RConversation

A new movement is launched!

Wow. Global Voices Online, our daylong international bloggers' workshop held as part of the Berkman Center's Internet & Society conference, was a stunning success.  Special thanks to my brilliant colleague Ethan Zuckerman and the collective brilliance of the assembled bloggers and technologists from all over the world.  I didn't have time to blog the sessions as they went along, but plenty of others did. They included David Weinberger, "j", Jeff Jarvis, Jeff Ooi, Isaac Mao (in Chinese), Alex Steffen, John Lebkowsky (participating remotely via IRC), Matt of "Blackfive", Tim Oren and many others... according to Technorati and Feedster.

"Global Voices" is now the name of a new movement. As Ethan says in his summary of our next steps: "We’re all in this together, and something big is happening."

This is a movement of global cyber-citizens. We are developing a manifesto, which includes the following core beliefs and goals:

1) we believe in free speech – and act to defend it and extend it

2) we believe in direct connection between people in ways which allow us to consider ourselves part of a bigger here and wider us – and we act to bring flows of tools, money and attention to bear on creating channels for those connections to develop

3) we believe in planetary citizenship along international norms – and we act to empower campaigns to make the world fairer, freer, more prosperous and more sustainable.

Saturday's meeting included people from a broad political spectrum. I hope the Global Voices movement will remain broad and inclusive. Occasionally there were disagreements. But one thing was very clear: neither left nor right has a monopoly on the desire for free speech and a more open, global citizens' dialogue. As Ethan says, we're all in this together.

So if these values speak to you and if you think you'd have something to contribute, check out the Global Voices blog for more details.

Dan Gillmor

Dan Gillmor (who quit his job yesterday) is speaking. He says the media failed in its coverage of the prez election. But journalism on the edges - thanks to the blogs - is moving more toward a conversation. Which is going to force politicians to listen to their grassroots. And the grassroots is where the wisdom really lies. One practical idea: he'd like to see prominent citizen-built wikis on every campaign issue.  Will this be part of his new citizen-journalism project?  Only time will tell. .......

Meetup's Scott Heifermann

Scott Heiferman of Meetup quotes Robert Putnam: "Joining one group cuts your odds of dying in the next year and a half."

"We're in the emergent organization business." He says we're on the verge of a new species of what multi-chapter organizations are. He points to progressive muslim meetups around the world.

This is a time for invention and change, he says. You don't need to have an organizational structure to start an organization any more.

Somebody on the IRC points out: "one of the interesting issues that confronts use of meetup for minority groups is the fact that Meetup makes it easy for the government to have undercover agents monitor the group by attending meetings, joining mailing list, etc." True. And in China if you're organizing a dissident meeting the last thing you want to do is talk about it online.

What government can learn from the dot coms

Esther Dyson says both governments and businesses would do well to use the internet more as a listening tool.

Jonathan Zuck: "politics as its own end is a little bit ridiculous." The business model that survived the dotcom crash is community building.  Finding ways to monetize the community-building is also what internet politics is about in many ways.

I&S IRC backchannel

The IRC backchannel here at the Internet & Society conference is #harvardbits on freenode. Thanks to Joi.

Hoder laments that the best blog tools aren't localized in various languages like Persian and Chinese. "Catspaw" comments on the IRC:

"Anyone who programs something and doesn't include internationalization support should be shot." -- Joel Spolsky

I&S conference: Hoder speaks

Hoder says that blogs are serving as bridges between different parts of Iranian society.

"Women in Iran have never had a chance to talk about the way they see the world freely." Blogs give them the anonymity to do so.  The older generation are reading younger people's blogs to get a better understanding of how they think.

They're creating the only forum for true political dialogue. Blogs are preparing the ground for the future of real political change.

This coming spring's election will be impacted by internet discourse, he predicts.
Blogs have made hardline conservatives so frustrated by blogs, they've launched a massive crackdown against blogs. Now most political websites and blogs are blocked.  A hardliner recently wrote an editorial that the blogs are a CIA plot to undermine the regime.

For more information about Iranian blogs Hoder points us to the Wikipedia Iran blogs page.