The A Spot

If it’s Teresa’s tendency to geek out over cool new tools, it’s probably mine to get lost down the rabbit hole of overthinking theories and abstract ideas. Today’s post is a prime example, but a blog is a blog, and since this is what I’ve been thinking about with respect to advocacy this past week, I’m putting those thoughts down as best I can.

Karl Maria von Clausewitz famously opined that war is “merely the continuation of politics by other means.” Put a different way, we might say that war — or violence — is advocacy taken to its illogical extreme. Our definition of advocacy up in the sidebar over there is “developing a passion for something and doing everything you can to make it happen.” It’s that “everything” that I’m picking at today. The Hutus of Rwanda were passionate that Tutsis should no longer exist, and they were truly willing to do everything to see that happen. Osama bin Laden and the followers of al Qaeda were passionate about striking a blow against the liberal, secular democracy that the United States represents; they were willing to everything, or anything, to do that. President Bush was passionate about removing Saddam Hussein from power for his (purported) role in supporting al Qaeda, and perhaps also passionate about bringing stable democracy to the Middle East. Whatever your opinion of the war in Iraq, few would question the President’s willingness to use any means available to accomplish his goals.

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I admit it, I am a geek, if you could not already tell from the last few posts to the blog. Matthew often has to reign me in when I geek out too much. But today a new resource came across my desk that not only spoke to the geek in me but also to the committed supporter of advocates around the world. Hat tip to Serhiy Danylenko in Kiev for pointing me to this.

The team at Tactical Tech has put together a new online resource called the DIY Communications Toolkit . This is a great new addition to the Security, Publishing, Audio/Visual Toolboxes.

(from the website) The DIY Communications toolkit from Tactical Tech offers a collection of tried and tested, accessible free and open source tools. The toolkit is designed for small and medium-sized NGOs, advocates, and citizen journalists to help them create and distribute content for their advocacy efforts while exploring the constantly evolving world of campaigning and communications.It contains a series of how-to’s, hands-on-guides and tutorials that walk you through the processes of creating and distributing content for awareness raising and online activism.

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So I wish I had those 12 steps laid out so I could plot out my moves based on those steps. While unfortunately I may not have a clear road map just yet, thanks to Lara Birnback at Public Agenda , I do have some great new resources. Lara has pointed me to LogoLink - Learning Initiative on Citizen Participation and Local Governance - (from their site) LogoLink is a global network of practitioners from civil society organisations, research institutions and governments working to deepen democracy through greater citizen participation in local governance. LogoLink encourages learning from field-based innovations and expressions of democracy which contribute to social justice.

There are some great reports, resources, conference proceedings here from all over the world. I am definitely going to spend some more time on this site. One paper that jumped out at me was Triumph, Deficit or Contestation? Deepening the ‘Deepening Democracy’ Debate

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One of our loyal and lonely readers - Gretchen - has asked for a post that unpacks the term Web 2.0 to give us a bit of context since both Matthew and I have been posting about this idea a bit lately. Not to rehash what has already been done on numerous other blogs I will try to keep this relevant to the larger issue of advocacy.

For short hand here is a quick breakdown from Tim O’Reilly’s blog from 2005 which compares by example Web 2.0 tools to Web 1.0 tools:

Web 2.0 has advanced alot since he first wrote this article.  There is still alot of hype around the potential for these tools in places where broadband Internet access is not readily available but we have seen the connections between web based content and cell phones, public access computing centers, small footprint web enabled devices break down some of the barriers to entry.  Web 2.0 is all about tools which help users generate content, communicate and share ideas, materials and resources with others, craft and build campaigns.  Some ubiquitous Web 2.0 tools are Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Change.org.

Beth Kanter over at Beth’s blog does a good job describing some of the Web 2.0 tools - such as new media and social media tools - which are relevant to advocacy as: Social media is … a way of using the Internet to instantly collaborate, share information, or have a conversation ideas or causes we care about. It’s a world where anyone can be a publisher, a reporter, an artist, a filmmaker, a photographer or pundit …. Even an activist or citizen philanthropist!”

Examples of Web 2.0 use in the civil society sector are rounded up here in the session materials, outlines and resources from the recent Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans.

Thanks to the new Pipes set up by Marnie Webb at Compumentor which help folks find content related to technology and civil society I was able to find this blog on ICT for Democracy set up by the folks at ELDIS . If you have never browsed ELDIS you should. It is chock full of development research and discussion aimed at helping us create change.

The ICT for Democracy blog is new, launched this past April, but the bloggers have already posted some great bits on the potential for technology to be a Trojan Horse which empowers users to act in ways they never before imagined.

If you dig a bit deeper in the ELDIS community you will find that bloggers can post on multiple, issue or topic based blogs. If you click on a user you can find all the posts they have made to various discussions throughout the community. Very cool.