Craig Newmark at Reboot Britain last July (cc photo by JD Lasica)
I‘m excited about the bootcamp that I’ll be co-presenting this Wednesday, June 2. For the first time, Personal Democracy Forum will be hosting a Mobilize Your Cause Bootcamp put on by myself and Katrin Verclas, founder of MobiileActive.
We’ll dive deeply into the strategy, tactics and tools available to activists, change agents, businesses — anyone who wants to move the needle. We’ll be offering ideas, showing case studies and sharing resources so that participants can take home practical tips and field-tested examples of how to take your social or political cause to the next level. The bootcamp will consist of five hours of presentations and interactive discussions.
We also have three marvelous guest speakers who’ll take part in a conversation with the workshop attendees: Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, who knows something about how to create an engaged community; Nicola Wells, an organizer for the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, and Rachel LaBruyere, deputy online director for the Reform Immigration FOR America campaign.
I’m having fun finding best-of-breed tools, like Google Earth and manyeyes. See the “word cloud visualization” at the right? I just grabbed the text of the Contract From America issued by the Tea Party last month and entered it into manyeyes. The Tea Party folks certainly seem keyed in on “government” and “liberties,” but I’m not seeing references to terms like “community” or “problem solving.” It’s one of a wide range of Web 2.0 tools that make it simple to repackage messages in interesting new ways. (Go ahead, try one yourself.)
The program will show you the 12 elements of an effective campaign; examples of mobile action for social good; how to build an activist community, and new technologies for mobilizing your existing and potential supporters.
More details after the jump:
Who should come:
- Social media/community managers at nonprofit organizations
- Editors & managers of political and political reform sites
- Communications, marketing and PR professionals
- Techies, geeks, nerds and mobile fanboys & fangirls
- Students and faculty
- Activists, advocates and those who want to make the world a better place
When: June 2 (a Wednesday) from noon to 5 pm
Where: CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, 219 W. 40th St., NY
How much:
Register and find more info on the PdF Bootcamp page.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
JD, how to build an activist community using new hi tech mobile platforms sounds like The Future jumping out at us globally in a brave new inter-connected world. I hope it can unify diverse people and prevent the kind of catastrophe i do fear the planet Earth is gravitating towards. GD, Australia.