To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Can Members of Congress Keep Up with the Digital World? – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – – "Let’s face it, the world is no picnic these days. We’re facing climate change. The world’s oceans are on the verge of being irreparably damaged. One of the worst humanitarian crises continues to escalate in the Horn of Africa, where famine, war and drought are threatening 13M+ people. Thankfully, we have some incredible nonprofits on the ground who continue to tackle these issues everyday, raise awareness and mobilize people into action. And now more than ever, people are reaching out to their members of congress through online channels to voice their concerns about some of these very issues. But how is Congress responding? Are they adopting new methods fast enough to respond to their constituents in the digital age? Is the fear that their responses could be modified with malintent valid? The Congressional Management Foundation new study, Communicating with Congress: How Citizen Advocacy Is Changing Mail Operations on Capitol Hill provides some good insight."
• Donate Your Account | HelpAttack! – "Well how about that – after Epic Change’s use of JustCoz, and Al Gore’s campaign with Climate Reality Project in September to get folks to donate their status updates, someone has gone and open sourced the concept.  Donate Your Account seems to allow anyone to set up a campaign, and allow others with Twitter or Facebook accounts to automatically re-broadcast messages from that campaign."
• 92% of Americans Take Action for Social Good [INFOGRAPHIC] – "Ninety-two percent of American’s took action for social change this past year, according to the Social Change Impact Report from Walden University. The report was created as a kind of barometer for who is engaged in social change, what issues matter to them and how they’re working together. Surprisingly, tech did not play a huge role. According to the report, people from Generation Y were more likely to get involved through traditional means than digital. Only 52% of the demographic posted a comment or expressed an opinion through a blog or website (it’s unclear if this also includes Facebook or other social networks). This, however, butts up against more promising stats such as 80% of respondents believe technology is getting more people involved in social change than ever, and 65% of adult respondents say that social media is not just a fad."
• The Case for Innovation in Advocacy | Association Advocacy Chick – "I am not an innovator. Correction: I have been convinced that I cannot be an innovator. If you were to play word association with advocacy, I’m sure innovation is not the word you’d come up with.  But why is that? Many associations insist that it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Yes, traditional lobbying, grassroots advocacy, and political involvement are effective ways of moving or defeating legislation.  However, what if there’s a way to make those methods even better?  Fly-ins are great, but expensive.  Political action committees are prohibited for many cases.  What does that mean for the in-house lobbyist who needs to convince a few key people to support their legislation?"
• How The Seemingly Chaotic But Wildly Successful Fringe Festival Makes It Work | Fast Company – "This has been an explosive summer–markets in turmoil, cities in flames, politics in meltdown. So it's a relief to enjoy and learn from an explosion of a different sort–the explosion of creativity taking place this August in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the renowned Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The festival, a one-time icon of artistic rebellion, is now the largest arts gathering in the world. It is also an entertaining case study in the power of grassroots innovation and open-source creativity, a positive symbol of how unchecked human energy, shaped by a few simple rules, can unleash truly amazing results."

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• SignOn.org Beta – Have you seen the new petition tool from MoveOn.org? "SignOn is a service provided by MoveOn.org Civic Action to allow anyone to set up their own online petition, share it with friends, and stay in touch with the signers of their petition using email." What do you think? Have you tried it yet?
• 30 Super Useful Nonprofit Hashtags – Twitter Chats, Too! « Company K Media – Kerri has an excellent round up of some of the most popular hashtags on Twitter related to the nonprofit and social impact sectors, as well as hashtags to follow to join in regular Twitter chats. Check it out and add yours to the list!
• Women Deliver » Updates » Winners Announced for the Women Bloggers Deliver Competition – Congratulations to my friend Toyin Ajao! Check out this very cool initiative and follow the stories of the three women selected to blog for Carbon for Water! "We are so excited to announce the winners of the “Women Bloggers Deliver” competition! Over the past few weeks, we received over 250 applications from bloggers around the world – from California to Kenya, and from Mexico to Iraq. The competition, a partnership between Women Deliver and Vestergaard Frandsen, was held to draw focus and attention to the just launched Carbon for Water project, a public health intervention that will contribute significantly to health and development efforts that are transforming the lives of families and communities hard hit by the lack of clean water. The three winning bloggers will accompany community workers as they distribute LifeStraw® Family water filters to almost a million households in Kakamega, Kenya."
• What We Lose if We Lose Data.gov | Freedom to Tinker – "In its latest 2011 budget proposal, Congress makes deep cuts to the Electronic Government Fund. This fund supports the continued development and upkeep of several key open government websites, including Data.gov, USASpending.gov and the IT Dashboard. An earlier proposal would have cut the funding from $34 million to $2 million this year, although the current proposal would allocate $17 million to the fund. Reports say that major cuts to the e-government fund would force OMB to shut down these transparency sites. This would strike a significant blow to the open government movement, and I think it’s important to emphasize exactly why shuttering a site like Data.gov would be so detrimental to transparency."
• Social Actions Transition: Introducing the GuideStar Team – My Social Actions – As Peter and Christine announced in March, Social Actions has a new home in Guidestar – here's an update of where the transition is at and introductions of the two Guidestar staff who will be instrumental in pushing Social Actions into the future!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• CTK Foundation Grant Award: Social Media, Technology, and Poetry for the Soul | Community Organizer 2.0 – "I was contacted by my colleague John Haydon last week to write about an interesting foundation grant challenge by the CTK Foundation. John was reaching out to bloggers, asking us if we would write about the launch of the fourth annual CTK Foundation Heart and Soul Grant Award to nonprofit organizations. I agreed to write about the award because of several interesting aspects: the award will help nonprofits support their mission through technology, applicants must create an original poem to submit, the Foundation’s use of bloggers to create awareness, and the opportunity for nonprofits engage stakeholders during the application process by using social media."
• Pew: Open government is tied to higher levels of community satisfaction | Gov 2.0: The Power of Platforms – "The results from a new study from Pew Internet and Life Project found that when citizens believe their governments are sharing more information, they are more likely to feel satisfied with civic life. The study will offer support for elected officials who run on open government platforms or who work for more transparency. Broadband users are more critical of their communities and local institutions."
• It’s About Impact NOT Influence  – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – "Do you think your organization has clout or Klout? Is your organization considered a content curator? Are you a leader or a follower? Or are social media ranking tools an example of more kool-aid mix being added to the overflowing punch bowl? As more nonprofits get aggressive with their social media outreach, they are starting to take cues from the business sector about their own influence and finding “those influentials” that they think are going to produce magical results. “Is it even possible to measure online influence, divorced from offline influence?” asks Tom Webster over at BrandSavant. Nope, it’s not possible."
• From #gettngslizzerd to Getting Donations: Red Cross Capitalizes on Twitter Gaffe – Social Philanthropy – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – "Shortly after 11 p.m. on Tuesday, someone named Ryan found two four-bottle packs of Dogfish Head Brewery beer. The more than 260,000 people who follow the American Red Cross’s Twitter account were promptly informed of the discovery. Accidentally, of course. Gloria Huang, a Red Cross employee, mistakenly posted the comment to the wrong account through the online application HootSuite, which can support more than one Twitter account at the same time. What the Red Cross did next is an example to other nonprofit organizations that make a similar gaffe."
• The Power of Facebook plugins, and other social sharing tools | Community Organizer 2.0 – Here's a great post from Debra Askanase with notes and slides from her recent webinar on Facebook: "I had a fabulous time presenting a webinar yesterday for Nonprofit Webinars about “The Power of Like and other social sharing tools.” I put together the presentation to answer these four questions: which Facebook tools (plugins) should I use on my website, why should I add share buttons to my website or blog, what is the ROI of Facebook Like and social sharing, and how does Facebook decide where to place a shared item within someone’s news feed?"

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• YouTube Goes Fully Social And Challenges Facebook | Community Organizer 2.0 – "Today, YouTube announced that every single YouTube channel now comes equipped with a moderator feature. It’s an incredibly exciting step to see YouTube becoming fully social. The moderator feature allows any channel to ask for ideas, questions, or suggestions from the community..right from your YouTube channel. Users may vote the crowdsourced ideas up or down. By integrating Google moderator, YouTube has brought real time engagement features into play and made it 100% more engaging."
• Explaining racial differences in attitudes towards government use of social media | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project – "Last week a reporter from the New York Times read our recent Government Online report and emailed me with a question—how did I explain the disparity between African-Americans' and Hispanics' views of the importance of government social media versus whites? Did I think it had anything to do with minorities being more trusting of the government during the Obama era? Since my reply got pared down due to space constraints, I’m reproducing my response to his query in full below."
• The new JustGiving Facebook app is here « JustGiving blog – JustGiving has a new facebook application out! It launches alongside the current JustGiving application for Facebook which was launched in 2007, which has seen over a half million users – and over 139,000 active in the past month – and over 9500 fans. The JustGiving team is always great about sharing stories, lessons, and insights – so I'll be watching to see how this new tool goes!
• Wild Apricot Blog : Make Your Own Infographic – "Infographics are to data what storytelling is to an annual report: a more engaging way to help bring attention and understanding to your nonprofit’s cause. Yesterday we looked at an interesting infographic that suggested a new way to view your volunteers. Today, let’s look at infographics in general – and resources to help your nonprofit get started on making your own."
• Minnesota Open Idea: Crowdsourcing Contest For Social Change Done Right | Beth’s Blog – "The Minnesota Open Idea is an example of an online social good contest that works. It combines expert judging with popular vote, online strategy with good old fashion off line organizing, links objectives to a theory of change, and incorporates a fun and engaging way for people to learn about and take action on a timely community problem. In this interview, Jennifer Ford Reedy, VP for Strategy and Knowledge Management, at the Minnesota Community Foundation shares the how they designed this online social good contest for success."

In Richard’s words:

“I am a lucky man, and basically because I do not dare make mistakes, so correct. Even drafting of this writing, is manipulated to criticism and change. Perhaps one of the things that is m’incomoda not suffer the discomfort of change. The experimentalist spirit and desire to meet new experiences and new friends I can always enjoy. The only problem is the inability to catch everything.

Now I’m a councilman in Copons, where I live for seven years, a very pretty village of Alta Anoia. Councilman and Economic Development of New Technologies and Communication. I also vice president of the Consortium for the Economic Development of the Alta Anoia, we are working on the issue of new technologies, especially GPS routes.

I have a study of communication & web design, called Redall. With two friends Gemma Urgell and Jordi Mas.”

What are the various projects you’re working on now?

Copons 2.0: When I became a councillor I put into motion a project of digital inclusion and citizen participation using free web tools: Copons 2.0. It was one year before we could see benefits, problems, results… We’ve progressed by trial & error and now we are engaged in more projects like ours in villages near Copons. copòns.net

La Teva Alta Anoia: The main objective is to create a new web portal of Alta Anoia, through which an innovative way to serve as a benchmark for tourism promotion as a tool of identity and cohesion of a country and a brand: Alta Anoia.

How did your work getting the local council online get started?  What’s been the reaction of your community?

Copons 2.0: approach to consensus decision making
What’s the idea?

Really, it’s easy. We proposed a new path to take decisions. Until now, when a citizen had a problem they went to the Council to explain it or filled out a form. Only sometimes the citizen received an answer and a lot of times it was difficult to solve the problem. Now when somebody wants to solve a problem, they have a new way: publish their problem on Facebook. More citizens can get involved to give their opinion, and of course, the council too.

What are benefits?

Not just seven people at the council give solutions. Everybody can participate in solving a problem. Sometimes, citizens who have had the same problem in the past give their opinion and this is fantastic! Another benefit for the councilis to have a space to propose projects for the future, and see the opinion of the citizens.

The premises of the project:

– Everybody can participate with their digital profile -anonymity is not allowed – Everybody can start a discousion to solve a problem – The Council must alwaysgive an answer – Work to involve maximum of citizens in a digital space – Offer training sessions to avoid the digital divide – Share the project with other villages to increase open government

Results & lessons learned

– More digital profiles in the vilage – More ICT in the village – More dialog – More knowledge about the limits of local administration – More who is who wants to help and who is who wants to put obstacles – More analogic dabate – More knowledge about the real problems of citizens – More long tail of problems – More people involved in a specific search for solving problems – More accountability – More transparency – More proximity – More co-creative (administration-citizens) solutions – More feedback & demands.

Who or what topics have been more interesting in the TalkingAbout series?

A mosaic of experiences, stories and projects with Web 2.0 as a backdrop.

People follow people on Twitter, we have dozens of friends in Facebook, read many blogs, we take an idea about the people we admire, that surprises us, which enriches knowledge. Why not go one step further and stay with them? Why not talk face to face with people who pass through the network to be part of our day without having shared a conversation out loud.

This is why Gemma Urgell and I started talkingabout. Now, after a year interviewing different people and creating the platform, you can share your talkingabout topic and create, together, a mosaic of experiences, stories and projects with Web 2.0 as a backdrop.

Culture, politics, education, business, economy, cooperation, youth, journalism, the new values on different facets of Web 2.0 (share, distribute, create value, co-create, disseminate) are present thanks to people that extend and amplify this new way of understanding life and the relationships between people. You also have much to tell us about this paradigm shift and how to apply it in your day, and obviously also like to know or know someone who read a blog, or following on Twitter … therefore propose to you a # talkingabout here and share it with us. Passes from 2.0 to-face conversation and, through a short video that summarizes the meeting and share.

To learn more about Ricard’s work with government transparency and community building, connect with him directly at:

• Twitter: @ricardespelt
• Web: http://www.theplateishot.com/

Context for the event from Rory Cellan-Jones:  Prevailing ethos of the web has been libertarian, optimistic about the potential of the internet to be a medium of free expression and break down barriers.  That ethos continued until the last three years or so with issues in Burma, Iran, and China.  We’ve seen potential for those unsympathetic to the cause to use the technology too – a bit of an arms race created.  Technology is amoral – it doesn’t care. In Iran we’ve seen it used to get out information and resist censorship but have also seen it used by the government to alter a mobile phone system and monitoring calls.

Tweets and highlights from this event on Twitter at #AITech

Panelists include:

• Susan Pointer, Google’s Director of Public Policy & Government Relations
• Andrew Keen (via video), author of Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture
• Kevin Anderson, blogs editor of the Guardian
• Annabelle Sreberny, Professor of Global Media and Communication, School of Oriental and African Studies (with special interest in Iran, bloggers & social media)
• Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology Correspondent for the BBC, is chairing.

Susan Pointer: declaring an interest as a passionate advocate of the potential of internet technology. When it comes to the potential to underpin human rights, for me the question is not technology good for human rights but is the access to information, the ability to connect with people online, to use online tools to mobilize offline activities, to question wisdom, and shine a light of transparency – it’s a useful tool for promoting and underpinning human rights. So, the answer is yes as a tool. The access to information drives knowledge. The technology itself is not intrinsically good -at Google we are advocates for free expression on the internet and free access for all; the technology istelf is and should be a neutral platform for this. it does not itself dictate who does the communicating or how we assess the communications. Nor does it require that we leave our human faculties at the on switch – the internet democratizes the channels.  Rather than ask if the tool is perfect or not, we should work together to make it a perfect tool, keep the internet platform healthy.

Andrew Keen: I would never argue that technology is against human rights. When it comes to the internet, you can of course find lots of examples where twitter or facebook or email have been used by governments or corporations or regimes. But, the tools of the digital revolution are used by those against the regime but are equally used by those in the regimes.  Because of the natural of the internet, where traditional intermediaries have been done away with, it’s increasingly easy for regimes to use this supposed democratized media for their own.  I haven’t seen that much proof that internet has changed [post the Obama election]. Changes come through people and culture and not through technology. I’m not arguing that it is bad, but the internet isn’t necessarily good for human rights.

Annabelle Sreberny: Communication technologies have been good for human rights since we created the alphabet. These are tools that can perhaps accelerate the speed of information and the number of people involved, but it’s always had the potential for change. Politics is communications by another name. Communication technologies have always been used for political change, especially with Iran. 1905-1911, people were publishing in exile, printing and sharing over the boarder, etc. in Tehran. 1975 revolution used leaflets and cassette tapes helped mobilize and push the revolution. Youtube and facebook are just the new tools for political change. Western audiences came to know Iran through the 2009 election, the internet had been the place where you could find politics happening inside Iran when in person it was very hard there.  For example, the internet was important because it was difficult to organize offline. Given the difficulties of face to face politics and public space control, many of the people 30 and under stay home where they can be online and be free. They are inventing it for themselves. One thing that internet technologies can do is the bringing together across boundaries – so, the diaspora are slowly invited back into politics. Which causes a lot of Iranian politics to take place outside of the country.  This is politics – we need the good and the bad; the cyber army, the 10,000 bloggers claimed to be trained by the national guard, etc.  In Iran the regime hasn’t yet shown itself to be as savvy as the green movement.

Kevin Anderson: I think in terms of human rights and damage of censorship the internet has been a net good.  Without social media, we wouldn’t have been able to provide the kind of information that was available. It would have been a blackout of information but suddenly there’s a way to get it out. The Guardian had an injunction to gather all the names of the people who were killed and detained and that’s something that would have never been possible without the internet. I think what we are learning is that increasing the freedom of information isn’t all that’s needed to free those living under extremist regimes.  People point to Obama but it was actually a perfect marriage of the internet and traditional pounding on doors. The internet can be problematic – some of the debates can become quite divisive online instead of cohesion. I think underlying slacktivism isn’t enough – you can’t just turn your profile green.  Just as the Guardian used crowdsourcing to get the names of those detained, the government is using crowdsourcing too. Security is going to be increasingly one of the things that internet activists have to learn. Today, a China official said the internet is a new battlefield without gun powder. The incident with Google in China has made aware the increasing militarization of the internet – targeted attacks against corporations and activists and that’s the most worrying development.  These are sophisticated attacks and as the regimes become more sophisticated in espionage methods, people engaged in human rights will have to live in a new threat environment.

Questions:

Isn’t there plenty of evidence that technology is actually bringing information to societies in a way that was not possible 20 or 30 years ago?  Isn’t accelerating the process by which people can take on governments?

Andrew Keen: The wall in Berlin was open by accident by a guard, so you could argue that the internet is a distribution of knowledge so that would have never happened. The internet is actually a really effective tool for maintaining regimes.  So, this organization of knowledge could actually be a good thing for demoralizing government.  The more knowledge there is in the world, the easier it is to spy or look into the knowledge.  Let’s not delude ourselves that the opposition are Luddites.

We always thought of the internet as a free space with free spirits, anarchic, but it’s actually becoming dominated by a few corporate players, like Google. It has said a lot about it’s commitment to freedom of expression and so on, but it’s first duty is to it’s shareholders just like any other corporation.  Given that, how profound is Google’s commitment ever going to be to human rights?

Susan Pointer: First, Google’s size – we live or die by the trust users have in our services. We have no contract, tie-in, etc. – most all of our services are free.  Those users are free to choose whether to use our services or elsewhere. We retain their loyalty by providing services they want to use and having protections in place that they trust. It’s very different than your traditional model. Without a doubt, every user is important to our business but every user has the choice. Do we want to keep you? Of course, so we have to keep innovating, providing exciting services and that’s what drives. We support an open and competitive environment that is based on user buy in. In terms of our commitment to online freedom of expression, from the beginning our motto has been to do no evil – it means we are committed to providing as much access as possible.

Even in China?

Susan Pointer: We took the decision as a very complex – google.cn  It was not an alternative to the normal site. We found that there were users in China couldn’t access the .com site so it was created to give them access.

There was no commercial imperative behind that?

Susan Pointer: It was absolutely based on what would provide the most access to our users there. What that means  is that in order to set up the .cn site we had to be compliant with Chinese law. Which meant self censorship of the results. We would do that, we would not provide access to the .com site so you could still get results there, and on the .cn site we would provide a message when censorship was happening so the user would see when results were being withheld. In light of our investigations of attacks on the human rights activists, we have taken the point that we are no longer comfortable self censoring results and are pursing how we can provide results without censorship with China which could mean we have to discontinue use there.

Historically, people have used all kinds of methods to fight for human rights. Is there evidence that these tools are making the fight easier?

Annabelle Sreberny: The arguments would have to focus on the speed and the numbers of people involved. It’s about scale. They work like memes, the speed people react and join in.

Slacktivist term, is there not a danger that 20 or 30 years ago there was far more intensity because easy technology wasn’t there. You had to get face to face with people.

Kevin Anderson: I think it’s a bit of both. The idea that social media completely transplants face to face – one of the difficulties is that it isn’t an either or. I think there are people who say “yes, there are people who have said I’ve changed my avatar green…” One of the things with Dean’s campaign initially was that they had huge amounts of online activism but had problems turning that into real life work. It can be broad but shallow. The power of the Obama campaign was translating online activity to real world impact. Translating a click into someone on the streets is the step it takes.

People have seen technologies for a force for good and bad – in Iran you have to say that there was a unique set of circumstances. Before the election you had a population that had migrated to the internet, a government who had let them have that space. After the election that space exploded and the government was slow to catch up. But now they are catching up, with the cyber army and beyond. The question is how can we make it a force for good?

You use the term slacktivism about people in the west – the point that needs to be made is that internet lets people participate in the activism without the fear, true there is the other side of the coin…

Kevin Anderson: The point I’m making is that politics is communications but it is also a number of other actions, especially when you are dealing with regimes that have been successful at staying in power. You have to use all the tools of politics to make that change. While freedom of communications is key, there are a number of other steps. As regimes get more sophisticated, like we see China exporting some of it’s internet controlling tools elsewhere (like Iran), the methods have to get more sophisticated. If you show support you are lazy – no. But there has to be a number of people taking actions in the real world, too.

Annabelle Sreberny: Mousy solidarity – how easy it is to click on a petition, and so on.  Why the sense of solidarity? Because we don’t ave politics like this – it feels good to be part of it. We feel like we can participate.

Our attention span is ever shorter, time is relative.

Kevin Anderson: If it’s going to be that transient 24-hour news cycle, that sustained action is key. Once the novelty wears off, breaking through the media cycle is difficult. In Iran, it’s quite clear, this is a long sustained struggle and isn’t something that’s going to happen quickly. You had more democratic and open societies with the Velvet and the Orange revolutions. With the Chinese, the point they made was that we have to control information otherwise there will be chaos.

Susan Pointer: It was the immediacy that played the role in creating interest in Iran. Had that information come out weeks later it would have been restricted to academics and others pouring over the information. It’s important to sustain that information and interest. The discussion about membership of an organization and what it means to be active: lots of people would have joined a group or gone to a meeting without contributing. The power of showing numbers online can be more powerful than showing up online. We need to look at how membership and participation are defined. Where does the pressure come from on an international exposure. How we defend the nature of the internet: it makes institutions and governments nervous. We need to be as vigilant in our spaces as internationally to keep it without gatekeepers and screeners. That’s what will keep it a source of immediacy.

The deision making process by Google – with Iran it can seem clear. What kind of process does Google go through to make those decisions?

Susan Pointer: Once we created google.cn we had to meet compliance. In general terms, I spend a lot of my time with issues where access to our services are restricted and we work to fix it. The open access to our services – it shouldn’t matter where in the world you are, you should be able to access services.

Is the speed and scale of internet communications a bug as well as a feature?

Kevin Anderson: My experience online is largely positive. The places where i see the most animosity is news sites. And that’s not the internet to me.

There’s debate between those who say you should be able to say/do anything and those that say other people’s human rights are at risk in that situation.

Kevin Anderson: I can only speak for myself but I wouldn’t say anything online that I wouldn’t say face to face. It’s said that it is still so new we haven’t created social mores for it. I remember when the AOL newbies came on and we thought they were ruining the internet… if you are saying things you think would turn you red if you were saying them outloud, then you probably shouldn’t say them.

Climate change and climate gate – what are the social media implications?

Kevin Anderson: as a journalist, yes, we want to present all sides but do we present all sides as if they are valid? At the Guardian our editorial decision is very different than at the BBC. We can take a stand. I believe strongly in objectivity but it can be a difficult thing in fractious debates like this. It might be a bit beyond this debate.

If corporations are immoral – one of the reasons we expect corporations to be moral is because Google wears morals on the sleeve, etc. Where does the openness of information infringe on human rights (like Google Buzz – there was no consent for followers, etc.)?

Susan Pointer: mission, people, leadership and so on decide who a company is. I chose Google because I felt that it made good decisions. It’s easy to disassociate ourselves though. One thing I would say from our perspective is we follow through from the way we communicate, some would argue we are too open but I think that’s part of the process to engage with users. Buzz is one where we thought we had the controls in place but the options that were there could have been better with visibility – and we responded immediately.  We do have the ongoing discussion with our users. Privacy comes down to individuals having choice, transparency and control. Transparency in the human rights space is interesting – we want the option to be anonymous but we also want to know who is saying something.

Google’s business depends on knowing more and more about users – behavioral advertising. Isn’t that going to be difficult to walk that line? You have to make bigger profits and that lies in knowing more about your users.

Susan Pointer: Majority of our advertising is contextual – the search you made and the content on the page. We hold IP addresses, and not users. You can also opt out permanently of being associated with certain things. In settings, users can have the option to opt out, or opt in to certain things.

Annabelle Sreberny: So much of the content from Iran was user generated content sent to the media – what’s happened to that? Why should we be working for free for large media? Facebook is increasingly hard to excavate. People put content online that they want to share but you can’t get to it. What happens to the content we are putting up there?

Do you think access to technology will be acknowledge as a basic human right like water and shelter? Is it trivializing human rights by associating the internet with it?

Kevin Anderson: Yes. Technology – internet is about communications. We already have universal access provisions for things like telephones. Technology infuses my life. What we are seeing now is not that people don’t have access but choose not to have it. Why do people exclude themselves and what are the resasons? Especially in a technologically advanced country, that becomes a bigger issue.

Susan Pointer: When we are talking about technology we are taking it from the point that you have access to it. We have to consider the fact that in many places of the world people still don’t have access. We aren’t just talking about changing governments but giving citizens access to information at all.

Should Amnesty be fighting for the right to access the internet?

Annabelle Sreberny: Article 19 – the fundamental mission. THe right to community is all about access. Thinking about the right to communicate opens up many interesting issues.

Is there any indication that Amnesty is doing better now with technology?

Amnesty Rep: You can argue yes. If you look at Amnesty’s history, 49 years ago people wrote letters to get people out of prison. Once we had fax machines, we started having urgent actions to send a fax. Now we coax people to send emails. Technology gives us new ways to do things.

I would imagine a letter or a bag of letters 20 years ago was possibly more effective than a million emails today.

Amnesty Rep: It explains why we’ve never given up on letters. To some extent you can delete your inbox really quickly than you can get rid of a bag of letters. But it also means we can get information quickly and from everywhere quickly.

What technology means for people who are experiencing a crisis who don’t have access – don’t make it onto twitter, don’t make the news cycle?  Like Sri Lanka where pictures weren’t getting out.

Annabelle Sreberny: There were also huge demonstrations elsewhere pulling in the diaspora.  They play a role in alerting the media in other places. We can fall into the trap that one technology takes over from all others. Other technologies are still around. With the diaspora, you just need to get enough people to pay attention that they can spur the media.

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To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• 2009 Year-End Fundraising Guide – Online Fundraising, Advocacy, and Social Media – frogloop – “Is your nonprofit sending out 8-10 online fundraising appeals this holiday season? According to Mark Rovner and Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies who led the recent webinar Procrastinator’s Guide to Year-End Fundraising with Kathryn Powers of Conservation International and moderated by Eric Rardin of Care2 and Rebecca Higman of Network of Good, this tactic has been helping organizations raise a lot of money. Nonprofits can expect 60% of their donations to come in between Christmas and New Year’s.”
• Public ‘want to know how money is spent’ – Third Sector – “More than half of the general public would donate more money to charity if they knew exactly how it was spent, a new survey of 2,000 people indicates. The research was carried out for donation website See the Difference, which will be launched next year. The data shows that 51 per cent of people would give more if they knew how their money was spent and 40 per cent would do so if they could actually see the difference their money was making.”
• Facebook Will Be Google-able (If Your Profile is Set to Public) – “At Google’s event today announcing a number of fantastic new features, including real-time search, a new partnership was announced: real-time search of public Facebook status updates. A Google/Twitter partnership was announced months ago but we assumed that Facebook wouldn’t be allowing Google to index many details of its site because the two are fast becoming big rivals. Thus today’s announcement is a very big surprise.”
• Does Directgov Deliver? – “Directgov (www.direct.gov.uk) is the Government’s official website for the general public. This discussion paper analyses how well Directgov delivers on its promise to consumers to ‘provide information and online services for the public all in one place’. The analysis is approached from a user’s perspective, and highlights the types of problems consumers frequently encounter with the service. It is intended to promote a debate, and at the end of each chapter, suggestions are made for rethinking key areas so that they can deliver more effective online public services. We want to hear your thoughts and ideas on this discussion paper so please add your comments in the ‘Your feedback’ section that appears on each page. The paper will be open to comment til the end of January 2010.”
• 20 Questions To Start a Social Media Discussion | Brand Elevation Through Social Media and Social Business | Altitude Branding – “Let’s make something clear: you can be the person that starts asking the questions and initiating the conversations that move social media forward. You. Sitting right there. Yes, you. I don’t care if you’re the marketing assistant, the PR coordinator, the customer service manager, the HR director, or the mailroom clerk. What it takes is the intent to be part of the progress, the bravery to start an open conversation, the maturity and patience to not make it personal, and the investment in the outcomes to take it a step further.”

NetSquared is proud to announce

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Government agency that delivers economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide on behalf of the American people, is sponsoring a challenge to find the best in mobile innovations for good.

The first place winner will receive a grant of $10,000, the two runner-ups will receive grants of $5,000 each. All three winners will have the opportunity to present their ideas to senior USAID officials, experts, and the public in Washington D.C.

Interested in finding out more?  View complete Challenge details at 2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge.  Be sure to read the Rules and Guidelines.

Easy Steps to Participate:

1. Register and/or Login
2. Click on Username
3. Click on “Submit a Project to the Project Gallery” under My Project Idea
4. Select “USAID” from the Prize Tag menu located below Additional Cause Area Tags on the Submission Form

If you have questions, we are here for you!  Please contact us at usaidchallenge@techsoup.org.

Survey Monkey just announced that it is now 508 compliant!  This means that the surveys you create are accessible by those with disabilities.  You can read more about the 508 law here.  Survey Monkey is the only free survey tool to meet these standards.

Have you ever used the tool? Do you have a constituency that would benefit from this new functionality?