Trippi and Kanter and Leyden, oh my!

Today I get to attend the New Politics Institute’s forum called New Tools, New Audiences.

The event is all about how web 2.0 tools is being used in politics. There is a great collection of campaign people, techies, and every shade in between.

There will be breakout sessions on social networks, video, mobile and more, and I’ll live blog as much as possible.

Click here to follow along and participate.

Race and Politics- Live Blog from CAP

Due to the unprecedented nature of the 2008 election, communities of color are being actively sought after and their role and influence scrutinized by the media and political pundits. In an effort to add depth to the national conversation about the important role these communities are playing and will continue to play in ‘08 and beyond, the Center for American Progress Action Fund is bringing together noted experts from the Asian American, Latino, Native American, and African American communities to discuss how these communities view this process, how they are working together to advance a common agenda, and about the role voters of color will play in November and beyond.

Click here to follow the live blog of this event.

The two things we’re never supposed to talk about…

Politics and Religion come together today in an event at the Center for American Progress. “From the Pulpit to the Polls; The Role of Religion in Politics” will be held today a 12:30 (Eastern). I’ll be live blogging from the event -

you can follow along here.

Make sure to post questions and comments! An “instant replay” will be available after the event ends (at 2:00pm).

Featured panelists include:

E. J. Dionne, Jr, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, syndicated columnist, and author of Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith & Politics After the Religious Right
Amy Sullivan, Nation editor at Time magazine and author of The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap
Jim Wallis, President and Executive Director, Sojourners, and author of The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America

Getting Excited About Maps

There’s been a lot of buzz about using maps in advocacy, and its been something I’ve been meaning to explore further. I knew about the use of maps to see that damage done in Darfur (you can track as village go missing, and as communities are destroyed in Zimbabwe). And as neat as these were, they didn’t really do anything more than show me what I had just read before I click on “see map.”

But today I came across a completely engaging use of maps.

Buried somewhere in the Oceana website (it really should be easier to find) there is a fun tool for getting people involved in increasing awareness of mercury in seafood. If you visit Oceana’s Green List, you are asked to enter in your zip code. The site will then show you a map of your area with all the local grocery stores marked with either red or green map pins. The green pins indicate the store posts warning about mercury levels in seafood. The red ones indicate stores that have yet to post these warnings. They are on the so called Red List.

If you click on one of these pins, you get the sotre’s name, logo and address and a link that says “Help us get to your store to hang signs.” and “Sign up to speak with your store manager.”

When you click on the link, you fill out a quick form (name, email address) and then you are given a link to a printable comment card that you can drop into the stores comment box.

Personally, I found this very fun and engaging. I would have never thought about lobbying my grocery store on this issue, but now I can ‘t wait to drop this thing off!

(This post was originally posted on my blog at NetCentric Campaigns.)

Live Blog Coverage of the Internet Advocacy Roundtable

The Center for American Progress holds a monthly event called the Internet Advocacy Roundtable. Today’s roundtable is called “Party On…line with the Republican and the Democratic parties.

I’ll be attending this event and invite you to follow along! Please feel free to post any comments of questions.

If you are seeing this after the fact, you can still read through the blog’s Instant Replay.

To follow along or see the Instant Replay, please click here.

Online Video Distribution for researchers

While searching for a different Ted Talk, I came across this one. It is a fascinating example of how technology can be adapted for different purposes. But I love that in the end the speaker, Johnny Lee, credits online video distribution for the spread of his product. It only took 5 months to go from prototype in his lab to a major commercial product.

Now, to find the kids’ Wii remotes and start tinkering….

Public access and grassroots video

I’m attending a lecture today given by DeeDee Halleck, an expert in public access television programing and the use of communications in grassroots development.

You can follow along here.

Voice to Text as a Development Tool

This morning I read about a web application called Jott.com, which uses voice recognition to let users send email and text by speaking. The idea is that you call a phone number, select the destination of your message, then speak. The voice recognition program then turns your speech into text and will then send it to recipients via email or text messaging.

You can leave messages to yourself, to others, or to a group.

But here’s where I think it would get useful- Africa.

Internet connectivity is still hard to come by in most places, but cell phone service is much more widespread. Wouldn’t it be great to have a similar application with phone numbers that could be dialed from countries in Africa? Then users could send emails and text messages from places where they have no internet connection.

Currently Jott.com’s telephone numbers are only available in the US and Canada.

Health Care Journalism Conference

Thanks to my mentor, Jackie Judd, I’m attending the Association of Health Care Journalists annual conference.

I’ll be live blogging again - to follow along, click here.

Breaking up with advertisers

I came across this while doing some research for work.

What a fun way to show how media and our relationship with it is changing! This is specifically about advertising, but nonprofits should pay attention, too, since their outreach methods need to change as well.