Community Blog

Last week during Web of Change, several folks entertained and engaged the crowd with short "pecha kucha" presentations -- 20 slides running non stop for 20 seconds each.

People shared personal stories and perspectives about what is most compelling in their world -- topics like art, politics, online organizing, immigration, environmental education, and yes -- why the hell any of us are in this field in the first place.

Why failing frequently and openly in online campaigns will lead to greater social impact

Michael Silberman is a senior online campaigns strategist. He is a partner and co-founder of EchoDitto, a leading digital strategy and technology team supporting the social change sector. More via @silbatron. 

Jonathan Warnow works to harness new media and social technology to catalyze large-scale change. He is a co-founder of 350.org, an innovative global climate campaign that has used a model of open-source activism to coordinate 10,000 offline events in 181 countries.

Ever get a sinking feeling after you’ve launched a great email, set up a great online action, built a thriving online community or implemented a perfect graphic? You know the one: a nagging sense that you’ve failed to truly move the needle forward on your issue--that maybe you’re just re-arranging the deck chairs?

Cheryl Contee, Partner at Fission Strategy, specializes in helping non-profit organizations and foundations use social media to create social good. She is also the co-founder of Jack and Jill Politics writing as “Jill Tubman” on one of the top 10 black blogs online. Cheryl is included in The Root 100 list of established and emerging African-American leaders. Fast Company has named her one of their 2010 Most Influential Women in Tech. She has over 13 years of award-winning interactive expertise and previously served as Vice President and lead digital strategist for Fleishman-Hillard’s West Coast region in San Francisco.

 In just under 10 years, the world has experienced a massive leap forward in our ability to communicate with each other and connect around the issues that matter most to us. Social networking has revolutionized how people dialogue with each other. The ways in which institutions and individuals negotiate power & influence has shifted dramatically. It’s hard to believe that it was only in 2002 that we saw the first blogs as we know them today. Yet there’s an even more powerful set of innovations on the horizon and too few nonprofit organizations are prepared for the next quantum leap.

Arif Mamdani, the Executive Director of the Progressive Technology Project (PTP), has worked with community organizing groups for over a decade to help them gain the skills and vision to use technology more effectively to advance their goals.

With Arif's partnership, this year Web of Change launched the New Networks Fund, an initiative aimed at connecting the existing Web of Change community with senior movment leaders of color from organizatons including Color of Change, Puente Movement and the Florida Immigrant Coalition among others.

The central idea that I’m bringing to Web of Change this year is more a question than an idea, and the question is: what do we need to do to raise the bar for technology capacity and infrastructure for progressive community organizing groups? 

Apollo Gonzales is the Netroots Campaign Manager for the Natural  Resources Defense Council. Apollo provides campaign strategy to over a dozen programs, on campaigns ranging from Mountaintop Removal Mining to Toxics  Reform.
He is tasked with the mission of  moving online advocates from  one click activism to super activism, and bringing traditionally siloed  institutional experts’ voices to the blogosphere.

Of the 300 plus people currently employed by my organization, well over half are Facebook users and there are 456 people who list my organization as an employer. That means that there are about 100 people who continue to associate themselves with the work they once did here. With the average Facebook user having 130 friends (I topped 500 sometime last year), the 1st degree network of my colleagues is about 20,000 people.

In the coming weeks, we'll be sharing our Web of Change Six Questions series, which is designed to give you quick insight into the minds of our Anchor team. Today, we talk with David Averill and Karen Uffelman, both of Groundwire, who have brought their extraordinary fundraising leadership to the Web of Change team.

(1) Tell us a few things about you that aren’t widely known.
Dave: I have a really deep desire to build a cob house with others but no time to do it and whenever I need to distill change in my life I listen to Steve Winwood’s High Life or Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes. 

Idelisse Malavé is an organizational consultant and coach committed to supporting social justice leaders, groups and networks.  She has worked on a range of organizational effectiveness projects, including crafting strategic thinking processes, planning, change management, team-building, mediation, meeting design and facilitation, leadership transitions and governance.  She ran the Tides Foundation for many years, served as Vice President of the Ms. Foundation and was a civil rights litigator. She is also co-author of the book Mother Daughter Revolution.

The modern story of social change is unfolding within complex and unpredictable economic, political, social and cultural realities. Globalization, new media and technologies and the Great Recession are getting to be “old” news, yet the changes they bring still manage to evoke the “shock of the new.”

The power and roles of government and corporations, racial and ethnic demographics, financial systems, social and economic structures and relations, popular culture and much more are evolving rapidly and sometimes abruptly. Our ideas and strategies for achieving social change aren’t keeping pace.