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This is a great example of real voice vs. fake PR. The last post generated 43 ads in 48 hours.
Step 1. Review the funny ads.
Step 2. Make your Own (link is to the right bottom of any ad)
Step 3. Post your link (so we can save this.)
Step 4. Pick the date Chevy folds and takes down the site.
My favorites:
Funny Chevy Ad - Hot hot
http://www.chevyapprentice.com/view.php?country=us&uniqueid=a211be06-122e-1029-98eb-0013724ff5a7
http://www.chevyapprentice.com/
This is a BLAST. (Thanks Noah.) Chevy and the Apprentice set up a tool to create commercials for SUVs. They want you to create ads for their crappy products. It is a good idea but I don't think folks should be saving Chevy ad money.
These machines are driving us all to the edge on global warming. We are more dependent on oil and we are less safe. The owners try to "be cool" but are really like sheep manipulated by advertising and GM. Ride your SUV in traffic...what a waste.
Please make a funny ad and put a link in the comments... or send me your link via email. The network can take down this ad. Help people connect the dots between SUVs and global warming. Go get them.
Chevy Ads can be fun.
Someone please record these too.
http://www.chevyapprentice.com/view.php?country=us&uniqueid=26d957f4-10fc-1029-98eb-0013724ff5a7
http://www.chevyapprentice.com/view.php?country=us&uniqueid=8ed46414-111c-1029-98eb-0013724ff5a7
http://www.chevyapprentice.com/view.php?country=us&uniqueid=90039748-1120-1029-98eb-0013724ff5a7
http://www.chevyapprentice.com/view.php?country=us&uniqueid=952eb09a-110c-1029-98eb-0013724ff5a7
http://www.chevyapprentice.com/view.php?country=us&uniqueid=42019b68-10ac-1029-98eb-0013724ff5a7
Rapture
Posted at 09:00 PM in Advocacy Strategy, Communication Technology, Examples of Network-Centric Advocacy Campaigns, netcentric, nptech, Organizing Guide, Personal Rants | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBack (23)
I have blogged on the ideas of mobileactive reporting before ranging from the use of phones to catch police abuse in Seattle to students capturing teachers abusing students, to using phones to inspire others to join them at a rally. We need to work out the strategies and technologies whereas the connected world becomes a tool of the masses not merely a wired world monitored by the state and centralized authorities.
Link: WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Earth Witness.
I've long admired the Witness project, which provides video cameras to human rights activists around the world in order to document violations and abuses. I was particularly happy to see the recent news that Witness plans to open up a web portal to enable users of digital cameras and cameraphones to send in their recordings over the Internet, rather than just as hand-carried videotape. While thinking about that development, however, it occurred to me that a similar model might work well for a "second superpower" army of networked environmentalists: imagine a web portal collecting recordings and evidence of ecological problems (human-caused or otherwise), environmental crimes, and significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. It would be, in essence, an "Earth Witness" project.
Posted at 12:54 PM in Advocacy Strategy, Communication Technology, mobileactive, netcentric, nptech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This looks like an interesting example of network-centric voice and distribution via TV.
Link: Democracy: Internet TV.
The Participatory Culture Foundation is a new non-profit organization based in Worcester, Massachusetts. Our mission is to create tools for broader, deeper engagement with culture and politics. We're working to ensure that the new mass medium of internet TV is open and independent, just like blogging and podcasting.
Posted at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
I thought this was interesting. I have benefited and lifted as much as possible from thinking at DOD on network-centric strategy. It is amazing to see the folks in very different fields struggling with the same questions and same resistance to change ideas. The questions he asks and the measures Cebrowski ask are not that different from questions raised here or on World Changing, Movement as Network or lots of other interesting blogs.
1. Given the challenges and change we need to make today in policy, behavior and the economy...how relevant are the big nonprofits?
2. Where do peace groups, social change and advocacy movement need to innovate to create a different future?
It is also out of respect for the contribution "network-centric and self-synchronization" ideas will ultimately have on broader progressive social change movement that it is worth noting his passing.
The advice to leaders is worth a read.
Link: www.GovExec.com - Parting Wisdom (3/22/06).
He was naturally drawn to Cebrowski, a 37-year Navy veteran who headed up the Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation from 2001 through 2005, until cancer forced him to retire. Cebrowski pushed military leaders and civilian Defense Department execs to rethink how they organize the armed forces, arguing for a transformation from an industrial-age, hierarchical military to an information-age, networked force....pieces of advice to leaders:
Be bold. "Don't try to do it unless it looks impossible. You have to pick up the things that look really hard. Other people will have done everything else."
Be fast. "No transformational leader ever looks back and regrets moving too fast."
Be specific. "If you lack specificity, your subordinates will be able to change your message to suit their own purposes."
Posted at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I really liked this article on AlterNet: MediaCulture: Blogging While Black. by Chris Rabb. He nails a few points I have seen lots of media people trip over.
Blogging at the heart is about communications between people (lots of them). Blogs are the new listserve, mimeograph or printing press. However, blogging is not about news.
Blogging is about direct communications among the grassroots. Blogs have helped voice new speech, mobilize new participation and attack issues with a new perspective.
You can choose feet on the ground or hands on the keyboard. Which do you choose? Are you sure?
But blogging is not exclusively or primarily about reporting the news; it is fundamentally about grassroots communication between individuals and groups without the filter of government agencies, political parties, corporations and other such entities.
Thus, blogging is inherently egalitarian and democratic because anyone – even those who are not tech-savvy – can set up their own weblog and wax philosophical within just minutes. And to do so is often of little expense, if not free (minus the value of your time, of course).........they can use to make their voices heard amidst an American media universe monopolized by essentially seven corporate behemoths. Moreover, a blog's endemic power comes not from its ability to generate revenues, but is derived from the will and capacity of its readers to coalesce around the sharing, mobilization and analysis of issues the more entrenched institutions do not address. Namely, the issues that have an overwhelming impact on the black community.
For those millions of us Afro-netizens who go online to shop, research, and communicate with one another, the epicenter of black life has become the media. But until the media we rely upon includes blogs in particular, we are literally ceding our best of hope of communicating and organizing amongst ourselves – two bedrocks for any viable movement for a community's uplift.
Those of us fortunate enough to regularly use the internet and who now have an almost addiction to Google.com, Mapquest.com, eBay.com and Amazon.com, cannot afford to limit ourselves by so gravely under-utilizing the web and the opportunities at hand. We must blog while black. It is not a fad or a luxury; it is our civic responsibility to do so. And to abdicate this duty, is to succumb to the dangerous mythology that blackfolk must wait for our next messenger from above, all the while not realizing that the messenger is at our fingertips and the inviolable message from generations past endures in our hearts and minds. Where the success of all previous grassroots movements has been measured by feet on the ground, the power and effectiveness of blog activism for black folk and other dispossessed communities will be measured by hands on the keyboard.
Posted at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
John Klien does a good job sniffing out the power of tele town halls. This is an amazing strategy using technology to engage people. Issue groups should be watching closely and experimenting with as soon as possible.
The implications as much more relevant to self-organizing groups and memberships of nonprofits and campaigns than top down elected officials.
Telephone conversations are very personal and powerful even if there are hundreds on the phoneline. I am interested to see if people can play with this style of engagement to find better leadership (use a round robin style for speaking and polling) gather and prioritize better ideas ( the really hard part of conversation and coalition building) and ultimately to see if participants on the calls feel listened to and more engaged in leadership (if it is just another way to market the same top-down BS it will not add anything to the movement).
I am looking for grant money to experiment.
Link: Minnesota Republican Watch ? Blog Archive ? John Kline's "Tele-Town Hall" Raises Privacy Concerns.
National Journal's Hotline On Call is reporting on a new technology that allows town hall meetings to be held over telephone lines. Here's how it works:When [the Congressman] is ready to hold their Tele-Conference call, an automated caller begins dialing a pre-selected group of numbers (say by zip code) and instantly invites folks that answer to participate in [the] Tele-Town hall. The listeners can ask questions and more intriguing, [the Congressman] can poll the listeners (who vote via touch pad).
It sounds innocent enough, until you take a closer look. Like a controversial CD recently produced by the Republican Party of Minnesota, the Tele-Town Hall collects personal information from participants:And yes, the technology allows the respondents' poll answers to be logged with the phone number (can you say, "micro-targeting"?) …
Listeners press the number on their phone that corresponds to their views, and the congressman's office records and collects another piece of data about that specific household. The simple process of operating a drop-down box to denote which questions correspond to which answers allows congressional offices to collect anything from demographic data to opinions on complex issues. Source: Hotline On Call, 3/8/06
Posted at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
