Archive - Jul 25, 2007
NCSL Pregame
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 07/25/2007 - 18:57Last year, Bill Hobbs, who is a fellow member of the Media Bloggers Association (MBA), convinced the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to cover their annual convention in Nashville. He wrote several posts, including one about a session where State Legislators explored “the role blogs and other Internet technologies have in the policymaking process”.
He included an email that he sent to the NCSL pressroom suggesting that the MBA and NCSL work together to get more bloggers covering the 2007 convention in Boston. I haven’t heard anything recently from the MBA about this, but on a mailing list of progressive bloggers interested in regional issues, one person asked if anyone was going to the convention. Since Boston isn’t far from here, I figured it would be a good trip for me. So, I signed up as a member of the press and communicated with their Public Affairs Staff to confirm my attendance.
In Bill’s post last year, he spoke about how only around 100 people showed up for the session on E-Legislatures: Technology and the Policymaking Process. A staffer for NCSL commented that with the packed agenda that NCSL has, 100 people showing up to a session is actually pretty impressive.
As I look through the agenda for the 2007 convention, I have to agree with the staffer. I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading through the agenda trying to decide which sessions to attend. It is going to be very hard to choose.
I posted on a mailing list that I’m going to the convention and asked what sessions they would like to see covered, and I’m getting some suggestions there. If you have any thoughts about what sessions you would like to see me cover, please let me know.
Next week I hope to post more about the different sessions I plan on attending as well as other thoughts about the convention. Stay tuned.
Online Community Organizing
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 07/25/2007 - 11:13Last Thursday, Seth Godin wrote a post, Jobs of the future, #1: Online Community Organizer. It is a pretty good description some of the stuff that I’ve done for political campaigns and other organizations. One person, reading Seth’s post sent me an email suggesting that I “write to him and ask him for suggestions for who may be looking for a community organizer. perfect for you”
Apparently, the reaction was typical of reactions that Seth got. He has written subsequent post talking about the response he got and his plans to put a bunch of job leads up on Thursday. I hope he gets them up in time for me to respond before I hit the road for our annual trip to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival.
He describes this as a job of the future, but others write about having done online organizing for years. Seth ends his first post with, “If you were great at this, I'd imagine you'd never ever have trouble finding good work.”
The problem is, that I’ve done too much of this sort of work on a pro-bono basis. So much so, that a person well acquainted with my current situation wrote me a note starting off “Dear Mr. Pro-Bono:” Right now, it seems that the only people who really get the importance of online organizing are non-profits, a few political campaigns, and assorted under-funded startups.
So, I’ve been looking around for other places where I can work these skills into the job. I’ve heard of one organization looking for a communications director that can think out of the box. I’m actively pursuing that position, along with many other people. I’ve been talking with a few tech startups about doing IT management or engineering as part of a segue to a focus on online community organizing.
On my own blog, I’ve been contacted by two technology evangelists. Tara Anderson, from Lijit sent me an email saying that she had seen that I had signed up for Lijit and wanted to get my reactions. Then Brandon Watts from Criteo left a comment on my blog thanking me for installing and blogging about Criteo and also asking for feedback. Lijit and Criteo are doing the right sort of thing.
So, if any of you know of people looking for a social media guru, a director of technology evangelism, or some related position that gets the importance of online community organizing, please let me know.
