Blogs | Social Signal

We've recently started exploring Second Life, a virtual world that constitutes an exciting, immersive form of online community.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve begun blogging at Corante’s Civic Minded blog, your guide to the political impact of the web. My inaugural post begins like this:

When I worked in a Member of Parliament’s office back in the early 1990s, our office – like those of our colleagues – was inundated with an unending stream of petitions, pre-printed form letters, faxes and actual mail. Sifting through it all took up a huge amount of time (and incurred more than a little staff resentment).

These communications varied wildly in impact. We often took the effort required by a particular medium as a rough proxy for the level of sender’s depth of feeling and commitment. A personally written letter, for instance, carried a lot more weight than a lowly mass-printed postcard, which was maybe a little more significant than a petition.

And if a tangible, paper-based petition is unlikely to soften the flinty hearts in the corridors of power, you can how much hope their electronic kin have. Point-and-click protest is so easy to do – and for that reason, just as easy to ignore in the face of so many competing demands for attention.

So my heart usually sinks whenever I receive yet another appeal to go sign yet another e-petition. With a very few exceptions (such as the petition to change Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day’s first name to “Doris” in 2000), and despite the hopes of their sponsors, they almost always wrap up without making a dent in public policy.

But now British Prime Minister Tony Blair seems interested in rescuing the lowly e-petition from irrelevance. Earlier this month, his office launched a remarkable experiment with online petitions.

You can read the rest of the post here.

What makes for a transformative media moment: a moment when an individual reads, watches or hears a news story and is galvanized to take action on an issue? Social Signal hopes to offer a new answer to that question with the WIDget, a tool that will turn words into deeds by marrying web-savvy media outlets with the latest nonprofit volunteer and donation opportunities.

It's true -- all this snow is really very pretty. But it's also pretty darned cold, especially if you're living outside.

Does your organizational structure support web innovation or inhibit it? Learn how to make the most of your own team's structure from the web strategists at two very different nonprofits: Corrie Frasier, Online Communications Manager for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jed Miller, Director of Internet programs for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Someone at City Hall is listening to at least one corner of the blogging world.

Over at ChangeEverything.ca, the online community we built with Vancity, user Scott Robarts recently asked why the city is cutting down the trees on Granville Street:

Dr. Joyce Brothers once said that listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery. If so, bloggers should be feeling mighty flattered these days.

One of the faster-growing areas of public relations these days is blog monitoring. The Web 2.0 equivalent of a clipping service, blog monitoring services scour the Internet's blogs for mentions of a client, client's competitor, or keywords suggesting an issue important to a competitor.

RootsCamp - a series of gatherings for progressive Americans and members of the "netroots" to discuss and debrief on the U.S. midterm elections - won't just be happening in San Francisco, New York City, Bloomington, Washington DC and Columbus.

The first of the planned conferences won't even be happening anywhere you can find on a map.

Instead, it will kick off on Better World Island... deep in the heart of the avatar-based Second Life virtual world.

The conversation launches at 1 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, November 8, and runs through November 14. It's an unconference (wha'?), open to anyone who meets the exacting criteria:

Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. The people present at the event will select the demos or presentations they want to see.

If you're politically minded and you've been dying to learn more about the Second Life weirdness you've been hearing so much about, this is a great way to dip your toe in the virtual waters. And if you're progressive and a SL veteran with something to share about the election campain, well, you've probably already signed up.

For more info, visit the RootsCamp Second Life site. And see you there!

If you've been online for a while, you've probably seen them: would-be online communities that echo with emptiness.

John Gladding at A List Apart offers a handy metaphor: hosting a party where nobody comes. (Dammit... must I relive high school again?!) And he uses that metaphor to offer some solid advice – pitched particularly at people operating forums, but useful for the rest of us, too.

Among his best tips: