Netcentric Advocacy

Standing up in Egypt : Want Change?

 This is hard to watch. These clips show the incredible motivaiton and courage the people demonstrated to create the change in Egypt. Good luck to all of them in brining about peace and a better life.

AARP Online: They can't be different from most nonprofit web strategies.

This article from Online Media Daily gives a brief overview of AARP’s re-designed website.

And here’s a link to AARP’s very useful study of online practices by the 50+ crowd.

Good news: 40% of 50+ internet users consider themselves extremely or very comfortable using the internet. We’ll make online donors out of them yet!

And 27% use social media sites (many learning about such sites from children or grandchildren). However, reflecting their almost genetic preference for print media, when it comes to following the news (a driver of giving, at least in the cause sector), only about 36% look for online sources, and of those 66% chiefly go to the sites of traditional media (cable news, newspaper and magazine sites).

via www.theagitator.net

Often groups complain that the online strategies are not a good fit for thier older membership. It is great to see AARP teaching the rest of us how to most successfully engage thier membership and give us real data on what works with that audience and the trends there.

Annie Leonard tells the Story of Stuff. She also describes dependence on networks.

In case it has been a few months since your last peek at the www.StoryofStuff.org let me continue to encourage you to think about the way www.storyofstuff.org is an asset for an entire network of activists.

Watch the interview below to hear about the ways Annie by design has "pushed the power to organize" out to others. 

The resources that Story of Stuff team creates, the stories Annie tells, and the clarity to the vision for so many partners continues to add capacity to a network of allies. Annie's effort is a great example of the ways they are designing to be a network services to a cause. She talks a bit about it as well in the video. 

The story behind 'The Story of Stuff' from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

 

Museum 2.0: One-Pager: A Simple Alternative to Messy Websites

This must be the new design guide for campaigns, micro-sites and small nonprofits.

Design your site to be super clear, simple and easy maintain. Cut, cut and cut again to to present a single set of value to user of the site and reduce need to keep the content fresh.  A simple site increases value to the user and reduces your headaches.   

If you are going to have a run on and long blog like this go ahead but really take pride in the brainstorming and note space. :)

SO WHAT are the ESSENTIALS of your SITE?

1. One hook with the user. (emotional is good. timely is good)
2. A clear promise and a clear ask. (what is the trade?)
3. A signup form to stay connected to people with zip and social spread tools. 
4. Basic learn more link. 
5. Blog and transparency too. 

    

One-Pager prioritizes simplicity--both for library patrons who use it and for librarians who manage it. One-Pager isn't meant for institutions with a team of web developers; instead, it's designed for library systems that have little to no capacity to write and design online content. The argument is that instead of offering inadequate, unclear, or poorly-designed online services, it's better to offer users something clear, attractive, and easy to maintain. The site is optimized for speedy use on mobile devices as well as standard web browsers. It forces librarians to pare down their content... like it or not.

via museumtwo.blogspot.com

 

Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. Welcome the Age of the Low Motivation Revolutions

Revolutions are not made: they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. - Wendell Phillips

The basic equations that are at play are the same in each revolution.

Motivation + Network Capacity = Revolution Potential

We can see that the motivation for change builds from hope and despair. Motivation is inspired by crack downs. Motivation emerges from seeing injustice.  The economic pain motivates people as a does history of police abuse. Motivation comes from empathy and fear as well as belief in success.

Network capacity is the only global virus leaking into every corner of humanity on the backs of cellphones, cheap processing power, commerce and information flows.

Network capacity is the ability for the stories to circulate and networks to coordinate. Network capacity includes a common stories, common language, common vision to throw off the oppression. Network capacity is the ability to share, communicate, coordinate and swarm. Network capacity is the ability to see in real time what works in another country or across town. Network capacity is the ability to adapt quickly. Network capacity is the backbone of solidarity and taking actions with other and working together.

As the world pours “free” network capacity onto populations we are arguably not just entering the age of networks but the age of low motivation revolutions.

What does this mean?

1. Small bands of really motivated people will connect and trigger revolutions.
2. Large bands of just very mildly pissed off people will connect and trigger revolutions.
3. Because revolutions take less motivation we will need to do more to keep people happy or we will endure rapid destabilization.
4. The longer people suppress connections to the free network  services the more traumatic change will be  once the motivated get networked.

Leading in the age of revolutions is 1 part motivation and 1 part network builder.  If you have a motivated public throw more network capacity on them to create change. It is increasingly important to know what makes a network functional and to understand the mechanics of networks. Hope we can help.

Flash Mob Gone Wrong. What if?

Flashmob gone wrong.

 

 

 

 

This is interesting food for thought  in 5:40 seconds.  We know there have been flash mobs that lead to vandalism and muggings.  We have seen international networks work to rescue people or foster hate crimes. We need to be thinking about the shifting ways people behave , the way people consume information and the complete distortion of time and scale that networks operate on.   How does this change your thinking at the US State Department? How does this change the way you organize as a teacher in Wisconsin?  What does this online and offline mixing mean to groups with 10,000 followers and friends? How do you convert attention to action? How is that engagement ladder changing in a world of flashmobs gone wrong?

Help Kids Live Longer and Healthier. Help means Connect. Help Means Act.

There is only one way to organize a movement, "ask". Will you do something about childhood obesity?

 

There are many great causes out there and many new ones pop up with the publication of new research, the crisis of a new event, or a population reaching a breaking point. However, causes don't make change. You do. People need to understand/feel the crisis or the problem . We need to understand that there is something we can do to change the problem. We need to understand what to do. The success of the petition on change.org and care2.com are good indicators that those elements are coming together.

 

Childhood obesity is a problem. It is a crisis. It impacts 23 million children. The data says this generation needs us to do something, if they are going to have a chance to live healthy and long lives. America did not just decide to over eat and stop moving. Food has always been available. We did not give up interest sports, athletics or interest in healthy people. If anything we are more interested in those.

 

Something else is going on. Something small that is having a huge impact on our kids and our fate as a country. I say it is small because I am not a doctor, city planner or a researcher they know this is a big deal. I say it is small because 150 calories seems like a little thing. The root of the epidemic among children is just 150 calories a day. 150 extra calories every day converts to something like 10 lbs a year on a kid. This converts to obesity at a young age (4^th and 5^th graders 40 and 50lbs overweight). It seems so simple. Help kids eat just a bitter better and healthier. Help the kids move or play more everyday and we stop this epidemic. Work together, and the pain, the suffering, the early disease and the billions of dollars it will costs all go away.

 

Everyone is responsible for what they eat. Parents are responsible for getting kids moving and helping them eat healthy. But parents need help. We all have a responsibility to help the next generation thrive. There are too many forces are working against parents rather with than them. Parents that work hard to provide the right foods and then someone brings them cookies. Parents work to get kids to a party for a schoolmate and kids are offered 1000s of calories at a sitting. Parents that can no longer assume the schools will get them moving on a playground or in PE.

 

The answers are within our grasp. We can help parents. We can help them if we make sure kids are surrounded by healthy affordable foods not junk food. We can help them if we reduce the ridiculous amount of crap food advertising pushing kids to eat more, more, more. We can help them if we help keep kids moving in PE, community fields and safe places to play. We can help them if we put schools where kids can walk. We can help them if we create trails and play spaces kids can use safely and help keep communities safe so they can stay outside.

 

Kids will play with just about anything. I watched mine play with empty boxes and run around a field playing tag or tumbling around for an hour. They will ride bikes along trails until their legs fall off and say in a pool right thru lunch and dinner if I didn't call them. My 5 siblings used to fight (that was worth at least 150 calories a day). Kids are not different. Our food and environment are.

 

You walked to school. Your kids don't. You drank milk (ours was powdered milk) or drank out of the hose in the yard. Your kids are offered sugar drinks EVERYWHERE. Food and food marketing is everywhere. Gas stations sold gas. Now kids are begging for treats when you fill up the van. 10% of kids ask parents to go for fast food everyday.

 

Those are not accidents. Governments cut back on sidewalks while building roads. Food companies have pushed into every nook and cranny of your kids day. Junk ads tell the kids in the middle of every movie, jersey, billboard, book, show and on every carton that junk food is easy and fun. The things that pass for school lunch are heavily influenced by industry. The default kids meals in restaurants don't meet healthy meal standards. We cut budgets for PE. We build over the woods near kids houses. We surround them with dangerous roads and fast cars. We cut budgets for school meals, food preparation, and parks. We don't do anything to bring healthy food into reach while junk food has an industry nudging parents influence out while superloading sugar, fat and salt into things packaged as healthy. We were making some mistakes that are driving this epidemic.

 

Working with everyone isn't easy. Change is hard. The good thing is there is no doubt we can do this. There is no doubt if we do the right thing we will reap huge benefits. But we have to ask.

 

Can you join the movement? This is what we asked in our first effort on the petition site. Today, we are building a movement to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity. We need to make that 150 calorie shift. You can play a part. You can lead. You can support those who lead by tuning in and getting engaged and participating in all they do.

 

Will you join? Others are. It is time.

 

 

   

   

Everyone is a publisher. Network reporting 140 characters at a time. Bahrain

This is from the Head of the Foreign Relations Office Bahrain Center for Human Rights Human Rights Activist. (30 min screen shot.)

 

  

Screen clipping taken: 2/16/2011, 7:49 PM

   

   

Network Widget - Get One. Connect the people you know to leaders working on Childhood Obesity.

“Be the Ball Danny”… Dannnaana == Seeing Social Media Success Before It Happens

Dan Cohen has a nice little riff over on the communications network blog about  seeing social media success in your future.

I really like the visualization of the future idea.

I would add a few questions about the network nature of the tools.

• As we use these technologies how are we different?  Is that enough?  What would make it personally worth enough to use media online?
• Who are we talking with online?
• What are we learning?
• Who did we build trust with?
• What did we reveal about ourselves and why?

 

She asked then to think who their allies were.  She asked what tools they thought made the most impact over the “past” year.

Seeing Social Media Success Before It Happens (the Communications Network blog)

 

 

Why Work on Childhood Obesity?

There are lots of resons that I like working on childhood obesity. None of them seemed linked to the pure data that explains the problem.(obesity rate widget) Data is compelling. The control of the widget helps make you think about the issues behind the data. I typically can be a bit geeky but I am not sure I would have "connected the dots" these trends, the widget and data with people.

However, I was at a conference a at the end of last year,  a doctor from the CDC gave a talk that has stayed with me. (My sister is a doc. ) I know what good doctors do. I know how hard they work to be a good doctor. I know what it means to my sister to help someone. Anyway, this doctor (I need to go back and look at the agenda to get the name straight.) talked about walking away from bedside practice to take a job at the CDC.  She looked into the room and of activists working on health and childhood obesity and pulled from a lifetime of experience to tell us  "we are all at the bedside." 

She took a job at the CDC because she realized shifting just a few percentage points on this issue, was going to save many families from the need to hold hands of loved ones with tubes up thier noses. She knows addressing childhood obesity was going to reduce suffering, pain and loss on a massive scale.  She knows what early death looks like in a hospital. She has faces on the numbers below.   She challenged of us in the room to dig deeper in our work. She challenged us to realize we all stand with those families everyday.

I didn't go to medical school but I have been at a bedside during to many of those moments. I can easily put my own faces behind those shifting numbers. I am also very proud of the work we are doing at Preventobesity.net. 

Check it out. think. act. Take the widget for your site.  

 

The Magic and Dynamic Mix. The Right Policy. The Right Communications Strategy. The Right Network.

   

When I think about the elements that need to be in place for a campaign to succeed. I imagine that each campaign needs to have a focus in four areas throughout the campaign. The campaign needs effective management, it needs the right policy, it needs an effective communication strategy and it needs the right network. These elements interplay with each other.

 

A great communications strategy can open up new policy options and build a new network. A strong network can achieve significant policy change with a very poor communication strategy. The perfect policy is not always good enough. There is no way around investing in developing each of these four elements. Effective management balances the tension between the communications team, the policy team and the network team. Having a good policy does not mean you have an effective communication strategy. Having effective network strategy does not mean you have figured out how to communicate about it or tested any kind of policy.

 

What I find most surprising is that we do not balance our investment and expertise in these areas. Most campaigns and nonprofits that I work with are too heavily focused on policy expertise. Boards, strategy staff, and the policy people that want to see change need to be more deliberate on establishing a better balance in their management structures to deal with the development of each of these three elements.

 

Across the board, on almost every campaign I see a need to focus management on bringing both communications and network strategist to the senior leadership table.

 

If your organization has the opportunity to develop the perfect policy, the perfect communications campaign, or the perfect network which do you believe provides you with the most strategic value to leverage towards success?

 

Engagement Unpacked and Debated

Gideon Rosenblatt is enjoying “retirement” digging into some important concepts that feed social change.  His riffs are must read content for serious organizers (online and on land). I like his focus on teasing apart the spectrum of “engagement”. I love his work.  I enjoy debating with him via blog post to sharpen my thinking and figure out what he is saying.  These posts are thought provoking. 

Engagement is important to define. However, I don’t think I like the way it is defined here. I don’t like the way he set up the word engagement to be tied to productivity. I also react negatively to the idea that  to the idea …

“The art of engagement centers on knowing when to invest in relationship building and when to tap relationships to get work done.”

In this framework, you are not engaged if you are in a relationship (connection of ideas and discussion) and you are not engaged if you are doing weekly tasks for someone.  It is only engagement by connecting the relationship to tasks.Or as the Church used to say “faith without works is dead”

“Engagement is what brings tasks and relationships together. Engagement is the process of building relationships with people and putting those relationships to work to accomplish some goal.”

In this model, unless we use some really loose definitions of task and relationship then solidarity, alliance, alignment and accompaniment are not engagement. Learning from another (is that a task or transactional?) This definition makes “issue engagement” focus on a defined set of relationships and tasks.  I don’t think that is consistent with my experience.

Getting work done with other people is hard. Getting work done by people that you don’t pay is harder. In this framework, engagement is a proxy for making people work because they like you. Again, I disagree.

It is hard to work with people when you don’t pay them. However, there are lots of reasons for failure outside the relationship/task balance. When you are not paying them, they need to either like the work (you don’t matter) or they like you, or they expect rewards in the future, or the do it because they hate who you are also working against. Are you “engaged” with other people when you are at a rally together but don’t know each other?

Finally, this framework of engagement also seems makes engagement “scarce”.  I am struck that engagement in the model is not regenerative. You “discharge” relationship points to get things done and when you are “broke” of relationships you have no capacity to get tasks done together and still be “engaged”.

Engagement is about promise and entanglement. Like one of captains on Star Trek “Engage”. Engagement comes from the “engagement period”. The groups that are great at engagement are the groups that know how to create promise. These groups entangle their allies together close and far with attention and listening and excitement.  Those that excel at engagement often align people into action but it is important to unpack and tease farther apart failure to effectively “work” an engaged public in a productive direction and the failure to be successful at engagement. 

If you want to build engagement create promise and entangle with your audience (listening, work, learning, accompaniment, campaigns, actions, etc). If you want the engaged group to be productive empower your network leaders to get things done, and invest in the network capacity of the engaged group to share, collaborate, adapt, and act collectively.

Engage.

Small Change Matters: Tweet It. Gladwell.

I've been thinking about a response to write Malcolm Gladwell's Small Change and his typical "advocacy doesn't happen online" half-hearted probe into causes and movements. However I've been waiting to see if there is another riff out there that I agree with most so I could just re-tweet it and move on.

I have seen some strong rebukes of Gladwell's article but I'm compelled to jump into the fun. I think the bottom line is that Gladwell needs to hang out with more activists (smart guy and great other books).

Not that it matters what us advocates think, but I totally disagree with Gladwell. There will be no revolution that is not supported (and tweeted) by a coordinated advocacy network. The network will leverage the most powerful and accessible tools to communicate persuade and coordinate. The successful movement will use every means possible to connect and synchronize with people who care about an issue. I don't know if Gladwell ever worked on a campaign or part of a movement with a loose network of people to get a policy changed but based on this article I doubt it. I also think he totally confuses deep personal anger and connection with the effects of racism with social ties. I bet there were all kinds of new friendships made in the protests and after not before as he suggests. They were not there for a social event.

First, social networks are not advocacy networks. People who hate each other can work and participate effectively in the same advocacy network. People who hate each other destroy the same social network. Social networks beget social outcomes. Invest in advocacy networks and you get advocacy outcomes. Advocacy networks use social media. Some social networks engage in activism. (Gladwell seriously confuses these concepts.)

All networks have a purpose and a value. The way the network is built sets a norm. Dating networks are sometimes used to create business deals. Sometimes people who work together date. People can use networks for other purposes but sometimes it is creepy. Match.com is not going to solve world hunger. The civil rights advocates were connected to an advocacy network. Facebook is a social network. Twitter is a communication tool. Advocacy networks use these to get things done and connect people together for advocacy.

The civil rights movement did not happen without scale, communications and coordination. It did not happen without synchronizing efforts of people. Yes, it happened without e-mail, Facebook and twitter but who the hell would do this kind of work today without using the best tools available? Shack Dwellers International coordinates with skype and email. I know advocates. We know what activism is. I also know they will use twitter, facebook and email. So yes, the revolution will be tweeted.

Activism is about creating change, shifting power, distributing rights, fighting injustice and waste. Gladwell may think it is about protests, passion, commitment and strong ties. He is simply wrong. Show me a serious force shaping today's culture or politics that is not online? Broadcasting challenges to authority, speaking out against norms, raising consciousness and fighting authority and trends empowers others to do the same. The communication grid in a network fosters a common vision, common language, and distributes ownership of an agenda. Uprisings happened when people speak the truth and are heard. Uprisings are inspired by communication of stories that move people. Networks don't centralize the ownership of the campaign they spread it. The civil rights was a movement because so many were inspired to own it. If Al Gore or any one group "owns" the climate campaign we are sunk. HealthCare reform was a massive network effort fighting very centralized efforts.

The more that people can coordinate on their own, the less they will be victimized. The more we connect resources of attention, money, wisdom and political capital behind these groups and leaders the faster the revolution will happen. It does not matter if those resources come from small donations or large, from one person volunteering for one year or 10,000 for 10 min. each. The opportunity and revolution of our time will be tweeted. We will continue to move deeper into the long-tail of engagement to engage new voices and resources.

Human nature has not changed but our behavior has. That has changed the landscape. I like committed and passionate people. I love the underdog. I'm inspired by those that sacrifice so much for the cause. Can that really be the only way people can achieve revolution? Political donors used to believe that you had to donate thousands of dollars to influence politics. The longtail of political organizing has just started. It is increasingly feasible, powerful and sustainable to act small and coordinate small bits from lots of people. A small bit of passion, money, voice and vote counts. The next revolution is more voices, and groups, and the new ways that people can engage.

The closing paragraphs of Gladwell's article reveal how little Gladwell really gets the subject of change and movements. Advocacy networks use twitter, Facebook, cell phones, blogs, secret handshakes, dances, puppets, rituals, newsletters, whatever. The successful advocacy network engages all ties (weak and strong) to create options for leveraging anything available in the fight. Advocacy networks spread issue ties like "the fever" Gladwell keeps referring to. Social networks are not required by design to grow. Advocacy networks are designed to grow.

Advocacy networks power many types of activities. In a healthy advocacy network, you have core groups planning the really big and complex activities, you have specialist that spread talents around the network and you have "walk-ins" all running experiments and operations to move the agenda forward. Networks don't have a boss but they are filled with leaders. Network means connectivity not leaderless or inept (or efficient ). Networks have varying degrees of "organized clusters " from the example of the Obama 2008 campaign (strong center) to smaller scale examples such as work on gay rights (loose center), the anti-war movement, anti-immigration, pro-migration, tea-party, deaniacs or the many, many which Clay Shirkey brings up.

Healthy networks have a fluid governance (because they are designed to have redundant leadership) but I have never been in quickly operating highly functional network "government by consensus". That's not how networks are governed. In advocacy networks, advocates and resources swarm around success and experiments (think Cindy Sheehan in Crawford TX) Increasingly, they are using communication tools to figure out what is working, learn, share and synchronize. The early successes in the next revolution will be tweeted (put on facebook, etc) the network will swarm around what is working. The next revolution will be tweeted.

Small change matters. The activists networks are getting better everyday at figuring out how to leverage these networks to drive real change. We are getting better on understanding the mechanics of what makes and effective advocacy network and designing new networks for emerging movements.

Seeing the influence of networks on social change requires the right perspective and understanding of advocacy to see what is going on. Gladwell just misses it. He needs to hang out with more activists.

 

Connect. Relationship. Engagement. Is that the path?

Turning connections into relationships is the essence of “engagement” and we’ll be covering that (a lot) in future posts. In the end, what it really comes down to is practicing much of what we’ve been taught since we were kids. Engagement and building relationships are about “meeting people halfway”... Both sides have to reach out in order to meet each other. It’s a given-and-get world and the sooner we center ourselves in this relating, the happier and more effective we are – both as individuals and as organizations.

Gideon Rosenblatt is opening up his pen again on networks, connections and engagement. Gideon is one of the really smart people exploring the intersection of network theory and social movements.  I am excited to read more.  Although out of the blocks, I find myself disagreeing with some of his starting thoughts....

Two reactions to his good post...

1. Advocacy networks are not social networks. Social engagement and civic engagement are different beast entirely. If you invest in social networks you get social outcomes. Some social outcomes can be leveraged for advocacy. However, it is totally appropriate for people who have no social ties with each other or any relationship with each other to be able to work together on social agenda. There are people who want to work on climate change that I will never like nor would I ever want to sit down at the dinner table with them. Conversly, I have family members that I love and would bleed for but we do not see eye to eye on a single social issue.

Turning connections to relationships then relationships to engagement might not be the right path. Seeking engagement that is based on connection is the opportunity of our time.

2. I am really interested in the idea that both engagement and relationships are scaling virtually.

I forget where I was reading it but I ran across a quote that kept me thinking. human beings are the only species that can make up arbitrary symbols and give them value. Things like art, currency, neighborhoods, brand names, even the concept of the tribe or nation. We make these up. We make them real. They all evolved from something real and tangible but have unique charateristics that allow us to share , move, exhange and trade them.

Just as if you went back to an early silk trader and offered them some google stock or money deposited into a bank they would think we were trying to rip them off.  Today, I think there is a similar disconnect of relationship with the symbol of relationship. While this seems like a ripoff to those of us that are used to trading silk. symbols of connection among individuals may open up new opportunities to scale relationship and connection to numbers, cluot, voice and value across borders as never before.

We see the beginning of  scaleable human connections now. It may take anther decade or more before we really understand what it means I may take another 10 decades before people actually believe you can be connected to 1 million people do something successful them. However, I don’t see the trend reversing and I feel a lot of optimism about a more connected humanity.

Top Five Tools for Listening on the Social Web - Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media - frogloop

This is worth forwarding. Nice tools for 'listening" to the web.

As organizers, many nonprofits are focused on getting the message "out" but very few have a listening strategy.

Why listen?

• Listening helps you become a better organizer.
• Listening is part of your brand offline. It should be a part of your brand online.
• It helps you communicate more effectively.
• You can learn things that reshape your strategy.
• It is fun.  

1. Addictomatic: This is by far the easiest way to create a listening dashboard for free. Type in a search term and it will generate the latest news, blog posts, videos and even images around the keyword. After it generates results (using a variety of search engines, news sites and social networks) you can personalize the dashboard. Bookmark it and check it daily. 

2. Topsy: Part search engine, part social web connector. When you search for something on Topsy, such as “climate change”, Topsy finds daily conversations that match the search term. The results are the items people link to, when discussing your search term via a social network, news website, blog, etc. Topsy ranks results based on how well they match your search terms, and the “influence” of the people tweeting or writing about your issue. Bonus: It links to the conversationalists twitter profiles so you can follow them and engage with them on Twitter.

via www.frogloop.com

Many Eyes. Visualizations of Life’s Growing Data

I have blogged on many eyes in the past. It is a useful tool for generating visualizations of data, text and trends.

There is a capacity to pull together data sets including twitter feeds or government data to tell a complex story in a single image.

The world we live in becomes increasingly digital. Each activity generates a new digital shadow. The challenge to the organizers is to leverage this complex data to learn faster and make the right conclusions based on data trends.

This data driven adaptation of strategy will be the key to successful organizing. (It always has been) The tools to do it well are getting cheaper and more accessible.

Think about the data you have, the stories the data can tell to your organizing team, supporters, the media or your allies. What are the things you learn from your data .

 

Cultures get what they celebrate!

Clay is on fire. Cultures get what they celebrate! What does your campaign and movement celebrate?  Are you setting up a movement culture that celebrates sharing, collaboration, collective action and trust? Or are you celebrating donations, staff size, media attention and individual credit? What are the metrics you celebrate in movement building? Are those different than when you focus on legislative outcomes?

There are tons of good riffs in his talk and book. Ways we network the movement will directly position (or not position) civic change leaders to leverage these dynamics.  It never happens by accident. In each case it took leaders to build the network, support the network and drive the network to produce.  Usually, they were different leaders and each had different skills and focus.

How to lure people to your startup with analytics

If you are interested in that approach, here's a couple of tips. First, try to show users something as soon as possible. In an ideal world they arrive at your page and immediately see a graph that tells them something interesting about themselves or something they relate too. Typically this isn't achievable, but at the very least have a single step where they enter an email address, twitter name, etc and then within a few seconds get some information. You should also show an example of what they will get on the landing page. These techniques reduced my bounce rate massively, never overestimate people's patience, you constantly need to be convincing them to spend time navigating your site.

The second key is presenting your statistics in an actionable way. If you can not only tell a user something interesting, but cause them to do something based on that information, then your chances of a repeat visit shoot way up. Feedburner has an 'Optimize' tab that guides you through ways of increasing your traffic. I found that changing from just showing your most-frequently-contacted friends to sending a report of the people you used to talk to and haven't for a while ('Losing touch report') and giving them a link to email each person alongside the list turned it from an 'oh, that's nice' to a must-have.

via petewarden.typepad.com

This is smart.

Your data strategy must a.) provide value to the user immediately. b.) data and visualizations in an actionable way.

In an advocacy context, I would suggest that good data visualizations create a common focus point (inspire discussion), set a common language (visually based on what data you display) and give them options to engage each other because of common or opposing understandings of the data.  

Oil in the Gulf Widget

I like these tools to help tell the story. This widget misses a few important tweaks that would make it more valuable for both the user and PBS.

1. Sign up for updates on this story. (Name recruitment for PBS). Thank you emails should have links to charities and actions in them.

2. Donate to news coverage of the gulf coast spill. (short video talking about the cost of covering the story)

3.  The logo link to news hour should be all the Gulf spill coverage NOT the homepage.

4. Tell your story of the Gulf like this..link 

5. Watch the Mos Def the Gulf Aid track, 'Ain't My Fault.' http://bit.ly/acApvO#mb

 Oil in the Gulf.

There are big drivers afoot shifting civic organizing again. These forces are going to be as trans formative as the web was and initial email. The forces are mobile and data.

You need to be developing strategies today that:
a. capture data
b. position you to leverage the data you capture to deliver service to users.
c. integrate this personalized information product with social and mobile media channels.

There are lots of reasons "why". and even more ways "how". It is a process I am working on right now with clients and campaigns I care about. Unfortunately, very few organizations or social movements are working on serious strategies that are going to line up with the coming wave of changes in content will be delivered.

I ran across this quote "Organizations should refocus their attention on personalizing content and disseminating news through mobile devices" - Eric Schmitt @ Google.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35649.html#ixzz0nanfhl4Z

It is interesting to think about.

Metrics and Focus at a start up.

Startup Metrics 4 Pirates (Montreal, May 2010)

View more presentations from Dave McClure.

Amazing summary based on the links and tweets and followers.

 

 

This looks like a very cool service that focuses on generating a "newspaper" from the links and stories in a twitter feed and from the feeds of those that follow a feed. It seems like it could have a great potential as a single update on a network of activitity. For groups working on issues this would work well if.

a. Main source (twitter account) links to the daily clips, actions and videos on an issue.

b. The main source follows all the members in the coalition and regularly retweets their news reports and actions.

c. The main source only approves followers that are in the coalition. (can we even do that anymore?)

The resulting "paper" would be tight and focused on the issues related to the campaign. With Google ads (grants) the calls to action and focusing on retweeting the videos the page could becomevery useful in coalition work. Just a few small tweaks (allogn others to embed sections, or adding navigation wrapping around the page and it would be a very robust hub for a coalition.

The Community Roundtable's Community Maturity Model

One of our missions at The Community Roundtable is to further the discipline of community management – not just in our own community but more broadly in the marketplace. Our first effort to define the discipline is our Community Maturity Model:

This model does two things. First, it defines the eight competencies we think are required for successful community management. Second, it attempts – at a high level – to articulate how these competencies progress from organizations without community management that are still highly hierarchical to those that have embraced a networked business ecosystem approach to their entire organization.

via community-roundtable.com

This is brilliant. I like the elements and the focus on building toward a network. Building networks can be intentional and be defined in a series of steps.

I am sure all networks are not "mature communities". I am also sure all functional networks are not "communities". However, the ideas and elements are good and worth looking over.

There is one significant failure. The network misses "feedback mechanisms." In other stages, leaders can look at the metrics to shape the direction and learning. In the network phase of distributed leadership, those leaders need "distributed leadership tools" or universally accessible feedback mechanisms so that any partipant can "see" what is working and what is not. 

Social Media Campaigns are Data Driven

9 Tips on How To Run (And Not Run) Social Media Campaigns

This is an interesting look into the role data plays in scaling social listening and being attentive to those that you are interested in sustaining the conversations.

View more presentations from Rapleaf.

This Side Up Campaign: Products as campaign Tools

This Side Up Campaign: Products

Spread the word that babies are safest from the risk of SIDS if placed to sleep on their backs for nap or bed time. Our adorable onesies are the perfect gift for your friends and have proven an ideal way for hospitals to educate their patients on the risk of SIDS. English and Spanish versions are available.

 
There are so many reasons I like these style campaigns. The right information, at the right time, as a service (free onesies). It gets into the workflow of the people we are trying to connect with and gets them the campaign message right.

The only downside is never putting the onesie on backwards in the middle of the night on no sleep. 

School Lunches and Jamie Oliver

 

 

 

I am not sure what to make of this. Jamie Oliver is riffing on the importance of school lunches and the importance of nutrition to America's children but somehow the computers have positioned dog food ads above his riff on the food revolution. "every dog wants to be a Cesar dog?" Really? My dog mostly wants to eat whatever the kids drop.

What ads really belong here?

A Network Haiku. Palin and Discovery. Dark Clouds. Boo. Boo.

Here is an interesting contest of user voice. It generated 1600 Haiku's about Palin getting a million dollars from Discovery. I wonder if twitter and txt culture makes for better Haiku contest?

We thought Discovery Communications' decision to give Sarah Palin a "nature" documentary series about the state of Alaska with a paycheck of a cool $1 million per episode deserved a tongue-lashing.

So we invited you to join us in delivering Discovery an unconventional response. And we've received an overwhelming response, with more than 1,600 haiku submitted by you in just the last week!

Now, we need you to vote for the top haiku.

Friends of the Earth staff have culled through thousands of your haiku to bring you the best of the best. These haiku help show how ridiculous the notion of a Palin "nature" show is.

via action.foe.org

Pug Meetups around the world. Why?

This is a social club for pugs & their humans! We love our pugs- all ages, all kinds and we want to meet you and yours.

The club holds monthly meetups that generally fall on the first Saturday of every month (barring holidays) at Austin local dog parks. We are usually at Bull Creek, but in the winter months we take field trips to other local dog parks! We also host bigger events like The Great PUGkin Fest, a halloween costume contest for pugs in October, the Valentines Day PUG Tuneup in February, the Spring Luau in April and the PUGtucky Derby in May. Some of these are fundraisers for pug rescue, and some of these are just events held to play some games, laugh at our pugs and have a good time.

We would love for you to come out and join us- after all, we are all pug people!

via www.meetup.com

They want to talk to each other. They use technology to cluster. Coordination takes little cost.

What things have they done that have nothing to do with Pugs? Are they green space advocates?  Did they raise money for a disaster? Discuss politics? March at a Tea Party? Is there a strict "pug only" discussion moderation or is this an example of something much more complex?

Worldchanging: Bright Green: Obama for America's Lessons on Technology for Social Change

it’s a losing game to pick winning technologies – instead, we need to use whatever works to put forward a clearly articulated set of values.

“Even smart communications folks forget that we have a progression from values to mission, mission to strategy, strategy to tactics.” The campaign was successful because the tech decisions were led by this progression and empowered by the willingness of folks like David Plouffe to be open to innovation action.

via www.worldchanging.com

Brilliant look inside the thinking behind Obama's team and the way they approached technology. I love this quote... "use what works to put forward clearly articulated set of values."

Global Guerrillas: THE SIMPLIFICATION OF COMPLEX SOCIETIES

In the book, he makes the compelling case that complex societies are, at root, very successful problem solving systems.  If they weren't, they would never have become complex in the first place.  Why?  Societies solve challenges by creating new rules and processes (new complexity) that are then added on to the existing system ad infinitum.  More successful outcomes = more complexity.

However, as noted above, problem solving comes at a cost.  Each solution leaves a residue, a layer of complexity that never goes away (laws, taxes, monopolies, treaties, etc.).  It builds up over time and saps the social system's flexibility and efficiency.  Eventually, ever new layer of complexity extracts more in costs than it provides in benefit (solution).  At that point, according to Tainter's analysis of ancient civilizations, the complex society collapses. 

via globalguerrillas.typepad.com

What if the complexity is not the nation-state or enterprise but humanity? There are very few system or total collapses (world war, dark ages) on a macro-level (time and scale), I am not sure that the view of collapse holds.  The human network is on one path toward global complexity. We progress but are rooted in basic human needs and requirements.  

And yet. I love the logic and feel this riff has at kicking dust in the eyes of the giant old dinosaurs.

Games People Play. Things People Value. Changing Behavior

Game Designers and trying to shift behavior by: This is disturbing in a big brother kind of way.

• bonus points ...        
• sensors everywhere (DSI, Cell phones)
• value for points. points = money.
• tatoogle ad sense...yuk

       

Saving Money With Smart Research and Smarter Defaults

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness have articulated the benefits of default choices in encouraging positive behavior for workers and organizations. Though those books talk about default choices in the context of retirement choices for workers, the key lesson that's been learned is how efficiencies can be gained simply by offering smart defaults.

via expertlabs.org

What are the defaults that you have set the wrong way at your organization?   What does making it easy mean in the world of activism?

Links

Note... a bunch of sites I like for elements of the design and/or strategy…

http://www.whytuesday.org/

http://www.charitywater.org/whywater/

http://blogs.ushmm.org/worldiswitness

http://www.livestrong.com/

http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/

http://www.homelessnation.org/index.php?lang=en

http://remembersegregation.org/

http://www.walkscore.com/

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

http://www.350.org/ ( I like the twitter integration at the top)

http://www.edutopia.org/video

Orgs with email list of under 10,000 grew online revenue by 26% YEAH!

Great service from Convio for sharing this summary and Michael Stein for his work.

There are some really interesting trends in here. What do they tell us about the future?  How do these trends shape the movement? 

• Online giving grew 14 percent. 69 percent of organizations raised more in 2009 than 2008, while 31 percent saw declines in their online fundraising.
• 61 percent of all organizations saw their average gift drop in 2009.
• The average online gift was $80.81,
• the online revenue per usable email address in 2009 was $11.68.
• Small organizations grew fastest. Organizations with fewer than 10,000 email addresses on file grew online revenue by 26 percent, and gifts by 32 percent.
• Email files continued to grow strongly. The total email file grew 27 percent in 2009 to 39,100 constituents.
• The open rate for email fundraising appeals was 19%.  The click-through rate was 1.7%, down from 2% in 2008.  The overall performance of online fundraising appeals was 0.15%, a slight rise from the year before.
• Web traffic growth continued for most, but at a slower rate. 60 percent of organizations grew their website traffic from 2008 to 2009. Web traffic growth in 2009 was in the single digits at 6 percent compared with double digit growth seen in previous years.
• Web traffic was strongly correlated with email file growth. 38 percent of an organization’s success building large email files could be directly attributed to the amount of traffic to the organization’s website.
• Registration rates dropped. The rate at which organizations converted website visitors to their email file declined to 2.12 percent in 2009.
• Constituents were more reluctant to open emails and click-through. While open rates for both fundraising appeals and newsletters remained around 20 percent, the click-through rates for both types of online communication declined in 2009.
• About 7% of online activists also donated money online to the organization they took action with.  Conversely, 8% of online donors also took an online advocacy action with the same organization.

via michaelstein.typepad.com

Growth in small orgs. Growth in those that invest in generating web traffic. Growth in depth of connections with the membership. 

Traffic Flow by Data Points: Look at the pulse of a city.

What is the data you want to see? What is the traffic and transactions in your work that reveal patterns? What do you learn from this as a Taxi driver? Police? Mugger?

What data services and "maps" should we be thinking about as a movement that will inform our organizers, policy people, communications staff and fundraisers? 

What is going on at 3am on Friday?

Data. Is it really a part of your strategy?

There are strategies that really think about data and there are strategies that don't. When you think about your advocates and allies. When you think of all the thousands of transactions that reveal intent, interest, need or solutions. Do you have a strategy that focuses on using that to make things clearer? Do you have a strategy that leverages the most formative trend of modern culture?

It is not easy for organizations to make this shift. However, good organizers have always known about tracking activists, campaigns, votes, neighborhood support, grant performance, etc. Making the leap with the new data trends is as essential today as basic organizing efforts were 100 years ago.  Being a good organizer is not just communication at scale of mass media but organizing at that scale. We need to update our thinking, planning, tools and concepts of data management to fit this new world.

From the NOI review of the Obama campaign... Transparency of measurable outcomes across a greater audience creates accountability and actionable data - sorely needed measures for many campaigns. When data is shared from volunteer to volunteer, volunteer to staff, and staff to senior management, institutional culture shifts. Outcomes become incentives for self-motivation and are socially compared, in real time. Volunteers and staff can visually assess their contribution to the campaign through charts, graphs and leader boards. Teams can track their impact together, and records from week to week and month to month are accessible and analyzed.

The Other Side of Network Success. Culture of Adoption

I just read an interesting paper called measuring user influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy (Miyung Cha , Hamid Hadadi , and Franbrecco Benevito )

The most interesting thing in the article was the theory that the strength of influentials came from two areas...

1. The interpersonal relationship among users. (Which is consistent with work and planning we do in Network-Centric Advocacy)

2. The readiness of society to adopt innovation. (Which is not something I have really focused on in the past)

The first idea is not radical, the idea that relationships among users really dictate the influence of each user. But the second concept, that the "readiness of the society to adopt innovation" is a large driver of the power of influentials, is something worth thinking more about.

You could be the most connected person among a group of stubborn and entrenched individuals and you will have very little influence. You could be a very loosely connected leader among a group of early adaptors and you will have great influence.

This begs the idea of what activities can you do consistently to enhance your networks willingness to adopt innovation. What are the steps you need to plan to drive up the influence of leaders?

Not only do you have to build relationships among the users, but you have to drive up the readiness of the users within that network to adopt to change. Any change.

Network builders must consistently feed this readiness to adapt innovation so that leadership can emerge and leaders and new ideas hold more sway over the overall network.

Twitter and Advocacy Discussion at 1pm

The Network Effect. Groundcrew and Feedback

I like the story and ideas around Groundcrew. I look forward to figuring out how jump start the use of Groundcrew with the organizing we thinking about. 

Netcentric Campaigns "Do Good with the People you know"

I love this video.

Day Traders and Campaign Plans

Creation of political will and policy change are an outcome.

Changes in political will and policy are not irreversible. It seems increasingly like they are reverse by courts, new politicians and switching party control that long-term shifts will be increasingly elusive if we stay on our current path.

The key challenges to fostering long-term change which protect policy gains and multiply the power of political will are. 

            A. Generating deep cultural interest in the issues, problems and solutions.
            B. Distributing ownership of the effort to fix the problem.

Short term policy activities that do not secure long-term solutions are not a solution for fixing deep systemic problems.  Passing lots of policy that is far beyond where the culture is ready go begs for backlash, the reversal of political gains and waste organizing effort and resources. Focusing on shifting culture and distributing ownership of the effort to create change secures sustainable gains.

Here are three examples....

1. Gay marriage = Culture has shifted. Political will and policy are tumbling now to align with the culture. In the past gains have been easily rolled back in political and policy context while culture has grown more mature and accepting.

2. Climate Change = policy efforts are far ahead of culture and activism increasing targeted at short term policy gain may or may not be successful but are seriously threatened if they do pass because not enough is being done to "distribute ownership of the effort."  It is currently a very centralized effort focused on political will and policy. 

3. Anti-war movement originally mustered massive amounts of political will but has moved into politics and policy (with the new administration) and abandon effective cultural engagements.

The threat is that with a "friendly' Washington many of the professional activists and policy wonky types are leaping into cashing out political will and pushing for policy gains. However, major progressive efforts are now threatened by three trends.

First, the focus on Washington combined with the economic condition has decimated the cultural movement in the field. More dollars are pushing Washington to move faster and farther on policy. State groups and field organizing activity is decreasing. There are less local organizers creating local context to issues and solutions.  The large culture wind that blew progressive into town is no longer being fanned by stupid moves of our opponents or by our own careful nurturing.

Second, the focus on exact policy, committees and specific frames and legislation pushes the Washington groups with more money and staff to exert targeted control to implement the most aggressive and far reaching solutions they believe they enact immediately. This pushes DC groups to reach farther and "cash in" political will to support very specific positions.   This need for control sucks away local feelings of ownership and engagement and diminishes political will with each step.

Third, the opposition is shut out of Washington policy and political process so they are focused exclusively on culture war out in the field and in the states. The have the potential to organize new support almost unopposed. (rise of the tea party)

These trends drive the pendulum to swing back and forth.

What needs to happen?

These trends open up the opportunity for a disruptive third way to emerge which does not push left or right but one that strictly "pushes"  culture -> political will -> policy.

In order to protect the progress that has been made and to avoid the swings of political will and policy, progressives working on the far reaching campaigns MUST add elements to their current  plans that use each activity to do 2 / 3 things.

1. How does this current activity (cash out of political will) or policy initiative add to the base? Policy work without base building is a strategy doomed to fail. How does this effort engage new people in new ways?   How does this effort appeal to the 10 minute volunteer, the person watching on TV, how does what we are now doing inspire those that don't care to engage just a bit more? 
2. How does work "spread ownership"? How are the activities and solutions being distributed so that the field and the states pick up the solutions? How does the energy and activity and messaging become a tool for local activity (in addition to national policy work)?  How does the national work elevate the local energy and demonstrate a clear unified and respectful relationship with solutions owned by others?  How does the policy work and organizing spread "across and up" not "just out and down"?  How do activities create a redundancy in leadership? What are the ways the actions "power the edge" vs. empower the center?
   
3. Given the assumptions that standing success for a real movement is cultural, distributed and engages many equal leaders, What activities and investments are being made that add the capacity of many leaders to share, collaborate and harmonize actions with each other? How do these harmonizing efforts help leaders act because they understand the situation (not because they are controlled)? How is each action laying more capacity for a base to collaborate so that the policy work and use of political capital is in sync with the field?
   

Planning for a Movement

This dynamic and lack of cultural and network perspectives on current campaign teams is a direct threat to the gains we have won in the last 24 months. The short sited "day trader mentality" of the current campaign and DC policy leadership is dangerous for the reasons listed above.

Therefore, at senior levels of strategy and planning we must bring a balance to the drive to "cash in" with the staff of equal authority and responsibility to design plans and campaigns which also meet a long-term goal of distributed base building and solving distributed collaboration.  We must honor the feel for the field and the assessments of leaders at local and state levels in-spite of the fact that DC seems so easy to achieve quick gains and we need to carefully retool major national strategies on the big agenda items to intentionally avoid strategies that are not fundamentally focused on bringing new people to engage in solutions.

Do You Care about Communicating with Each Other?

I was asking the twitterverse about the use of online tools (yammer) and adoption rates and Howard Rheingold flipped back this nugget. 

Latest: RT @hrheingold: "Success depends on ppl involved care about communicating w/ each other" great metric for network building too. via twitter.com

I am inspired to think about lots of the work of network building and creating advocacy networks.  Is it possible to nudge people to care about each other?  What does that mean? Communicating involves exchanges and listening. It involves connection and sharing of ideas and information.

 If you are building a network how do you make it easy to make people "care about communicating with each other"? 

To varying degrees, face to face, meetings, community spaces, get people involved because they lower the "care" threshold among people that might not normally care to communicate with each other. If it takes little effort then I only need to care a little to communicate. If it takes lots of effort to communicate, then I need to care lots.

Do emails, twitter, facebook, status updates etc create "care"?  Do they lower the threshold so much that they are so easy to use that people that don't normally communicate start to chatter? Does that chatter and exchange mean that they "care"? Yes. It does in some way.  

So, the question for the network strategists is to both make it easy to communicate AND increase the reasons that people would want to communicate.  Network building is a mix of building the participants (or leveraging the participants) care for each other  and decreasing the barriers to communication.

To look at the challenges this way, lets unpack how the seven elements of network building fit into those 2 challenges...

Build the participants care for each other...

• show them how they SHARE VISION
• build SOCIAL TIES
• reinforce COMMON LANGUAGE, VALUES and CULTURE
• LEADERSHIP to weave ties

Decrease the barriers to communication...

• support a dense COMMUNICATIONS GRID
• spread a COMMON LANGUAGE
• capture and share network FEEDBACK
• LEADERSHIP to maintain the network infrastructure and train participants.

The other network elements complement the network once it is communicating and tied together...

• SHARED RESOURCES to get things done.
• LEADERSHIP to drive direction 

Network success depends on getting people to care deeply about communicating, collaborating and acting together with each other. It depends on developing an intentional strategy to increasing "care".

What information do you like to pick up before starting an online organizing project?

I started to think about all the campaign meetings and discussions I have been in over the years. Groups are great and they share lots of data including proposals, plans, budgets, etc. However, I am usually very hungry to sit down with the campaign team to talk about the vision and where things are going. What am I looking for during these meetings? Why does most the literature and information in proposals not give online organizers enough to chew on? What do I really want before I can sit down and develop the best advocacy network strategy for a group or client?

These are not in order. Here is a list of things I like to get my head around before I get into thinking about the online strategy. Most of these are obvious but some are driven by what makes a network function.

• What is the campaign trying to do? What is success?
• How do the policy team/ campaign team think it will be done?
• Who is the target audience? Who are the influencers that the online strategy must engage to succeed? What services would be most valuable to them in their own work?
• Where are the turf wars in this campaign among the allies? Among the opposition?
• What does collaboration look like right now? What works? What sucks?
• What is the most effective way to talk to the targets and influencers? What do they want to need to believe to act the way we want them to? Who do they listen to?
• What role does listening play in shaping the campaign? What information are we listening for? Is the strategy and campaign team willing to adjust campaign goals based on the input of others?
• What leadership roles can the grassroots take in this campaign? How can those leaders connect with each other? How can they come to know of each other? How do new people get treated?
• What are the technical and communications skills of the targets and organizers in the campaign?
• What resources are "in play" ? What data, reports, events etc are coming out in the period that I should know about? What existing activities can be tweaked to create an online organizing hook?
• What are the transactions, the movements, the flow of work of those we want to organize? What are the little ticks of user motion that reveal change, movement or intent?
• Where are the bottlenecks of people? Where do they cluster? When and where do all the users need to do the same things at the same time?
• What does the technical capacity of the group look like? What do the databases look like? How much data is being captured now?
• What does change look like in the organization? How does scope change impact staff or current business planning?
• What are the distribution channels for the campaign? Where does online fit in that mix? How do the channels connect with each other?
• What is the timeline? Is it realistic given the constraints of the issue, budget, staff and traffic?
• How much time do you have to discuss, digest and revise strategy? Is there space for building thoughtful conversation to build mutual understanding for proceeding?
• Who is in charge? What activity is delegated? What is the management drag on work? What is considered quick?
• What is the budget? When the money is gone, what will remain?

I am sure more will come up but this is usually much of the stuff I poke out of clients.

 

by not having "contol" of brand maybe we become better brands rather than better at spin.

This is an interesting. I like the riff on transparency and the clash that transparency will inspire us to be better as reviewers, readers and brands.  This transparency vs. control and history and trends vs. spin is interesting. 

Echo Creator Khris Loux on the Ties That Bind the Real-Time Web from ReadWriteWeb on Vimeo.

Truespin conversation: Testing Tanglerlive

Individuals Cannot Avoid Jumping to Conclusions

Here is a good article unpacking the fallout of group think. It is also a nice set of questions for any campaign planning and campaign strategists. The original article is about CIA and failures of intelligence. Our allies often get what we ask for but not what we want. My sense is that the failure of many of our investments and strategies is because we don’t do enough of the following….

1. Challenge Authority. Challenge Tradition.

2. Probe the Assumptions

3. Look for Indicators. What details could change your mind?

4. Brainstorm the likely responses from opponents.

 

Here is the section from the original article that hit me…

What our intelligence system really needs is ways to avoid becoming trapped by the natural tendency to leap to conclusions and stick with them. This is true in other fields as well, which is why so much of professional and scientific training is designed to reduce the errors made by fallible people using weak information.

If individuals cannot avoid jumping to conclusions, there are ways for organizations to make up for this. They can systematically solicit the views of people with different perspectives, for example, or use devil’s advocates who will challenge established views.

To compensate for the tendency to rely on implicit understandings, intelligence analysts can be pushed to fully explain their reasoning, allowing others if not themselves to probe the assumptions that often play a large and unacknowledged role in their conclusions.

To better recognize the significance of absences, analysts can learn to think explicitly about what evidence should be appearing if their beliefs are correct. Gaps do not automatically mean that the established ideas are wrong, but they may signal a flaw in the prevailing thesis. Analysts can also be trained to consider, explicitly, what evidence could lead them to change their minds - not only alerting themselves to the possibility that the necessary information might be missing, but also providing an avenue for others to find evidence that might overturn established views.

Analysts should think more broadly and imaginatively about how adversaries are likely to respond, especially when it appears as though they have few alternatives and may be pushed into tactically surprising acts.

Think different, CIA - The Boston Globe

Because of You Google Maps Show Live Traffic Reports for Back Roads

The thinking behind the Google Map service is the way every allied organizer should be thinking. Once you are not stuck at the ground level, we need strategists to step back and look at the 30,000 how can we make this happen.

The basic concept behind the way they build information on the map is exactly the way distributed advocacy and social change movements MUST be organizing. 

How do movements build up the capacity to enable collaboration with “almost zero effort” on the part of the organizers and groups?  What transactions of everyone else in the movement you work in would be most relevant to your work? What are the traffic jams of social change?

The people with cell phone are collaborating. They benefit from the collaboration. They have accepted the bargain of giving back peeks into data about them in order to see the big picture.

When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers. It takes almost zero effort on your part -- just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car -- and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody.

Google Watch - Google Maps - Google Maps Now Shows Live Traffic Reports for Back Roads

Human Nature Doesn't Change: Human Behavior Does.

This is a good presentation. Great line and introduction to the shifts in technology producing changes in behavior.  The goal of human nature is hard wired in people.  Somewhere in our bipedal mammalian evolution, we picked up socializing and connecting with each other as a species characteristic. 

The real evolution of the internet is not about the content, marketing, philanthropy, product placement, etc. etc.  The core of the network is connecting people to learn and share with each other, to collaborate, to evolve and to be.   Our survival in the ecosystem is dependent on communication and collaboration, it always has been and now it is just scaling with the people on the planet.

People increasingly turn online to find people who know, people to care, and people to accompany them while they are experiencing life. Those connections are evolving human behavior to a scale and tempo that is not comfortable for many.   What if people do get more value and reward from 5000 friendsters than 5 close friends?  What if "fame" online is as self-rewarding as fame offline?

The buzz about the collapse of social fabric is wrong. The "wisdom of the crowd", "wisdom of the market"  suggests that people are making daily choices all the time to connect via phone, email, FB, etc. about every topic and covering the entire range of human experience.  The experiences are all different but also very much the same. 

How does technology scale the best and worst of human nature?

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

View more documents from David Armano.

Data Driven Campaigns

Data at work in a defined context. Our movements need to really connect and track data and contribute to community and allies understanding of the data.  Time from 7:30 to 8:40 is amazing on the evolution of data enhancements and traffic mapping of engagement with the voters. 

Important ideas in any organizing context...

1. combined data creates new insights and "synthetic" data based on hard data.  By collecting data and sharing the data, it is possible to create new actionable data pools.
2. Carefully targeting allows movements to find new niches and audiences.
3. Careful targeting requires data sharing. 
4. Syndicating data access can help drive new levels of power to all that have access to that data. Access to data is scalable. 

This is a great presentation on the power of data. We need to continue to step up the tools and techniques that are available to allies working together on issues.

I'd rather have people grow out of our products, as long as more people are growing into them

We keep our products simple. I'd rather have people grow out of our products, as long as more people are growing into them. http://ow.ly/zIGI   The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals

Man. Wow… that is a line that should be burned into every social movement.  Jason is talking about products at 37 Signals but I would love to see that approach taken by our justice, environmental and other progressive movement organizers.

How many would pass? What % of our users do we graduate? Serve the new people well and you grow.

If you want to grow a movement build it to serve the newbie not the old baby boomer that wants you to add increased science policy review language onto some obscure wetland legislation. (press feed from ascribe)?