I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of March 17th). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Cause Global: Social Media for Social Change: Crowdsourcing Social Change – Marcia Stepanek has a terrific recap of our sxsw Crowdsourcing session with quotes and links to the case studies we shared. Thanks for the post, Marcia!
• 501derful.org – SXSW Crowdsourcing Re-Cap – Here's a wrap up from the Crowdsourcing Innovative Social Change panel from SXSW. Dave was a fellow panelist.
• A Few Reflections from SXSW Crowdsourcing Panel – Beth's Blog – Beth has a great round up of links and reflections from our sxsw session called Crowdsourcing Innovative Social Change. Her round up includes the slides we used in the session as well.
• 10 Questions for Camfed — Camfed International – Jordan Ridge and Kristy Green will be traveling to northern Zambia this week to meet students, filmakers, and young entrepreneurs in the communities where Camfed works – and you can go with them! Submit a question by Thursday, March 18th and 10 questions will be answered by Jordan and Kristy. Submit today!
• Facebook protest isn't enough. Selma vets and young activists must share lessons. – Here's an interesting piece from Paul Lamb in the Christian Science Monitor: "A Facebook protest or online petition is not the same as a sit-in or hunger strike. As activism re-invents itself, the experience of the older generations and the innovations of the young each have something to offer."

This is cross-posted from the #4Change blog here.

From the newest member of the #4Change team, ChristinasWorld: In the wake of South by Southwest in Austin, and in anticipation of some exciting social media and social change gatherings coming up on the 2010 events calendar, we thought it could be useful to explore How Social Media Can Enhance Events as the topic for the March #4change chat.

I’m excited! Not only is this a topic that I personally want to learn more about, but it’s going to be my first time as part of the #4change collective to co-host a chat, together with Tom Dawkins (@tomjd). #Gratitude in advance for your patience, as I find the right groove!
Some pre-chat food for thought:

My new Mac’s thesaurus offers several alternative terms we could use instead of enhance:

enhance (verb) increase, add to, intensify, heighten, magnify, amplify, inflate, strengthen, build up, supplement, augment, boost, raise, lift, elevate, exalt; improve, enrich, complement.

Most of us would probably agree that social media indeed can enhance offline events, but does it always? For whom? The thesaurus also tells me the antonym to enhance is diminish. Can social media also diminish offline events?

There are so many tools we can use to try and enhance offline events. What we hope to explore in Thursday’s chat is how.

#4Change March Chat Questions:

1. What’s the potential benefit of using social media to cover events? For whom?
2. What makes a good events coverage strategy?
3. Are there examples of specific events that really did the social media piece well?
4. Which Social Media tools are best suited for covering live events?
5. How does online reporting affect the experience of participants at an event.
6. Is it possible to imagine online participants actually engaging in offline events remotely through social media, or will there always be a disconnect?
7. How can the continuation of conversations held at live events best be continued online? Is it realistic or unrealistic to expect that they will?

Join the Twitter chat:

If you want to contribute to the conversation, you’ll need to have a twitter account (it’s free).

• To follow the conversation (whether you are planning to contribute or not), use http://search.twitter.com or another application to search on Twitter for #4Change
• Jump in to the conversation by adding #4Change to your Twitter message
• Feeling brave? Check out TweetChat – it’s a great application that integrates with your Twitter account and makes chats more fun! You can turn it off after the chat.
• Please introduce yourself in 1 tweet at the start or when you join in

Details

Date: March, 18th 2010
When: 2 – 4 pm US Pacific Time, 5 – 7 pm US Eastern Time, 9 pm – 11 pm London, UK (Late!)
Where: Twitter (search for #4Change)
Topic: How Social Media Can Enhance Events

I’m really excited and honored to be speaking today at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX, on a panel with Beth Kanter, Dave Neff, Holly Ross and Kari Saratovsky.  We’ll be facilitating a conversation, more than doing a formal presentation, and will focus on the power of crowdsourcing (using our own case study from conducting the Social Media for Social Good case study competition) and the application of social media in nonprofit program delivery.

If you’re here in Austin, do join us!  If not, you can follow the conversation in real time on Twitter with the hashtag #crowdx.  (We’ll put up more notes after the session, too!)

Here are some of my thoughts going into the conversation and slides if you prefer engaging that way:

Crowdsourcing for Social Change

The competition we conducted as part of this panel surfaced a collection of case studies of organizations using social media in their program delivery.  You can see the full collection, and how they were voted on by the community here: http://nten.org/vote-sxswi-panel

The Value-add of Crowdsourcing: For me, the two biggest reasons to include crowdsourcing in your strategic design of community building or contests are:

1. Crowdsourcing invites diversity by encouraging anyone with an idea or interest to participate
2. Crowdsourcing levels the playing field so it isn’t just your “favorites” or those you already know that get to play

For the most part, I agree with the way the crowds voted – but, given that people were able to submit and vote at the same time, it means some groups only submitted on the very last day, not leaving much time for votes. There are also two major issues that groups need to consider when using the wisdom of the crowd voting approach:

1. Crowds are susceptible to encouragement/asks/campaigning – meaning, a group that enters and has LOTS of followers or active community members can send out an appeal for people to vote and get a big response; some say this is just playing the game.
2. Criteria is really important to consider: the crowds voting = who do you want to win this; the hosts/judges/experts voting = quality, value, innovation or alignment with competition/organizational goals

I think the most important part of designing a competition that leverages crowdsourcing is to strike a balance between too many voices, and too few.  I think you create balance by focusing the competition on the stages of:

1. Open door policy for contributing/submitting
2. Public voting process
3. Public’s favorites put to expert judges for final selection

A process like this can ensure that lots of different ideas are included but that the competition can stay true to it’s purpose or the goals of the sponsoring organization.  For example, if the crowd voted in huge numbers on a submission that didn’t necessarily fit the criteria, it doesn’t mean it should win.

The most important way to use social media in a crowdsourced process is to allow the community to use social media anyway they want! Using tools that allow reposting, sharing, emailing and so on will give anyone the options they want to push your content around the web for you.

Convincing your executive team to use crowdsourcing shouldn’t take bribery.  There are lots of examples of projects that use crowdsourcing, even this one! Their hesitancy may come from not knowing what crowdsourcing means or how it works: so show them examples, but also show how the project you are working on could benefit from crowdsourcing and how the elements of crowdsourcing align with your project goals.

Sometimes what you want to do and the tools at your disposal just don’t match. Sometimes that means crowdsourcing. It isn’t right for every project or process.  Especially when you need things to be very specific or follow tight criteria, you are working very quickly or flexibly where communication with the crowd could be difficult or time consuming (or even confusing), and when you already know what you want (be honest).

Social Media in Program Delivery

The Seattle Free School is a really interesting case study for a number of reasons:

• Social media is integral to the success of the program because it is online but it is also the mechanism for growth and community building
• Collaboration via social media has enabled the program to come together and launch
• Social media tools allowed for distribution of roles/responsibilities across the community (including garnering press coverage)

There are many ways to include social media in your work. But within the scope of crowdsourcing, there is still a range for how you can use the elements of crowdsourcing and social media tools. Three specific examples that are very different include:

• Connectipedia: a wiki-based platform that allows anyone interested in philanthropy or social impact in the Pacific Northwest (or beyond) to share research, resources, information, or data about people, places and topics.  The value of the tool grows as people value the tool and add more content.  The crowd decides and creates everything that it is.
• Ushahidi: most recently, Ushahidi adpated it’s platform for use in Haiti and Chili to let the crowd both in Haiti/Chili and outside share information and data in real time via mobiles or a web browser.
• Nature Conservancy’s photo contests: The crowd, in this case it’s one that loves nature photos, shares the pictures they love about nature and in the process grow their community.  The contest attracts lots of participants and generates great content for the organization – but more importantly provides an engaging space for the community.

Measuring success of social media in your work can be a tricky thing to do, especially as we all explore and experiment with the tools every day and many tools and processes are still very new.  Here’s 5 key steps to mapping your work towards metrics:

1. Problem: Be as specific as possible, focus on the problems you will be addressing directly (not just changing the world)
2. Strategy: Highlight the strategies that specifically address the problems (this assumes you’ve already used a process to identify your audience and goals and chosen the corresponding/appropriate tools to match)
3. Benefit: These are both tangible and intangible, and can also include things that you don’t see or expect at the beginning but develop later
4. Value: These emerge from the Strategy choices and Benefits
5. Metrics: You can identify the corresponding metrics of your tools and your actions based on what has emerged above; again some of these are basic numbers/data and others will have to be qualitative

How do you keep supporters engaged in creating change over the long haul? This is something that the 350.org campaign has done really well.  The basics include:

• Show impact in real time
• Create opportunities for iterations and involvement by community
• Embrace storytelling

Crowd vs Community

When creating a competition or open call, or any other programming/process, designed to use crowdsourcing I think the biggest issue to explore in the designing/strategy and the implementation stages is the idea of community or crowd.

A community shares values, experiences, goals, or interests in a long-term way; the crowd may share those same things but usually for only a specific time period or around a specific event.  Introducing a crowdsourcing opportunity to a community means the call to participate, the value of participation and the way participation works all need to match the modes of operation or goals of the community already in place.  When creating a crowdsourcing event for the crowd, you match the elements of the event to only your own goals, hoping/expecting that the participants will self-select out of the crowd (and probably opt-out again after the event is over).

That sounds like it is easier to creating a crowdsourcing event or call for the crowd instead of a community; and maybe it it.  But, I think there can be higher expectations and more predictable value exchange when crowdsourcing happens within an already established community.  Why? For a few reasons:

• the community has a shared context or starting place, there’s less to explain upfront
• the value and practice of contributing back to the community is probably already in place
• the community leaders or influencers have already emerged and can contribute to the crowdsourcing project’s success
• the crowdsourcing event or project can add to the value and collaboration of the community’s growth and long-term goals

I’m really interested in the dynamics for both crowdsourcing and campaigning between communities and crowds.  Looking forward to exploring all these topics in the session today and in future blog posts!

What do you think?

I’m so excited to announce the launch of Thrivability: A Collaborative Sketch – a new book curated by Jean Russell with a collection of over 60 essays crafting a topography for thriving.  I have the great honor to be included in this collection and take such pride in sharing it with all of you!

There are a few ways to dive in:

• View the book as a slide show: on the website or on slideshare
• View the book on the website: as one page or through the sections on the right
• View the book in PDF: download here (we warn you about the file size though!)

I invite you to check it out and connect with any of those that inspire you or get you thinking when you read it.  To get you started, I’ve included the introduction to the book below from Jean Russell.

Enjoy!

—–

Thrivability Introduction

Jean Russell, Thrivable.org – Chicago, IL, USA
Thank you for viewing this book. It comes alive in your gaze.  I want to introduce you to thrivability by answering some of the questions you have. I am guessing that they might be questions like – what is thrivability and who are these people contributing to it?

What is thrivability – a working definition
In the dance between the individual and humanity as a whole, there is an aliveness.  In aliveness, there is a yearning for thriving.  All living things strive to move beyond survival to truly flourish.  Even in the development of this very project, the aspiration for thriving was clear — the enthusiasm of a very diverse circle of people focused on  a simple idea: that the goal of evolving our behavior should be to thrive.   And it gives rise….to this book.

Thrivability is our path out of unsustainable practices toward a world where all people have a high quality of life, a voice, and a nurturing earth supporting them.  Using whole systems approach, we evolve our way of being together, of collaborating, so that our collective wisdom and action bring forth a flourishing world and thriving life.

Why these words and phrases?
There is no single recipe or discrete list of requirements for thrivability. However, I created several groups of words and phrases that relate to it in some powerful way.  Perhaps they reframe a perspective or engage in a critical role.  The contributors of this book refined and evolved the title words and phrases. It is an exploration they have joined me in, and I hope you will join us too.

A bit about our contributors
Our contributors are from widely different fields – from social entrepreneurship to philanthropy, from deep tech space to community activism, from neuroscience to labor and economic history, from social network analysis to storytelling. I expect that you, the viewers and participants, are a wide range of people too. Like you, the contributors are from a vast array of places in the world from Stockholm, Brussels, and London to Thailand,  Australia, and Uganda, and include Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, NYC, Los Angeles, Houston, Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston. From noted academics to get-your-hands-dirty entrepreneurs, from scientists to the tree-climber next door, we connect them together to lay out the general topography of a thrivable world.

Together we sketch our view of thrivability.  We may not all agree. However, I think you will find, as I did, that while the field of interest may be different, the core principles, values, and beliefs about thrivability come through consistently, as core words 
re-appear on other pages. Please enjoy this curated collaborative sketch of thrivability. I invite you into the conversation.

What does thrivability mean to you?
What does it mean for those of us who suffer?
Are we thrivable already, only becoming less so?
How do you apply the idea of thrivability in practice – in your life, at your work, in your community?
How is it possible to co-create a thrivable world?

“A good question sparks more questions,” says one humble,  extraordinary, and curious friend of mine. I think he is right.

In grace and with gratitude,
Jean Russell

Thrivable.org strives to equip agents of transformation in order to co-create a thrivable world. We reveal the breadth of domains and their interweaving. We enable thrive agents to know where they are and what they can do and be for collective thrivability.

My latest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog.  You can read the post and join the conversation on the SSIR blog here, or read the copied post below.

—–

A new report from the team at Forrester came out last week: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid.  It comes at the same time that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the importance of community builders/managers/leaders or organizational voices to give permission back to the community members.  The evaluation and recognition of peer influence, something that is not only prevalent but inherent in social media, is something that help empower and sustain your communities AND increase your staff capacity.  Let’s discuss!

First, let’s talk about permission.

As organizations or community builders active online, working to practice and create quality engagement, we are often trying to guide, collect or herd conversations and interactions into spaces that we have created or monitor closely. When I say “give permission,” in this post, I’m really saying that you should balance the herding and collecting of the community with the encouragement and empowerment for the community to go wherever it wants with your message or information.

Giving permission to the community is really just recognizing that conversations already take place in spaces online where you don’t have a presence, a fan page, or a profile. That people talk about your services or programs, issues or sector wherever they are and you may never know about it, know them, or be part of the conversation.

Giving permission to the community to have conversations without you requires trust. You have to trust that the community will take your communications or mission forward. You have to trust that the community will monitor or respond to comments or issues in a way that matches the way you would (that you’ve modeled the behavior the way you want it repeated).

The conversations and connections that are taking place elsewhere, whether it’s on or offline, don’t have to remain a mystery to you, though.  Give permission for your community to report back – and provide the mechanisms to do so.  Create places for or explicitly ask for feedback, not just about what you do and how you do it (which you probably already do) but also what your community is doing, learning, hearing, seeing, interested in and so on. This way you can build active two-way communications that help you stay informed but also empower the community members to be part of team.

Now, what about peer influence?

I’ve talked before about how to map your community and the messages within it.  What’s so great about the chart from Forrester at the top of this post is that it shows you a great way to view segments of your database in an influential way. You don’t simply have to say there are people that respond to action alerts and those that don’t… I may not sign your petition, but what if I’m forwarding it on? What if you could send powerful invitations to spread the word or rally behind a cause or action to a select group of people instead of creating mass mailings to everyone you know?  Think of the difference: your communications become more strategic, more streamlined, and more efficient by recognizing those in your list that fall into the different peer influence categories!

Giving permission to peer influence

All of this is really to say: you can create a multiple win for your organization and your community by giving permission to broadcast and influence on your behalf.  It sounds simple, but there are always infastructre requirements behind everything.  In order to give permission and leverage the peer influencers in your community, you need:

• to create a dashboard, toolbox, or any other catchy name where influencers can grab images, videos, files or messages that are ready to be broadcast
• to create opportunities for influencers to be unique or valuable with their participation
• to monitor how your influence tools are used (“share with a friend” or RT or so on) to see what content is best or most successfully shared and if there are new influencers emerging
• to provide recognition or spotlight for those that are taking your message into their networks and creating impact
• to help your staff, team or organization to understand the value in distributing the communications and influence of your work, and help them leverage the network  in similar ways across all departments and campaigns

What do you think?

How has your organization seen peer influence or community leaders emerge in social media? How have you created ways to give value back to those driving your message to their own communities? (Think about all of this in terms of campaigns, fundraising, events and more!)

Join the conversation on the SSIR blog or share your ideas in the comments below.

I come across so many great conversations, ideas, and resources all over the web every day. Here are some of the most interesting things I’ve found recently (as of February 23rd). You can join the conversations in the comments, or click through to the original posts to find what others are saying.

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Social Media Today | ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media – A great post from Brian Solis on Social Media Today discussing the ROI of social media. This is a really great post to read for anyone thinking about how to measure, evaluate, and even consider the impact of social media use (and that should be everyone). "Over the years, Social Media experts attempted to redefine ROI for a new era of influence. While some introduced alternative philosophies for measuring the nuances tied to social media, others wondered aloud whether ROI simply wasn’t necessary as the tools and methodologies for analyzing yields didn’t yet exist. And furthermore, by focusing on justification and metrics, we were distracted from the primary objective of building relationships and cultivating dialogue. … But that was then and this is now. In 2010, we enter in to a new era of social media marketing, one based on information, rationalization, and resolve."
• Cause Fatigue #4Change Recap « 4change – Did you miss the recent #4change twitter chat? The February chat focused on cause fatigue, but if you missed it, Zero Strategist has done a great recap of the conversation and highlights. Check it out!
• The Collaboration Prize – Search Database – Wow! Check out this great resource – a database of collaborations! "The first phase of this database of nonprofit collaboration models (currently consisting of the 176 nominations deemed eligible for The Collaboration Prize in 2008) contains the information submitted by each nominator in response to specific questions about the nominated collaboration. Additional models of collaboration from The Collaboration Prize will be added soon. While the contents of the first phase are limited to data contained in the nominations submitted in 2008, the next phase of the database, to be launched in the next few months, will have an interactive component, whereby the existing data can be updated and the database can be expanded by adding new collaboration models that were not part of The Collaboration Prize project."
• Welcome to Kopernik – "Kopernik — www.thekopernik.org — a new non-profit venture that provides life-changing technology to the poor, launches today. Kopernik makes technology designed for the developing world accessible through the Internet and by harnessing the power of individual donations. Kopernik’s aim is to bring this technology to the poor in developing countries via the site, and link them to individuals willing to make a donation towards the purchase of the products. It is the brain-child of Ewa Wojkowska and Toshi Nakamura who have extensive experience in international development as UN staff members." Check it out!
• New Ideas for Promoting Physical Activity in London – "The Go London social innovation competition is a call for ideas on how to make London more active, the first of its kind to be energised by the groundswell of optimism surrounding London hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. It is a shared movement to create a city where physical activity is a normal part of Londoners lives and contributes to making London a more livable, sustainable and healthy city.

  The project aims to help improve activity levels of everyone by finding out what's already out there as well as asking people for their ideas on how they think London could become more active. In the same way that stories can come from anywhere to inspire others, and we'll hope to capture as many of these as possible, simple, life changing ideas can spring up too. Through the creative use of social media Go London hopes to capture as many of these ideas as possible."

• Facebook Causes: Not just for Individuals: ICT Hub Knowledgebase – The Knowledgebase from LASA is a great place to find articles on all kinds of topics related to technology for organizations. I wrote an article for them on how organizations are using Causes and it's now up. Visit the knowledgebase if you want to learn more about Causes but also head there to find some valuable resources on hardware, software, social media and more.

Tonight, I attended a live panel discussion on the question of whether Technology is Really Good for Human Rights, or not.  Below are live notes – apologies for spelling and grammar – that follow the main points and audience q/a.  Enjoy!

Context for the event from Rory Cellan-Jones:  Prevailing ethos of the web has been libertarian, optimistic about the potential of the internet to be a medium of free expression and break down barriers.  That ethos continued until the last three years or so with issues in Burma, Iran, and China.  We’ve seen potential for those unsympathetic to the cause to use the technology too – a bit of an arms race created.  Technology is amoral – it doesn’t care. In Iran we’ve seen it used to get out information and resist censorship but have also seen it used by the government to alter a mobile phone system and monitoring calls.

Tweets and highlights from this event on Twitter at #AITech

Panelists include:

• Susan Pointer, Google’s Director of Public Policy & Government Relations
• Andrew Keen (via video), author of Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture
• Kevin Anderson, blogs editor of the Guardian
• Annabelle Sreberny, Professor of Global Media and Communication, School of Oriental and African Studies (with special interest in Iran, bloggers & social media)
• Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology Correspondent for the BBC, is chairing.

Susan Pointer: declaring an interest as a passionate advocate of the potential of internet technology. When it comes to the potential to underpin human rights, for me the question is not technology good for human rights but is the access to information, the ability to connect with people online, to use online tools to mobilize offline activities, to question wisdom, and shine a light of transparency – it’s a useful tool for promoting and underpinning human rights. So, the answer is yes as a tool. The access to information drives knowledge. The technology itself is not intrinsically good -at Google we are advocates for free expression on the internet and free access for all; the technology istelf is and should be a neutral platform for this. it does not itself dictate who does the communicating or how we assess the communications. Nor does it require that we leave our human faculties at the on switch – the internet democratizes the channels.  Rather than ask if the tool is perfect or not, we should work together to make it a perfect tool, keep the internet platform healthy.

Andrew Keen: I would never argue that technology is against human rights. When it comes to the internet, you can of course find lots of examples where twitter or facebook or email have been used by governments or corporations or regimes. But, the tools of the digital revolution are used by those against the regime but are equally used by those in the regimes.  Because of the natural of the internet, where traditional intermediaries have been done away with, it’s increasingly easy for regimes to use this supposed democratized media for their own.  I haven’t seen that much proof that internet has changed [post the Obama election]. Changes come through people and culture and not through technology. I’m not arguing that it is bad, but the internet isn’t necessarily good for human rights.

Annabelle Sreberny: Communication technologies have been good for human rights since we created the alphabet. These are tools that can perhaps accelerate the speed of information and the number of people involved, but it’s always had the potential for change. Politics is communications by another name. Communication technologies have always been used for political change, especially with Iran. 1905-1911, people were publishing in exile, printing and sharing over the boarder, etc. in Tehran. 1975 revolution used leaflets and cassette tapes helped mobilize and push the revolution. Youtube and facebook are just the new tools for political change. Western audiences came to know Iran through the 2009 election, the internet had been the place where you could find politics happening inside Iran when in person it was very hard there.  For example, the internet was important because it was difficult to organize offline. Given the difficulties of face to face politics and public space control, many of the people 30 and under stay home where they can be online and be free. They are inventing it for themselves. One thing that internet technologies can do is the bringing together across boundaries – so, the diaspora are slowly invited back into politics. Which causes a lot of Iranian politics to take place outside of the country.  This is politics – we need the good and the bad; the cyber army, the 10,000 bloggers claimed to be trained by the national guard, etc.  In Iran the regime hasn’t yet shown itself to be as savvy as the green movement.

Kevin Anderson: I think in terms of human rights and damage of censorship the internet has been a net good.  Without social media, we wouldn’t have been able to provide the kind of information that was available. It would have been a blackout of information but suddenly there’s a way to get it out. The Guardian had an injunction to gather all the names of the people who were killed and detained and that’s something that would have never been possible without the internet. I think what we are learning is that increasing the freedom of information isn’t all that’s needed to free those living under extremist regimes.  People point to Obama but it was actually a perfect marriage of the internet and traditional pounding on doors. The internet can be problematic – some of the debates can become quite divisive online instead of cohesion. I think underlying slacktivism isn’t enough – you can’t just turn your profile green.  Just as the Guardian used crowdsourcing to get the names of those detained, the government is using crowdsourcing too. Security is going to be increasingly one of the things that internet activists have to learn. Today, a China official said the internet is a new battlefield without gun powder. The incident with Google in China has made aware the increasing militarization of the internet – targeted attacks against corporations and activists and that’s the most worrying development.  These are sophisticated attacks and as the regimes become more sophisticated in espionage methods, people engaged in human rights will have to live in a new threat environment.

Questions:

Isn’t there plenty of evidence that technology is actually bringing information to societies in a way that was not possible 20 or 30 years ago?  Isn’t accelerating the process by which people can take on governments?

Andrew Keen: The wall in Berlin was open by accident by a guard, so you could argue that the internet is a distribution of knowledge so that would have never happened. The internet is actually a really effective tool for maintaining regimes.  So, this organization of knowledge could actually be a good thing for demoralizing government.  The more knowledge there is in the world, the easier it is to spy or look into the knowledge.  Let’s not delude ourselves that the opposition are Luddites.

We always thought of the internet as a free space with free spirits, anarchic, but it’s actually becoming dominated by a few corporate players, like Google. It has said a lot about it’s commitment to freedom of expression and so on, but it’s first duty is to it’s shareholders just like any other corporation.  Given that, how profound is Google’s commitment ever going to be to human rights?

Susan Pointer: First, Google’s size – we live or die by the trust users have in our services. We have no contract, tie-in, etc. – most all of our services are free.  Those users are free to choose whether to use our services or elsewhere. We retain their loyalty by providing services they want to use and having protections in place that they trust. It’s very different than your traditional model. Without a doubt, every user is important to our business but every user has the choice. Do we want to keep you? Of course, so we have to keep innovating, providing exciting services and that’s what drives. We support an open and competitive environment that is based on user buy in. In terms of our commitment to online freedom of expression, from the beginning our motto has been to do no evil – it means we are committed to providing as much access as possible.

Even in China?

Susan Pointer: We took the decision as a very complex – google.cn  It was not an alternative to the normal site. We found that there were users in China couldn’t access the .com site so it was created to give them access.

There was no commercial imperative behind that?

Susan Pointer: It was absolutely based on what would provide the most access to our users there. What that means  is that in order to set up the .cn site we had to be compliant with Chinese law. Which meant self censorship of the results. We would do that, we would not provide access to the .com site so you could still get results there, and on the .cn site we would provide a message when censorship was happening so the user would see when results were being withheld. In light of our investigations of attacks on the human rights activists, we have taken the point that we are no longer comfortable self censoring results and are pursing how we can provide results without censorship with China which could mean we have to discontinue use there.

Historically, people have used all kinds of methods to fight for human rights. Is there evidence that these tools are making the fight easier?

Annabelle Sreberny: The arguments would have to focus on the speed and the numbers of people involved. It’s about scale. They work like memes, the speed people react and join in.

Slacktivist term, is there not a danger that 20 or 30 years ago there was far more intensity because easy technology wasn’t there. You had to get face to face with people.

Kevin Anderson: I think it’s a bit of both. The idea that social media completely transplants face to face – one of the difficulties is that it isn’t an either or. I think there are people who say “yes, there are people who have said I’ve changed my avatar green…” One of the things with Dean’s campaign initially was that they had huge amounts of online activism but had problems turning that into real life work. It can be broad but shallow. The power of the Obama campaign was translating online activity to real world impact. Translating a click into someone on the streets is the step it takes.

People have seen technologies for a force for good and bad – in Iran you have to say that there was a unique set of circumstances. Before the election you had a population that had migrated to the internet, a government who had let them have that space. After the election that space exploded and the government was slow to catch up. But now they are catching up, with the cyber army and beyond. The question is how can we make it a force for good?

You use the term slacktivism about people in the west – the point that needs to be made is that internet lets people participate in the activism without the fear, true there is the other side of the coin…

Kevin Anderson: The point I’m making is that politics is communications but it is also a number of other actions, especially when you are dealing with regimes that have been successful at staying in power. You have to use all the tools of politics to make that change. While freedom of communications is key, there are a number of other steps. As regimes get more sophisticated, like we see China exporting some of it’s internet controlling tools elsewhere (like Iran), the methods have to get more sophisticated. If you show support you are lazy – no. But there has to be a number of people taking actions in the real world, too.

Annabelle Sreberny: Mousy solidarity – how easy it is to click on a petition, and so on.  Why the sense of solidarity? Because we don’t ave politics like this – it feels good to be part of it. We feel like we can participate.

Our attention span is ever shorter, time is relative.

Kevin Anderson: If it’s going to be that transient 24-hour news cycle, that sustained action is key. Once the novelty wears off, breaking through the media cycle is difficult. In Iran, it’s quite clear, this is a long sustained struggle and isn’t something that’s going to happen quickly. You had more democratic and open societies with the Velvet and the Orange revolutions. With the Chinese, the point they made was that we have to control information otherwise there will be chaos.

Susan Pointer: It was the immediacy that played the role in creating interest in Iran. Had that information come out weeks later it would have been restricted to academics and others pouring over the information. It’s important to sustain that information and interest. The discussion about membership of an organization and what it means to be active: lots of people would have joined a group or gone to a meeting without contributing. The power of showing numbers online can be more powerful than showing up online. We need to look at how membership and participation are defined. Where does the pressure come from on an international exposure. How we defend the nature of the internet: it makes institutions and governments nervous. We need to be as vigilant in our spaces as internationally to keep it without gatekeepers and screeners. That’s what will keep it a source of immediacy.

The deision making process by Google – with Iran it can seem clear. What kind of process does Google go through to make those decisions?

Susan Pointer: Once we created google.cn we had to meet compliance. In general terms, I spend a lot of my time with issues where access to our services are restricted and we work to fix it. The open access to our services – it shouldn’t matter where in the world you are, you should be able to access services.

Is the speed and scale of internet communications a bug as well as a feature?

Kevin Anderson: My experience online is largely positive. The places where i see the most animosity is news sites. And that’s not the internet to me.

There’s debate between those who say you should be able to say/do anything and those that say other people’s human rights are at risk in that situation.

Kevin Anderson: I can only speak for myself but I wouldn’t say anything online that I wouldn’t say face to face. It’s said that it is still so new we haven’t created social mores for it. I remember when the AOL newbies came on and we thought they were ruining the internet… if you are saying things you think would turn you red if you were saying them outloud, then you probably shouldn’t say them.

Climate change and climate gate – what are the social media implications?

Kevin Anderson: as a journalist, yes, we want to present all sides but do we present all sides as if they are valid? At the Guardian our editorial decision is very different than at the BBC. We can take a stand. I believe strongly in objectivity but it can be a difficult thing in fractious debates like this. It might be a bit beyond this debate.

If corporations are immoral – one of the reasons we expect corporations to be moral is because Google wears morals on the sleeve, etc. Where does the openness of information infringe on human rights (like Google Buzz – there was no consent for followers, etc.)?

Susan Pointer: mission, people, leadership and so on decide who a company is. I chose Google because I felt that it made good decisions. It’s easy to disassociate ourselves though. One thing I would say from our perspective is we follow through from the way we communicate, some would argue we are too open but I think that’s part of the process to engage with users. Buzz is one where we thought we had the controls in place but the options that were there could have been better with visibility – and we responded immediately.  We do have the ongoing discussion with our users. Privacy comes down to individuals having choice, transparency and control. Transparency in the human rights space is interesting – we want the option to be anonymous but we also want to know who is saying something.

Google’s business depends on knowing more and more about users – behavioral advertising. Isn’t that going to be difficult to walk that line? You have to make bigger profits and that lies in knowing more about your users.

Susan Pointer: Majority of our advertising is contextual – the search you made and the content on the page. We hold IP addresses, and not users. You can also opt out permanently of being associated with certain things. In settings, users can have the option to opt out, or opt in to certain things.

Annabelle Sreberny: So much of the content from Iran was user generated content sent to the media – what’s happened to that? Why should we be working for free for large media? Facebook is increasingly hard to excavate. People put content online that they want to share but you can’t get to it. What happens to the content we are putting up there?

Do you think access to technology will be acknowledge as a basic human right like water and shelter? Is it trivializing human rights by associating the internet with it?

Kevin Anderson: Yes. Technology – internet is about communications. We already have universal access provisions for things like telephones. Technology infuses my life. What we are seeing now is not that people don’t have access but choose not to have it. Why do people exclude themselves and what are the resasons? Especially in a technologically advanced country, that becomes a bigger issue.

Susan Pointer: When we are talking about technology we are taking it from the point that you have access to it. We have to consider the fact that in many places of the world people still don’t have access. We aren’t just talking about changing governments but giving citizens access to information at all.

Should Amnesty be fighting for the right to access the internet?

Annabelle Sreberny: Article 19 – the fundamental mission. THe right to community is all about access. Thinking about the right to communicate opens up many interesting issues.

Is there any indication that Amnesty is doing better now with technology?

Amnesty Rep: You can argue yes. If you look at Amnesty’s history, 49 years ago people wrote letters to get people out of prison. Once we had fax machines, we started having urgent actions to send a fax. Now we coax people to send emails. Technology gives us new ways to do things.

I would imagine a letter or a bag of letters 20 years ago was possibly more effective than a million emails today.

Amnesty Rep: It explains why we’ve never given up on letters. To some extent you can delete your inbox really quickly than you can get rid of a bag of letters. But it also means we can get information quickly and from everywhere quickly.

What technology means for people who are experiencing a crisis who don’t have access – don’t make it onto twitter, don’t make the news cycle?  Like Sri Lanka where pictures weren’t getting out.

Annabelle Sreberny: There were also huge demonstrations elsewhere pulling in the diaspora.  They play a role in alerting the media in other places. We can fall into the trap that one technology takes over from all others. Other technologies are still around. With the diaspora, you just need to get enough people to pay attention that they can spur the media.

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The Social Media for Social Good collection from NTEN and NetSquared calls for your case studies in leveraging social media tools in your program work.

Social Media for Social Good

Everywhere you turn, you’re hearing about social media. Especially when it comes to fundraising. But at NTEN and NetSquared, we know that social media is good for a lot more than raising money. We know that social media can be used to change the world. That’s why we’re launching the Social Media for Social Good case study collection!

Whether you’ve run a successful advocacy campaign, integrated social technologies into your education programs or have found innovative ways to use social media to further your mission in any other way, we want to hear about it.  There is still time to submit your case study – but hurry!

Why participate?

We know that one of the best ways to learn is to hear how others have succeeded before. Submitting your case study means you can share your story with others looking to learn and explore the social media for social good space.  It also means that you’ll be entered into our competition:  We will choose 3 case studies to be featured in our session with Beth Kanter at SXSWi this March!

Vote!

Over the past month, organizations have already submitted their case studies and now it’s time for you to cast your vote! Rank your favorites to help decide which case studies are featured at SXSWi.  (Don’t worry, if you haven’t submitted yet, you can still do that, too!)

Deadline for submissions and voting is February 26th!

• Review the submissions and cast your vote today!
• Learn more and submit your case study now!

Don’t worry, I’m not trying to start an adjective revolution! Totally Baldacious is the latest campaign from The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and it’s turning heads! Well, it’s turning them bald…

“The Totally Baldacious campaign is a great way to show your love and solidarity with cancer patients while you help raise awareness and funds for cures.  Whether you decide to shave your head or color your hair, you will be helping The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society raise money for much-needed, life-saving cancer research.”

I really like so many aspects of this campaign that instead of simply changing my profile picture or tweeting about the campaign, I wanted to take a closer look, share with you some of the elements that are making it a great campaign, and some suggestions for ways it can be improved.

What Works:

Microsite: Creating a space for your campaign that is separate from your organization’s website can be really helpful for those new to your work or finding your campaign via social media.  People know they are in the right place, any tabs or links they click on will help them learn more about the campaign (and not get lost in the various sections of your organization’s website) and target information to them about the rest of your work based on their interest in the campaign.  Creating a separate web space isn’t always necessary, but in this example it really works.

Options: The barrier to entry to the Totally Baldacious campaign is low enough that everyone can participate in a way that contributes to the campaign, but that they are still comfortable with.  Asking people to shave their heads is a big deal, so creating innovative ways for them to join together without having to commit to something they just can’t commit to is really essential to high participation numbers.  Encouraging people to lighten the color of their hair instead of shaving it, or changing their online profile picture to a bald head to raise awareness all play on the same theme for support of those who’ve lost their hair from their fight with cancer, but don’t make people feel bad if they don’t want to “go all the way.”

Calls to Action: What may seem simple, is often very difficult to achieve, and in this case it’s the calls to action.  The Totally Baldacious campaign, though, does an excellent job making the calls to action clear, consistent, and do-able.  It’s so important that your calls to action – both buttons and actions – are the same throughout your site or campaign space (don’t want people getting confused about what you want them to do) and are easy to identify quickly (don’t want people poking around trying to find how they can participate).  Make it as clear as possible, like they did, with a “how can I participate” section.

What Could Improve:

Visible Goal: Even though the calls to action are very clear, the goal of those actions is a bit muddled. Is it to raise money? Is it to raise awareness? Is it to grow the list of supporters? It can’t be all of them.  It can be one, and the others can be bonuses; but all three can’t exist together as the ultimate goal.  Depending on the page you are on or the call to action you are joining, the goal you are helping to reach can be different.  It would be great if all signs pointed back to the same place.  (Individual fundraising pages have goal meters, why not an overall goal and thermometer graphic?)

Visible Participants: A campaign like this draws on the power of social media and the networks of it’s supporters. People that change their profile image to a Baldacious bald image (like mine above) should be able to see others who have done the same, and those who haven’t done it yet should get to see the latest newly-bald faces to inspire them to join.  People contributing money to an individual’s campaign or to the campaign over all should be able to see other’s who have donated, and those thinking about donating should be able to see other recent donors to inspire them to give.  These are just a few of the many ways to make the participating community more visible.

Movement Building: Don’t ever forget that what we are trying to do isn’t just get people to change a picture or donate money; it’s to change our world into one without the issues, illnesses, and struggles too many people face every day.  With that in mind, it would be great to see the Totally Baldacious campaign create a global-facing or at least globally open portal, too – through the way participation is made visible (previous point) or in other ways.  I see such potential in campaigns that get it right on so many levels to also get it right by catalyzing collaborations and truly building towards a movement.

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Thanks to all those at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and everyone else who made the campaign possible.  It looks great, is creating some fun ways for people to join in, and I hope it continues towards success!

If you haven’t yet, why not make yourself Totally Baldacious?!

I’m so thrilled to share the news with you all that my blog post, Online Community Building: Gardening vs Landscaping, was the most popular blog post on the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s opinion blog in 2009.  It is such an honor to me to contribute to the valuable collection of knowledge and insight at SSIR and to have a piece rank so highly is too good to be true!

Thank you for all those who follow my contributions on the SSIR blog and continue to spark interesting and challenging conversations on this blog.  I’m so thrilled to be part of this community!

Check out the Top 5 SSIR Blog Posts!