In 2004, Howard Dean’s campaign released a specialized distribution of the Open Source content management system called “DeanSpace” (using Drupal) which changed organizing politics forever. First, the power of the activist Network moved – giving people at the edge of the Network the real power. Secondly, in one stroke Free and Open Source software was legitimized for political activism and within the non-profit sector.

And in the last couple years, the toolset has continued to grow. What are the tools of the new online activist? Video phones, SMS text messages, YouTube, Flickr, and social networks like MySpace, Friendster and Tribe. And to what end? To employ strength, speed, and momentum to any and all offline efforts.

Mobilizing people for offline action with online tools is the name of the game now. Speed is the special sauce. Flash Mobs organized with cell phone SMS messages have replaced email. Social Networks have replaced traditional organizations. Free and Open Source tools like the Drupal CMS have made it cheaper and more accessible for the masses to mobilize for local issues. Digital images and video can travel the World in moments, creating the potential of an international audience, for those who know how to use the tools just right.

And we’re just getting started…

One of the fundamental tensions here is not so much over the shift in technology but the shift in culture.  Although opening up an organizations' advocacy strategy to scary or alien online tools is certainly a challenge in itself, there is also a need for new strategies and even new worldviews which treat supporters as autonomous allies that are essential to our long-term goals, instead of as material resources that can be budgeted and used up like so many paper clips.

In some ways, this reflects a return to old-school offline organizing methods, as Michael also pointed out.  Having studied the tactics of Saul Alinsky,  Martin Luther King, and Mahatma Gandhi (among other organizing heroes) I see this new trend as reinvigorating the old fashioned methodologies of creating strategic conflict to publicly illustrate injustice, and building strong grassroots leaders and then getting the hell out of their way.

Although I see these trends connecting to past activism, I find it has been effective to explain it to modern day organizers in current terms.  Over-used as it is, "web 2.0" embodies just the kind of user empowerment that I want nonprofits and campaigns to embrace to turn their individual supporters into a movement that transcends organizations or personalities.

As more and more people around the world begin accessing the net, the lines between our online and offline worlds continue to blur. I'm not the first person to make this observation -- I'm just fascinated by and obsessed with how online, networked technology is enabling us to organize real-world, offline action more easily on every scale, from local to international.

Organizations and businesses are starting to catch on. When we started EchoDitto coming out of the Dean campaign in early 2004, I expected us to be working immediately on a handful of projects that would seek to replicate the success of our meetup program -- a nationwide effort through which 189,000 used the internet to self-organize physical events and activity in their communities.

Instead, we ran into dozens of organizations, campaigns, and businesses looking to fulfill some pretty basic needs, like being able to easily update their website by themselves or being able to send an email to their supporters.

A few years later, we're now noticing that many of these same organizations have matured in terms of their approach to technology. They're committing more resources to their online programs, more trusting of their memberships/consumers/supporters, and they're far more comfortable experimenting with new uses of technology.

In the meantime, the web has grown up, which is a large part of what I think this conference is all about. This new "social web" makes it easier and easier for us to connect with one other. Increased online connectivity, however, hasn't eliminated the need for us to get together in the real world. Whether to share the latest with fellow hobbyists at the pub or to organize a political fundraiser in your living room or to get together on your front porch with other local activists to plan a local action.

If you're on a college campus, you can use Facebook to organize a party, or a protest. For the rest of us, there's Evite, which is now being used to organize more than 250,000 events each month. If you're a pet owner, a knitter, or share one of 4,601 passions listed on Meetup, you can get together and stay connected with the other people in your area who share this passion of yours.In short, the web ("version 2.0") only makes this offline organizing work a whole lot easier. Not only do we have the tools we need to find other people who share common interests, but we can also get in touch with them directly and easily, inviting them to join a specific event with realtime feedback, collaboration, and RSVPs. Just think about what this means for organizations and social change workers looking to organize offline actions on a larger scale!

Having seen first-hand the power and potential of massive, decentralized, real-world organizing via the Net, I'm extremely optimistic about what this means for orgs and individuals working in the social change sector. And I'm especially looking forward to exploring this further with everyone in just a few days.