Here is an update to the Fossett story. 50,000 searchers. Lots of false leads given to the Civil Air Patrol. 1. "Leads" Should have needed multiple blind confirmations. (Labor is free make redundancy your test on eliminating false leads.) 2. The user interface didn't work. 3. Poor images made the task very difficult. 4. Didn't leverage the network to sort and prioritize the volunteers. 5. Didn't realize the complexity of working with volunteers vs. Turks getting paid. Link: Online Fossett Searchers Ask, Was It Worth It?. Looking back, Diana Francis says she should have known it would be a big waste of time. She sat for hours each day in her husband's home office in Houston scouring little digital snapshots of the Nevada desert on Amazon.com, in hopes that she'd help locate vanished millionaire aviator Steve Fossett. Finally, though, she decided the exercise was tedious and unproductive. "It was so...

I am speechless. watch the video.

Tuesday Tips: Why Nonprofit Managers Must Use RSS ... And How to Start | DemocracyInAction You're not getting information -- about your cause, about your people, about your profession -- efficiently enough, which means you're not getting enough information, period. And someone else is getting that information, or will be soon. * Someone eyeballing your job. * Or your press release. * Or your grant application. * Someone competing with you for your constituents. * Or someone competing with your constituency for influence. They'll know when someone writes about your issue or blogs about your cause or has something to say about your organization, and know it without refreshing dozens of links and scouring dozens of mailing lists so their hands are free for the other hundred things they have to do.

Seth's Blog.has a good riff on engagement, big groups, fundraising and volunteering. We need to work harder in thinking of valuable things online volunteers can do to help move an agenda. Do they help you write thnak you notes? Do they call other volunteers? Do you send them phone lists and calling scripts so they can phone bank your member to remind them of upcoming events. We are not afraid to let our members talk to each other off line at an event or meeting. We can't control it there face to face. However, we paic on the ideas that encourage our members to talk to each other in online contexts. The big win is in turning donors into patrons and activists and participants. The biggest donors are the ones who not only give, but do the work. The ones who make the soup or feed the hungry or hang...

I have a killer project in the works. I am not sure Net2 application and/or presentation does the project justice. The Advocacy Email Index will change the way we scan emails and understand the movements. Who wants to be on our our allies email list? This project will help us scan and navigate thousands of emails more easily. Users will figure out new ways to find allies and swarm issues. Why? I want to know what all the groups at Green Media Toolshed are talking about (clients, or peace movement, yada..yada) Green Media Toolshed has 194 member groups. I wish I knew what issues they are working on today, this week, over the last year. What is important to them? What are they discussion with their members in email? I want to know so I can swarm on issues and support folks. I want help our members network better and...

Great video. Do you see the network in the middle of all the organizations? As folks work to create change what are you looking at? What are you trying to measure and count? Why do you miss the network? It is right there.

This is a very cool tool tracking news and chatter on the election.

Here is a great riff by Michele Martin on the failures to create conversation via a blog. It is a really good riff. At the heart of her six reasons are the basic rules of conversation. The same reason you don't want to talk to the looser at the bar or picnic translates online. Do you like to get sold something? Do you like being gamed in a conversation? Do you really ask folks what they are up to and riff with them on issues that are important to them? Add the being a jerk factor to technical problems and you will kill any conversation. All that being said, Why do you blog? Is it for the comments and conversation? When I started this blog I riffed on my reasons and I think I am still pretty much in the same space.... It takes me a long time to write...

I love distributed training. This looks like a cool model. Democracy for America » DFA Night School DFA Night School is the DFA Training Academy's free interactive online training program. In each DFA Night School 'semester' we have covered different organizing topics such as Working with the Media, Fundraising, Precinct Organizing and more. You can listen to the audio and view the presentations for each Night School session below or you can order a semester on DVD and help us keep Night School free to everyone.

Clay has pulled together a solid theory of organizing and networks. I can not wait for the new book and hope everyone picks up a copy. He is a solid leader in the space and has thrown down a new set of case studies and frames for thinking about what make networks function. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations . A revelatory examination of how the wildfire-like spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war. Activists...

Did you have an email strategy when 30% of the US population had email? Do you have a web strategy when 63% of the country is on the net? Where is your mobile strategy? Turning Shopping into Advocacy via a Mobile Phone | MobileActive.org Dane Grams, online strategy director of Human Rights Campaign, sat down with MobileActive for a chat about HRC's new Corporate Equality Index and mobile phone strategy. The HRC guide, Buying for Equality, isn't new -- the organization has been releasing the guide since 2002 -- but this is the first year that HRC has made the guide accessible via mobile phone. The guide includes evaluations of more than 500 companies. The scores of the businesses included in the guide are factors such as existence of domestic partner benefits, non-discrimination policies, and inclusion of transgender people. According to the HRC, 195 companies received a perfect score on...

They say you can't tell a story with numbers. Hans seems to do an amazing job. The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop.

Jeong-Hyun Lim the self-taught 23 year old Korean with a month of guitar lessons .... Is there a culture shift in the works? Does the communication grid change the tastes of a new culture? Are there new stars that can work on causes and campaigns? If I worked on music education or classical music educations programs I would be thinking about this story and the hook for my students and donors. Web Guitar Wizard Revealed at Last - New York Times When guitarists upload their renditions, they often ask that viewers be blunt: What are they doing wrong? How can they improve? When I asked Mr. Lim the reason he didn’t show his face on his video, he wrote, “Main purpose of my recording is to hear the other’s suggestions about my playing.” He added, “I think play is more significant than appearance. Therefore I want the others to focus...

I have often talked about the story of Alex's Lemonade Stand as one of the great examples of network-centric organizing. They continue to push the organizing and message crafting, the story telling and inspiration out to the audience. I love the new section they added "From the Mail Bag". Just unedited and raw scanned letters. They have raised $18 million for Alex's Foundation and have a story that just keeps spreading in a connected culture. It is clean and easy. Stop Cancer, Save kids, Hold a lemonade stand. It is a beautiful campaign.

Here's your chance to do some old fashioned, person-to-person reporting: Call up a lobbying firm and verify that we have indeed identified a former congressional insider who's moved on to K Street. We give you a really simple script, and an easy way to record your efforts. Just click here to get started. Where Are They Now? Staffers Needing Verification These staff members still need researchers like you to verify them. A call typically only takes a minute and helps ensure our research is as accurate as possible.

And now for something totally different... My new favorite sports channel So why does this matter? It is the fragmentation of lovers of sport. We no longer just need to watch NFL or Baseball. The fragmentation allows each of us to find urban gymnastics (free running) or poker to watch. The overall audience grows but it fragments even faster. The same dynamic is coming to politics (how many niche candidates are "still in" the race?) and advocacy (what is the name the new climate group of this week?). The challenge is plotting out a strategy to make sure the whole is greater than the parts.

Food for thought..How are you organizing your message and audience on cell phones? MobileActive