubled waters language (preventing a perfect score on the speech scale. ) It is a very well crafted speech, beautiful framework and a good guide to consider for advocates.

Full text Below

1999 Malcolm Gladwell Article on Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg

There are a few project that I am working on that are about connecting people. A friend suggested I look up an old article by Malcolm Gladwell that discusses Lois Weisberg. There are a few wins in this process. First, Gladwell post all his essays back to 1997 and as you read thru them you can see how Tipping Point was written with each article dropping into place. Second, the search reminded me how smart Gladwell is and refreshed some key concepts he discusses in Tipping Point.

Finally, I was able to find some great gems of wisdom worth considering in the project I am working on.

If the world really is held together by people like Lois Weisberg, in other words, how poor you are can be defined quite simply as how far you have to go to get to someone like her. Wendy Willrich and Helen Doria and all the countless other people in Lois's circle needed to make only one phone call. They are well-off. The dropout wouldn't even know where to start. That's why he's poor. Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation.

So the question is can a nonmonetary strategy of connecting people create wealth? Does fighting isolation = fighting poverty? It is a really fun concept to play with in the context of social justice work and campaigns.

In the book "The Language Instinct," the psychologist Steven Pinker argues against the idea that language is a cultural artifact -- something that we learn "the way we learn to tell time." Rather, he says, it is innate. Language develops "spontaneously," he writes, "without conscious effort or formal instruction," and "is deployed without awareness of its underlying logic.... People know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs." The secret to Roger Horchow and Lois Weisberg is, I think, that they have a kind of social equivalent of that instinct -- an innate and spontaneous and entirely involuntary affinity for people. They know everyone because -- in some deep and less than conscious way -- they can't help it.

The question then is if we are forced to teach language can we? If by a vision for a community we want to foster and create conditions for "spontaneously discovering the power of networks to change the power dynamics for a community can a program be designed to teach "without conscious effort or formal instruction," and can we encourage participation and use of such a system to be "deployed without awareness of its underlying logic".

These are really important questions that can be resolved by intelligent strategy, experimentation and prudent investment. Lois' arts program is a great example of network investments. They are still running strong and connecting 400 people this year alone. In the months ahead, they are going to be doing a network assessment to determine the long term value of those ties and better understand how those links have converted into power, wealth and improvements in quality of life.

Network Tools get Even Better for Blogger Campaigns: Tom Mauser's Petition to Renew the Assault Weapons Ban

This is really cool. Please sign the petition (your names will not be sold or shared) to extend the ban on assault weapons and see a truly decentralized network-centric campaign in action. Click the link and follow the instructions.

Five years ago my 15-year-old son Daniel Mauser was one of 13 people killed at Columbine High School by two students. One of them used an illegal assault weapon.

The national Assault Weapons Ban automatically expires at the end of the summer. Congress must renew this ban or military-style assault weapons will be back on the street and available for sale in our neighborhoods. We cannot let this happen. We have to put pressure on Congress to ACT NOW.

This is way to cool and a fantastic way for bloggers to engage readers in campaigns without becoming part of a group.

The Blue Dots are he rolling network of people supporting the petition from Network-centric advocacy.

All Great Movements are Sustained by Dreams

I just needed to post this for the notes....It is a great speech by Glen Ford. I have clipped some of the stuff I find most powerful below but the whole thing is worth a read.

The People’s Dreams vs Wal-Mart’s Schemes Glen Ford delivered the following remarks to the Labor Plenary at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference, in Chicago, Illinois.

Civilization is the sum total of the expressed dreams of a people. It is their version – and vision – of what life is supposed to be. But in the United States, only one very small group is empowered to dream its dreams – to build its version of civilization.

This group sees neighborhoods and cities and countries – the whole world – as its private Field of Dreams – places where they can make ever-increasing profits, at ever-diminishing cost to themselves. Forget about the rest of us.

Wal-Mart is the “model” for this brand of civilization. They lock up everybody else’s dreams in their Big Box. And, whatever they do, no matter how destructive – they call that, “development.”

Normal people, regular Americans, have their own “civilized” dreams, including people in the inner cities. They walk the streets of their neighborhoods, saying: “There oughta be an entertainment complex, right over there,” or… “This is a perfect place for a restaurant – if they’d just move the police station a little closer,” or… “They need to build some housing, here – bring some life to this area.”

What these everyday people are doing, is urban planning. Normal people are keenly interested in development. But regular people are given no reason to believe that their dreams have any connection to “development” – or to the political process. It’s just…day dreaming.

Instead, we have allowed corporations to decide the fate of the cities. We hardly speak of democratic development. Even now, as the cities become more valuable than they have been in nearly a half-century, we still fail to tap the people’s dreams.

What we are left with, as a result – is Wal-Mart. And, not just Wal-Mart, but the Wal-Mart “model” – which is applauded on Wall Street and at the White House as the way that American corporations should operate.

If we are to defeat the Wal-Mart model, we must become the enablers of the people’s dreams. ..We must give the people the tools, the information, and access to specialized disciplines, so that they can dream – and build – their city....

..We must bring together real urban specialists and planners, to do audits of the public and private assets of the cities, to assess the actual potentialities of these places – in close collaboration with those activists who are daily grappling with corporate developers, in localities all across this country...Building a movement for democratic development is also the context in which to discuss how union pension funds should be invested – investments that should be made with a larger Plan in hand: a democratic plan for urban development....
Our job in the fight against the Wal-Mart model is to raise up a people’s vision of their city – one that shines in their imaginations – a dream that they will fight for. Because, in the end, all great movements are sustained by dreams.

Kudos...The Black Commentator

Weekend Outlook :Hospital Visits, Deaths and Asthma Attacks: Oh Sunshinny Day

Have a nice weekend! Wahoo! Cool weather is going to disperse pollutants...Yeah..that sounds like a great strategy. Anyone living in the south to bad.

For the national weekend outlook, air quality levels are expected to dramatically improve over the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, as an upper-level trough of low pressure builds over the Great Lakes region. This weather pattern will keep temperatures cool in the east and enhance the dispersion of pollutants, resulting in generally Good AQI levels. In the south, Moderate AQI values are expected through the weekend, with Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups AQI levels in parts of Texas. In addition, residual smoke from the Alaska/Yukon fires will impact the air quality in parts of the Southeast. An upper-level ridge of high pressure in the west will cause Moderate to Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups AQI levels in parts of California due to reduced vertical mixing and dispersion of pollutants. In addition, AQI levels in the Yosemite National Park area will remain Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups to Unhealthy due to particle pollution from fires.

Getting Email to Journalists

Here is a must read for communication staff on emails, email formats and email outreach to reporters. I have chopped it up and tweaked it a bit for environmental issues. Like our peers in corporate PR most of our emails are not opened nor read. We need to learn more about the developing practices so that our pitches continue to be professional. I highly recommend giving the full article a solid read.Getting Reporters To Open Your E-Mails -- J-Log Online The advise also has wisdom for action alerts and general email format wisdom. Journalists are people too.

1. Avoid Spam Filters
This seems straight forward but the filters are becoming increasingly sensitive so make sure you understand what set them off.

To a spam filter, a pitch may appear to contain an array of trigger words and suspicious phrases... You can't prevent every instance of spam blocking, but you can take some steps to help lessen the chances of your e-mail ending up in a black hole. ..The most important step is learning how spam filters think, and creating e-mails that avoid the usual pitfalls. Fortunately, you'll find that -- once you can do this -- many spam triggers are easily avoided. Rather than taking up space here with all the how-to’s, allow me to simply direct you a terrific site on the subject.

2. Getting Your E-Mail Opened & Read
The content of the email and communicaiton is obviously the most important part of effective outreach. However, assuming you have a solid angle (big assumption) the most important thing you can do is format the message effectively.

The key to success is the subject line. No matter how on-the-money your pitch, a subpar subject line will kill any chance of getting the reporter’s attention. You’ve got one shot at getting your e-mail opened, make the most of it with a killer subject line.

1) Place the word News or Press Info or Story Idea at the beginning of your e-mail subject line, in brackets e.g.: [Story Idea]:

2) Try to incorporate the reporter's first name also at the beginning of the subject line.

3) If you know the name of the reporter's column, for instance Fishing with Linda, also try to incorporate that. If the reporter doesn't write a regular column, try to at least include their beat (e.g. Joe, re: your future pieces on the energy industry).

Here is a sample:

To: Linda
From: MArty@savetheenvironment.us
Subject: [Story Idea]: Linda, Here's a bit of Background on Cooling Towers and Water Quality Violations by Southern Company for Your "Something's Fishy Column"

That’s a heading that will stand head and shoulders above the rest.

The Dos and Don'ts outlined in the artilce are also filled with good advise.

Do:
Make the information you place in the subject line short and to the point. Often, reporter's e-mail software cuts off the subject at only a few words.
Don’t get cute or be too vague in your subject line. For example Here’s a Great Story! is vague and sounds like spam;
Try to make your most newsworthy points at the top of your e-mail message - don't expect a reporter to scroll down to find the news.
Include your contact information, including cell phone, e-mail address, regular address, fax number & website URL at the beginning and end of the e-mail.
Include a link to your website if you have additional information such as: photos, press releases, bios, surveys, etc.

Don’t:
Include more than a short pitch letter or press release in the body of your e-mail.
Allow typos or grammatical errors.
Include an attachment with your e-mail. In this day and age of sinister viruses, reporters automatically delete e-mail with attachments.
Place the following words (by themselves) in the subject line: Hi, Hello - the media's spam filters will pounce and destroy.
Send an e-mail with a blank subject line.

Join My Staff: Send Smart Friends: GMT is looking for a Membership Coordinator in DC

Green Media Toolshed seeks a Membership Coordinator to manage an online training and technical support program for member organizations. This full time, junior level position will work directly with the Director of Media Services and Marketing to manage all aspects of membership operations. A successful candidate will have the ability to identify and resolve recurring problems, establish priorities, work independently and proceed with objectives with little supervision. Skilled use of MS Word, spreadsheet programs, e-mail and Internet is required. Desirable qualities include a high-energy level, excellent organization and time management skills, a strong sense of mission and a demonstrated sense of humor. Please see attached file for a complete job description.

Ipods for Advocacy

This is an interesting experiment at Duke. It will definitely be worth revisiting in a few months to see how the students are using the ipod as an education tool. Ipods jump across some of the big digital divide issues into very diverse and unwired communities. The ipod could be a connection to rich conversations, conference calls, music, critical text and listserve traffic. Younger students with Ipods might be able to visit an advocacy site and then quickly download a load of content and conversations related to a campaign to take back to an elder that is willing to learn more. The campaign information could be bundled with music and connections to 800 numbers for feedback, phone surveys, conference call numbers, etc.

We think they'll use it to listen to music," says Lynne O'Brien, director of Duke's Center for Instructional Technology. "We think they'll use it to listen to their Spanish lessons." And that makes sense, says Rik Myslewski, editor in chief of Mac Addict magazine.

"Students are much more likely to listen to things on their iPod while they're traveling on the bus or waiting in line than they are to open their laptops," says Myslewski.
But, he also notes that the iPod can spur other creative uses because it's much more than just an audio device.

"The iPod is… also a text player and it's also a hard drive," says Myslewski. "It even handles hyper-link text so you can jump from one page to another by clicking on lines in the iPod text fields."

Duke University has created a Web page where students can download recorded class lectures, language lessons, audio lesson plans and the school's academic calendar. The Web site, which mimics Apple's popular iTunes music site, even allows students to purchase music files for their iPods.

But what else could be offered on the site could be anyone's guess.

At the core the Ipod represents another new channel for pushing megs of content to new audiences and it should be examined as a tool for advocacy.

Technology for Network-Centric Campaigns

This is a cool technology (2001) that could be dusted off and applied to peer-to-peer organizing at every level of the advocacy movement with a few tweaks the email maps could be local, congressional, state or national. The more specific the mapping the more valuable the tool might be to local campaigns.

Giving voice, strength and purpose to the email petition...The technology could be married with a few new tools to organize meetups and local campaigns. Ideally a campaign could even draw a target area (congressional district) and the goal is to get as many pings inside the circle as possible through a six degrees campaign.

You are probably on this page because you received the Tom's Petition email. We are using a new technology where the email is the petition, and all you need to do to register your support is forward it to your friends and also back to tom@tomspetition.org in the same message. So, please, go back to your email and participate (the instructions are also in the petition).

The email links email petitions to maps. No groups databases and no centralized system. The system is built by the guys at eyebeam (they continue to do cool stuff (fundrace and googlerace) but it looks like this forwardtrack was built in response to a Nike campaign.

Most e-mail forwards die before they are widely distributed, but if critical mass is attained, it is possible to reach millions of people without spending any money at all. Another benefit is that each person receives the e-mail from a friend, often with a personal recommendation such as "I thought you would like this," or "This is really funny." So the audience is preselected for its receptivity to the message. When a recipient does enjoy the message, he or she can begin the process again by reforwarding it. It takes so little effort for each person to pass the message to multiple recipients that an idea can almost seem to be spreading on its own, like a self-replicating virus.

It is a great article from back in 2001 that was very predictive of the viral efforts to follow like the peace movement and early Dean campaign. This article predates all the forward email to a freind tool. Interestingly the mapping part could be plopped onto most friend systems toward to quickly generate new maps.

Nike has the advantage when it comes to mass media, but activists may have the advantage with micromedia. I discovered this accidentally when I sent my Nike e-mails to a few friends. My small group of friends may be divided from everyone else in the world by only six degrees of separation, but until the large-scale adoption of the Internet, this did not have such dramatic consequences. I never expected my conversation with Nike to be so widely distributed; the e-mail began to proliferate without my participation. The only force propelling the message was the collective action of those who thought it was worth forwarding. Unions, church groups, activists, teachers, mothers, schoolchildren and members of the US armed forces sent me letters of support.

The exchange is working its way into sociology textbooks, viral marketing seminars, business-school cases and doctoral dissertations. My guess is that in the long run this episode will have a larger impact on how people think about media than how they think about Nike and sweatshop labor. This larger lesson suggests an exciting opportunity for activists. The dynamics of decentralized distribution systems and peer-to-peer networks are as counterintuitive as they are powerful. By understanding these dynamics, new forms of social protest become possible, with the potential to challenge some of the constellations of power traditionally supported by the mass media.

I need to sit down with this team.

kudos to the smart guys at @dvocacy.Inc for watching this stuff.

Angels are Network-Centric: "It's A Wonderful Life"

Here is a wonderful article by Jed Miller and Rob Stuart pulling together some really great network-centric concepts and building out the language in some new ways. I really love the It's A Wonderful Life connection. I will recycle that frequently in future presentations.

When we try to describe network-driven advocacy, or technology strategy, or online community, jargon is often an obstacle. So we look for stories to explain the benefits of network thinking and networked action. Instead of proselytizing about "the power of networks," we remind people how Tom Sawyer got his fence painted. We explain how networks work like George Bailey's friends at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life" – they pass information quickly and pool their resources to make a difference.

New language! There are some other nuggets worth playing around with in the article as well. I have clipped a few below for further thoughts.

Candidates have been claiming to speak for commoners for centuries. The Dean campaign empowered constituents to speak for themselves, and to hear themselves speak, using an online platform created by the campaign..... initial MeetUp build-up was rooted in local, non-sponsored action. "Dean supporters do not drive 200 miles through 10 inches of snow to see a political candidate or a representative of his staff," wrote Samantha Shapiro in The New York Times Magazine. "They drive that far to see each other."

I know the same is true across the movement. There are no candidates and most of our staff do not go to conferences to read. The movement gets together to "see each other". River Network to Oceans and Climate Change the conferences of the movement are about taking time to sync personally the leaders of the movement. These conferences are about connecting and "wiring" the movement. The value of marches probably also is to "see each other".

In a cellular world, power is transactional, not institutional. Network-centric organizations measure their effectiveness not by how much money they raise or how much press they get, but by how well they are able to make fruitful connections between their constituents. Interactions are more important than broadcasts. The Dean campaign used MeetUp.com to bring Deaniacs together at local Starbucks, so they could generate ideas and projects on their own. The more MeetUps that took place, the more momentum the campaign took on. New Power groups are awake to the fact that that an organization's real authority exists among its extended community – online and off-line. Power is generated by citizens at the grass roots. What the organization provides is an opportunity for coordinated action.

I agree and disagree. I love the idea that power is transactional not institutional. However, the value in a network can also be measured in network throughput. The Dean campaign network was wonderful and unsuccessful. The network delivered political power to the candidate and transformed politics but it did not ultimately win. You can measure network health and value and you can cultivate it and make it grow. Ultimately, the Dean network did not produce results that the participants wanted and as soon as it stopped providing value to the participants the connections broke and formed around another healthier node.

Another interesting idea is that There are no penalties on late arrivals to the scene and no perks for early adopters. One campaign succeeds the next, and each new effort offers members the chance to participate in shaping the group's strategy. Politics, perks and campaigns almost always reward early adopters with control and perks. There is a tension among advocacy movement with groups fighting over turf or issue control. The work flow of campaigns often reinforces the centralization of power and the ideas that people that join later should have little influence over the campaign direction. The standard campaigns also struggle to bring new volunteers or participants "up to speed" and punish late comers by making them ask lots of useless questions.

A major objective for network-centric organizations is information sharing among participants. The better informed membership becomes, the more effective its decision making will be as new campaigns take shape. New Power invests in relationship building, knowledge management, and online community technologies that make it simple for individuals to sign up, contribute, and connect to valuable information. The arrangement, analysis, and presentation of information is a team effort. The easier it is for membership to communicate among its own ranks, the more likely it is that fruitful relationships will be generated. Network-centric organizations devote significant resources to expanding the capacity of the group's membership to perform.

Yahoo. Kudos to Jed and Rob

AdvoKit - Open Source Peer-to-Peer Organizing

Dan Robinson of AdvoKit spent some time showing off Advokit 0.8. It is an impressive system built specifically to enable people to organize campaigns and manage the work load of campaign activities. The system has huge potential for advocacy groups and small campaigns as well as the really big efforts currently underway for November 2004.

Top five things I liked:
1. Reasonable volunteer workflow based the operations of GOTV operation. Call flows, scripts, taking information from the people you call.
2. Pretty slick work tracking and permissions models to enable coordinators to monitor what has been done and what needs to be completed.
3. Slurp of voter files and permission based access to data. (volunteers can only peek at little windows of the overall data set)
4. Sounds like a very flexible and robust data model with a customizable interface and configrable display of fields and tabs.
5. Communications management and the ability to mange phone, email, walking lists and label outputs.

Things I look forward to seeing in the future.
1. GUI improvements, documentation, help guides etc.
2. Volunteer data cross checking and import to support effectively working a peer network
3. Web interface for managing volunteer recruitment.
4. A hosted instance for campaigns of groups that want to target less than 10,000 people.
5. Donation processing
6. Plug in for GMT on environmental advocacy campaigns.

It is a great bit of work. Smart tools that are network-centric in that they encourage peer to peer organizing. They enable diverse leadership to access high quality tools, they build situational awareness of the campaign coordinators and the tools enhance a campaign team to scale effectively. Help them out if you can.
AdvoKit 0.8.0 Free

Finding the Environmental Blog Community

A tip to c h a n d r a s u t r a for getting the conversation rolling.

Yes. Environmentalists blog. However, a really good blog is a reflection personal views and thought processess, an online think space, etc. The environmental group blogs are nice tools (GreenPeace) for giving voice to members and ways to create volume around core messages. I have run across thousands of blogs that hit on clean air, water, river quality, birding, campaigning, health, labor and justice issues but the fun blogs are more personal and I don't think the movement (organizations) are comfortable letting staff kick out personal opinions on subjects just yet so most likely you are going to see more personal blogs (like this one) that are cranked out by environmentalists but not branded as such.

Keep the list rolling and links from comments will be pulled together into the list:

Environmental Blogs:

The collection sites of Environmental Blog Feeds:

NPO Blogs - running collection of nonprofit blog feeds.
Earth Blog @ the eco portal the environmentalism portal - useful links to environmental sites

Group or Campaign Blogs

Colorado Environment state environmental group blog on issues affecting Colorado.

Inner Purple Line

Green Media Toolshed staff blog on environmental communications.

Greenpeace Blog
Excellent content about Greenpeace initiatives, campaigns, and news

Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior Blog
A boat with a blog! Check out this excellent post about clear cutting in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia (includes narrated flash slideshow -- now that's wired enviro-blogging!)

Environmentalists as People Blogs

World Changing
Not specifically environmental but good related issues and content

Jon Stahl's Journal
Interesting, well-written, timely content on a variety of issues pertaining to sustainability and the environment

Geoweblog
Mostly related to physical geography but with an environmental edge

Nature Guy
Vancouver BC writer and all-round enviro-dude. New to the blogosphere but not the issues

Sustainablog
Everything about sustainability

David Suzuki Science Matters
OK... this is really just Suzuki's "Science Matters" Column but I like to pretend it's a blog

If you want the html for the page to add these links to your MT or Typepad blog leave your email in the comments and I'll shoot it back to you.

Trends for Online Communities

A great bit of content from Online Community Report focused on the trends of ...well online communities.

I like the following nuggets:

Most online communities are not economically viable. Most never will be due to several tricky issues which conspire against online communities: Advertising (tricky content next to unscripted text), Subscriber Fees(people don't want to pay to talk). No market value..

Online communities that work are:

Search communities (looking for? dates,jobs,friends)..Search communities also enjoy powerful network effects: the larger they are, the more valuable they become (a dynamic not always true with standard online communities).

Trading Communities: (swapping..ebay)

Education Communities: Online education. is booming. .. Consumers understand the concept of e-learning.

Scheduled Events Communities: Corporations increasingly are holding gatherings online: conferences, annual meetings, analyst calls, and working meetings.

Subscriber-based Communities: Salon.com .

Community Consulting Firms: Consulting is possibly the most prosaic aspect of the online community world, but it does generate revenue.

E-mail-based Communities: E-mail continues to be the killer app.

Advocacy Communities: Many online communities don't seek to be profitable. They have other goals in mind: advocacy, education, politics. Advocacy communities are growing quickly in sophistication, thanks in part to new, powerful tools designed specifically for their needs.

CRM Communities: Corporations spend billions of dollars annually on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs. Sophisticated online efforts are increasingly involving message boards, Q&A areas, and other community applications.

There are some great links on the actual report. The story provides food for thought around the sites people return to again and again. Reading the communities that work tells us a bit about user behavior that should be considered in designing Internet campaigns and tools that provide value to Internet users. (if you replace the concept of "pay" with "offer you detailed information about themselves" you can see the same set of trends breaking in the advocacy and campaign world.

Internet now rivals radio as the main source of news for Independent, swing, and battleground state voters.

Data released by New Democrats shows that the Internet now rivals radio as the main source of news for Independent, swing, and battleground state voters.

One in ten of these voters say the Internet is their primary source of news. However, five times as many get their news from TV, which remains the dominant news medium for voters (see table in the report).

These findings are part of a NDN memo on media habits of voters, the third in a series of memos based on polling by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates.

It is interesting that email is not ranked. Older Pew polls suggested that a majority of people also exchange some news via email around major stories (assume election is major story). It is also misses some of the work Valdis Krebs is doing around the value of conversations (peer-to-peer). However the memo is worth a read and a strong call to organizations to focus on Internet strategy to move messages to audiences.

I would ask a few more questions ..how are the trends breaking (increasing or decreasing use of Internet..radio, how does it compare to Pew results (voters vs. public) and what percentages are being spent on developing messages and distributing messages respective to importance of the medium. Are groups and campaigns spending at least 10% of the communications budget on radio and Internet strategies? Finally, I would ask about the power of the mediums...if my message dominates the radio so what...there are no links to additional information, action and organizing tools but on the Internet I have more of an opportunity to engage the target audience.

The related strategy memo is more about message strategy not campaign or distribution strategy. It is still a good read.

Network-Centric Design Principals

Interesting thoughts on the way to organize campaign resources from Lockheed Martin. Reworking the language a bit for an advocacy context, I can see the thinking reflected in the network-centric advocacy approach to organizing and empowering political movements for justice, environmental protection and peace.

The goal is to develop a family of integrated systems that will deliver interoperable, seamless organizing capability to the movement of the 21st century. Network-centric advocacy is the way the political participants will organize and fight in the information age, linking various systems, issue areas, global constituencies, staffs, data, talents and skills together to exponentially increase the benefit of those systems that otherwise operate independently.

The foundation for planning and supporting a network-centric advocacy movement is to develop a model of political and advocacy engagement that is centered on actual behaviors and designed to :

Focus on the user's role in the system

Reduce training and crewing costs through extensive analysis of human tasks and automation

To support changing mission priorities and evolving technologies, net-centric solutions are built on an open system, component-based architecture that is scalable and:
1. Reduces maintenance costs
2. Eliminates redundant processing
3. Frees-up bandwidth

Linking all information assets in the campaign - the campaign headquarters, field offices and allied participants, field organizers and individual participants, a rapid response teams, and a funding network - is the key to transforming information superiority into political power.

This is an example of Lockheed Martin's ability to understand rapidly-changing requirements and to respond with vision and effectiveness... AMEN

Complexity of Systems Outpaces Elaborate Modeling Efforts: Conversation Science "Discovers" the value of Planning to be Opportunistic

This ought to be a confusing shot to the planners out there. Ecological (and political systems) are to complex to model or control..a truly "smart" and strategically funded and opportunistic stance may be the most effective way to achieve progress.

Elaborate modeling efforts used to guide land conservation result in plans that are rarely achievable in the real world-and may actually be counter-productive.

Ironically, the authors of the new study - leading mathematicians and conservation planners - are the very people who have been at the forefront of these modeling efforts. Frustrated with continued species loss, they took a step back to figure out how to improve the system. Surprisingly they found that an opportunistic approach - informed by basic scientific information about the abundance and distribution of plants and animals, but heavily focused on how landowners make decisions - will have a better shot at protecting biodiversity over time.

"For the last 20 years we thought we needed to be more systematic and we became really good at identifying priority areas for protection without taking into account opportunities in the real world - the rise and fall of property values and who might be influenced to sell," says coauthor Hugh Possingham of Queensland University, a leading conservation biologist and mathematician. "We've taken a passive theoretical approach instead of getting out there and actively seizing opportunities."

The scientists now call for a new approach to conservation - one designed more like a dynamic business plan than a static scientific assessment. Their study provides a new framework for estimating the benefits of paying a premium to acquire important sites for biodiversity -and emphasizes the importance of being opportunistic and acting fast.

The approach is not willie-nilly but truly a reflection of the same conclusions int he network-centric advocacy papers. Political systems are very complex and attempts to control and plan progress are ultimately going to less successful in the aggregate than a smart strategy to exploit opportunities. Spend less funding on planning more on developing situational awareness. (note I said less not.. none) Spend more resources in a rapid response mode rather than the strategic campaign.

There are a huge set of challenges to this in setting up a political context (control, flow of money, ownership of results, etc.) I would imaging the same challenges convert to the land protection arena. It will be great to see how they develop solutions. My first guess is that a bunch of people that are planners are going to attack the paper and messengers first.

Blog Conference on PR and Communications

Here is a great spring of interesting communicaitons and technology content. I have been very interested in the way the online conference is going and quality of the content on communicaitons strategy. There is lots of serious food for thought at Global PR Blog Week.

The Global PR Blog Week 1.0 is an online event that will engage PR, marketing and business bloggers from around the globe in a discussion about blogging and communications. The event is scheduled for July 12 - 16, 2004.

Advocacy Groups can have a CLipping Service: East Coast Environmental Groups Take Note

At the Bluevision Conference, I spent some time chatting with Shaw Thacher from Atlantic CoastWatch. They have a great service of free clippings for the environmental groups working on Coastal Issues along the Atlantic (North America to to Venezuela) I recommend river, sprawl, bay and ocean groups to get the clips. Shaw and the staff actually find key articles, surf the papers in small markets and kick out a newsletter of interesting stories.

They are in the middle of some changes but it is worth checking out (today).

News Nugget services are being upgraded. The new interface is accessible via: http://64.78.13.52/acw/search.cfm

At this time you should pull down the region, issue and last 30 days to get a feel for the huge amount of work these guys are doing collecting links to stories.

Blogs for Campaigns : Tools for Organizing

I have been looking at the reasons that corporations are looking into internal blogs and I have been wondering if the line of thought holds up for "campaign". Should loose groups of organizers (decentralized) consider using a blog as a tool for internal and external communication and why?

And the Winning Pitch:
First, think about the value of the Wall Street Journal to business leaders. The value it provides is context — the Journal allows readers to see themselves in the context of the financial world each day, which enables more informed decision making.

With this in mind, think about your company as a microcosm of the financial world. Can your employees see themselves in the context of the whole company? Would more informed decisions be made if employees and leaders had access to internal news sources?

Weblogs serve this need. By making internal websites simple to update, weblogs allow individuals and teams to maintain online journals that chronicle projects inside the company. These professional journals make it easy to produce and access internal news, providing context to the company — context that can profoundly affect decision making. In this way, weblogs allow employees and leaders to make more informed decisions through increasing their awareness of internal news and events.

The quote is considered the "perfect pitch" on why companies should blog and the reasoning carries over to campaigns and advocacy efforts. However, the "perfect pitch" misses some key components for advocacy context.

In campaigns of loose groups of activists, coalition and networks there needs to be some essential glue that helps bond the group together. Strong social ties, common story, dense communications support and shared resources are just a few of those essential cohesion points that help build the networks ability to think and act collaboratively. Blogs (shared daily journals in first person) are one way to create a channel of communications that helps build the voice of a network (vs. a brand or mission drive).

Blogging makes it easy for companies to collaborate and communicate efficiently and effectively. It gives every individual within and outside an organization a voice to easily share thoughts, ideas, documents, and images on the web. The advantage is the capture, dissemination and management of a company's tacit knowledge and intellectual capital that is searchable and accessible from anywhere. The benefit of giving your constituents a voice is that they provide timely valuable input, build better relationships, become better references, and increase your profits. Blogging is THE future of how businesses will use information for profit and initiate the incremental steps of continuous improvement.

In many "battle" scenarios the advantage goes to the players with the highest situational awareness in a campaign. Listserves, conference calls and conferences are the traditional ways to build these. Blogs are new tools that are primarily designed for easy publishing and the format has evolved in a way where a dense set of cross linking blogs and accessing a feed can build situational awareness for the people working on the campaign and those that may join your effort in the future (persistent record)

Being organized is fundamental to managing difficult situations. It can mean the difference between success and disaster. With so many modes of communication, it's almost impossible to quickly notify your team and even more difficult for them to collaborate and decide on the right response. Success will depend on everyone coming together, accompanied by timely information, to stop escalation of the problem and control the situation.

blogs make it simple to quickly notify the entire team about a problem or opportunity. Besides putting everyone on alert, it automatically creates an online Situation Center where the team can share ideas, update status and make informed decisions.

Nonprofit Advocacy Blog Strategy

Very Cool Targeted Robo Calling: Blasting the Network of One Company

Here is an innovative way to think about creating conversation within a company cafeteria. Robo calling every extension at an office or in a building. I could also see this as a cool strategy for peer-to-peer advocacy connect your members with a script to start with, talking points, and the direct line of someone that works for a company. The innovative idea is in getting every extension.

I like the approach because it assumes that the company is not a mono culture and the strategy significantly "gooses" a defined social network and shapes discussion within the company after the action.

Thanks to Robj's blog

Thousands of Procter & Gamble Co. employees arrived at work Wednesday morning to a voice mail message from Pretenders star Chrissie Hynde...
But Hynde wasn't congratulating P&G on its record year. She urged Procter workers to contact the company's Iams pet-food unit and ask it to end laboratory tests on animals. Hynde, an Akron native, was acting on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has protested against Iams for more than a year.

"Don't think these tests are necessary or required by law. They aren't," Hynde said in the voice mail, which was sent by auto-dial early Wednesday. "Other companies test in other ways."

PETA received a list of 12,770 P&G phone numbers, most of them in Cincinnati, anonymously several months ago, said Mary Beth Sweetland, director of research and investigations at PETA. P&G has about 13,000 employees in Greater Cincinnati, and employees at several local locations reported receiving the voice mail.

Area Awareness Fostered by Bluetooth: Advocacy and Political Swarming Tool

Here is an interesting networking tool emerging from the social network needs of daters. However, I can think such a "profile tool" would be really useful at meetups and other political, advocacy get togethers. It would allow speed networking at conferences.

In an advocacy context participants would be encouraged to enter information about skills, campaign interests and needs into the profiles. Show up at a progressive food court with a virtual billboard and let your phone help you pick who you sit at lunch with. ( Needs: Looking for dedicated volunteer to help with my writing loads, need young tech savvy virtual researcher to perform directed research on technology applications to campaigns, need subscription and email list newsletter tool, need a good intern) then hammer out all the skills that you have to offer and "working" a room gets accelerated by the software and phones helping make the connections.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Student Gracinia Lim has made new friends thanks to mobile phone software that alerts her to compatible people nearby.
She is an early customer of a service in Singapore called BEDD that uses Bluetooth wireless communications to scan strangers' phones for their personal profiles.
The application joins a swelling number of Internet and mobile phone based services that offer to widen people's social networks.

Users download the BEDD software into a compatible phone, complete a short profile of themselves and include a description of who they want to befriend, or an item they want to buy or sell.

The software automatically searches for and exchanges profiles with other phones that come within a 20-meter (65 ft) radius. Matched users are given each other's contact details.

Getting Smarter: The DAy After The Day After Tomorrow

There was an interesting point about the WTO protests in the book Netwars and Networks

Law enforcement, government authorities, and even the American Civil Liberties Union have conducted instructive after-action analyses of the Battle of Seattle..... By way of contrast, none of the protest organizations has rendered an after-action analysis of the strategies and tactics used in Seattle, even though the Internet teems with eyewitness accounts.

I am interested in the movie The Day After Tomorrow... There was a build up to the movie. A recognition that it could have an effect. Groups submitted proposals and strategies were funded and not funded.

I am very interested in a movie campaign debrief.

Things we need ... People who know what happened and what didn't happened (actual results of investments and activities) All the proposals that were submitted for evaluation... those that were funded and those that were not funded.

Organize a listserve and conference call ...a quick run down the list....Given what we now know.. what should we have funded, what were dumb ideas that would not have worked (i started some of them) if we funded them and what should we think about for the next movie that can help us move an agenda. (DVD release or something like oh I don't know like Michael Moore's next documentary?)

Example...Suggested Blogger Campaign...Link pimping and factoid posting talking points on the Day After Tomorrow Movie ...were blogs important in the dicussion of climate change related to the movie? Would that have been a good investment?

Distributed Content..Fully developed generic html pages that could be pasted onto lots of smaller groups web sites helping local groups participate in movie buzz debate?

more to come....I am going to see if I can get my hands the list of propsals, participants, funders and experienced campaign organizers.

Are there other campaigns like this that we could organize debrief's around?