This week’s WSJ onlne column, “Recommended Reading” inludes a selection of resources, Web sites, books and online tools for leveraging technology for social change. CitizenSpeak is the second item on the list. Whoo hoo!!!! Who knew that the Wall Street Journal cared about social change?

The Providence Business News also ran an article on CitizenSpeak in this week’s edition. Thanks Natalie Myers for writing such a great article!

To see the entire WSJ article and other recommended tools, please go to http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB116370734687625444-lMyQjAxMDE2NjIzNzcyMDc3Wj.html

Mobile Active, a global network of organizations and individuals using mobile phones for activism and civic engagement, announced today the release of the MobileActive Strategy Guide - the first in a series investigating the use of mobiles in civil society. The guide is designed to equip organizations around the world with the know-how to deploy effective mobile campaigns for a variety of types of activism and advocacy. Other guides in the series will focus on issue advocacy, fundraising, humanitarian and disaster relief, and mobile organizing. You can download this strategy and pass it on to a friend at www.mobileactive.org.

I’d like to highly recommend a new book out called “Momentum - Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age.” Written by Alison Fine, founder of InnoNet, and with a forward by Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn, this book is a great tool for any organizer interested in developing a Web 2.0 communications strategy to get their voices heard. I’m proud to announce that the book includes a case study that I wrote about how the Schuylkill River used CitizenSpeak to take on a multinational railroad company. For those of you who have read the book - this group eventually won over this company.

Awesome news today: George Hotelling was named the first winner of the new annual $10,000 Pizzigati Prize. We were one of the 6 finalists. I figured we didn’t have a chance. The other finalists included:

1) the main developer for the CivicSpace (formerly DeanSpace) project which powers thousands of campaign and nonprofit sites
2) a developer for the Martus project, an open source human rights reporting software used worldwide and developed by Jim Fruchterman who just won a MacArthur Genius Award in large part for his Martus work

But, guess what???? CitizenSpeak WON!!!!! Whoohooooo!!!!! We’re soooo thrilled.

The award is for $10,000. $5,000 goes to George and $5,000 goes to CitizenSpeak.

Thanks to everyone that contributed to this development work and for your awesome campaigns!!!!

Jo

There’s a great ope/ed in the New York Times today by Adam Cohen, called “Could a 15-Year-Old With a Laptop Be the New Campaign Media Guru?” about the Yealy Kos - the first annual convention for the Daily Kos blogosphere. The article talks about the importance of blogs in the shaping and dissemination of political news and messaging, the popularization of political advertising, and the 2004 proven effectiveness of netroots fundraising.

As a principal at Green Machine PR, I found the article to offer an interesting angle for one of my new PR clients, Mobile Voter. Cohen writes, “On Election Day 2008, voters could get video clipes on their laptops and cellphones from Beyonce, Springstein… targeted by geography or demographics… urging them to vote and telling them where to do it.” Mobile Active offers the first mobile phone based Get Out The Vote platform. The service is aimed at increasing the youth vote. I’m very interested to see what promotional advice I can glean from The Participatory Culture Foundation, a non profit group that presented on how ordinary people can make political videos and distribute them over the Internet.

CitizenSpeak was just named the Hot Site of the Week for PolitcsOnline. For those who don’t know this organization, you should. It’s great. They have by far and away the best weekly newsletter about online politics. It’s informative, well written and a quick read. What more could you ask for.

Check out the “hot site” blurb at http://www.politicsonline.com/content/main/hotsite/hotsite_display.asp?id=320

The Social Source Foundation announced that they have integrated CiviCRM with the open source CivicSpace/Drupal CitizenSpeak module. CiviCRM is a FANTASTIC constituent relationship management solution designed specically for nonprofits. This is great news for downloaders of the CitizenSpeak open source module (not those who are using this hosted service but those that want to build their own e-advocacy services on their own server.) With this integration, data(participant details) entered in citizenspeak module can be accessed using civicrm.

For more informaton please visit: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/CitizenSpeak+Module

Hi Everyone: Due to a massive server crash, CitizenSpeak was down over the weekend and for most of Monday but I’m glad to say that it’s back. I’m so sorry to all of those whose campaigns were disrupted. Please email me if you have any questions or need to vent. I really am so sorry!!!!! Thanks for your patience, Jo Lee

In this article (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125504,00.asp), PC World gives Think Free two thumbs way up. According to PC World,
- Think Free’s word processing app is as powerful to use as Microsoft’s
- You can upload MS Word docs to Think Free
- Think Free comes with a ton of free space
- Re collaboration: editable docs have their own URL. No more email and no more multiple versions.
- Docs can be automatically converted to PDFs
- Excellent spreadsheet and presentation programs too

It’s great to see mainstream media putting forth ideas that challenge its reason for being. While content from the Economist comes solely from its own editorial board, this article focuses on the the future of user generated content. I believe CitizenSpeak falls directly into this category. It enables grassroots and individual activists to launch campaigns about issues that are important to them rather than simply particpate in campaigns defined by larger organizations. Don’t get me wrong. These large scale campaingns are important. But so are the issues brought up by citizen journalism and citizen activism. For more on the Economist article, called “Among the Audience,” please go to http://www.economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=6794156.