For folks on the lefty-side of the political spectrum, there’s a virtual space for gathering with other organizers and activists in Second Life at RootsCamp on Better World Island. Here’s how they describe it: RootsCamps are 2006 post-election debriefs. Progressives — everyone from the "netroots" to precinct captains to field organizers to national message consultants…
Category: Politics
My Mission: Arming Ewoks with light sabers
Sitting in an ouzo bar late at night in Athens last Friday, I got asked by a colleague out-of-the-blue what my "vision" was. Never an easy question to answer whether enebriated or not (I wasn’t.) I think I replied something along the lines of, "Hey, how about that Acropolis!" Sitting on the subway this morning,…
Save State of Play IV!
Just got a message from some of the organizers of the conference "State of Play IV" scheduled for January 7-9, 2007 in Singapore that they are in dire need of additional sponsors for the event. Organized by Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, New York Law School, Trinity University, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore,…
Chinese rep: “we don’t have software blocking Internet sites.”
Yesterday, during the "openness" session at the Internet Governance Forum, there was a fascinating interchange among the panelists, the audience, and finally a member of the Chinese government delegation on the question of Chinese censorship of the Internet. The controversy kicked off with a representative of Rapporteurs Sans Frontieres, a group legendary for their media-stealing…
Survey of recent e-consultations
As I prepare my remarks for the Internet Governance Forum next week, I’m interested in what can be learned from recent ICT-enabled consultations that have taken place around different political processes. Here are a few notable ones: Minnesota just finished an interesting multi-modal e-debate among all six candidates for governor A joint US/Canadian consultation took…
First gubernatorial e-debate in Minnesota
e-Democracy guru Steven Clift has done it again, organizing the first gubernatorial e-debate in Minnesota. His site smoothly brings together streaming videos posted by each of the candidates, daily blog posts and rebuttals, RSS feeds, flickr photos, and email updates. Taking place from October 9-19, several issues important to Minnesotans have already been debated, including…
Your tax dollars at work: US government regulation of virtual worlds
Reuters (now with their own Second Life Bureau desk!) reports that the US Congress is considering how virtual economies such as those within Second Life and World of Warcraft interact with US tax code. According to federal economist Dan Miller: Right now we’re at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind…
Thoughts on strategic uses of virtual environments for the UN
Recently I was contacted by the programme officer of a UN agency for advice on how they could best use the virtual world of Second Life to promote their organization’s goals. As an activist with more than ten years of experience with various international campaigns and coalitions at the United Nations, and an active Second…
Ban Ki Moon is next UN Secretary-General: share your views on the race
I’ve mentioned previously that my pal Tony Fleming runs a very well-done blog covering the race of the UN Secretary-General position in 2007. Tony tells me that he has been invited by the Washington Post to provide background material on the UN Secretary General’s race. Using this material, the Post asked leading editors, writers and…
Avatars and humans stand up against poverty
In my previous job, I was responsible for promoting civil society activity on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, a set of development targets agreed to by the governments of the world in 2000 at the UN General Assembly. It’s an important list of commitments to combat some of worst social ills — including poverty,…