advocacy

Blending the use of social tools around the current focus and concerns of your work colleagues’ and activists is a must. So I think Nigel Dunn is onto something with his concept for a widget response network.

Nigel blogged after listening to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Darfur and Chad Appeal over the weekend.

While the UK-based DEC does have a Rapid Response Network for Big Media, he believes (and I agree) that they could benefit enormously from providing a badge/widget that is available all the time.

If there’s an appeal happening then content connected with that is delivered, otherwise it’s empty. This would allow the ongoing development of a network that could be brought into play (more or less) instantly that a new appeal is launched.

He even anticipates widget strategy meetings…

Inevitably new technologies and ideas will spring up over time, which means that you will have different versions [of the badge/widget] operating at the same time. So a few years down the road you will have meetings to decide what content/functionality to deliver to everyone left on version 1 compared to the whizzy new version 2, etc.

These widgets could have a “donate” button embedded in them, but it’s the network effect of thousands of ’smart’ widgets of the sort I wrote about in March (see widgets of the world unite) that is really exciting. Lots of potential for demonstrating real social impact.

A widget response network in the way Nigel describes would also be a powerful tool for groups like the The Genocide Intervention Network, and Amnesty’s crisis response network.

Incidently, the Appeal for Darfur and Chad has raised around £3m since its launch last Thursday, and for the first time ever in a DEC appeal, more has been raised online than by phone, according to this article in Professional Fundraising.

Twitter for urgent actions

It seems relevant to link the ‘widget response network’ concept to my first thoughts on Twitter.

It was Andy Carvin who recently asked “might text messaging… serve any purpose in times of public emergencies?”. He explored the humanitarian relief potential of Twitter in his post Can Twitter Save Lives?

For another take, check out Twitter for human rights, from the always brilliant Dan MacQuillan.

Something else to go on the radar of your buzz director. (What, you still don’t have one?)

Just back from Baristas (terrific vanilla latte) where George and the team proudly sport “Make Starbucks History” t-shirts (as captured by caffeine buddy Ed Mitchell).

This got me thinking…

First, I was reminded of something Heather Green wrote in the Business Week blog last week. Heather noted how activism “splintered” to pursue different interests during the 1980s and 1990s. But now, she continued…

Because of the Internet, the different activist groups and NGOs can still be dedicated to their specific cause, but can coordinate on broad goals or campaigns when they want.

So on one hand you’re seeing fragmentation, but on the other, you’re seeing effective coordination.

On a small scale, the Starbucks Challenge, takes the form of always asking for fairtrade coffee when in-store. On a much larger scale, the online activity behind Make Poverty History - one of the most widely supported and recognised campaigns in recent years - stands out as an example of how to effectively devolve the distribution of campaign messages to a supporter base… to build a movement.

There have been other interesting examples such as the Jubilee 2000 movement, which grew from small beginnings to become an effective international campaign. Not all coalitions are as effective; the Stop Climate Chaos campaign has (so far) failed to grab me… nor, more importantly, influence many headline writers. (Do movements need a figurehead? Discuss).

The issue of connecting dispersed supporters through new technologies was covered in more detail in the first of a series of ICT Foresight reports published by NCVO in October (and free to download from the NCVO website).

The inspirational Network-Centric Advocacy blog always has lots to say on such subjects. This caught my attention recently:

There is widespread recognition that positive change on a variety of big and small issues will need to be driven by loose networks of global and local activists connected together from global warming to the plight of trash pickers in the developing world…

…The raw components for transforming the way to “do” organizing are on the table and staring leaders in the face…

There is serious need to inspire a cadre of activists, strategists, campaigners and investors to shift real resources into this new model of activism. Our best thinkers need to move horsepower into thinking about networks, how to build them, how to assess them, training on leadership in a networked world, what can networks do and how to invest in them.

(Read the whole post; it’s worth your time.)

I organised campaigns in a previous life (Oxfam; 1988-91) and it hasn’t escaped me that I first think of global issues (at least before I became a Dad) before concerning myself with more achievable changes needed on my own doorstep. The age of connectivity is yet to make a serious mark on local politics and online activism. At least, not on my watch.

Local campaigns often start out with just one or two people determined to change things in their community, like the installation of a zebra-crossing.

We happen to need one at the north end of our village in North Somerset. To be honest, I’ve only recently become more aware of this since becoming a governor at my daughter’s infants’ school.

I thought that it would be relatively easy to find another local community which had already managed to get the authorities to install a crossing, perhaps as part of a safe routes to school campaign. Not so.

An obvious first place to look was the BBC’s Action Network, but there’s not an awful lot going on under the pedestrian crossings category. Maybe we need something like change.org, but for local issues. Looks like I may have to re-invent the wheel.

Finally (for now)… the always-readable Kathy Sierra posts her frustrations at how James Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of Crowds” concept has been twisted and abused to mean virtually the opposite: The Dumbness of Crowds.