Half-Poets Even

You've reached the old DemocracyInAction blog.  Times change ... so do we.  You can hit our Drupalized homepage at www.democracyinaction.org, and go to our blog here.

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Catch you over there ... 

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Jason Z.
06:00 PM Nov 09, 2006 - 0 comments permalink

As Billmon reflects on the GOP's stubborn caucasian plurality, RedState inadvertently underscores with a longing look back at the Gingrich Revolution, featuring a YouTube whose only person of color is the Jefferson Memorial statue.

Did y'all get the demographic memo?

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Jason Z.
05:30 PM Nov 09, 2006 - 0 comments permalink

... several political users of the same toolset that powers DemocracyInAction who, like Virginia Governor Tim Kaine in 2005, worked through advocacy shop WiredForChange, and now get to add "-elect" to their title.

Joe Sestak for Congress (PA)
Chris Carney for Congress (PA)
Jim Doyle/Barbara Lawton (WI Governor and Lieutenant Governor)
Kathleen Sibelius (KA Governor)
Paul Morrison (KA Attorney General)
John Chiang (CA Controller)

(pause to take a breath)

... AND ... four Senatorial candidates working through the DSCC, which makes the same tools freely available to any Democrat running for Senate:

Ben Cardin (MD)
Claire McCaskill (MO)
Sherrod Brown (OH)
Jon Tester (MT)

DemocracyInAction:  Strong enough for a Senator.  Made for an NGO.

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Jason Z.
06:30 PM Nov 08, 2006 - 0 comments permalink

Surely a few exultant Dems are just rolling out of bed by now, grappling for aspirin and for the name of the unfamiliar supine body curled up next to them. Plenty of lessons learned in that, certainly.

Colin Delany -- whose Online Politics 101 guide (.pdf) we recently extolled -- has a very nice overview post of lessons learned about online politicking in the '06 cycle that's as applicable to cause-oriented advocates as to political campaigns.

Update:  Higher muckity-mucks talk about it at Personal Democracy Forum, although I'm not sure the conversation really gets going out of the gates.

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Jason Z.
02:00 PM Nov 08, 2006 - 0 comments permalink

Via Football Outsiders, where discussion has descended into a stultifying miasma of intellectual property minutiae, comes word that the National Football League is the latest entity to strip its highlights from YouTube.

Let's leave aside for the moment the timing: just like the rest of the copyright action on YouTube, it's occurred in the aftermath of the startup's move under the penumbra of Google's capacious treasuries. There's every likelihood that it's a dance of corporate elephants to conclude with a curtsy and a few million bucks changing hands.

But forget that.

Whether it is or is not indicative of any grander strategy on the part of the league, let's consider it as such. Because while the NFL is obviously a different animal in terms of scale from the local web 2.0 API jockey, it's as classic a case of content distribution as any. What best behooves the long-term growth of the sport: wide distribution of free highlight videos that people will forward to one another, slap on their blog, argue about calls, the works? Or, an RIAA-like clampdown demanding marketing royalties for every 

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Jason Z.
03:30 PM Nov 07, 2006 - 0 comments permalink

In view of the desperate shortage of election-related talk in the blogosphere, the crack team at DemocracyInAction is pleased to offer to our modest readership the DIA Election Pool.  Test your forecasting mettle against fellow progpolinptech peeps and DIA users with absolutely nothing on the line.

No political expertise or interest needed to play.  You need not be a DIA user.

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Jason Z.
05:00 PM Nov 03, 2006 - 0 comments permalink

Check out the latest DIA QuickTip: Using Social Networking Websites (pdf)

In fact, collect them all.

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Mara
11:30 AM Nov 02, 2006 - 0 comments permalink

The complex of discussion lists, web forums and what-not devoted to chattering about issues of nonprofit technology has grown to a mid-sized anthill.

And needless to say, those of us who peddle wares hither and yon make it our business to keep an eye on them, and the fact of our respective eyeballs' conspicuous presence, ever alert to poach one another's customers or stanch negative vibes before the discussion really gets going ... well, I like to think we contribute something to the conversation, but it's also a factor closing off that important space for nonprofits to speak freely among themselves.

No more.

Via the initiative of the excellent Confessions of a Non-Profit IT Director blog comes a new NTEN affinity group specifically for nonprofit IT workers, with access restricted to keep out the salesfolk.  This space needs more stuff like this, and I wouldn't be surprised if demand from among non-techie staff operating on the user side caused the group to either stretch its mandate or generate a sibling.

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Jason Z.
11:00 AM Nov 01, 2006 - 0 comments permalink

Nonprofit tech is great, but something about elections -- prodigious treasuries, definite deadlines, winner-take-all stakes, tens of thousands of contests (with seemingly limitless external meddlers) to serve as laboratories -- concentrates inklings into forward lurches.

With the last week of desperate ad-buying, get-out-the-voting, suppress-the-voting, October-surprising, poll-circulating, bobblehead-gabbing, white-knuckle-clenching, Internet-flaming upon us, herewith a Cliff's notes of the cycle's noteworthy tech trends.

(I'm going to elide fundraising here, as it's been pretty well established that netizens can ring the register.)