Cha- Cha- Cha- Cha- Changes….

It’s a ghost-town around here.  I’ve neglected this blog, and for anyone that has been following I apologize for leaving without notice.  But over the past several months as I continue my recovery from a rather serious illness I’ve re-evaluated how, where, and when I write and curate online, and through that process, have slowed my own long-form writing by focusing on curation and short-form posts.

Going forward I hope to use this platform to dig into issues I care deeply about, fleshing out ideas and concepts affecting our current political discourse and environment.  Going into the 2012 election there will certainly be no shortage of issues gaining traction in our public conscious, and new methods of voter persuasion and mobilization tried out, all of which I’ll have something to say about.

As I move this space into a place to dissect issues surrounding politics and social media, primarily, I will continue curating content from across the web on my Tumblr blog, and through my Twitter feed.  I’ve continued being active in both those places, so follow and tumble along.

And in the near future I look forward to creating a place here to continue fostering a discussion on the changing nature of politics and issue advocacy in America.

The Power of Relationship

I titled this post The Power of Relationship, but I could just have easily titled it Why I’ve Neglected my Writing and This Blog.  For over the past month and during the Christmas Holiday, I’ve spent my time and energies focused on family and friends and growing relationships with those in my life I’ve come to know and love– something that relates to both our lives online and obviously off, whether you’re a small business hoping to use social media to engage your customer base, a non-profit looking to motivate your volunteers, or an activist seeking to inspire the masses to your cause.

When push comes to shove, relationship matters above all else.  This is why brands spend thousands to build their presence on facebook and twitter, and this is why readers come back time after time to the same blogs and authors for their news.  This is why during the Holidays your feed reader seems to slow a bit, and this is why I’ve neglected writing the past several weeks.

As I prepare for yet another round of surgeries, and 2011 kicks into high gear, I’m committing myself to a re-focus of sorts– understanding these health procedures will keep me from traditional work for a while– and truly dedicating time and thought to sharing worthwhile content on this site.

So with this mental push I begin writing anew– reminded again of why social media works and why it’s important: understanding and respecting the power of relationship.

Turning Online Awareness to Real-World Activism on World AIDS Day

Every December 1st the world recognizes World AIDS Day, a day to remember those we’ve lost to HIV/AIDS and those currently infected and affected by this terrible disease.  The HIV virus, while perhaps not as visible and in-your-face as it was just two decades ago, still affects millions across the United States alone, including me.  As a young gay male, I’ve grown up understanding the disease in myself and others, though incredible stigma and shame still exist to this day for those of us infected with the virus.  So as my little corner of the web embraces this day in remembrance and advocacy, does anyone offline really care, or even know, of today’s importance?

From my digital perch, people within my social reach obviously care about this issue.  My facebook news feed has been overwhelmed with a sea of red ribbons. Much like when the gay and lesbian community came together last month to celebrate “Spirit Day” by wearing purple and changing their avatars to show-case their purple-goodness in solidarity with bullied LGBT teens, today that same concept has taken hold with cascading shades of red.

This awareness has also spread to twitter, with Global AIDS remaining a trending topic throughout the day.  Remarkably, my own sphere of the twitterverse has reacted positively to my tweets on the topic, with just one of my updates receiving 62 retweets as of this writing!  To put that into context, I’m normally off-the-wall excited when just one of my tweets is retweeted 3-4 times, let ALONE 62, and counting.

So people do care, but the question becomes whether after the ribbons disappear, and the retweets slowly end, will these netizens take their obvious passion for HIV/AIDS into the real-world through volunteerism or activism.  Many working in the non-profit and political technology industry speak often on the topic of “slacktivism:” when a would-be real-world activist instead fulfills his or her need for volunteerism with relatively simple and ineffective forms of online activities, like simply switching out an avatar to the cause-de-joure. I have my own thoughts on that particular subject, but for this post I instead want to focus on what we, as individuals or those working for social change organizations, can focus upon when an issue takes the web by storm.

Our goal as change-makers should always be to convert those who care about an issue into someone who acts upon those passions.  So you’ve found dozens of people retweeting your cultivated message on HIV/AIDS?  Great– contact those people and engage them with some of your other efforts-whether it’s penning letters to elected officials, signing petitions, writing an op-ed for their local paper, or volunteering at their local AIDS service organization.

Instead of lamenting these “slacktivists,” lets instead work to cultivate them into activists. At both an individual and organizational level, there exists massive opportunities online to reach new supporters, or re-engage those already passionate about your issues, especially HIV/AIDS.

So today, on Worlds AIDS Day, take that next step. Stand up and be counted.  Don’t stop with simply adding a red ribbon to your avatar, but proactively work to see this crisis end, and the virus curtailed.

First and formost, know your status. Get Tested!

For my HIV-negative brothers and sisters, join a clinical trial. We’ll never find a vaccine or cure without your participation.

Volunteer with your local AIDS-service organization (I’ve linked to several for those living in the Philadelphia region), or find organizations online doing spectacular work.

Regardless or how you want to take your passion further, the important thing is acting upon your hopes and dreams. Together we can eradicate this horrible disease, but only if we create real-world activism from raising awareness online.

Failure to Mobilize the Electorate: The Community-Organizer-in-Chief Forgot to Organize!

I specifically wanted to wait several days before writing up my own, humble analysis on last week’s midterm elections- you can already find pretty much every viewpoint from across the ideological spectrum hashed out and analyzed to death on any website that’s ever focused on our domestic politics.  But in my mind, one of the largest hurdles that prevented Democrats from escaping the great bloodbath of 2010 is not being discussed in the context of it’s impact on this election cycle- namely, the Democrats lack of organizing throughout the congressional session and recent election. Our “community organizer-in-chief” forgot to organize, with tragic results for Democrats up and down the ballot.

First, I should mention that there are obviously countless factors that contributed to such a “shellacking:” high unemployment at the top of the list, disappointment and disillusionment among first-time Obama voters, lack of progress on key legislative priorities for the traditional democratic constituency groups, as well as playing defense in nearly 50 House districts McCain won over Obama in 2008.  There is no magic “silver bullet,” in that these numerous issues all contributed to the election results last week, and had unemployment been at 7% rather than nearing 10%, things would have been dramatically different.

Also important in my eyes is the atrocious messaging, from the White House to the Congress and into the states, that contributed to an unaware public acting outside their own self-interests.

• Why don’t Americans know that Obama passed the single largest middle-class tax cut in our history?
• Why don’t Americans know that we’re on-track to re-gain nearly ALL the money from TARP, even making money on interest?
• Why don’t Americans know that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the stimulus bill saved or created literally millions of jobs?
• Hell, why did they even call it a “stimulus” bill in the first place, instead of calling it the Largest-Middle-Class Tax Cut in History that Saves Millions of Jobs and Avoids a Global Economic Meltdown bill instead?

Understandably, when all these mis-haps and outside forces meshed together they created an untenable environment for Democratic victory. But with a robust organizing program, much like Obama launched during his ground-breaking presidential campaign, I believe these losses would not have been as staggering. Sure, Organizing for America (the iteration of Obama for America during the campaign) sent out e-mails to try to engage supporters, and here and there asked members to call their representative– but from the start the organization was mishandled and forgotten, housed not independently but instead as part of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Texting those on your list three times the night before the election after nearly two years of dis-engagement does not bode well for a campaign’s success.

The stage was set during Obama’s historic campaign, when Obama himself steered donations away from outside interest groups and 527s and instead directed all the left-leaning wealthy donors to his own campaign. This may have made sense from a communications standpoint in 2008, but two years later I argue that decision unintentionally dismantled the vast infrastructure needed to effectively answer these groups on the right. Adding fuel to the fire was the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which in effect opened the floodgates for shady groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS to saturate countless media markets with attack ad after attack ad, without the necessary Democratic counterweight.

After these outside groups were de-funded, many of us hoped that Organizing for America would take on the work needed to continue the momentum after the election: engage these millions of new voters and provide a rallying cry for the President’s policies.  Instead, OFA was housed in the DNC, and instead of aggressively mobilizing for progressive policies, they simply became another tool for the national party.

Imagine what OFA could have done to combat that fateful August recess of 2009, when the tea party ransacked town hall meetings across the country, and what those actions could have done to shape the debate away from “death panels” and instead toward a robust public option for all Americans.

Imagine what OFA could have done to inspire these new voters to continue and build upon the change they began in 2008 with Obama’s election.  Instead, perhaps the best organizing done pre-election was done by a group of three young people, in the course of just one night, when they launched WTFhasObamaDoneSoFar?, virally trying to mobilize a base of voters disheartened and disillusioned with the past two years.

Obama began his career as a community organizer, and all organizers understand the need to continually engage your supporters, bringing them into the process. When you go silent, your supporters go silent, and because of this incredible lack of consistent organizing, not just before the election to get-out-the-vote, but throughout the first two year’s of this president’s term, the Democratic Party paid a much heavier price than they had to pay.

The Morning After Gut-Punch- You Live to Fight Another Day

“The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”  -Ted Kennedy

It’s the morning after.  You’re looking around at an empty union hall, an empty office, with trash and signage littering the ground and weeks-old pizza stinking up the workspace.  You spent the past few months working 16 hours every day, 7 days every week, while seriously neglecting your family, friends, and personal health.  You knocked on thousands of doors, schleping through the cold and the rain every single day, and spent more hours talking to voters on the phone than you’d ever like to admit.  Your supporters said you could win, and you felt your heart pound with the enthusiasm of working to elect a candidate you’ve poured your heart and soul into.

But then you lost; and it’s not just you.  Democrats lost more seats in the House of Representatives than any party has lost in one single election cycle in nearly 70 years.  Countless state legislative bodies, governorships, and Senate races– Democrats lost them all.  And on each of those races also worked a handful, or even many, young staffers that put their own entire heart and soul into that campaign as well, only to feel that same gut-punch of defeat this morning.

This post isn’t to re-hash specific election results, Nate Silver has done an amazing job at that; and this post isn’t about working to identify what exactly went wrong for the Democrats, I plan to go into those themes a bit later. This post is for all the young staffers and volunteers in the field today, many of my own friends, feeling dejected and lost, and how to pick up the pieces and move forward even stronger than you have before.

Barack Obama’s campaign of hope and change inspired millions of young Americans to get involved in the political process for their first-time ever in 2008, and many of these young people today feel their first real sting of defeat- but it’s my hope that you all realize that through this adversity you will only grow into a stronger, and more effective, staffer or volunteer in your next race, and the race after that.

I remember watching the results in Ohio in 2004, watching Bush win re-election and the candidates I worked with across the midwest fall one-by-one to defeat.  It was heart-breaking.  After devastating loses in 2002, it was tragic to see those I worked so hard to support conceding, one by one.

Yet two years later, I remember balling my eyes out as Nancy Pelosi raised her arms victoriously in the air, celebrating a massive Democratic land-slide that swept many of those members into office that lost their seat last night.  But if I had let the discouragement of defeat permanently soil my desire to work in politics in 2002 and 2004, I would have never felt that amazing rush of victory in 2006, and again in 2008.

Losing hurts.  What happened last night will have enourmous consequences at every level of our government- from state-based legislation to redistricting efforts to national policy- but we learn from loss, we pick ourselves back up, and we live to fight another day. We point to positive results (like over 100 openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender candidates winning their races), and assess our weaknesses.

So, to my friends out in the field today cleaning up your empty campaign offices, I’d remind you to always remember the prophetic words of Teddy Kennedy:  ”The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

 

Vote! Your Social Media Overlords are Making it Fun!

Every so often, as citizens of the greatest country on the face of this earth, we are asked to participate in one of the most fundamental tenets of a participatory democracy- voting.  Today, as millions across the nation schlep to their polling places, our social media overlords are doing everything they can do to make this process as harmless, fun, and social as possible.  And major props to them for it!

Facebook is doing their part, complete with polling place information and a running tally of facebook members who have already taken to the polls. What I really like is monitoring the total number of your own friends who have voted!  Of course, once you vote you get your very own badge on your wall.

Not to be outdone, foursquare is offering its members their own special “Election 2010″ badge just for checking-in to your polling place with the #ivoted hashtag.  Foursquare has also launched a constantly-updating website to watch people checking-in to their polling places across the country.

What I love about both these efforts is that they both play on an on-going theme in our American democracy that goes back decades itself- proudly displaying your “I voted” sticker when you go to the polls.  In recent years many municipalities have done away with the physical-world sticker, but now our social media titans have stepped in to provide that much-needed badge- both for us to wear with pride, and also to pressure our friends to join in on the fun.

So get out. VOTE! You forfeit your right to complain and moan if you do not vote. Our democracy cannot survive without it’s citizenry participating in this most basic functions, and when Democrats vote, EVERYONE wins!

Update:  Readwriteweb just published a similar blog post on the subject with even more information. Check it out!

What are you Waiting for?

It took me months to finally publish a blog post.  It wasn’t for lack of ideas– I keep an on-going list of ideas I’d like to write about, and I’m constantly scribbling down concepts I’d like to flesh out in more detail.  But I waited..and waited.. and waited.. because I didn’t like how my website header looked (still don’t, if anyone is interested in helping make a nicer one), or my About page wasn’t worded to my liking.  I was waiting to perfect little things that in the grand scheme of things weren’t as important as the content I wanted to create. I finally jumped in– and everything else just came together.

So my question is, what are you waiting for?  Whether it’s that perfect job you’ve put off applying for because your resume is. not. absolutely. perfect, or that twitter account lying dormant because you haven’t built up a strong following, if you keep waiting until that elusive “perfect moment,” you’ll likely be waiting a helluva long time.

Organizations and small businesses sometimes wait to engage in social media outreach, just because they’re waiting for everything to be perfect.  Enough followers before you offer a deal, or enough fans before you launch a series of articles– they are waiting to provide the content, without realizing that the content will grow their audience.  We’re all guilty of waiting for that special moment, without realizing that while waiting we’re missing countless moments.

It doesn’t take paying some “social media consultant” a gazillion dollars and spending countless hours on media training to start a twitter account and begin engaging with people.  Simply listen, and respond, and you’ll see the benefits of the medium.  Just today,  super-blogger Jeff Gibbard shared a story of a business simply listening to what he was saying on twitter, engaging in conversation, and winning over his service.

The simple gesture of reaching out to someone nearby, talking about something, seemingly mindless, Marathon Grill got a regular for lunch; I may have never tried it otherwise.

It’s these simple gestures, simply listening and engaging, that’s important with social media. You don’t need to wait, you can simply jump in.

While you wait for these “perfect moments,” you run the risk of missing opportunity, often-times unbeknown to you.  Just look at Chris Coons, Democratic nominee for Senate in Delaware.  Running in a year highly unfavorable for Democrats, many others took a pass on the race.  There was a likely shoe-in Republican nominee for the seat– so why jump into an unwinnable race?  Well, the race can instantly become winnable when the other side nominates an unelectable candidate.  Suddenly your decision to just jump in makes a whole lot of sense.  Same goes for Scott McAdams in Alaska.  Running in a Republican state, in a Republican year, as a Democrat might not have made much sense– until Lisa Murkowski launched a write-in campaign, and suddenly you have a chance at becoming a United States Senator.

My point is that, yes it’s important to plan, yes it’s important to have goals before acting haphazardly, but when that waiting becomes debilitating, you’re losing opportunities, both known and unknown.  Just jump in, head-first, with whatever you want to do– and everything else will work itself out.

Innovating itself to Relevancy? LinkedIn launches “Signal”

Maybe I’m a tad too harsh with my headline, but I’m so incredibly frustrated with LinkedIn. The end-user experience, the community within the site, the purpose of using it– I’m frustrated all-together with the network. And my frustration largely stems from my belief that the concept of a social site for professionals and networking is genius; the potential for a thriving network of professionals swapping war stories and helping each other up the career ladder seem great, so why do I really really want to like LinkedIn, but just can’t get into it?  That’s not to discredit the site– there are millions of users, their traffic is up, and countless bloggers have espoused the benefits of maintaining a presence on the social network.

But for me, I’ve rarely found reasons to continue coming back to the site.  I primarily log in when I find someone interesting online that I’d like to know more about.  I’ll surf over to their profile, check any messages in my inbox while I’m there, log out, and spend my time sharing links and finding information through other sources like facebook, twitter, or google reader.

All this might change with a new “labs” feature launched today called “Signal.”  Today on their blog, they highlight five key features to the new product:

1. Filter: Browse only relevant status updates from your stream
2. Search for keywords, topics, or people across your stream
3. Get an auto updated real-time stream with rich content
4. Find the hottest trending links across any relevant topic
5. Who’s shared this link

The LinkedIn team’s five points are exactly on-topic, and go a long way in explaining the utility of the lab.  I’ve found that Signal is the perfect tool to allow me the opportunity to find interesting people on the network working in fields relevant with my own work, and see what they are sharing and saying.  The best part is that the stream isn’t JUST for your own connections– you already had an easy way to follow their updates from the LinkedIn homepage itself.  Rather, you can determine the subset of users you’d like to find updates from based upon their degree of connectedness to you (friends of friends, 3rd connections, etc), industry, region, school, keyword, or workplace.

I believe this is the most killer-feature:  I can search the connections of my connections who work in non-profit management specifically; or I can search connections of connections that also went to American University working at a certain company, and see what they are sharing and saying.  These broader searches really highlight the inherent utility within LinkedIn, and since many users automatically import their twitter stream into their profile, there seems to be a healthy amount of information loading into these new filters.

Here’s a quick screencast I made for the more visual-learners among us:

This might just be the first-step LinkedIn makes in the long march back toward relevancy, and into a site that promotes a vibrant community rather than simply a repository for web-based resumes.  If you’re interested in trying out Signal, click here.

Today is National Coming Out Day- Are you Creating a Safe Space, and Possibly Saving Lives?

Each year on October 11, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community celebrates (or commemorates?) National Coming Out Day.  It’s supposed to be a day to recognize those in our community struggling with coming to terms with their sexuality, and celebrate those who have taken steps in their life to live openly and honestly as a proud and out LGBT person.

This year’s commemoration is marred in sadness, as what seems like an epidemic of gay youth suicides have finally entered the public, mainstream consciousness and violence is rocking even those urban areas many consider to be “gay-friendly.”

I’ve been staring at this draft post for hours, not truly sure what to say.  There is SO much that needs to be said, and written, and understood– how do you tackle such an overwhelming problem that is seeping into every facet of our society in a blog post?  How do you convey the seriousness of the problem to those who don’t understand the power of their hate-filled rhetoric? I honestly believe that many of those who vocally denigrate gay people and their relationships (like the Republican nominee for New York governor, Carl Paladino) fail to take the time to stop and think about the consequences of their words and actions– they fail to realize how a young, gay youth might react when told their love isn’t as “real” as their straight counterparts, or that their life is not as “valid” as another life.

So instead of tackling the insurmountable, I instead want to focus on how the internets and the social web has completely changed the landscape for young, LGBT and gay youth. Just ten years ago there was no facebook, myspace, or twitter; just like tens year before that there was no AOL or wide-spread internet use in the home. I came of age during the AOL/Compuserve era– the glorious 90s of dial-up internet and AOL chat rooms. Because of this, I feel damn lucky– I had the opportunity to log into a chat room and find hundreds of other people just like me.  Whether they lived in the same city or shared similar interests– I found people, young and old, that were gay.  I could relate, and in an instant realized that who I was isn’t an abomination, that I wasn’t a freak, and that others were just like me. I can only imagine how hard it was for LGBT and questioning youth to come to terms with their sexuality before the internet connected us all, and before they could find a community to call their own from the safety and privacy of their own house.

Today, with the widespread adoption of social media and social networking, that intimate connection only continues to grow in size, scope, and reach.  Gay and questioning youth can connect on myspace, find each other on twitter, make a facebook group, and find thousands of websites with information and res0urces on coming out and sexuality.  Not only is there more opportunity for connectedness, but many are also doing really interesting things in this space.  Take, for instance, super-gay Dan Savage’s recent “It Gets Better” project, which has attracted mainstream attention and gotten dozens of celebrities and regular-folk alike sharing messages of hope and strength (like Glee’s Chris Colfer above, Tim Gunn, and countless others).

The social web is providing a platform that can truly save lives.  My hope is that when a gay kid is feeling like there is no hope, and that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, they will stumble upon one of these videos, and realize that it DOES get better.  But today should also provide everyone an opportunity to look at their own facebook profile, and twitter feed, and think– what message am I sending to LGBT and gay youth?  Do your connections either comment or respond with deragatory comments like “This is so0ooo gay” when you know they mean they think it’s stupid.  Have your connections ever called you a f*g to put you down?  Well, one of your friends or followers might just be an LGBT youth, who sees that and sees your inaction to the comment.

We need our STRAIGHT allies to COME OUT on this National Coming Out Day.  Without allies, without your love and support, violence and bullying will continue against those vulnerable in our society.  So come out!  Call out your own friends using “gay” as a derogatory term– Call out your friends that use the “f” word without really understanding how hurtful that term can be towards LGBT youth.

With great power comes great responsibility, and the social web and networks have given us all tremendous power to connect.  But it’s incumbent upon all of us to create and maintain a space that is safe, and welcoming, to everyone, even the LGBT youth among us all.

HOW TO: Increase Productivity with Browser Bookmarklets

It’s always an eye-opening experience to learn that not everyone religiously follows technology blogs on a daily basis.  Just last week I was having dinner with some colleges and I realized that many of the things I do to save time online and be more efficient aren’t known to a larger audience outside the tech geek set.  I didn’t start writing to provide a forum on tips, tricks, and hacks– but I do want to share information with organizers and activists that can potentially save them time and energy throughout the day doing things they’re already doing more efficiently.  So with that, I introduce what is, for me, the most time-saving tip for sharing and saving information in my browser- the bookmarklet.

Bookmarklets are simply links that are saved in your bookmarks toolbar- a place where most people save links to websites you visit throughout the day.  Although having these website links are great for quick and easy access, there’s a whole lot more possibility to save time by using these links for bookmarklets.

Say you want to share an interesting article on facebook or twitter.  Without bookmarklets, you’ll have to copy the URL address, mozy on over to facebook, paste the link into your profile, and click share.  With the facebook or twitter bookmarklet, when you’re on the page you want to share, you simply click the bookmarklet– and voila, information shared.  To use a bookmarklet, just find one for the service you’re using, and drag it into your bookmarks toolbar. In addition to sharing, bookmarklets provide an easy way to save information for later viewing- whether you use delicious or instapaper as your preferred tool.  It’s amazing how much time you can save by using bookmarklets.

For those who are more visual learners, check out this quick screencast I made on installing and using bookmarklets:

I use a variety of bookmarklets on a near-daily basis.  They save time and make sharing and saving as easy as a click of the mouse.  I’ve listed below some links to find a bookmarklet for the services you might use- just click on the bookmarklet for the link.

Everyone knows and loves Facebook. But to more quickly and easily share content and links on your profile, bookmarklets are the way to go.

The new Twitter bookmarklet is great because they automatically shorten your URL with twitter’s URL-shortening service, t.co.  A lot of time and energy is saved with this automated shortening.

I use Bit.ly to shorten links, and see how popular these links have been on twitter and facebook.  They provide an easy-to-use service, but also an analysis on how many people clicked your links after sharing.  It’s worth creating an account just to access these statistics.

I’ve recently begun using Instapaper to save links and posts I find across the web that I’d either like to save for later, or reference back to in the future. They provide a dead-simple interface for saving and accessing your favorites, and makes sense for people using more than one browser or machine throughout the day.

I just discovered Notes for Later, and it’s an amazingly simple service that sends a link and note to your e-mail address.  Whether you’re on a page and want to write about it later, need to save information you find, or simply find inspiration on something that’s in a post– you click the bookmarklet and you’re emailed a link and note to the story. Super simple, and super efficient.

A lot of people still use Delicious to save links across platforms, browsers, and machines– and they provide a useful service for those seeking to add more data to each link they save (like tags).

Evernote is probably one of the few services that folks across the tech-web absolutely rave about, yet I still haven’t found a helpful use for the service. Basically, it’s a locker for all your information- a place to store links, notes, pictures, and pretty much anything else.  So, for all you Evernote fans, here’s the bookmarklet.