One of the things that is important about any conference is the face to face networking that goes on outside of the keynotes and panels. At Personal Democracy Forum, I received lots of different cards, links etc., and I thought it would be helpful to highlight some of them.

change.org

I was part of the Change.org beta and have been very interested in the site. They are a site where people can list nonprofits that they are interested in, encourage people to donate or take actions on behalf of the nonprofit. This week, they came out of beta. They’ve added a section for politics. Please stop by and add .

PledgeBank

I spoke with Heather Cronk for a little bit at Personal Democracy Forum. Heather used to work with the New Organizing Institute, and has moved on to PledgeBank. PledgeBank is similar to Change.org, but they have an interesting take. People pledge to do something, if a bunch of other people pledge to do the same thing, sort of like grassroots driven matching donations on our local public broadcasting station.

PledgeBank is part of MySociety.org, which has been doing some very interesting work on eGovernance in Great Britain.

ringtones08.com

I spoke with Jo Lee for a little bit. She handed me a card for ringtones08.com. They also have a MySpace page and have started a facebook group. At RingTones08, you can upload Ringtones for the 2008 Presidential Election. I played my Howard Dean Scream Ringtone for Jo Lee and she encouraged me to upload it. I will sometime soon.

Vote Solar

I spent a little time talking with Gwen Rose from the Vote Solar Initiative. They grew out of a bond initiative in San Francisco in 2001. They work on the state and municipal level to support solar energy projects. They have an action alert network that encourages people to contact their elected officials.

A problem that they are running into is how to find the best tools to contact members of state legislatures. I kicked around some ideas about using the grassroots to come up with better ways of contacting state legislators.

Later, I ran into Sarah Schacht from Knowledge as Power.

Knoledge as Power

Knowledge as Power is a 501(c)3 aimed at providing citizens timely access to legislative information and encouraging people to contact their state legislators about issues. I spoke with Sarah about the problems that Gwen had been having and suggested that the two might want to explore ways to work together.

Other folks I ran into included Rafael DeGennaro of Read The Bill, Ruby Sinreich of lotusmedia, Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen and Beka from The Change You Want to See.

So, if you didn’t get a chance to attend Personal Democracy Forum, at least follow the links and stop by and say hello.