Community Blog

What is your superpower? This is a favorite question of my colleague, Jon Stahl, and when he asks it, what he’s really talking about is value proposition. And not just some vague value proposition, like, “we protect the environment,” but more along the lines of what can you do for me today? Wonder Woman, for example, fights crime, but her superpowers? Invisible plane, “lasso of truth” and, hello, magic bracelets. I’m on board with the fighting crime part, but more likely to pay attention if I can get a ride in the invisible plane.

Reflecting on my experience last fall at Web of Change, the impressions that stick with me are these:

1) Deep personal connection is hard to come by and as critical as ever, maybe even harder to come by in an era of 140-character-or-less snippets of communication. Attending Web of Change was a good idea if only to have a few days to forge meaningful connections with brilliant people over well-thought and deeply felt conversations and experiences - no glowing screens in the middle.

Question - How does this new distributed leadership model differ from Web of Change’s past?

This year we're trying to mirror some of the open collaboration models we're seeing in effective movement building efforts online. Web of Change has always relied on heavy community participation and volunteer leadership to make it what it is, but the heaviest lifts have typically been managed by a small, centralized team. This year we've divided the core event production responsibilities among a larger team of "anchors" who are accountable to the rest of the anchor team -- and with this post the entire WOC community! -- for their respective responsibilities. We're working as a team to support one another and remove obstacles. And if we do this right, this team model will make WOC 10:10 the most successful WOC to date.

Michael Silberman is the Web of Change 2010 Chair and a partner and co-founder at EchoDitto, an internet strategy and online campaigns team that works with leading social change organizations.

Our field is maturing rapidly. The next generation of movement leaders is overcoming its fetish with technology and expertise as secrets to online success.

Michael Silberman is the Web of Change 2010 Chair and a partner and co-founder at EchoDitto, an internet strategy and online campaigns team that works with leading social change organizations.

Going to the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen (COP15) was the closest I've come to a good strong punch in the gut -- the type that makes you question much of what you once believed to be true. But it was also one of the best wake-up calls I could have asked for.