Jeremy Heimans, founding director of Purpose Campaigns, tells us how GetUp.org became the largest political organization in Australia and why I shouldn't be so cynical about the grassroots' ability to shape global discourse.

Josh Levy, who is awesome, and I talk about his new job as managing editor at Change.org, what he's learned at techPresident, and why he believes that just writing blogs won't change the world.

What is your role at Change.org?

I finally write about my visit to the first Socialcamp in Germany.  There were activists, campaigners, NGOs and many others who shared their work, experiences and visions with an open spirit. Particularly, the mixture of participants from the traditional German nonprofit sector (social welfare), newer NGOs and activists were quite inspiring. This kind of mingle, which makes it very creative, happens all over again after the Socialcamp in England. The hub in Berlin offered their location and both days were filled with sesssions.

Examples

The YouTube Nonprofit Program has a new Nonprofits & Activism Manager, Ramya Raghavan, whose job it is to help you leverage the power of YouTube for good. How awesome is that?

Check out her introductory blog post, AgentChange, Reporting for Duty, and her video introduction.

Welcome, Ramya!

I'm at this morning's ilovemountains talk, which I've awaited ever since blogging about it as a brilliant online campaign. They just released a new map feature showing where and how their online campaign has spread.

Interesting Tidbits:

• Willie Nelson agreed to give them rights to use "Blowin in the Wind" after they passed a request to his bodyguard.
• They've superimposed the Transamerica building and the Golden Gate Bridge next to some of the removed mountaintops to show the scale of devastation.

I spent some time last week helping out a group of folks to get a Firefox extension up and running for Knowmore.org. It was a great experience - a testament to the power of distributed volunteer software development as well as how Firefox as a platform can enable such groups to rapidly build and deploy world-changing tools. As officially announced on Knowmore.org today, the extension is live! For screenshots and details, check out the wiki page, and you can install it here (still sandboxed, login is required).

Inspired by Allison Fine's report for the Case Foundation, "Social Citizens," this month's Net2ThinkTank question was, "Is Online Activism Good for Social Change?"

Ivan Boothe of thequixoticlife says that online activism is good for social change, but the bigger question is:

I'm feeling the need for a semantic discussion on what exactly is activism vs. other types of change methods.

I attended NetSquared last year for its inaugural conference, and I wrote an introduction entitled Can Blogging Stop Genocide? If you're interested in all the details about who I am, how I got here and how it's connected to the project I'm proposing at this year's conference, check out that entry.

What I really want to focus on in this post is how to find ways to collaborate with other participants at the conference, rather than be swallowed up by the competition. But first, and quickly by way of an introduction, I'll say that the Genocide Intervention Network's mission is to:

empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.

Perhaps you can see that this fits pretty naturally with the spirit of "web 2.0" and social networking -- user-driven projects, user-generated content, network-centric advocacy, etc. As a result we've engaged in a number of such projects in the past, and happily share our experiences with other organizations.

A moment of personal exoterica before we launch into the N2Y2 events in San Jose; tonight I'm packing and now all of you are privy to my sundries:

* Laptop w/bag (liveblogging from San Jose)
* Camera (to remember what you beautiful people look like)
* Shoes (never forget the good shoes for dancing)
* Clothes (magenta and red, a fiery feeling)
* Books (any suggestions?)
* AMO Game (always connecting the dots)
* Chocolate (the raw cacao powder this time)
* Hand Cream (see Beth Kanter's tips for liveblogging post)
* I heard I love you! card (ask Jean Russell for more info)
* Virtually Delicious (our Second Life design team cards)
* Saving Grace (a gift for a friend)
* Go Green Guide (playa planning 101)
* Delight (for manifesting good cheer)