I apologize for the heavy-handedness with the exclamation points, but I am excited to announce that after a rather substantial vacation (in Portland, Ontario), I’m back to blogging.

And do expect a snazzy new update for next week. Make Something Happen will have some exciting and surprising new content for you to chew on.

Any ideas about what it might be, my friends?

I am very excited to bring it to your attention.

-Filed in The Point

Organizers and activists who are tracking an issue - say, nuclear regulation - can spend countless hours sifting through data from a vast range of federal sources: the Peace Corps, the National Institute of Health, and hundreds of other disparate tidbits in order to understand the full picture. It can feel a bit like going to the bookstore and having to peruse all the titles before finding what you want.

Finally, someone has hit on a time-saving solution that organizes key federal data while also shining a bright spotlight on what’s really happening in government: OpenRegulations.org. It’s the only place on the Net that offers individual RSS feeds for each federal agency (there are more than 150 agencies cataloged). Feeds range from the Administration of Children and Families to the United Institute for Peace, offering reports, lists of statistics, meeting notes, and every other bit of regulatory data you can imagine, right at your fingertips.

Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow with the regulatory studies program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University is the creator of this project. He came up with the idea after he subscribed to theRSS-feed of Regulations.gov, the “federal government’s official regulatory clearinghouse,” and got flooded with thousands of updates on every piece of regulation posted about on the site. Frustrated by the information overload, Brito, a self-described neat-freak (see Unclutterer), formed OpenRegulations.org as analternative to Regulations.gov.

By doing the sorting via RSS feed for users, Brito’s site makes it possible for activists and organizers to spend less time researching and more time on advocacy efforts, all while gaining a clearer picture of what the government is up to.

Brito sees the development of OpenRegulations as a step toward future opportunities for interesting mash-ups. He points to MAPLight, an award-winning database that tracks campaign contributions and political action, as an example of what can be done when websites parse, tag, and catalog otherwise cluttered bits of information.

With this newly organized, inside information about how our government behaves, organizers will soon have a clearer picture of a politician’s relationship with funding, policy, and legislation right at their fingertips. With the advancement of Brito’s project, pajama and traditionalist activists alike will have another tool with which they can understand and respond to government waste, clumsiness, and irresponsibility.

-Filed in People, Tools

At both Make Something Happen and The Point, we talk a lot about the Carrot Model. For this reason, we couldn’t help sharing this bit from Maureen Dowd’s op-ed in today’s New York Times:

[Sen Obama's] meeting with Angela Merkel taught him a whole new expression.

“When we were talking about Iran,” he told me, “it turns out that carrots and sticks in German is sweetbread and whips, which I thought was a little more evocative.”

-Filed in The Point

Increasing participation by offering incentive (free beer)

My friend Sarah organized her first meetup. The topic of the meeting was related to a particular industry and the methods by which it communicates, though we will focus more on the process Sarah went through to figure out how to entice people to come. By watching the initial success of her meeting as well as the inflated successes of the model she based hers on, she learned that it takes a moderate balance of incentive and resistance to simultaneously get people in the door and to avoid the possibility of having too many people get in the way of your intended purpose.

Or, in other words, free beer can be good or bad depending what you hope to get out of offering it.

Sarah explained that as she structured her meeting she took into consideration and prioritized the reasons she shows up to any topical event. If entry is free, she will attend a workshop for the purposes of education (or discussion of the topic at hand) or networking (she is a freelancer). However, it was one night that we were at one monthly event, one that shall remain nameless, that was selling itself with the help of a third, that reminded us of a forgotten factor: free beer.

“If the meeting’s bad, at least the drinks were free.”

Brilliant. The predominant incarnation of this particular meetup, one that occurs in city’s nation-wide, involves a monthly, bar-based get-together where folks congregate, talk about industry-based, socially conscious issues, and pay five-dollars a pint. Some brilliant organizer, for whom this plight must have strongly resonated, lifted the industry-centered focus* and found a brewery that would sponsor the meeting with free beer** and some free food.

Both Sarah and I very much enjoy lubricating otherwise seemingly-dull conversations with alcohol, and neither of us enjoy paying for it. And while she didn’t think much of her decision to stick with keeping her own industry-centered themes in the format of the meeting, Sarah immediately made a sponsorship deal with another enthusiastic local brewery and she began putting the (down-low) word out that the drinks would be free. Again — Brilliant. When I’m at conferences and the education components are bad, the likelihood of drinking for free on the tab of some industry sponsor is redeeming. Even if core of the meeting is bad, Sarah thought, at least one element is reliably good (and often promised to make the networking part easier for us closet introverts)

“Oops - Could I have provided too much incentive?”

With Sarah’s new priorities, booze, networking, and discussion of issues related to the topic at hand, 20 people showed up to her first meeting. She didn’t know half of them and thus she felt successful. Meanwhile, the model she based the structure of her meetup on, the free beer and general conversation meeting, was facing growth that initially startled Sarah.

We had been going to the gathering here and there with friends of ours, but because of previous obligations, Sarah and I had missed the last meeting of the group she modeled hers after. It had grown substantially since the topical modification and the drinks were introduced, going from a steady 20-person meeting to 70-80 after the next month and well over a hundred at the next. Our friends caught the last meeting and reported an attendance of well over 200 people. Lines for the keg were 20-something strong. The free beer was gone in an hour.

Moderate incentive v. All incentive // Meetings v. Parties

For a short while, Sarah had thought she had made a mistake by offering free beer and that her meeting would soon be over-saturated. She realized, however (or at least hoped like hell), that no, this would not be the case. In her meeting, which is aimed at folks in a typically low-pay industry, optional free drinks had become a reward for people who might not otherwise feel, to give up a free night. In the other meeting, which initially catered to a similar crowd, the requirement of association with an industry had been lifted and coupled with the extra incentive of complementary alcohol. Since the only requirement for entry was sharing an interest in the generally vague topic of the meetup (”It’s about the Blues? My cousin listens to the blues! Where’s the beer?”), it had essentially turned itself into more of a soirée than anything else.

By increasing the incentive while also dropping the requirements for membership, you’re basically left saying, “Come have free drinks with a bunch of people who think about vaguely similar things as you do.” There’s nothing wrong with doing that—this model defined much of many people’s high school and college experiences. It’s incentives had changed to accommodate what appeared to be its new mission: increasing rates of social capital with the help of beer (another wholly noble goal), otherwise known as a party.

However, when an organizer is looking to create something more structured, incentive must be matched equally with terms of entry in order to ensure free-riders don’t overwhelm underlying goals of an action. At a meeting with an explicit goal, a participant with a beer in their hand is being rewarded for their participation. At a meeting with no goal, a participant with a beer in their hand is an extra in a John Hughes movie. Free beer is meant to balance the fact that the folks might need an extra selling point to tip their interest to attending the meeting, thus increasing the likelihood the meeting will have a strong, qualified turnout.

By balancing participation challenges with incentive, we are able to bring more qualified people into the conversation, strengthen our dialog, and create new opportunities for well-matched collaboration. By creating more incentive than challenge, especially when one of them is beer, chances are we’re just throwing a party.

The incentive-heavy will cutter your path.

This model is applicable, of course, to all paradigms of organization. The glory of participating with purpose, the personality of the organizer, or, in the case of the Internet, the usability of the platform don’t always translate into high levels of participation. Sometimes, if a task asks a little more than zero effort from a participant, extra recognition for engagement, a trade of services, or a free something or rather might be necessary to get someone working on your side. It is important, however, to create a balance between the complications of opting in and incentive. Unless you’re looking for a strictly numbers-based mass of support, allowing the balance tip towards the incentive-heavy can leave you burdened with incentive-hungry folks cluttering the path that separates you from your ultimate goal.

Footnotes:

*Now the meetings are about over-arching social-consciousness.

**Which, it’s worth mentioning, is spottily illegal depending on your locale and venue.

-Filed in Ideas, Tactics, Uncategorized

I just pledged $100 dollars to the development of a New York City-based “vertical farm.”

If you don’t know about the project, you can check out The Vertical Farm website here, an article on the concept in The New York Times, or this discussion in The Huffington Post on how we can use such a construction project as part of an advanced building block of our future (and national security).

From the campaign: The Vertical Farm is a urban indoor highrise farm that can grow food to feed urban populations in a sustainable way. It’s one of the most innovative solutions to the impending food and environmental crisises we’ll see in the next 50 years.

Benefits include:

• Year-round indoor farming produces 4-6 times more food
• All organic
• Dramatic reduction of fossil fuel use in farming: shipping, tractors, etc.
• Recycles water it uses
• Avoids weather-related crop failures
• New jobs

The best thing about the pledge is that it’s just that - a pledge. I have not yet been charged. I am supporting an idea and only when there is enough support to leverage it into a reality will my money be put to use.

Andrew Mason puts the project into context of The Point’s weekend upgrade:

“Hey there, We launched a major upgrade to The Point this weekend. I’m inviting you a “carrot” campaign — one of our new features. For these campaigns, there are no preset tipping points — people just pile on the money until someone agrees to do something. In this case, we’re trying to get a developer to agree to build a skyscraper farm in Manhattan. Please forward this to New Yorkers you know - I think it’s a really cool idea. You won’t pay a dime unless someone reputable steps up and agrees to build the farm. We’ll probably work something out where you’ll get a return on your investment, either in the form of equity or produce, but it’s too early to promise anything. Help spread the word!”

Please consider supporting the concept, be it by pledge or spreading the word about the campaign, and get behind bringing United States’ food production into the future.

-Filed in Ideas, The Point

Check it out and learn more about the see3 network here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hwj4HW5V2Q[/youtube]

-Filed in People, The Point

Topics covered:

1. Meeting and flaking on an interview with the fabulous Wendy Cohen.
2. The intersection of on and offline establishment of trust and how one works off the other.

Meet Wendy Cohen, the interviewee I neglected to record.

Like the technical genius that I am, I talked with Wendy Cohen of Participant Media and Screening Liberally for nearly an hour, and I did it all having forgotten to hit the record button.

We discussed our love for Jay Rosen, adoration for Larry Lessig, and talked about how she organized the first Screening Liberally event, organized around the film Thank You For Smoking, back in New York. We talked about her time as a community manager at the Huffington Post (she was their first), where she worked on increasing the volume of user participation and on-site chatter. We discussed her present role at Participant, where she has the same title but works in a capacity that is not focused strictly Internet community development. How does she keep up with the demands of a job that doesn’t necessarily have a consistent, set-in-stone job description? She says that she’s had great mentor and consistently reads up what’s being said about the subject online

Based on her contrasting experiences, I asked if an increase of tangible, face-to-face social capital better facilitates online action? Are you, Wendy Cohen, more willing to sign onto an Internet protest or fundraising campaign I am organizing than you were before we met face-to-face and only knew me via email? And if so, do you think that this is the case for most people

Wendy suggested that yes, she would be more interested in participating in some sort of online action that I initiate after having actually met me, but that the dynamics of getting to know people are becoming so much more multifaceted that it is becoming easier to feel like know know someone that you have never met face-to-face. Perhaps this is closing the gap between the need-to-meet-to-trust people and those who give/participate more freely than others.

Nice to meet (/trust) you.

We discussed Wendy’s efforts with Screening Liberally, a social event she co-created that organizes folks online to get together and watch socially liberal independent films offline. We discussed the conversation the meetings breed and bonding that face-to-face meetings facilitate. Screening Liberally stemmed from Drinking Liberally, a similarly structured event that Cohen had been attending for a few years. She also organizes Net Tuesdays in L.A., a NetSquared event that organizes in a similar way to the “Liberally” events (bringing folks face-to-face using Internet technologies), though it concentrates on non-profit and tech issues. Part of the bonus of both events is camaraderie and networking built around an issue as well as the educational component. The strengthening of trust, based wholly on meeting someone face-to-face, can be beneficial when eventually trying to mobilize someone to act online.

Internet-organizer communities continue to rhetorically treat the off and online as binaries — as if they don’t overlap each other as one: When I am my offline self, I am not my online self. When I am my online self, I am not my offline self. However, social transactions are based upon perceived loss and gain on the parts of each participant. For some, getting a person to act online may require little more than a compelling cause and an easy avenue for action. For others, it may require a level of trust unachievable by a call for action alone. In the past week, of the past ten people I have asked who have given money to a cause online in the past year, every one said that they are more likely to give to someone that they know. Even though my ask went out to friends and Internet associates alike, with the exception of one donor, every person who gave me money for a Point campaign aimed at helping my cousin who had lost her home in a fire, a seemingly compelling cause, is someone I have met, if only briefly, in person. Even Warren Buffett has been known to work to restore trust with his fellow company-folk by meeting with them face-to-face.

We chat, We vlog, We tweet.

While the ways with which we are able to get to know each other online are becoming more and more diversified in both their depth and distribution apparatuses, thus transforming the ways we build and assess trust, for some, the willingness to give time, money, or action is contingent on getting to know that the face on the other side of the screen indeed belongs to a human being. The Internet is special in its ability to accelerate the speed of our message, the mechanics of our campaigns, and the depth of our ability to organize. Meetings, connection, and person-to-person resonance, while absolutely possible for many to achieve online, is still a more-quickly absorbed process off. By adapting our off and online behaviors to embrace all tools — by focusing on building social capital in both spheres — we strengthen our leverage in both worlds, both as individuals and part of a greater social wholes, as well as leaders of movements architected in this digital world we’re finally starting to get a grasp of.

The next time you have time to do so, head on over to a gathering of the like (or differently) minded, be it at a Screening (or Drinking or Living) Liberally event, or a gathering of Net Tuesday organizers. While your online fundraising prowess might be in competition with rock stars like Beth Kanter (thanks to her suggestions for successful community maintenance and fundraising), it can’t hurt to connect with those who might potentially participate in a future something, if only they know who you were.

[Edit // 10:30 pm EST] Here, a few hours after posting this, I just came across this blog post. It discusses this study [doc]. While it doesn’t necessarily drive home my point, it does discuss the importance of offline shared experience, online connectivity, and to The Point’s point, fostering “a feeling of ’strength in numbers”:

There is great potential for the youth activists to build a Global Potential alumni network, one grounded in the offline shared experience of activism and action, on Facebook that will help”connect one another online and in person,…[fostering] a feeling of ’strength in numbers’ a common space in which to [feel] comfortable and supported in their activist work”.

For tomorrow: I’ll discuss the pros and cons of providing incentive for group participation, and take a look at what can happen when added incentive brings more participation than productivity.

For the comments: In your experience, how does face-to-face, offline networking and participation augment your online organization?

-Filed in Ideas, People

A journalist with Ritalin-prescription envy explains how “the digital age is destroying us.”

-Filed in Uncategorized

At Netroots Nation 2008, Dr. Lawrence Lessig spoke as a keynote and presented Change Congress, his new initiative to use connective tools to help steer the government body into a new direction. I asked Lessig why, after 10 years of tackling copyright and intellectual property issues, he had decided to move on Congress. He responded, “We had hit a level of success, the issues were no longer hard, and I felt like I was getting lazy so I said ‘I’m going to throw everything I am doing away and do something different.’”

Even more amazing, he explained, “And I in fact said, ‘I am going to do that every ten years. Every ten years I am going to throw away all of my intellectual capital and work on something new.’” And so here he is, trying to corral Internet grassroots activists on the left and right to act against what many consider to be a failed government body. Here, he discusses using the carrot model to change the government, how true change has to be “purple” and how he plans to attract the attention of the not-so-obvious audience.

Make Something Happen: Outside of a crowd like those at Netroots Nation, which is predisposed to being supportive of your work, how do you plan on bringing the attention of the public to Change Congress?

Lawrence Lessig: We’ve got a big push now to grow a list of people who want to participate in as many different ways as we can. Part of what the Trippi organization is doing is helping us think about how to parse, simplify, or extend the message so that it can reach a wider range of people than those who are otherwise coming to events like [Netroots Nation].

I spent an enormous part of my life speaking and not all of the speeches are ones that I give for 2000 person audiences, so I speak in every venue I possibly can to get people to think about that. Everything I produce, I make available for other people to use as well.

I think that’s as much as we can do right now. As this thing gets going and other people who are running campaigns begin to incorporate this message into what they’re doing, I think that will be another kind of leverage point that will be very important to us as well.

MSH: Is public dissatisfaction with Congress correlative to the public’s feeling of disengagement with the process?

Lessig: I think there’s a number of things that plays into it. Some people are skeptical that [9%, the number of constituents happy with Congress's performance] is a meaningful number. The important thing to do is to see how it has changed over time. So if you don’t think it’s 9% and you think that it’s 15%, the one thing it’s not is 40%. Just after World War II, it was above 70% so part of it is that people have become disengaged. Part of it is that they just don’t have faith that there is any integrity in the system — that Congress is just particularly bad at drawing lines and fighting this particular president on certain issues, that they’re so quick to think that it’s worse to be seen as an obstructionists. But I think it’s better to be seen as an obstructionist of bad policy than I think it is to support this policy of the present administration. But even the best leadership is not going to restore the type of faith in this institution that we need — that’s fundamental to reform.

MSH: Are there any examples or success stories where you have seen people use connective technologies to spread awareness or illicit reaction? Stories where you realized that your mission is now possible?

Lessig: I think that some of the things Sunshine does with lobbyist [issues]. Bloggers like Matt Stoller, who put up the voting record and asked people to fill out information about the particular things [with regard to voting records]. Models like Wikipedia — What’s interesting about this is that they invite people to participate in their pajamas, meaning it is in a context where it is very easy to be connected and doesn’t require a huge demand, but then gives you a feeling like you’re making a contribution to something that is public and important as the inspiration. We’re seeing more and more of that.

But there’s been no organization that has really achieved the percentage of efficiency that I think is possible. We still have a lot of learn and to build from.

MSH: You noted in your presentation that Change Congress will have a panel of bloggers intended to be critical of the organization. Why do you find doing that important?

Lessig: It’s the ethic of the net. When you look at what happens on the net, [participants that] adopt an ethic of openness, [can help protect] from criticism. When you contrast that with a corporate ethic and a corporate website, where everything is closed and just great, I realize which side of the divide we’ve got to be on. So that wasn’t conceptually hard.

What’s hard is organizing it in a way so that it’s not self-destructive because it’s so easy for critics to take over space and to drive other contributors out. Figuring out how to architect that to the best advantage is not easy to do.

MSH: What concerns and criticisms about the model are you hearing back from this community?

Lessig: There is a concern about the substance of particular things, and this is likely because we haven’t made the message clear enough. My response to that is that we haven’t endorsed as much as we have made available. We might expand those and it might turn out that some are not relevant. If nobody cares about earmarks in the end, then maybe earmarks disappear. Making clear that what we’re doing is trying to facilitate a language with which we can understand, criticize, and change Congress. Not having a set of Ten Commandments is a hard thing to get people to be able to do.

MSH: How is Change Congress using the carrot model with regard to leveraging political activity?

Lessig: It will make it very easy for people to focus on the flavor of a forum that they care about, and then go out and support particular people who match that. Right now we’ve got a list of [supported] candidates, or you can go to an ActBlue,or a Slate Card page eventually, where you can support all of the candidates. What I want it to be is basically you make your representation that takes you to your ActBlue page and then you can make a choice to support all of them or pick which ones you’re going to support individually so that it’s just a simple 1, 2, 3 and then you support it so that candidates begin to say, “Wow. Where is this money coming from? Oh. I see there are people in my district who think this is important and they do something about it.”

MSH: Do you think that Congress knows what’s coming?

Lessig: No. And that’s our chance. They have a vague sense, but they don’t have a chance to focus on it because they’re still focused on getting funded in the old system. So I think we have eight years to build the alternative before it penetrates enough before they figure out how to co-opt this as well.

MSH: Does anyone in there get it?

Lessig: There are particular people who I am inspired by. Tennessee Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper is one; (Massachusetts Democratic Congressman) Ed Markie understands a lot of these issues. I wouldn’t say that my list of candidates is actually comprehensive enough.

MSH: You have said that you think that this change is purple (supportable by both the left and the right). You really believe that both sides are going to be able to work on this issue?

Lessig: I think that’s the only way we succeed. When RightOnline had that conference and wrote me and said, “You know, we’re having our conference at the exact same time [as NN08],” I wrote back and said, Why didn’t you invite me to talk?” They responded that they can’t invite everybody so I just said “OK.” [laughs]

We’ve got to learn how to speak about these issues in a way that includes the widest range. This is a matter of the constitution. We have to pledge support for reform of the constitution that makes it so the system functions.

[Lessig discusses Change Congress at Personal Democracy Forum 2008

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=_obGaWfkDgs[/youtube]

-Filed in People

In a somewhat predictable occurrence, I bought headphones on JetBlue (as I left my set somewhere in the Austin Convention Center) and they didn’t work in my computer/recorder so I am still without the text of the Lessig interview.

Netroots Nation was helpful by way of shining a light on Internet activism and action, though it felt a little long by the time Sunday rolled around. For those unfamiliar with the structure (ie. likely anyone who wasn’t there), the conference is part education, part networking opportunity, and part rally for the netroots generation. In retrospect, I find it unfortunate that I was unable to make the right wing net conference, also occurring in Austin over the weekend. It would have been particularly interesting to compare the attitude and atmospheres at each happening (although apparently Michelle Malkin there shouldn’t be a “self esteem problem” in the blogosphere of the right). I am also interested to find out whether or not, in the case of an Obama presidential victory, next year’s conference will be as large and energized without a campaign or a figure to rally around.

The panel that explored how video can help a cause/issue/campaign was great, though I had to leave it early. The milblog session was excellent, though somewhat disappointingly under-attended. It helped put into perspective how military use of blogs and other communication technologies are changing the perspectives of American’s with regard to what’s going on in Iraq. It was also inspiring to see that by way of VoteVets, exposure was shined on the poor living conditions at Fort Bragg, ultimately leading to political action.

Oh. And I was awed to see San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, a true rockstar politician who garnered the stumbling attention of anyone with a pulse.

As per usual, there were so many interesting sessions and only so little time to see them all. As can be the case at conferences, some of the attitude was self-congradulatory, though that’s largely attributable to the fact that the conference isn’t strictly educational. Further, I wonder what these communities are ultimately going to gain by continuing to ask avid Internet activists year after year how we plan on bridging on and offline activism.

I do, though, think we need to talk differently about how we look at online action, new organizing, etc. Let’s just do it, as it were.

-Filed in Uncategorized