Personal Democracy Forum 2008
Note by Vanessa Scanfeld:
Gina Cooper - co-founder of netroots nation. Grew out of DailyKos website. Organized first YearlyKos conference.
Brian Behlendorf - group of webmasters - improving software, none had goal of becoming commercial software developer so shared. that was incentive of apache project. easy to put up software for free. what emerged was consensus oriented development. had never met in person. gradually changed - formed 501 c 3, but remains an entirely volunteer organization. technical decisions made by volunteers. radical inclusiveness was key to bringing on best and brightest. played out in interesting ways. alexi kosut.
mozilla started as commercial product - but released as open source. struggled for a while - millions of lines of code - many people had to understand it. disruptive change is part of open source. firefox 3 - 2 million people participated in beta cycle.
Scott Heiferman
Leadership in a networked age - at meetup, don't support any candidates. Yes we can - people have been doing this for a long time. A lot of "yes we are." yes we can has. believe in power of self-organized groups. learned lessons - howard dean supporters started using it - was centralized, told you where to meetup. twitter and others become more and more open. need to enable a self-organized organization. make tools that accommodate 10s of thousands of meetups every week. sense of structure/bureaucracy. gathered everyone in a room and decided to let them self-organize to get something big done in the next 6 weeks. they got into 6 teams of 6 ppl each - got more done in 6 weeks - launched multi-lingual meetup, meetup api, etc. you realize the power of self-organized groups over and over again. no such thing as a movement that isn't about self-organized groups.
had no leadership at meta-level - went from alpha and recently to beta - what do groups of groups look like? how do multi-chapter orgs look in the 21st century. structure is underrated. the social network doesn't get everything done. concept of a structure in place - where is the 5,000 chapter organization that can flex its muscle?
5% of people were presidents of local orgs.
Gina Cooper - got involved with the Dean movement - through meetup. started small and then fill auditorium. netroots nation came out of kos community - vision and need to come together. politics + technology + media. focus is more on netroots and grassroots - people who come are people who want to engage. started off as a teacher - taught high school math and science. one of lessons started with howard dean - nobody is going to give you permission to be a leader - talk to each other, inspire each other, and be inspired by each other.
networked age - brought possibilities and demand. burden is on us. need to step up in our own way.
craig newmark - difference between having a boss and leader - makes you feel inspired. 2008 is when we are inventing participatory democracy. something big happened with dean campaign - during this conference, people gave credit to Obama campaign. In interest of seeing a fair fight, want to see more from McCain campaign. want to see this being a historic year - want both campaigns to get involved with this. i think we see this happening. notion - people running campaigns - goal is to get their guy elected. then they need to take networks and turn it into something real. real change is that we've got a lot of people involved in monitoring the election. and candidates have to get message that they aren't the boss - boss is the people who got them elected. people who participated are the boss.
talking about millennials and kids - get that they can make things happen on the net. if site has made contribution, maybe it's because people know how to get together and get things done. give people real power and trust people and respond in a trustworthy way. 25 people in the company. trust people, give tools for governance. there are bad guys, looking for attention. every day, deal with people like that - balance between self governance and centralized governance. most of what do, listen to suggestions and feedback and act on it. many companies talk about listening and then don't. any power, leadership we exert - we give it away. suggestions: notion of listening and changing. hear from obama campaign, you hear about having a CTO. hard part is actually listening and doing something about it. as of today, having a national CTO is less important to having someone who is listening and reacting. you can't live in a bubble if you are doing customer service. Transparency campaigns - sunlight, center for media and democracy, maplight. everything government does should be public record. challenge for campaigns now - need to listen, need people to participate with words, votes, $$. Money needed to run the campaigns. Vote with your dollars - need lots of people voting with small numbers of dollars.
Brian Behlendorf - group of webmasters - improving software, none had goal of becoming commercial software developer so shared. that was incentive of apache project. easy to put up software for free. what emerged was consensus oriented development. had never met in person. gradually changed - formed 501 c 3, but remains an entirely volunteer organization. technical decisions made by volunteers. radical inclusiveness was key to bringing on best and brightest. played out in interesting ways. alexi kosut.
mozilla started as commercial product - but released as open source. struggled for a while - millions of lines of code - many people had to understand it. disruptive change is part of open source. firefox 3 - 2 million people participated in beta cycle.
Scott Heiferman
Leadership in a networked age - at meetup, don't support any candidates. Yes we can - people have been doing this for a long time. A lot of "yes we are." yes we can has. believe in power of self-organized groups. learned lessons - howard dean supporters started using it - was centralized, told you where to meetup. twitter and others become more and more open. need to enable a self-organized organization. make tools that accommodate 10s of thousands of meetups every week. sense of structure/bureaucracy. gathered everyone in a room and decided to let them self-organize to get something big done in the next 6 weeks. they got into 6 teams of 6 ppl each - got more done in 6 weeks - launched multi-lingual meetup, meetup api, etc. you realize the power of self-organized groups over and over again. no such thing as a movement that isn't about self-organized groups.
had no leadership at meta-level - went from alpha and recently to beta - what do groups of groups look like? how do multi-chapter orgs look in the 21st century. structure is underrated. the social network doesn't get everything done. concept of a structure in place - where is the 5,000 chapter organization that can flex its muscle?
5% of people were presidents of local orgs.
Gina Cooper - got involved with the Dean movement - through meetup. started small and then fill auditorium. netroots nation came out of kos community - vision and need to come together. politics + technology + media. focus is more on netroots and grassroots - people who come are people who want to engage. started off as a teacher - taught high school math and science. one of lessons started with howard dean - nobody is going to give you permission to be a leader - talk to each other, inspire each other, and be inspired by each other.
networked age - brought possibilities and demand. burden is on us. need to step up in our own way.
craig newmark - difference between having a boss and leader - makes you feel inspired. 2008 is when we are inventing participatory democracy. something big happened with dean campaign - during this conference, people gave credit to Obama campaign. In interest of seeing a fair fight, want to see more from McCain campaign. want to see this being a historic year - want both campaigns to get involved with this. i think we see this happening. notion - people running campaigns - goal is to get their guy elected. then they need to take networks and turn it into something real. real change is that we've got a lot of people involved in monitoring the election. and candidates have to get message that they aren't the boss - boss is the people who got them elected. people who participated are the boss.
talking about millennials and kids - get that they can make things happen on the net. if site has made contribution, maybe it's because people know how to get together and get things done. give people real power and trust people and respond in a trustworthy way. 25 people in the company. trust people, give tools for governance. there are bad guys, looking for attention. every day, deal with people like that - balance between self governance and centralized governance. most of what do, listen to suggestions and feedback and act on it. many companies talk about listening and then don't. any power, leadership we exert - we give it away. suggestions: notion of listening and changing. hear from obama campaign, you hear about having a CTO. hard part is actually listening and doing something about it. as of today, having a national CTO is less important to having someone who is listening and reacting. you can't live in a bubble if you are doing customer service. Transparency campaigns - sunlight, center for media and democracy, maplight. everything government does should be public record. challenge for campaigns now - need to listen, need people to participate with words, votes, $$. Money needed to run the campaigns. Vote with your dollars - need lots of people voting with small numbers of dollars.
