THis is a test of our website.

The conference is upon us!

This year's Grassroots Use of Technology Conference will feature a presentation by Emerson College Professor Paul Niwa on his work on the BostonChinaTown.org project.

What if the media viewed urban communities in a more holistic way? Instead of presenting a polarized community with one side for and another against this or that issue, what if it was able to capture the nuances and connections between residents, organizers and activists? Would stories be different?

“Economic Analysis, Elitism or Ignorance?”
by
Mary Lynn Cramer, BA, MA, MSW, LICSW

This week, the Sunlight Foundation unveiled our draft of what could become model transparency legislation -- the Transparency In Government Act of 2008. Here's the twist: Instead of immediately approaching lawmakers to sponsor the bill,
the Foundation decided to first post the bill online at http://PublicMarkup.org in order to solicit public input to further shape, refine and edit the bill.

Participate in this collaboration. You don't have to be an expert. Just tell them what you like, and what you think about what they have drafted.

Developing this model bill via PublicMarkup.org offers an exciting opportunity to experiment with collaborative bill-drafting online. In addition, they hope the public evaluation of the draft bill will increase attention to the critically important issue of transparent government. Our hope is that the final product can be used as a model for transparent government.

After months of development and testing by a few dozen folks, Open Media Boston, the new progressive news, views and arts web portal, has just launched and is now ready for your participation. Please check us out today at http://www.openmediaboston.org!

The Basics

Aiming to cover Boston's community, political and arts scenes using a balance of social media (anyone can publish to our Open Forum) and editorial control (we have an edited front page), OMB is easy to use. See the basic instructions below this message for more information, or just follow the instructions throughout the website.

Marc Osten from Summit Collaborative just posted this to the NTEN list. They are a series of five short video tutorials titles Online Community Building and Engagement. These are the first installments in a series on the topic that will continue. A 2nd installment will air in April.

These videos cover most of the content that Marc presented at the National UK Circuit Riders Conference last month in Birmingham. The five titles are:

Part 1: Getting Started
Part 2: Who is the online community?
Part 3: The Tool Trap
Part 4: Organizational Issues
Part 5: Setting Clear Objectives

The Progressive Technology Project is announcing a new initiative that builds on its new Voter TechKit (http://votertechkit.progressivetech.org.) In the Voter Organizing Technology Education and Resources Project (VOTER Project) PTP will work with community-led organizations to greatly increase their long-term capacity to conduct effective integrated voter engagement activities.

PTP will work with a select group of 501 C3 community organizing groups that are engaged in voter education and get-out-the-vote projects in 2008. This program is designed to develop, support and document efforts to integrate the organization’s voter engagement work with its on-going programmatic work.