The Release of Social Citizens (beta)!

The release of Social Citizens ^BETA today is very exciting for what it isn’t – and what it is. Late last year, Kari Dunn and Ben Binswanger of The Case Foundation asked me to write a paper for the Foundation about the emergence of Millennials, 15-29 year olds, as activists. They wanted to know more about how these young people are using all of their widgets and gadgets for causes.

And that’s when we talked about what the paper isn’t.

We decided to go beyond a simply litany of the ways that young people are using blogs, social networks, and videos to share information about their favorite causes. We wanted to go a step further and ask harder “so what” questions. What does it mean to Millennials to have the ability to become an advocate for their cause instantly, broadly, inexpensively, and what does their ability to do so mean for the rest of us?

The Foundation provided me with an opportunity to cast a wide net across the real of Millennial activism; from Facebook to the Red Campaign, from the presidential campaign trail to the human devastation in Darfur, from Gossip Girls to Invisible Children, a documentary about the difficult lives of the children of Uganda. I followed the trail of email, blogs, YouTube videos, websites, donations, Tweets, and IMs around the country and even across the globe. I interviewed over thirty people, read many articles, papers, books, and websites, and examined the data on who is doing what for causes. And what I found was astounding for its scope, scale, and idealistic intentions.

Marnie Webb, a key informant in the paper, asked, “What, if anything, does all of the clicking, blogging, and “friending” add up to in the end?” And my answer is, “Far more than I imagined, far greater than I had hoped.”

Millennials are doing more than pinging and poking and sharing information about causes. They are radically altering the very notion of what it means to be an active citizen in the process, and that’s why we’re calling them Social Citizens. They are viewing their responsibility to their larger community solely through a cause lens. They are clicking, buying, running, hammering, petitioning, and sharing information with their friends.

And, you, my careful reader, have noticed that there is a “beta” on the end of Social Citizens in the title of the paper. This is to remind that this field of youth activism is changing at breakneck pace. American humorist James Thurber said, “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” And certainly, in this case, we know that there are lots and lots of questions without answers yet — and this is fantastic news to folks like me and my colleagues at the Case Foundation who like having conversations with other people who are interested in increasing the number of people who are actively engaged in trying to improve our world.

However, as encouraging as this news is, their activities raise serious questions. Is it possible to envision a very large generation of citizens who lead their lives at a great distance from government, even lives infused with causes, volunteering and a hopeful outlook about the world. Can government really be irrelevant to their lives, and, if so, is this a good thing for society? Is it important that young people are engaged in public policy advocacy? Is our tendency to connect only with like-minded people using our on line and on land social networks a good thing for activism or a critical bottleneck to the effective scaling for causes? Are social change institutions critical to the future of Social Citizens and their causes or are they becoming old-century anachronisms of top-down hierarchies that can’t survive much longer?

So, what do you think? I hope you’ll read and enjoy Social Citizens ^BETA, and I’m looking forward to our upcoming conversation and your ideas, thoughts, comments, and questions about Social Citizens.

Voter Story in Pennsylvania

There will be a lot going on in Pennsylvania tomorrow with the death match between Obama and Clinton coming down to the wire. A huge turnout and lots of new voters are expected which is always worrisome in large states like PA with lots of different municipalities (the Pittsburgh area has the largest number of unique municipalities in one county, Alleghany, in the country) all with their own machinery and rules. There will be a lot of commentary on who voted for whom, but there is another, smaller story worth watching, and that is what happens to the machinery tomorrow.

The folks at Why Tuesday have been provided a heads up that several Pennsylvania counties are using Sequoia Voting Systems electronic voting machine. These are the same machines that failed dramatically in the New Jersey primary on Super Tuesday in February. The vulnerabilities of these machines have been well publicized by computer science professors Ed Felton and Andrew Appel at Princeton. Appel bought five used Sequoia machines last year at a government auction to explore their guts. Wired Magazine has an account of what Appel learned once he had thoroughly explored the Sequoia machines:

Appel says he opened the machines with a key that came with them, and was able to easily access the machines’ motherboards and memory chips to swap them out. But even without the key, a student of his was able to pick the lock in seven seconds. He says that even seals wouldn’t thwart a hacker because they’re easily counterfeited, and many counties fail to use and track them properly — as evidenced by recent reports out of Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

But none of this is really news, is it? We’ve come to expect human error coupled with crummy machines on Election Day. But, here’s the real story for tomorrow, Voter Story.

I’ve been watching voter hotline efforts mature and scale over the past few years. The idea behind Voter Story is that rather than rely on news reports or even blogs about what’s happening on Election Day at the polls, voters can call comment using a form on Voter Story (on its website or through its widgets that are freely distributed). Partners groups working to public Voter Story include VoterAction, Committee of Seventy, NAACP Voter Fund and the National Lawyers Committee for Election Protection.

Rob Stuart, the brains behind Voter Story, also told me that he is working with the League of Women Voters of PA to get the word out about Voter Story.

Voter Story is important on two levels. Local voter assistance organizations will be using the data in real time to pinpoint problems across the state and make state officials aware of them as well as help individuals access the ballot. After the election, geeks like me will be able to use the data to get a broader, data-based picture of what the problems areas were across the state.

We can hope that tomorrow’s vote runs smoothly across Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, there are systemic reasons why that won’t happen. Let’s read about the story as it unfolds in real time at Voter Story.

Social Networks and Civic Engagement for Young People

Lance Bennet and his team at the University of Washington have launched the Puget Sound Off in Seattle in partnership with the City of Seattle, YMCA, .  (Full disclosure, I am an adviser on the project.)

Lance and his team want to leverage the natural interest that young people have in connecting through online social networks with the need that the rest of us have for young people to become engaged in their communities, develop a collective voice for action and advocacy.  The effort serves teens 13-18 years old and teaches them how to use social media tools like blogging and polling, and just plain social skills like facilitation in the process of identifying issues and organizing around them.

I’m looking forward to watching this project unfold and learning from it.

Nonprofits Need to Catch Up to the Attention Economy

As part of the Net2ThinkTank, Britt Bravo has asked for posts responding to this question, “How can nonprofits and NGOs succeed in the online attention economy?” Herewith is my data free, not-so-humble opinion!

Britt also supplied helpful overviews of the attention economy here. The bottom line here is that people have lots and lots of choices of places to go online, information to pay attention to, stuff to buy. Those companies who can keep consumers attention longer will be more successful In selling them stuff — whatever the stuff is, eyeballs on ads, or books or used cars. The intended outcomes for causes in the attention economy are, as Britt states on her blog, “the opportunity to make a difference in the world through the channels and services their organization provides (information, donation, membership, volunteering, advocacy, media creation etc.).” So, the fundamental premise here is that each one of us has limited time and attention (some of us more than others!) and the online world has become a blur and bevy of information and causes, and some causes and sites and companies are going to win that attention and others are going to lose it.

Certainly one truism of the Connected Age is the tension it creates within organizations between the need to become more transparent, open, and connected with volunteers and donors who have lots of choices and the need to continue to raise money in tried ways to make payroll. In particular, of concern to nonprofit organizations (or at least what should be of concern) is the fact that younger donors are more likely to support causes over a period of time, but less likely to be institutionally loyal. So, where does this leave organizations dependent on individuals who are being pushed and pulled across the web to raise friends and funds?

“Branding” of organizations is where these tensions intersect. By it’s very definition branding is at odds with fthe ree movement of donors and supporters. Organizations want to define themselves as so compelling and unique that donors will be moved to donate only to their institution for a particular cause, whether it’s breast cancer or conservation or climate change, and to stay with them over time. I think that this way of thinking is sorely out of step with the online, networked world and will continue to keep organizations in silos, viewing other organizations as competitors rather than partners.

For organizations that are ready to think about themselves as part of an ecosystem of institutions all working towards one common end – or even across causes as a green economy requires — the attention economy is a wonderful opportunity to create an attention ecosystem that informs and activates constituets across organizations. For those who continue to think in old century ways, the attention economy is another nai in their coffin. These organizations are like the broadcast TV networks that still believe that they can hold onto viewers as if those viewers don’t own remote controls.

I would love to see organizations coordinating their efforts in such a way that constituents are encouraged to participate throughout the entire network reading blogs, posting comments, joining meet-ups, reading government reports across organizational lines but still within the cause ecosystem. This is the promise of a network-centric approach for social change – but only for those organizations that realize that they don’t control or own their constituents.

Power has already shifted to the edges, nonprofits need to catch up to their supporters.

Rebooting America Essay Contest

I am working with the folks at the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) on an anthology that will be released at the PDF conference in New York on June 23rd and 24th (if you haven’t signed up yet, do so quickly, it’s the best conference of the year in my completely biased opinion!)

For the anthology we have asked an amazing array of creative thinkers to answer the following question:

When the Framers met in Philadelphia in 1787, they bravely conjured a new form of self-government. But they couldn’t have imagined a mass society with instantaneous, many-to-many communications or many of the other innovations of modernity. So, replacing that quill pen with a mouse, imagine that you have to power to redesign American democracy for the Internet Age. What would you do?

And now we’re asking you, dear readers, bloggers, thinkers, activists, couch potatoes, to answer the same question.  The winning essay(s) will get a free pass to the conference (or a refund if you’ve already registered).  You can read more about the contest here at PDF.

Send us your ideas of how to make our democracy stronger, better, more inclusive and participatory, more 21st century and less 20th century!

A Must See Video: The Story of Stuff

A few years ago I attended a conference sponsored by the Tides Foundation.  One of the speakers was mesmorizing.  She didn’t use a PowerPoint or any other bells and whistles.  She taped boxes and shapes on a wall to describe what she called, “The Story of Stuff.”

Her name is Annie Leonard.  She describes her story this way on her website:

“From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.”

Here’s a link to the video.  Watch it NOW, really, I mean it, stop checking your email and watch this video now, it will change the way you think about the world.

My Talk At Berkman

I had the great pleasure of speaking at the Berman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School this past Tuesday.  I discussed the paper I just wrote for The Case Foundation on the intersection of Millennials (we defined these young people as 15-29 year olds) with causes and social media.  I’ll be writing more about these themes in the next few months as the paper is released.  But, here for your viewing pleasure is the video of the lunch.

Feel free to shoot me any comments — unless your comment is something like, “Hey, Al, what’s up with your hair?”  And just so you know, the answer is that it was really, really hot in the room causing my curls to stand on end!

Voting For Causes and Candidates Online and Overseas

Voting, in some form or another, is on the minds and screens of Americans everywhere during this election year. As everyone knows it’s American Idol season and millions of Americans are voting by phone and text messaging for their favorites. However, in spite of the great interest in and high turnout for the presidential primaries on the Democratic side, the voting system — the mechanics that should allow for an easy and secure one-person-one-vote process, a system that the government has invested $4 billion since the debacle in 2000 — continues to be broken. Early registration deadlines and expensive machinery that continues to freeze, lose votes, and confound voters doesn’t work well. And in the case of Michigan and Florida, a political party is on the road to intentionally disenfranchising it’s own voters, a situation complicated by the politics of the death match for delegates between Senators Obama and Clinton, but also, as reported here, the Herculean logistics and costs associated with revoting. At the same time, quietly and efficiently, a quiet revolution in voting is happening in unexpected places.

One of the most exciting efforts is the unfolding Make It Your Own Awards sponsored by The Case Foundation. In 2006, The Case Foundation commissioned a paper by Cynthia Gibson entitled Citizens at the Center. The premise of the paper, which like all good ideas is very simple in retrospect, is that solutions for community problems need to come from local citizens who are supported by local advocacy or service organizations. Based on this idea, The Case Foundation created a grant initiative that would be completely transparent and democratic, two words rarely associated with philanthropy in the past. Here’s how Cynthia Gibson describes the Make it Your Own Initiative, “What we were trying to do through Make It Your Own Awards is to make operational two notions. The first, to show what citizen-centered efforts, which are very difficult to define but are taking place all across the country, really look like. The second, to show how philanthropy, which has traditionally operated as a black box, can actually involve “real people”, the ones who derive significant tax benefit, in their efforts.”

Community-based groups submitted online applications aiming to be one of the four $25,000 winners. More than four times the number of applications than the foundation expected were received, 4,641 to be exact. Using an American Idol-like winnowing process, the foundation enlisted 100 experts to narrow the number of applicants to 20 finalists. These finalists each received $10,000. And now the fun part, the public voting (you can vote here: http://miyo.casefoundation.org/vote/) begins and lasts until April 22^nd.

Created by HZ Design, this election site is pleasing visually and very easy to use. With a nod to the wisdom of the crowds, the public will “elect” four winners. Each voter will use a unique email address. To safeguard against skewed results, and a flat out popularity contest, the site rotates the position of the finalists on the screen. The votes will be tallied independently by an outside firm, Election America. As Rich D’Amato of the Case Foundation said, “It’s fun and not too difficult, but most of all it’s involving people in meaningful ways in selecting the winners.”

The Make It Your Own Awards are more than a singular event, and more than a charitable one too. They are a harbinger of voting in this country. It’s easy to imagine voting portals like this one that have links to additional information on the people running for election or the ballot initiatives. We already have a wonderful example of online voting during this presidential primary season.

Democrats Abroad, a division of the Democratic National Committee, organized online voting for registered members of the Democratic Party as part of the Super Tuesday primaries. Voters also had the option of voting by fax and mail and in person in some places. My friend Jim, a Democrat living abroad, emailed me, “I had to register with “Democrats Abroad” before they would let me vote. It was all done by email, and I really wasn’t too worried about security.”

On February 21^st, Democrats Abroad released the results of the first global primary for a presidential election. A little more than 23,000 votes were cast overseas and about half of those votes were made online. For instance, of the 662 votes in Japan, 435 were cast online, in Australia 414 votes were cast, 273 were online. This pattern was repeated in every region around the globe. After he voted, Jim emailed me again, “I logged in to the site with a id number and password that had been emailed me. I was required to submit a us address and agree to be a good democrat.” He continued, “In the end I could print a copy for my records, which I didn’t, but I’m not so worried that my vote won’t be counted this particular time.”

If the DNC and state party officials were to really consider a revote in Florida and Michigan , voting online is a safe and tested method that can inexpensively scale elections and allow voters to cast ballots wherever they are and whenever they like during the voting period. It’s not new or risky or futuristic, if you look carefully it is happening right now, safely and successfully. Given these examples and the proclivity of people, particularly young people, to use their everyday connecting tools to cast ballots, whether it is for their favorite causes, presidential candidates or the male actor with the cutest eyes, the tools are in place to scale online voting inexpensively and securely.

The complaints and concerns about online voting are as of-repeated as they are untrue. What about fraud, say the naysayers. This red herring pops up over and again and is repeatedly proven not to exist at any meaningful level (for an excellent study on the myth of voter fraud, click here to read, “Securing the Vote: An Analysis of Election Fraud” by David Callahan and Lorraine Minnette) why would online voting promote fraud any more than the nonexistent fraud that currently exists? In the case of Democrats Abroad, once a voter was identified as registered, they were sent a unique identifying number and passcode. The Case Foundation is appealing to the better nature of voters by using email addresses as identifiers – and if voters choose to use more than one email address we know from other voting efforts that it will be balanced out by the rest of the crowd who understand the spirit of the effort. But what about hackers? say the nabobs. Almost 18,000 votes disappeared from a Florida Congressional election in 2006 – almost 5 percent of the vote total in that race (why is it always Florida?) Election machines were left unsecured and unattended overnight in a very close election in Maryland’s 4^th District in 2006. All of these problems stem from local tampering, unsecured and unreliable machinery (could there be a better analogy for this Bush Administration than $4 billion spent on new election machinery since 2000 and the results are that voters are less confident of voting outcomes!).

Oh, wait, don’t forget the fact that not everyone has online access, say the curmudgeons. Well, actually most Americans do have access (see Pew study here) and those who don’t in their homes do at work or at public access points like their public library. An older person said to me the other day, “I do my banking online and that’s safe, why shouldn’t I vote online?” I am not suggesting that voting only happen online (and those without online access at home can go to a library or vote at work also), we should keep mail-in voting as an alternative. Together the system will be much less expensive than the current broken system.

The solution is happening right now at the Case Foundation’s website, overseas with Democratic voters and the myriad other online voting efforts that are seamless, and intuitive for so many people. Online voting offers a clear distinction and alternative to the antiquated rules and troublesome and troubling mechanics of on land voting, a system determined to keep as many people out as in. How much more wasted money on machines that don’t work do we have endure until the logical answer, that one sitting right there in front of us, is adopted? Whether naysayers, curmudgeons or skeptics like it or not, online voting will be the 21^st century version of the increasing popular absentee ballots and mail-in voting.