During the day, Massa, a former schoolteacher, works with the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. Even more, interestingly, influenced by punk-rock ethic as a teenager, he worked with an organization to combat hate speech in music (where, despite having one of the least hateful demeanors imaginable, he used to go undercover to concerts that promoted messages of racism and hate). Without further ado, we proudly present our conversation with Justin Massa, Executive Director of MoveSmart.org:

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[And a special thanks to Connecticut-based Waiting For Sully for the opening song.]

Wednesday, 4:53 PM - Social Actions came in third place. Know More came in second. And the winner of the NetSquared Mashup Challenge was… [drumroll] Ushahidi: Mapping Reports of Post-Election Violence in Kenya!

What a great conference. Expect to read more about many of the featured projects and how the folks behind them are engaging volunteers and activists in the coming weeks.

Wednesday, 2:47 PM - I told Billy Bickett that I wish that the American democratic system was much more like the one that NetSquared uses. In exchange for ongoing education, engagement, and eventually voting, the participant is rewarded with networking opportunities, beautiful weather, hardworking facilitators, and ice cream at every turn.

Wednesday, 2:26 PM - Voting!

Wednesday, 1:47 PM - Talked with Rob Miller of Open Planning Project about the importance of effective communication. It is important to recognize the needs of the people you connect with, he says, citing Marshall Rosenberg, the creator of Nonviolent Communication. Even when someone is coming at you aggressively about the things that are annoying or irritating them, being able to hear what they are saying and connecting with them by effectively recognizing your mutual needs makes engagement a more valuable process.

Wednesday, 1:34 PM - The name tag as conversation starter.

Talked for a bit

Wednesday, 11:49 AM - A sage-like Peter Deitz presents Social Actions, an aggregator and API. Social Actions needs an evangelist, he says. He also needs developers. They’re aiming at sustainability: I don’t want to be asking money forever.

The Social Actions interface searches through all of the campaigns across the board of social platforms such as The Point, Kiva, Six Degrees, The Point, and many others. Further, “We want to put citizen sector on par with the private sector.” See our interview with Peter here.

Wednesday, 11:37 AM – YourMapper explains that when it initially decided that they would put crime statistics online, they somewhat expectedly found some push-back from local law enforcement. It took an “in” with the local force and a lawsuit to get their hands on this information.

Wednesday, 11:02 AM - Blair Golson of Participant Media blogs about the Second Life seminar that I was unable to make it to. The best line from his post is this, hands down: “Try to grok the meta-ness of this scene.”

Wednesday, 10:56 AM – Tom Inhaler (left) from KnowMore discusses their Firefox extension. He discusses their precarious relationship with American Apparel, how they hope to keep monitoring corporations balanced, and how sometimes their company profiles (McDonald’s) sometimes mysteriously go missing. He explains that they don’t exist to facilitate specific sorts of activism, but to provide the opportunities for people who might then be inspired to take action. An audience member: “When I take a look at your site, all of the ratings make me feel bad about participating in the economy. How do you avoid perpetuating feelings of disenfranchisement?” Joe’s joking response: “I just want to start out by telling you that I am a huge fan of disenfranchisement.” The audience bursts into laughter.

Wednesday, 10:54 AM - Justin Massa discusses how MoveSmart likely won’t be used to further perpetuate gentrification – “People have been doing a pretty good job gentrifying neighborhoods without us.”

Wednesday, 9:27 AM – Ben Drexler talks quite articulately about the Genocide Intervention Network, Darfur Scores, and how they are working to use web tools, lists, and widgets to put pressure Congress-people to get tough on genocide. On their second year as an organization, he says in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion: “The terrible twos are worse for nonprofits than they are for little kids, let me tell you.”

Asked why they don’t use a pre-existing scoring tool like Capitol Advantage, Drexler suggests that it is because Genocide Intervention Network needs a greater scope of analysis than is available on Capitol Advantage. Goldbeck says that branding is very important to them. They would like to attain political clout similar to that which is held by the NRA or the Sierra Club. Herein, to increase capacity and care about anti-genocide, they find it necessary to build their own infrastructure.

Wednesday, 8:40 AM – Milling around, waiting for the conference to start back up. Justin Massa of MoveSmart introduced me to the DJ-duo The Hood Internet and some other table is talking emphatically about Stuff White People Like.

Tuesday, 5:15 PM - Funniest moment of the day:

Speaker – Who here is working with a non-profit that has a Facebook page and a strategy? Attendee – We have a page, but we have no strategy.

Tuesday, 3:41 PM – Vinnie Lauria and Kristine Molnar lead a fantastic discussion about how nonprofits can use the Internet to leverage and increase donations. Check out a longer recap here.

Tuesday, 1:39 PM - Over a terrific lunch, I had a great conversation with Jamie Hartman of the Taproot Foundation, Greg Baldwin from VolunteerMatch, Ben Rattray of Change.org, and Vince Stehle about facilitating/concentrating on different paradigms for matching volunteers with organizations (converse to doing so the traditional, other way around). How do we match people who want to volunteer, but don’t know when or how? Is it possible to archive/categorize skills and match those with organizations accordingly? How do you make folks who don’t have bigger skill sets feel like the only kid in the sandbox when they are not picked to participate in seemingly dynamic projects? Thoughts?

Tuesday, 12:05 PM – Janessa Goldbeck, Director of Membership at the Genocide Intervention Network, presented the Anti-Genocide Action Tracker, which scores members of Congress based on their position and action on Genocide issues. One might be surprised to find that former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo received an A+ on his stance/voting record.

The point system is gathered by several workers who are based in Washington DC, monitoring each Congress-person’s stance. They have made available a widget that processes a user’s IP address and informs them of their congressperson and also informs users on their social platform(s) of choice when important legislation is pending. It is interesting, she says, because it is a product that is applicable to almost any issue.

Also, see great interviews with Goldbeck at blogher here.

Tuesday, 11:58 AM- Nicolas Kardas of Microsoft gives a speech, but it sounds much more like a commercial for Microsoft products. Need to attract new visitors? Use this product!

Tuesday, 11:18 AM – Michael Metz of Cisco talked about the popular resistance to corporate/nonprofit media and outreach in his address to the conference. 137 million households have put themselves on do-not-call lists. They believe in their peers before anyone else. 81% of the people buying our products aren’t listening to our messaging. When they’re ready, however, they’ll engage.

Some approaches that have worked for Cisco include options to IM with company representatives and providing short videos for folks who come to and use the site. Don’t bother and pester people, he suggests, but be ready when they want to engage. Stop bombarding them with outbound marketing. And when they’re on the site, take a look at their cookies and what they’ve been looking at online and then market accordingly.

He explains that his wife says that it is sort of creepy, what the company does with user info. She feels like someone is looking over her shoulder at what she’s looking at. When he tells her that it is simply like listening to his users more closely, this puts her at ease.

Tuesday, 10:04 AM - Representatives from each project just gave a 2 minute synopsis of their presentations. Each project appears to be unique and interesting; many are utilizing mapping in new and useful ways. There are also a few projects focused on holding Congress more accountable and there is one interesting eco-rating project. Michael Metz from Cisco is awestruck by the range and scope of projects, he says.

Tuesday, 9:50 AM – Vince Stehle opened the conference by speaking about how NetSquared and the projects here are representative of the importance of working to more efficiently democratize philanthropy. Technology is generated with user-generated content. Organized philanthropy will play an important role in the development of the social web, he said, but sustainability is contingent on an organization’s/individual’s/campaign’s ability to support donors.

Tuesday, 7:32 AM – Being in Santa Clara for the first time is very much like strolling a walk of fame for dorks. You find yourself excited to see the offices for Yahoo, Cisco Systems, Ebay, and all of these other companies whose products you grew up immersed in. It feels silly to admit this, but with these corporate brands having been so omnipresent in my young life, it’s hard not to think that being here, as late as it is to finally make it out this way, is really cool.

Talking with the guys from Squarepeg (pictured above) about who—corporations like Nike or small software folks on the ground—will ultimately have say over kinds of information (shoe sizes/styles and/or willingness to volunteer) will be shared in a post-2.0 is surreal. The conversations happening here are helping to shape the scope of how people will use the web to make good things happen in very near future.

It has been amazing to talk with various folks and representatives of various Mashups who are tackling the ways in which information is now stored and used. The stages of understanding this whole point-o transition will only be graspable in retrospect, but watching the stages unfold from the point of the “2.0″ declaration is watching evolution in action. How will we better motivate people to move forward, organize around issues, and leverage their consumer practices against corporate irresponsibility? We hope to have a better sense as the day unfolds.

Monday, 9:32 PM - Having already spoken with Laura Welcher of the Long Now Foundation, Justin Massa of MoveSmart, Tom Inhaler and Eric Cooper of Know More, Blair Golson of Participant Media, Isaac Holeman and John Wagner of Squarepeg, and many other folks in the field of making stuff happen, I already feel exponentially more enlightened than I was when I arrived to the conference a few hours ago. From challenging corporate messaging to archiving every known language, the ways in which these people are leveraging the Internet is both inspiring and constructively challenging

Monday, 5:46 PM - Today I arrived in San Jose. Rather than finding and paying for a hotel room, I hunted a room down using Couchsurfing, where I found a great place downtown. This is my first time using the site, and I have been looking forward to using it since friends told me about their admiration for the service over a year ago. I am staying a big house with a handful of students/sustainable farmers who have been generous enough to share their space/car with me. The experience is already much better than one based at a hotel, as when I arrived, one of the housemates had his parents over and they were blackening sardines on the grill. We sat outside and drank homemade wine and ate and talked about how things were for them back home, back in the day.

• Contemplate the importance reciprocity in Internet action with Beth Kanter
• Talk to Justin Massa, founder of MoveSmart.org, about how punk rock led to community development
• Assess the successes and challenges of Meetup organizers with over 10 seasoned players
• Find out what makes The Great Clay Shirky tick
• Take a look at why everyone we interview talks about Saul Alinsky as if he were a deity
• Shoot the shit with Ze Frank
• And much, much more