Advocacy Avenue

While networking in a crowd of new media types at Geoff Livingston’s book release party last week for Now is Gone, I got to talking to an interesting web designer, surprisingly about everything but new media.  That’s what happens when two midwesterners get to catching up!  But while reading his blog dedicated to his experiences with being deaf and touching on new media, I caught a posting that really hit me.  He discusses how left out the deaf and hard of hearing can be with online video content without captions and transcripts.  He also applauds the New York Times for publishing transcripts of recent poltical debates. 

As online media continues to race forward, I hope that you will join me in trying to make things more accessible to all!  Thanks for opening up my eyes and ears, Chris!

Why have just one blog when you can invite all your stakeholders to come to your site and create their own? That’s the promise of software that can host user diaries. Instead of restricting most people to commenting on your core writers’ posts, you give everyone the power to create threads about their interests. On an environmental site, one person might focus on logging in Brazil, another on desertification of the Sahara, a third on solar-powered car racing. Each would gather their own fans to comment, and you’d end up with interlocking references between diaries – truly a community site.

Of course, if anyone can write for your site, you need a way to manage contributions that aren’t relevant to your topic or aren’t respectful of others. With community software, users also help moderate by marking comments and diaries as recommended (or not). You can feature excellent diaries to direct more traffic to them, and you can make troll-rated comments vanish.

User diaries are likely to work well for organizations whose stakeholders are already engaged in the blogosphere. If you aren’t sure whether diaries are appropriate for you, try starting with a normal blog. Over time, identify your interesting commenters and others writing blogs in your area. Ask them to guest-blog – on weekends, while staff are at a conference, etc. After a while, you may feel confident in expanding to a full diary system. Let us know how it goes!

Commonly used software for user diaries:

• Scoop: The original diary software, which grew out of Slashdot and Kuro5hin. Extremely thoroughly load tested. Used by Daily Kos, for example. Can host at one of the providers who specialize in Scoop, XLAN and ScoopHost.
• Soapblox: Intended to work the same way as Scoop, just built out of different technology (Java instead of Perl). Gaining traction for state-focused progressive sites. Used by My Left Wing, for example. Hosted solution.
• Drupal: Not just a blogging platform, but software designed to support a community. Has many modules, including ones for forums, email newsletter management, and even CiviCRM, a constituent relationship management system. Does require significant customization. Used by TPM Cafe, for example. List of hosting providers.
• CivicSpace: Based on Drupal with a lot of the modules and configuration already set up. Was available as a download in the past but now is a hosted solution. Used by Democracy for Washington, for example. Hosted solution.

-Jennifer Berk (Consultant)

Now that you know my excitement around microsites, I thought I’d share some of the other buzz words and concepts heard out and about at the Convio Summit… 

• Plaxo – Online address book that is stored online and autimatically updates information when users update their accounts. Syncs with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Apple, AOL, and more!
• Good list hygiene – Industry term for keeping a healthy constituent list that does not have a lot of bouncebacks or bad addresses.  Click here for some best practices from iMedia Connection.
• Political Moments – This term comes from Kathy Mitchell, Internet Advocacy Manager for Consumers Union.  She used it to describe the contextual hook that gets people to think about politics who ordinarily wouldn’t.
• Social Media Optimization (SMO)- Most people are familiar with the practice of Search Engine Optimization, but this term coined by Rohit Bhargava last year refers to maximizing the use of social media for publicity.

Of course by far the biggest news going around the summit was Convio’s new open initiative.  Convio is now able to integrate with popular social networking tools like Facebook.  This is definitely a necessary development in the online advocacy world!  Check out FrogLoop for a full primer on how the open API’s interface with databases, including an interview with Convio Senior Product Manager, Sam Heywood.

Can’t get enough? Check out in depth coverage from nonprofit online video experts See3. Includes video, of course!

A local race in Northern Virgina between Republican state legislator Timothy D. Hugo and his Democratic opponent Rex Simmons is getting some attention in the blogosphere.

The Washington Post ran a story over the weekend about Hugo’s latest ad that includes "unidentified, unverified quotes" critical of Simmons taken from the comments section of Raising Kaine, a partisan Democratic blog focusing on Virginia politics. The comments come from "Pitin," a Northern Virginia Democratic activist who is the executive director of Next Generation Democrats who supports a different Democratic candidate. (Did you get all of that?)

In Hugo’s ad, a narrator recounts what "others are saying" about Simmons. As quotes flash across the screen, the narrator says Simmons is "running the most cowardly campaign I have ever seen" and "has been lying to voters the entire campaign."

"We just can’t trust Rex Simmons," the ad concludes.

The ad, which also says Simmons supports amnesty for illegal immigrants, cites Raising Kaine as the source of the quotes about Simmons.

The paper reports that Lowell Feld, one of the Raising Kaine founders, is calling on television stations to pull the ad.  He charges that the ad misleads voters into believing that his blog opposes Simmons. (Raising Kaine is also unaffiliated with current Virginia Gov. Kaine, who supports Simmons… but voters may now believe that Gov. Kaine does not.)

On the other hand, Hugo’s camp says Pitin’s entry is fair game because "blogs are ultimately responsible for the comments that are posted on them."

Hmmm. I detect a slippery slope. Does this mean, for example, that if Simmons found critical comments about Hugo on one of the Washington Post blogs that he could run ads citing the Post as the source? What about the Fred Thompson’s campaign blog? Or, what about the official GOP blog.  Give me a break.

This looks like a short-lived tactic that may have already backfired.  Hugo has been called out to defend an ad that has been characterized as misleading.  Instead of talking about the issues, he now has to explain why he isn’t actually being misleading.  Why didn’t he just attribute the quotes to Next Generation Democrats? 

For more on this, see, ‘Nutpicking’ hits the big time from The Carpetbagger Report.

A quick demonstration on how to use Twitter.