Quite a few days have passed since my last blog entry. You may conclude that as the Forum heated up, Kip and I got totally engrossed and could no longer focus properly on sharing our experiences with our loyal readers.

On Friday afternoon I attended a workshop by the Progressive Technology Project (PTP)  in which various people presented on how they organized with technology. The presenters were mostly female and people of color – African-American, Native-American, and Latino. It was amazing to see how in this workshop intersection of technology and organizing wasn’t ‘owned’ by a bunch of white dudes with laptops, as is often the case. The nice folks at PTP allowed me to present as well, so I got a chance to showcase DIA in the best possible light. The other stories were amazing though. Example: an organizer from Oakland  talked about women learning to use radio and sound production facilities to create CD’s for local distribution, so as to reach local young people where they are: on the other side of the earphones. An organizer working with migrant workers in Oregon told us about how they established a low power FM radio station. A group of utterly charming teens reported on the training they received in video production, and how they used their skills to teach others skills, as well as values and political education. Wow.

On Saturday morning PTP presented again, this time about the intersection of electoral organizing and technology, with a focus on community organizing groups. One lesson: the story of how DIA as a platform intersects with the needs of community organizing groups has not yet been written. I felt a need to develop stronger relationships with this community of activists to listen and learn more, and see how/if we can help more than we ave.

The big stumbling block is how to integrate very local political districting information for one’s own support list with lists off the voter roles. While this problem is being tackled in various ways (see Catalist and VAN) the solutions tend to be expensive and technically difficult. It is clear that in many cases groups are finding a way out of organizing for a specific election cycle, and towards long term organizing extending over several voting cycles. I asked about how community groups doing successful organizing might use their power in primary campaigns, to elect their own or cultivate allies from the ground up. The answer was informative: many successful community organizing efforts have their roots in ‘militant outsider’ communities with an ingrained mistrust of the political process. Electoral work is done on the level of tactic without believing that this country is actually a full fledged democracy. I, um, agree…. But still hope there is a way to use grassroots power to elect better representatives and the community level.

In the afternoon Ana Willem and I conducted our session affectionately called ‘Databases for Beginners’ while Kip and David Taylor from Radical Designs were next door running our ‘Advanced Online Organizing’ workshop. I was jealous; originally, I was going to lead the advanced one, and Ana was to present to the beginners. But it worked out well in the end, as all four of us know our shit, and did a better job by dividing the work up as we did. It was fascinating to see ‘where folks were at.’ There were questions about how to do ‘find and replace’ in word documents, explaining what CSV files are, and pointing out the limitations of Outlook for mass email blasts. Yes, these are VERY beginner-y questions, and I needed to learn from those asking them. Ana (of jellobrain.com fame) understood this crowd a bit more than me, and the partnership was definitely greater than the sum of its parts. We ended up with 35 activists understanding what CRM’s and CMS’s are, how they relate to each other, and what the process of moving from an Excel spreadsheet to using DIA (or some other full featured platform) looks like.

The last workshop I attended was with some FOSS folk and radical librarians. It was another opportunity to discuss the benefits and imperative of free software. (To be honest, I think I got the message already….) It was more interesting to hear about the activities of the radical librarians. Who knew that there was a network of such folks eager to help in your research efforts? Esp. if the goal is to uncover some muck or better plan a mass action.

Whew. With me so far? There’s actually a lot more to tell, but it’ll wait till my next post…

[These are some of my Internet, Tech and Communications Subcommittee friends. Not everyone made into one frame... Sorry Jamie and Josue!]