Politics & Communication with Joshua Gee

For those that don’t already know. I was lucky enough to attend the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum after winning one of the 2011 Google Fellowships. After meeting amazing people and learning a ton, I am collecting my (admittedly scattered) thoughts on the conference into a series of posts.

All of my previous blog posts on PdF have tried to capture what I felt were the major themes of the conference. However, there were a number of talks that didn’t fit into those frameworks that were still worth watching. They were random, they were inspiring, and they were delightful.

Omoyele Sowore runs Sahara Reporters out of his basement in New Jersey. From thousands of miles away, he is working to uncover corruption and helped bring down the President of Nigeria. He also had a killer story about being smuggled into the country in style.

I didn’t recognize his name in the program, but when Dan Sinker walked onstage I freaked out. Dan created the Twitter account turned internet epic @mayoremanuel, which became a sensation during last year’s Chicago Mayoral election. Dan’s talk, about what inspired the account, how he worked on it, and what happened after he was outed, was great. He was also the only person at the conference had my picture taken with.

The most notorious talk of the conference came completely out of left field. I followed Jim Gilliam on Twitter because of some random app he created, but didn’t really know much about him. Now, his talk, “The Internet is my Religion”, has been tweeted, blogged, and even featured on oprah.com. If possible without alienating the few readers I do have, I would link to it every day. This footage doesn’t do justice to the thunderous applause that interrupted Jim or to the fact that almost everyone in the room was crying by the end.

For those that don’t already know. I was lucky enough to attend the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum after winning one of the 2011 Google Fellowships. After meeting amazing people and learning a ton, I am collecting my (admittedly scattered) thoughts on the conference into a series of posts.

I came away from PdF inspired to keep thinking and engaging with the ideas discussed. Part of that is picking up some of the books mentioned during the various panels and planery speeches. I tend to avoid too many “internet” books since most of them are terrible. However, I kept a running list of titles in the margins of my notes as they were mentioned. This ended up a more daunting task than I had anticipated. Every single speaker mentioned two or three books which were “great” or “indispensable”. Also, if you Google most of the people I have mentioned so far, they ALSO wrote books. Still, after reviewing my notes, I was able to cut it down to the few titles that I was most excited about.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations – Clay Shirky

The unofficial drinking game of the convention was to drink every time someone mentioned Clay Shirky (if it was serious, I wouldn’t have made it to lunch either day). I picked up this book at the pop-up book store in the lobby of the convention and just finished it yesterday. Pretty much as good as advertised, which is rare for these kinds of books. A great look at the underlying ideas behind the changes the internet is creating in society.

Hyperpolitics – Mark Pensce

I linked to Mark’s talk in an earlier blog post on the conference. Hyperpolitics is another title I picked up on the way out, and I have no idea how it will be. Still, I felt that his talk demonstrated that he is someone who loves language, so I look forward to cracking this one.

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom – Evgeny Morozov

I have been a big fan of Morozov’s work for a while. His digital pessimism seemed to be somewhat out of fashion at PdF because of recent successes by online activists in the Middle East, but a skeptical viewpoint on these issues is an important perspective to have in the debate.

The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations – Ori Brafman

I had never heard of this book, but one of the panels I attended, “Beyond Clicktivism to On-the-Ground Action”, was basically a paean to how amazing it is. The author, Ori Brafman, was on the panel and one of the other panel participants, Jenny Beth Martin (the head of the Tea Party Patriots) basically geeked out and gushed about how much she loves the book. She said she had just read it and bought hundreds of copies to hand out to Tea Party organizers nation wide.

What Technology Wants – Kevin Kelly

I don’t remember why exactly where or when I wrote this down, but I underlined it *twice*, so there you go.

The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel – Dan Sinker

The tweets of @MayorEmanuel mixed in with election coverage, maps, and history of Chicago. Consider this motherf***er preordered.

For those that don’t already know. I was lucky enough to attend the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum after winning one of the 2011 Google Fellowships. After meeting amazing people and learning a ton, I am collecting my (admittedly scattered) thoughts on the conference into a series of posts.

By design, pdf was brimming with optimism. If you get a bunch of activists and technologists into a room, that will happen. However, there was also an undercurrent of trepidation over the future of the web. I, for one, didn’t really understand or take seriously the forces at play which could jeopardize the idea of a free and open internet. While activists were using Twitter and Facebook to overthrow dictators, they were also being tracked for advertising purposes. Amazon and Paypal decided they wouldn’t support Wikileaks after just a hint of pressure from the United States Government. What would have happened if Facebook or Twitter decided they weren’t on the side of the revolutionaries, but on the side of the Government? What would happen to everyday citizens if Google or Facebook decided to give the CIA complete access to their back-end user data to help fight terrorism. Unlike some people I work with, I don’t think it has happened yet, but scary nonetheless. Meditations on these ideas, and on the need for citizen or consumer-owned alternatives ranged from the academic to the poetic. I particularly enjoyed all of these speakers because none of them were even remotely on my radar (a reflection on me rather than on them).

Find out more, plus the videos, after the jump.

Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author of The Googlization of Everything, talked about the challenges activists face working through what are essentially corporate networks. He made the obvious point that these are all companies, we shouldn’t expect them to act for the benefit of everyone. He also castigated the audience, reminding them that they shouldn’t consider themselves “citizens of the internet” but citizens of their own countries, where political battles are being fought that could have immense impact on the future of the internet. I almost forgot about his talk, but one line really stuck with me. He said that the internet isn’t a public square; instead, someone organizing via Twitter and Facebook is conducting a “rally in a shopping mall or debate in a Starbucks.” His talk starts at the 30:29 mark in the video below and goes for about 15 min.

Professor Eben Moglan was someone who is fantastically internet famous who I had never heard of. He is a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, and is the chief legal counsel to the Free Software Foundation. He had the unenviable task of following Dan Sinker (@Mayoremmanuel), who had one of the best talks of the conference. He proved himself more than up to the task. He made the most compelling case I have heard for identifying the forces on the internet trying to take away our online freedoms. While he was somewhat gloomy, he also presented a clear vision for a better future, plugging the project he is working on, The Freedom Box Foundation. He also delivered the killer line, “without anonymity on earth the human race will be no more.”

The final highlight was Mark Pesce, who is another person I followed on Twitter before the conference. He didn’t make any particularly insightful points, and I overhead a lot of people talking about his presentation as BS. Still, I liked it. It was conference plenary as performance art. If nothing else, he intrigued me enough that I bought his book on the way out of NYC.

I have considered myself a technological optimist, frequently arguing that most companies aren’t out to screw us and that everything is getting better. I still to believe that we should blame stupidity before we look for sinister motives. Still, these are big companies and since I do most of my professional, political, and personal work inside these networks, it does seems as if I should have my eyes open a bit more to the potential consequences and downfalls. But let’s be honest, saying you are going to “be aware” of something is really BS. Am I going to change my behavior? A bit. I am going to take some concrete steps to support privacy and free software. I made a small contribution to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I switched back to Firefox for my browser, I am going to try to use more open-source software, and I am going to update and use my Disapora profile a bit more. Not earth-shattering, but it’s a start.

For those that don’t already know. I was lucky enough to attend the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum after winning one of the 2011 Google Fellowships. After meeting amazing people and learning a ton, I am collecting my (admittedly scattered) thoughts on the conference into a series of posts.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the use of technology in global activism was without a doubt one of the most popular topics in the convention. The plenary session was packed, as were the panels. Understandably so, with speakers who helped cause the Tunisian revolution and long-time bloggers for Egyptian freedoms who were in the heart of Tahrir Square. Beyond just activists, there were a number of academics and first-hand observers who spoke more to the bigger picture of networked revolutions.

I don’t think I have mentioned it here, but I have been extremely dubious of the role that technology and social media played in the recent revolutions in the Middle East. With every magazine profile or newspaper article on the “Twitter revolution” or the “Facebook revolution”, my skepticism grew. I didn’t really believe that these tools could have played such a major role. Revolutions are hard and messy business, requiring on-the-ground organizing as well as extreme courage in the face of adversity. In the US, I have seen Twitter and Facebook breed a kind of complacent slacktivism.

Turns out I was sort of right, but mostly wrong. Check out the videos after the jump.

Read more

For those that don’t already know. I was lucky enough to attend the 2011 Personal Democracy Forum after winning one of the 2011 Google Fellowships. After meeting amazing people and learning a ton, I am working on a series of posts on my thoughts from the conference.

When you bring up government and new media, the mind jumps to some of the cool public-facing stuff coming out of the executive branch (Whitehouse.gov, West Wing Week, etc.). However, it was clear at PDF that there are an increasing number of smart people within the Government working hard to improve things at every level. Not just using communications tools to help citizens connect with their government, but also using them to help government employees talk to each other and break down bureaucratic barriers. While it was clear most of them are facing an uphill battle, the relatively large number of local, state and federal employees who were at the conference (not just as speakers) shows how many smart and dedicated public servants are up to the task. The highlight of the Gov 2.0 speakers was Vivek Kundra, who talked about the success the federal government has already had:

Besides Kundra, there were a few other high-ranking plenary speakers. I had no idea that Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) was such a leader in pushing for transparency within the Senate. Also, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) seemed to have some well-intentioned ideas around using more technology, but I was disappointed that he didn’t seem willing to credit the administration with any success. He does have an outstanding Twitter handle: @jasoninthehouse.

Beyond just the main speakers, I went to one of the breakout sessions on Gov 2.0. The session, titled “Changing the Government From the Inside”, featured a number of staff from federal agencies as well as the new media director for the city of New York (full list here). I found this panel particularly illuminating and frustrating. All of the speakers were smart, doing amazing work, and stymied at seemingly every turn by competing interests and bureaucracy. My favorite panelist was Richard Boly, (@Beaurichly) the director of the State Department’s Office of eDiplomacy. He discussed a variety of projects designed to help the State Department communicate internally that are built inside the secure firewall. These included Diplopedia, an internal Wiki, and the recently launched Corridor, a sort-of Linkedin for diplomats. I had never thought about the degree to which creating internal tools can be even more important than external ones in changing the culture of an agency (or company, campaign, etc). Boly elaborated on his panel remarks in a plenary talk later in the day:

It is great to see these kinds of success stories, but based on what I heard on the panel, they seemed to be the exception rather than the norm. It was also frustrating to see that it is still very hard to get involved in the process (If you aren’t Anil Dash or Jeff Jarvis). As someone with an interest in international relations and some experience doing internet-y things, I asked Boly after the panel what kinds of career options there might be short of joining the foreign service. The answer? Not many. It is either commit to the State Department for a big chunk of your career or wait until you are much older and there are some unpaid fellowships (Even those are mostly for academics). There have to be ways to make it easier to move between government and the private sector during one’s career. Political appointees do it (and it does raise a lot of ethical questions), but people who are doing most of the hard work of governance don’t. That means that innovation from within Government stays in Government, while innovation in the private sector stays in the private sector. As it continues to innovate, government will need more digital strategists, internal project managers, designers, and coders, and the need for career flexibility will get more important.

While it was particularly interesting to me and there was an entire track dedicated to it, the topic of Government 2.0 (or egovernment, or We-government, or whatever) clearly didn’t have much juice at the conference. The real buzz was around global activism. You could feel palpable excitement during the plenary speakers on that topic and it was the small audience for the panel I attended was mostly made up of new media directors for various government agencies. On the one hand, this stinks. If the tech community moves on to the next shiny object now that President Obama has been in office and whitehouse.gov is built on Drupal, we risk the gains we have made or the ability to make more progress. On the other hand, maybe this is a good thing. It seems that for the first time, we have smart and strong new media advocates at almost every level of government. It isn’t sexy, but they are working through the hard slog of creating institutional reform and maybe they could use some space. It doesn’t need to be sexy, it is more important to be seen as grudgingly essential. And really, you can set up as many Twitter accounts or a Facebook pages as you want, without those internal reforms, you really aren’t changing anything.

A few weeks ago, I received an invitation to a Facebook event to join City Council candidate Suzanne Lee as she launches her new website.

click for full-sized screenshot

While the resulting website is not that great (points for minimalism, less so for burying the Facebook/Twitter links). I find the strategy here intriguing. Likely it is of necessity. Websites are relatively complicated and expensive, Facebook pages (and Twitter accounts, and other stuff) can be online in a few minutes. A small campaign trying to get their presence started is better served to start with social networking accounts right away and then, like Lee did here, use that to actually drum up interest in the website. Still, most digital strategy is very website-centric, especially for campaigns. Interesting to think that maybe that is becoming outmoded.

It also occurred to me yesterday that maybe this is a spammy end-around run on Facebook not permitting Pages to send out bulk messages. I certainly went through to the event page and clicked on their site at the appointed time (which I probably wouldn’t have done for a message). This theory was bolstered when I received a second invite to the same event, which is taking place tomorrow at noon. Doing it once is sort of interesting and innovative, but If they arn’t launching another version of their site at noon tomorrow, I will be displeased. Also, the damn site could ask me for a donation or for my email address or something. If you are going to go dark side, do it right.