Activism

[Left: logo of the Chaos Computer Club]

The German hacker club, Chaos Computer Club has recently been in the news for their annual end of the year Chaos Communication Congress at which well-known writer and BoingBoing editor, Cory Doctorow spoke on “the coming war on general computation.” In this post, I will introduce you to the club, their events, and other hacker organizations, events and affiliates worldwide. I will do this via a sort of travellog of the club's Chaos Communication Camp, which I had the good luck to attend this past August.

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Bitcoin is peer-to-peer digital currency. Like Napster or Limewire, it does not rely on a central trusted issuer, but upon a network. Currently, one bitcoin is worth about $0.90 US.

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In recent months we have been collaborating with a brilliant research scientist at the MIT Center For Future Civic Media (a client of ours from a few years back), Leo Burd.

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An interesting study came out last week reporting on congressional staffers' attitudes towards Citizen Advocacy.  For the report by The Partnership For A More Perfect Union, the organization surveyed 260 congressional staff on their opinions towards communication with constituents via both electronic and traditional mediums.

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For anyone working in social change who's ever struggled with the question "Why do I bother?" this is for you, my peeps. I'm available to deliver this presentation to your meeting or conference. Just ask and we'll see if we can work something out.

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It is ironic that I write this while traveling from Seattle to New York by airplane.  Three years ago I set out to measure my carbon footprint from air travel.  Back in 2007 I clocked nearly 70,000 miles and a carbon footprint on the order of 25 tons of CO2. In 2008 the number dropped to 56,000 miles and about 22 tons of CO2. This year, I've only flown about 29,000 miles for around 10 tons of CO2.

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Our client JUST CAUSE just launched their magazine, but digitally! Back in 2007 we worked with the Seattle based team behind JustCause to create a social media and networking website for people working to make their communities and the wold a better place. From their announcement:

JUST CAUSE Magazine is now available to you in 2 formats.

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I've previously written about how organizations can start Tweeting, and last week found a great primer on using Twitter for Activism. The DigiActive Guide to Twitter for Activism is a concise and informative guide that any organization looking to evaluate or deploy a Twitter strategy should read. While it is geared towards activism I think that most non profits would find it helpful.

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It's becoming a ubiquitous way for us to connect one-to-one, and increasingly a means of accessing the interwebs. Streaming video is penetrating and eventually two-way videoconferencing will be available. Pocket Sized Projectors portend incredible opportunities for sharing information.

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News of what appears to be a distributed, spontaneous action against the new video game "Spore" because of the DRM included with the game has been spreading around the web since yesterday (when I first heard about it from Fred Benson of Free Culture) , and the action seems to be growing.

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