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May/June 2006
Featured Story It’s Not the Tools, It’s How You Use Them By Sean McConnell In the winter of 1999, the world became aware – very quickly – that the World Trade Organization (WTO) was not merely a benign organization of economists, politicians, and business leaders that met occasionally to discuss the politics of trade. Indeed, as soon as protests began on the streets of Seattle, pictures, stories, and even videos were transmitted to every continent giving voice to environmentalists and union organizers, students and grandparents, clergy and anarchists – all who had gathered to call attention to the economic injustices that were the product of WTO trade policies.
On February 15, 2003, a few weeks prior to the commencement of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, estimates say that between 10-30 million people gathered around the world for the largest war protest in history. Last August, thousands of candlelight vigils were held worldwide in support of Cindy Sheehan’s vigil outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch. Again, in September, more global vigils were held as 2,000 U.S. soldiers were confirmed dead in Iraq. All of these events have been covered by mainstream media for their overwhelming numbers, and much has been said in other columns and news stories about the power of the Internet to facilitate organizing such events. United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), MoveOn.org, TrueMajority.org, and FaithfulAmerica.org, using such tools as MoveOn’s “the meeting tool” and other solutions provided by organizations like Donor Digital and Get Active, have turned the Web into an organizer’s dream. Some of these organizations and tools have been criticized because they are used simply to turn out large numbers at single actions and not to form robust coalitions of people committed to daily peace and justice work. And that is their goal – to produce numbers. Organizers on the Right have long used this tactic through direct mail and now the Internet. They know that mobilizing large numbers of people to respond on one issue is the best way to influence politicians, the media, and public opinion. Noted conservative direct-mail guru Richard A. Viguerie has even stated that the Left has outmaneuvered the Right’s historical direct-mail organizing ability by using the Internet. That’s no small praise. (Of course, Viguerie’s praise of the Left is most likely an attempt to mobilize the Right.) Like direct mail, the Internet and the many solutions it provides are merely tools – means to an end. These tools hold no moral weight in themselves, and are therefore available to all who wish to use them. There is nothing stopping Bill Frist from raising as much money on the Internet for a 2008 presidential bid as Howard Dean did in 2004. There is nothing stopping the Christian Family Coalition from organizing nationwide vigils opposing gay marriage with the same success as a MoveOn.org campaign. There is, however, one thing that rises to the top when tossed into the pool of Internet traffic – truth (or at least an agreement of the value of a piece of information within a community). Early on, when we started to become aware that bloggers were sourcing stories later picked up by the mainstream media, there was a din of disapproval. “How do we know what bloggers are reporting is true?” What soon became clear is that the marketplace of ideas is the same in the blogosphere as it is on any college campus or in any town square. Any piece of information is valued by how it is verified within any given community of discourse. Bloggers soon became aware that they needed to bring in many points of view about an opinion or news item they were presenting in order to bolster their own presentation. This soon created networks of bloggers verifying each others' claims by presenting their own take on a piece. These communities of bloggers point to the true value of a network tool like the Internet. The value of the Internet is its ability to form these communities. Communities are now growing that no longer rely on notions of identity like tribe, race, or geographic origin – although the Internet does facilitate those types of groupings as well. Communities are now forming around beliefs and ideas and are not bounded by constraints like geography. Even though it is a marketing document, The Cluetrain Manifesto helped early adopters to understand what this sense of community was all about. It was a remarkably human endeavor. Even though some have claimed that the Internet and its community tools are impersonal, the reality is that “Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.” [Cluetrain Thesis #3.] This is the element of attraction that draws people into community. They see, hear, or read something that they deeply identify with. Frank Griswold, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, frequently speaks of the progressive triad of “conversation, conversion, and communion.” It is in conversation with one another that we are changed, and in being turned toward the other, that we enter communion with that person. Now, this of course happens in the non-virtual world, but the problem is that the non-virtual world is fraught with hierarchy. In a classroom for instance, the teacher/student relationship is one that does not allow a level playing field for the exchange of ideas. In the marketplace the same is true. Elements of class, race, gender, and other variables enter into interactions whether we intend for them to or not. Pardon the scriptural flex here, but on the Internet there is neither east nor west, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free. Of course, there are those who misrepresent their identity on the Internet, but that's not my point here. Suffice it to say that a thread of comments is merely that, a linear progression of comments. Teacher and student share the same entree into the conversation; hierarchy comes from the value placed on their offerings by the other members of the community. Cluetrain Thesis #10 states: “These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.” And #39 states: “The community of discourse is the market.” So, using the tools of new media allow us to lift up the voices not heard, and to share the words we value. As is the case with networked conversations, when an idea emerges from one network, it soon jumps to another one, as members of networks link their networks to other networks. Any best use of the technology understands this interaction. Also in this environment is the opportunity for completely open collaboration. Ideas are used and stretched and adapted until they evolve. When it comes to a specific resource, a user can develop use-specific versions that come from a community's needs and adaptations. In software development, this is called “open source.” Linda Grenz, founder of Leader Resources, says that the tools they provide are “evolutionary resources.” “We allow our clients to adapt their resources to fit their needs. They simply promise to share the changes they make back with us so that we can share them with our other client,” says Grenz. Open source philosophy has contributed to the development of software like Open Office, Web browsers like FireFox, and operating systems like Linux.
Filling your tool box So, what are some of the emerging tools that might best be used by progressives to better organize information and communities? Here are some tools that we should all have on our radar. Collaborative tools E-mail lists Of course, this is an old one, and most progressives are members of at least a few e-mail lists. As a collaborative tool, e-mail lists are invaluable to organizations when used correctly. Establish guidelines for your e-mail list so you don’t overwhelm members of the list with 300 e-mails saying something like “I agree” in response to a more substantial post. Used together with a CMS-based Web site, your organization can actually provide all of the same functionality that is available from Yahoo Groups without the annoying advertising, and providing group organizers with more control of the look and feel. A good, open source e-mail list program is Mailman. Wikis Recently, the world has become aware of the power of the wiki because of the tremendous success of the online collaborative encyclopedia known as Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, a wiki is “a type of Web site that allows users to add and edit content easily and is especially suited for collaborative writing.” Using tools like Social Text’s Enterprise Wiki, organizations such as Every Voice Network design products and strategize campaigns by wiki. What this means is that any member of the organization can go in and easily create Web pages that detail their role in a specific project, easily linking to budgets or task lists, without knowing html. Community Blogs There are currently some different concepts about what a community blog is. Some define community blogs as those found on social network sites like friendster.com or myspace.com. Then others consider blog aggregators as community blogs. In my mind the first is merely a social network blog, and the second is blog rolling (which refers to a list of links to other blogs usually found on the homepage of one blog). My definition of a community blog is a blog with multiple contributors. The best community blogs are not only collaborative tools, but also provide excellent sources of information. IMHO (e-mail shorthand for “in my humble opinion”) one of the best community blogs on the Internet is Boing Boing, which calls itself “A Directory of Wonderful Things,” and it is. It’s also an enormous time suck, so only go there if you have Internet time on your hands! Founded by author, techie, and copyfigher (if you don’t know what that means, Google it) Cory Doctorow and his friends, Boing Boing receives an average of 1.7 million unique readers each day (the most linked-to blog on the Internet, according to Technorati.com). Of course, the quality of the content is one reason for the popularity, but I think that the diversity of contributing viewpoints also helps. Social Bookmarking Now some might not see the value in social bookmarking right away, but after using social bookmarks for a short time, the value becomes apparent. Social bookmarking is a little like bookmarking a Web page in your browser, but it is much more collaborative. Social bookmarking allows a user to bookmark a page on a site that is public. Then the user can write her own notes about the page, then establish tags that group the page with similar pages. Once she has done this, she can find others who have marked the same page, and enter conversations about the content of the marked sites, and other users’ opinions. Many are finding this a helpful tool in recognizing and organizing affinity organizations, and keeping tabs on those with contrary agendas. There are several Web homes for social bookmarks. Popular social bookmark sites include del.icio.us (which can be pretty geeky – that’s why I use it), and the more progressive CommonTimes.org, for comments on news stories. Like community blogging, progressives have not yet captured the potential of social bookmarking, but it does need to be considered as a tool for collaboration and concept/strategy development. Web Tools
CMS The era of outdated calls to action on progressive Web sites should now be a thing of the past, due to the dawning of database-driven Web sites. Web sites that have their content managed by databases are the savior of organizations that need to post content quickly and can't afford to have a programmer on staff. A Content Management System (CMS) allows anyone who has the skills to purchase a book or airline ticket online to post content on their organization’s Web site. CMS does require a large up-front fee to have a developer build a site for your organization, but once the site is built it should require very little maintenance. You don’t really need to know the names of the code that drive these sites (like MySQL and PHP), but you might want to know some of the types of templates that run on this code. A new popular CMS is called Joomla (a transliteration of a Swahili word meaning “all together”). Others include PostNuke and MDPro. RSS Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is the feature that makes blogs and podcasts so popular. The problem in the past was when you put new content on your Web site that you wanted constituents to read, you then had to send an e-mail telling them to come to your Web site. Or, if you didn’t know who all of your Web visitors were, then you had to wait for them to visit the site to see your updated content. With RSS, as soon as you post content it is sent to subscribers. This is called “pull” content, where the end user decides what she wants to receive, as opposed to “push” content, sent to the end user in e-mail or an instant message. To receive RSS content, you need to have an RSS aggregator, and these are now available for free on the Internet. For podcasts, Apple’s iTunes is a user-friendly way to access content. For blogs, I use NetNewsWire on my Mac (which is not free: $24.95). Windows users have many choices, including NewsPoint that brings RSS feeds into Outlook. Epilogue Finally, I want to say something about faith and the Web. Many have wondered aloud whether religious experience can be delivered electronically. I have three answers to that question. First, in the same way that books and publications have been able to deliver spiritual content to readers in the past, the Internet is no different. As a matter of fact, it only makes finding content that much easier. BibleGateway.com, for instance, provides a searchable Bible in 35 languages and 50 versions. Second, in my experience there are sacramentals (outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace) everywhere in life – including on the Internet and in other forms of new media. Artists throughout the centuries have played the role of mediators of grace, and digital artists are no different. My challenge to you is this: How are you going to portray a sense of faith and justice in a way that touches the faith life of your Internet visitor? Third, the interior religious or spiritual life is just that – inside you. It might be informed by those things mentioned above, but it is not outside of you. You can find community on the Internet, and maybe even bring those you meet together for a brick-and-mortar gathering, but the Internet will never touch the Divine through your heart. As I stated at the beginning, these are merely tools. As we all know, some tools are available only to those who have the resources to acquire them. Every human being has a spark of the Divine within her. Use these tools that I’ve written about here, but don’t make them the only tools in your chest. Reach out to those who seek justice wherever they might be found. When you can, go into the streets and bring justice to the earth. Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).
Sean McConnell is a web and marketing consultant for Episcopal churches, and serves as the communications officer for the Episcopal Diocese of California in San Francisco.
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