NetSquared, a project of TechSoup.org - politics

Energizing the World's Grassroots - Interview with Jeremy Heimans from Purpose Campaigns

jedsundwall — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 03:17:10 -0400

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.

Democratic Convention Joint Blogger Coverage

Steve Hanson — Mon, 4 Aug 2008 10:31:42 -0400

I thought I'd write a short entry about a new site that we've put up pretty quickly for the Democratic Convention. We're building a joint blogging platform that aggregates in the different bloggers who are covering the Democratic Convention. It's a Drupal site that aggregates different bloggers. It filters the blogs by keywords, and automatically assigns appropriate tags to the blogs, and then builds different pages based on those taxonomies. At the moment we have 31 of the 124 bloggers at the convention aggregating their streams (including me). We're also pulling in some pictures, videos, and other content from the Internet. After the convention we intend to expand this model to cover political and placeblogger sites from around the country. Come visit us at http://www.rootswire.org

Human Rights Campaign

TimHanson — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:29:27 -0400

I'm looking for people interested in working with HRC Houston www.hrc.org turn the Texas House GLBT/Progressive friendly this upcoming election cycle. We only need five seats to accomplish our mission!

We have launched an aggressive effort, teaming up with The Sierra Club www.sierraclub.org, Stonewall Democrats www.stonewalldemocrats.org, the ACLU www.aclu.org and others to fight for fair-minded and equal rights for every American.

“Inconvenient Truth” and the Political Spectrum

webuyitgreen — Mon, 7 Jul 2008 23:48:09 -0400

This entry originally appeared in the Portland Oregonian on June 20, 2008 under the title "Climate Change's Other Inconvenience."

By WeBuyItGreen: promoting green living, fair trade and tap water

Fighting Taxation Without Information: Interview with Eric Odom

jedsundwall — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:47:45 -0400

Eric Odom talks to us about how the Sam Adams Alliance is using open source software to bring transparency to the corners of American democracy that often go overlooked.

Jed Sundwall: What is the stated mission of the Sam Adams Alliance?

Eric Odom: The Sam Adams Alliance has existed for a year and a half. It's a 501(c)3 that focuses and education and information and it also has 501(c)4 because of our work across the country with activists and leadership training.

Paul Saffo: The Importance of Being Cybergenic

Britt Bravo — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:56:43 -0400

During the first NetSquared Conference (N2Y1), technology futurist, Paul Saffo, spoke with Lucy Bernholz and Howard Rheingold about "disruptive technologies" that cause significant changes in the way that individuals live, businesses operate, or society behaves during a session entitled, "Making the Most of Disruption." (Watch it on FORA.tv. Listen to it on the NetSquared Podcast).

Last week, Saffo's article, Obama's 'Cybergenic' Edge appeared on abcnews.com. It talks about how successful candidates need to not only be "mediagenic," but also "cybergenic."

Demanding to be Heard - Interview with Brian Dear from Eventful

jedsundwall — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:07:21 -0400

Brian Dear, founder of Eventful, talks to us about how structuring event data is helping people find the events that matter to them and their communities.

What does Eventful do?

Eventful's mission is to help people discover, track, create, and share events. Basically, we want to provide worldwide comprehensive service to help people find events everywhere. We're trying to address a major need that the Internet hasn't met until now, which is basically a search engine dedicated to event discovery.

We're trying to exploit technology to the fullest to help people with one particular niche, albeit a very large niche. On any given day, probably 50 million events go on throughout the world.

Interview with Micah Sifry + Special Net2 Discount to Personal Democracy Forum

Britt Bravo — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 17:24:07 -0400

"If you are a political hack who is dealing with life in a networked age, or a hacker who is into politics and wants to drive change forward, this is the place to be."--Micah Sifry

This year's 5th Annual Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) has been expanded to two days, June 23-24, and will be held in New York City at Rose Hall, the new home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Keynoters include: Elizabeth Edwards, Michael Arrington, Vint Cerf, and Craig Newmark. Presenters Include: Arianna Huffington, Lawrence Lessig, Mayhill Fowler, Ana Marie Cox, Robert Scoble, Josh Marshall, Douglas Rushkoff, Joe Trippi, Gilberto Gil and many more...

Sounds awesome, doesn't it? Well, guess what? PdF is offering a special discount to the NetSquared Community.

Shining a Light on Politics: An Interview with Ellen Miller of The Sunlight Foundation

Britt Bravo — Thu, 1 May 2008 19:29:29 -0400

You vote, right? But do you use Congresspedia, Wiki The Vote, the SuperDelegate Transparency Project, OpenSecrets.org, FedSpending.org, or PublicMarkup.org to be an informed voter? They are all projects whose creation was facilitated by the Sunlight Foundation to educate citizens and increase transparency in politics.

On March 28th, I talked on the phone with Ellen Miller, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, about their work. Ellen is also a NetSquared Advocate. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. You can also listen to it on the little player below, or on the NetSquared Podcast.

Ellen Miller: The Sunlight Foundation is a two-year-old organization that is a combination of a grant-making, and operational institution that focuses on creating greater transparency for the work of Congress.

Getting started...

Bryan H. — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:05:39 -0400

A little about Capitol News Connection: