Civic Minded

Update on Second Life as a Platform for Online Community Building and Politics

2007-02-22T14:25:59-05:00

Second Life's greatest utility, to me, is that it better mimics the experience of being offline in the same room together than any other online medium... The experience of interacting there is vastly more social and immersive than, say, an online blogging community. High trust relationships are built quickly.... Therefore, I think it is destined to become an important new platform for online organizing / community building / social networking.

Avaaz is here

2007-01-12T09:13:07-05:00

The folks behind MoveOn and GetUp have been working for a while on a global equivalent for "rapid response" citizen mobilisation, and Bush's move to deploy more troops in Iraq spurred them to launch a few weeks earlier than planned....

Creative Commons Salon launches in The Netherlands

2006-12-15T18:16:17-05:00

This weekend is the 4th anniversary of the Creative Commons, with parties around the world. As an early start, and breaking new ground, Amsterdam had its first Creative Commons Salon last Wednesday, to bring together artists and content producers and...

e, the undersigned,...

2006-11-27T18:24:33-05:00

When I worked in a Member of Parliament's office back in the early 1990s, our office – like those of our colleagues – was inundated with an unending stream of petitions, pre-printed form letters, faxes and actual mail. Sifting through...

Letter-writing was never easier

2006-11-19T13:54:15-05:00

No more debates about the best online tools for letter-writing campaigns, please, cut out the man in the middle, and stop worrying about how to deal with thousands of supporters hammering your site to participate. Head over to WorldCoolers.org to...

Amnesty presses Internet freedoms at UN's Internet Governance Forum

2006-10-29T00:28:18-05:00

This coming week marks the first meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, a new UN-sponsored body that emerged from last year's World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis. The mandate of the IGF includes a wide range of responsibilities, such as to: Discuss public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance in order to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the Internet; Facilitate discourse between bodies dealing with different cross-cutting international public policies regarding the Internet and discuss issues that do not fall within the scope of any existing body; Advise all stakeholders in proposing ways and means to accelerate the availability and affordability of the Internet in the developing world; Promote and assess, on an ongoing basis, the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet governance processes; Help to find solutions to the issues arising from the use and misuse of the Internet, of particular concern to everyday users With this kind of broad mandate, it should be no surprise that Amnesty International aims to put Internet censorship on the IGF's agenda this week. Amnesty has issued a press release stating that

RootsCamp: Post Election Open Sessions from The New Organizing Institute

2006-10-19T16:58:17-05:00

I like the New Organizing Institute. They're bringing much needed coherence to technology training for the political Left by running a series of technology trainings for future staffers for Democratic political campaigns I expect better tool choices, more effective use...

Can we trust voting computers?

2006-10-08T08:52:36-05:00

Since Wednesday, the Dutch group "We don't trust voting computers" has caused a bit of unrest with their report and tv appearance on the security of the NEDAP/Groenendaal voting computer. Interesting to read, a mix of fun (at least for...

Online shopping guide: the Election Advent Calendar

2006-09-25T14:27:56-05:00

All those who are counting the days 'til the Democrats retake the house now have a little help. The Election Day Advent Calendar has a door for each day between October 10th and November 7th -- and will offer a...

Set the expectations and offer training

2006-09-25T08:07:08-05:00

The eUser project released a report that details a survey regarding citizen need of eGovernemnt and other online survey. Among the key findings are: No perceived tangible benefits when compared to the phone or face-to-face interactions. Many can only access...

Help is on the way for the Dutch elections

2006-09-20T18:30:06-05:00

Yesterday, the third Tuesday in September, Queen Beatrix read the "Troonrede", the Dutch "state of the nation" speech for the combined First and Second Chamber in Parliament. Lots of good news, of course, with elections coming up in The Netherlands...

For the best online interaction, think face-to-face

2006-09-19T12:37:30-05:00

An article in yesterday's New York Times on the relationship between web conferencing and business travel noted that web conferencing has yet to diminish the need for business travel. Indeed, there is a countertheory that air travel, Web communications and...

Open Access To Knowledge

2006-09-13T23:07:46-05:00

I have just returned from Amman, Jordan, working with the General Assemblee of eIFL, a network of library consortia representing well over 3,000 libraries in almost 50 countries, serving over 8 million users. They do a lot of work on...

Nonprofit tips from the Craigslist bootcamp

2006-08-31T13:39:51-05:00

The Craigslist Foundation held its nonprofit bootcamp a couple of weeks ago, and the wiki for the event includes some useful resources on nonprofit technology: In Extreme Makeover: Nonprofit Technology Edition you'll find a quick overview of how nonprofits can...

Green screens join the e-participation toolkit

2006-08-26T17:06:22-05:00

Stephen Colbert's Green Screen challenge -- where the talk show host asks fans to upload their own videos, based on footage of Colbert in a light sabre fight in front of a green screen -- should be inspiration for everyone...