I think the pictures speak for themselves

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Technorati Tags: California, Courage Campaign, Human Rights Campaign, Prop 8

Sometime last week, Lindy Dreyer of SocialFish  wrote a very interesting post about what should be in your association social media plan.  I agree with everything Lindy wrote in her post.  However,  I felt that one item was missing from her social media plan.  I believe that before jumping on the social media bandwagon, an organization should first determine that there would be some benefit in doing so.  I inquired about this missing item to Lindy via comment.  My inquiry inspired a subsequent post from her.

First, I am flattered that my comment would inspired Lindy to follow up blog post.   I’m blushing… can you tell?   In her follow up post, Lindy makes the argument that every organization should invest in social media.  She argues that they may not necessarily want to break the bank on social media outreach but every organization should at least invest some time into social media.

While I’m flattered about inspiring a blog post, I remain skeptical that every organization should invest in social media.  I contend that while an organization may not foresee all the benefits of jumping on the social media bandwagon, the organization should at least insure that there is something tangible to be gained by investing their time into social media.  For example, National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) is an organization focused on serving local health officials. At this point their membership consists of the vast majority, if not all, of the local health officials around the country.  Their funding comes from the CDC and their programs are geared towards their current membership. To continue to be successful, an organization like NACCHO has to continue serving its members  by answering to identified needs/wishes.  If their membership has not identified social media as need or has not identified problems that could be solved using social media, it would be a waste of time and resources for the organization to invest in social media.

On the other hand, an organization like Be The Change, Inc.  whose core mission is “building a broad-based, web-fueled, citizens’ movement that will campaign for better public policies, promote active citizenship and citizen democracy” has no choice but to jump on social media band wagon.  To be successful on the web, the BTC has to follow current trends and eventually become one of the leaders when it comes to social media outreach.

To re-iterate my point, Lindy is right that your organization should have a social media plan and if you don’t have one, hire her to help you come up with one (Lindy, I want 10% referral fee…joking).  However before you that, your organization should first establish that it fits within its mission and it stands to gain something by jump on the bandwagon.  Once you jump on, it’s really hard to get off.

Technorati Tags: Lindy Dryer, Social Media, SocialFish, Web 2.0

I missed Mid-week reads last week. I’m sure I had a good reason but it’s currently escaping me.  Please accept my apoloiges.  Since I missed last week,  I will include a bonus article for your reading pleasure.  I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.

Seriously…drop what you are doing and watch this… - I’m not a fan of this type of title for blog posts.  Usually, it’s a stupid video of somone doing something moronic that they will regret having posted online in five years.   While i think that this title is a bit over the top, I think the video of Gary Vaynerchuck that Saul of Freshbooks shares in this post is worth watching.

After the Election, Will Obama’s Online Army Target Congress? – This is an “old” but good one.  In this post, Colin Delany of E-politics.com discusses the possibility of Obama unleashing his online supporters on the hill to apply pressure on congress as needed to get legislation through were he to be elected president.  Very interesting read.

Finance Industry Giving Visualized -  In the wake of the current financial crisis, we’ve been wondering how the financial industry became such  “laissez faire” industry.  Well,  the good folks at the Sunlight foundation built a tool that shows campaign donations from the financial sector since the early 90’s.   Needless to say the findings dont boathe well for our elected officials who claim to be independent.

Twitter, Facebook, Charitable Campaigning – In this post, Jeff Trexter warns online community managers of 501(c)3 organizations about the hidden risks of Web 2.o technologies when it comes to online activism.  If you blog, tweet or manage your organization’s Facebook/MySpace page, this is a must read.

Five Ways to Use Social Media to Reach People Who Don’t Use Social Media – Have friends/colleagues that think social media is worthless?  Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb suggests five ways to rope them in.   If you’re already a web person, the suggestion are very easy to implement. I’m thinking of setting up Yahoo Pipes myself.

***Bonus***   The Playboys of Tech – The title is self-explanatory.  Who says geeks don’t know how to party?

If you are reading any interesting blogs, please don’t hesitate to share them with me via comment or email at blog at makembe dot com.  A more extensive list of shared reading items can be found on my Google reader shared page.

Technorati Tags: blogging, Good Reads, Web 2.0

Last weekend,  I had the distinct honor of participating the "Money in Politics" Grant Summit hosted by Mobilize.org in partnership with the Sunlight Foundation, and Common Cause.  According to their website, Mobilize.org:

Mobilize.org is an all-partisan network dedicated to educating, empowering, and energizing young people to increase our civic engagement and political participation. We work to show young people how public policy impacts our lives, and more importantly – how we can impact public policy.

The orgnization put its name on the map by taking over the 2100 Fund, an organization that raised funds for organzations promoting youth activism, and writing the  Democracy 2.0 Declaration (watch it). 

Admitidly, prior to the summit, I had heard of Mobilize.org but I was not very familiar w/ its work.  I had planned to submit a proposal for the summit but missed the deadline because of the Silverman campaign and the presidential forum.  As luck would have it,  at the forum, I got the priviledge and opportunity to meet mobilize’s CEO, Maya Enista, and work with her in a breakout session. During that time, I told her about my interest in the forum and she invited me to attend.  

A crucial piece of the summit was the ability for those attending to present ideas and plans that solve the issue of money in politics. From the mobilize.org website:

Competitors in the Democracy 2.0 Entrepreneur Grant Summit must advance a new solution or approach to the money in politics problem – that will change the pattern in the field of civic engagement. Winners will each receive a grant, between $3,000 and $5,000 and will receive the support of Mobilize.org and its partner network to champion their proposal, creating systemic and sustainable change in the way elections are administered.Competitors in the Democracy 2.0 Entrepreneur Grant Summit must advance a new solution or approach to the money in politics problem – that will change the pattern in the field of civic engagement. Winners will each receive a grant, between $3,000 and $5,000 and will receive the support of Mobilize.org and its partner network to champion their proposal, creating systemic and sustainable change in the way elections are administered.

On the first day, keynote speaker, former Representative John Buchanan, gave an inspiring address encouraging and challenging my generation, the Millenials, to become the greatest American generation. He pointed out that money has become an element in our democracy. Technology, along with other tools, makes it easier to promote transparency and hold elected officials more accountable.

The morning on the second day, Nancy Watzman, of the Sunlight Foundation, and Political Party Time, a blog dedicacated to tracking parties thrown at both party conventions as well as fundraising activities of lawmakers, spoke about her exprience trying to bring transparancy to government since the 1990s and all the Sunlight Foundation’s projects and resources.  Nancy’s address was followed by a panel that included Josh Zaharoff of Common Cause and Matt Stempeck of Americans for Campaign Reform. In the afternoon, Sam Rasoul, candidate for U.S. Congress in VA-6,  stopped by to talk to us about his campaigns, his goals, the change would try to enact in congress and what he has been able to accomplish so far in VA.   Between the two speakers, competitors had a chance to meet with panels of experts who gave them feedback about their proposals.

On the last day, David Mark, Senior Editor at Politico and author of Going Dirty, shared his thoughts about the current Presidential campaign as well as some notes about his book. Competitors also got a chance to present their proposals in front of the entire conference. Four winners were later announced. The first prize went to Sam Oliker-Friedland of GoVoteAbsentee.org.  I whole heartily agree with the decision, as his proposal was the most developed and most likely to be sustained over the course of time. Basically, his website takes any voter of any district in the US throught the process of getting an absentee ballot. Check it out (Facebook Page) if you get a chance, and please spread the word.

The summit was a great fun and learning experience. It was a eye-opener in the fact that it made me realize how many Millenials are invovled in the political process and are seeking to improve the process and make it more accessible to everyone. I feel as though we sometimes get a bad rap for being overconnected and lazy and the summit gives us as a gneration the chacne to fight that stereotype and put our best effort into improving our democracy.

Tags: Democracy 2.0, Mobilize.org, Money in Politics Grant Summit, Sunlight Foundation, Common Cause, Just6dollars.org

Technorati Tags: Democracy 2.0, Mobolize.org, Money in Politics, Politics

***** UPDATE 9/22/2008 *****

Amy, from Idealist, pointed out that I missed a few posts.

• ServiceNation the Finale
• Kennedy – Hatch Serve America Act

I prepared this for work today.  I figured it would be a good idea to share.  It will be will be cross-posted at www.changewireblog.org.   It was privilege to meet and work with these folks.    Let me know if I missed any.  It certainly was not my intentions.

After the feed back from the first video, I decide to make another one.  Please share your thoughts.

With all the (local)election stuff going on, I forgot to mention that BTC (along with our coalition partners)  will be hosting the first presidential forum since both nominees formally accepted the nomination of their respective parties.  From an e-mail we sent out today to our list:

It’s a HUGE week here in ServiceNation. This Thursday evening, Sept. 11, our Sept. 11-12 ServiceNation Summit in New York City will open with a Presidential Candidates Forum featuring presidential nominees Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. They will share their views on service and civic engagement in post-9/11, starting at 8 pm EDT. CNN and MSNBC have indicated that they will carry the forum live (we are hoping Fox will too), so invite your friends and family over for a night of inspiring television.

The next day, the 12th, the ServiceNation summit continues with a gathering of 600 leaders from every sector of American society. The summit will release a bold policy proposal, and a Declaration of Service, which you can sign to declare your support for the idea that service to community and country can help unite America and solve problems. We hope to gather 1 million signatures (up, that’s 1 million!) on this Declaration, to show our leaders that America is ready for a new era of service.

I’m very excited for this event. I’m looking forward to hearing what both Sen. McCain and Obama have to say.  It should be fun, interesting and tiring.  I’m heading up to NYC on Wed morning for the forum (all my NYC people, holla me).  I will be part of the content production team but I’m not exactly sure how much freedom I will have to roam around.  Regardless,  I will be blogging (here and ChangeWire),  tweeting (BTC Tweet feed), taking pictures and possibly streaming (working out the details on that).  The full schedule of the event is at http://www.bethechangeinc.org/servicenation/summit/schedule (Sorry for the formatting). 

P.S.  The biggest dilemma if my life right now is whether or not I should cut my hair just in case I get to meet the next POTUS.  Feel free to weight in.

As I announced a few months back I’m now at Be the Change, Inc where I head the efforts in all things Technology (mostly web) with the support of very capable vendors and staff. As part of my role, I help identify technology and develop strategy that will help the organization spread its message and  lead to people become invested and take action in our first campaign.  To fulfill this part of my job, I’ve started attending various conferences and Panels around the City. One of the Roundtable that I attend pretty regularly is the Internet Advocacy Roundtable hosted by Center for American Progress Action Fund and lead by  Alan Rosenblatt.   The Last round table I attend was titled “The future of E-mail Congress  – New Solutions Offered and Old Myths Busted“( word doc of the preso) and there speaker was Daniel Bennett who is Co-author of “The Net Effect: How Cyber advocacy is Changing the Political Landscape” and was a columnist for The Cloakroom. 

The gist  of Mr. Benett’s presentation is that he has developed a technique that will more accurately group emails that each representative receives from various advocacy group so that s/he will not waste staff time reading all the emails and will have a better tally of where constituents stands on any particular issue by looking at the total number of emailed received.  According to him but unverified by anyone in the room, the system works with 95-99% accuracy and is easy to install and works with current e-mail systems on the Hill.  He claims to have tested in some offices with great result and received positive feedback.  In plain English, the system group letters according to a token or URL included each email.  So any given e-mailing campaign would have the same token. For the techie crowd, see some documentation at http://advocatehope.org/tech-tidbits. Mr. Bennett then called on all the orgs present at the lecture to lobby the vendors to start implementing this new system. He claims that there is no financial benefit to him and I don’t have any reason not to believe him. Lastly, Mr. Bennett claims staffer don’t read the letters already so his solution would a least make sure they have a accurate count before the vote.

I have two thoughts about this improvement by Mr. Benett.  As someone whose organization is trying to lobby congress to get legislation passed, this is fabulous. It’s a great tool and we can use to hopefully sway a representative’s mind and maybe get to move away from voting along party lines when we can get people from his district to e-mail him or her.  As person that has friends that work on the Hill, I know this will make their live easier and they will be a little more efficient while at the office and maybe get a few more things done.

As a private citizen, this “improvement” is outrageous.  Call me be crazy but I’d like to think that my representative or his staff would read the vast majority of e-mails and letters that come to them.  It’s their job! They  were elected to serve the people of their district and that includes reading constituent’s mail how ever outrageous they are.  The Reps and their staff are supposed to do what is good for the constituents and the for the country as a whole.  Just because 4999 people emailed about one side of the issue and 50001 email about the other side, doesn’t mean the rep should cast a vote in favor of  the highest bidder. While I appreciate Mr. Benett’s persistence and hard work (he’s been working on this solo for 5 years), I think his solution is the wrong way to go.   His solution is fixing the wrong problem.  I would even go as far as to say it’s making Congress worse.  We, as citizen and their employers, should not accept the fact Reps don’t read our mail or letters. We should def not make it easier for them not to read our letters.    While Mr. Benett’s claim about staffers not reading mail may be true, I refuse to give in his cynicism and make easier for them not to so.  And I sincerely hope others won’t either.

Was that too harsh?…….Naaaaaaaaaah.

All these Facebook events had me thinking:  Of all the politicians and or non-profits, who can really benefits from the extra exposure on Facebook?  At first glance the answer is easy.  Everyone of them can benefit from additional exposure on Facebook and if you subscribe to the theory that all publicity is good publicity, this is even more true. 

Before discussing who has the most to gain, it is imperative to mention that each organization must first determine its goals on Facebook and  its target audience and their habits.  For example, there is no need to for an organization like National Association of Home Builders to create a presence on Facebook, if their goal is to reach more Builders Members.  On the other hand, I don’t understand why an associations like National Minority AIDS Council or the Red Cross, have yet to take advantage of Facebook groups and Apps to promote their activities (at a local level if need be) and even launch education campaigns about AIDS and blood drives, respectively.

That being said, I think some stand to gain more than others.  In my opinion, the most stand to gain are local politicians and local organizations.  Facebook actions (i.e. signing up for events, following local group, viewing a tagging photos) better translate in the real world if they are kept in the small communities where that people can physically relate to and have to be part of every day.  I have no data to support this but one can only look at LateNightShots in DC and its success to get what the idea.  The site works because it drives people to meet and get together offline.   And they can do this because it’s hyper-local. Whether you agree with what they do  when they meet offline is a subject for another discussion.

While national organizations and national politicians can not benefits as much from the basic Facebook features as their local counterparts, they can rely on Facebook Apps to accomplish the same thing.  The Apps can be used as a tool to allow like minded users be a part of hyper-local community that will allow them then to engage with each other and organization/politician online and offline. 

Basically, a successful utilization of facebook to get a message across would be to create hyper-local groups than whose action and support can translate in the real world

Unless you’ve been living under rock, you are probably aware of the all the hype that Facebook has been receiving. With something like 45 millions users, everyone, from politicians to activist/Non-Profit organizations, has been trying to leverage for their purpose and or cause. The first event I attended focused on how political organizations and candidates can utilize Facebook to reach the masses. The Facebook reps started the presentation with statistics about the site, its users and the potential for growth. The numbers were impressive but nothing that hasn’t been published everywhere on the web. Needless to say, I was really excited about that part of the presentation. In latter part of the presentations made following recommendations to organizations and candidate that wished to tap into Facebook users:

• Form groups and keep the content fresh (i.e. pictures, wall post, notes, and posted items).
• Be candid, transparent, and relevant (i.e. don’t used canned photos only, don’t run everything by legal and PR, talk about Grey’s anatomy…everyone watches it)
• Encourage interaction between group members and have actionable items.
• Build Facebook application using the Facebook Platform when you find limitations in current Facebook functionalities (i.e. Barack Obama app & Causes App).
• Purchase various Facebook advertising package to target a specific audience (i.e. all 22-24 yrs old males living in NY) or to gain wide audience.

Post presentation, they had a Q&A. Again nothing exciting, expect you politician profiles can now have more than 5000 friends, and Groups administrators will soon be able to message more than 1000 people at a time.

The second event, titled Facebook Developer Garage, was held at GW the next day. By the title you can see that it was geared towards geeks like me. There was a bit of an overlap between the presentations. The presenters displayed the same stats from the other conference. I guess they can’t really compile new statistics overnight. During the second part of the presentation, the focus was more on the much touted Facebook Platform. To summarize, their message to developers was “build fast and iterate.” They made the case that the platform is young and full of potential. They, as in Facebook, have not yet identified all the characteristics of a killer app. The best way to discover users’ likes and dislikes is by trial and error, which is what they do themselves at Facebook (…think of backlash when news feed was first introduced). After the presentation from Facebook reps, some local developers came up and demoed their Facebok apps. Each of them talked about the challenges encountered while building their app and fielded some questions. I can not end with out a word of thanks for Jesse Tomas and Nick O’Neill for setting up the second event. It was very ad hock, but successful.

Next post what I learned…

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Facebook Platform, Non-Profits, Web 2.0