In September the Clinton Global Initiative will host its flagship meeting in New York. Since it was started in 2005 by former President Bill Clinton, CGI has mobilized almost 300 commitments from its members valued at over $2 billion.

This year CGI is interested in commitments focused on the nexus of education and global health, two of the four focus areas. We're helping them look, particularly for projects that are being planned or are recently underway, that use open education (OER) approaches to support global health. Are you involved in a project like this or know of one? If so, please let me know via email (dwitzel@forumone.com) or phone (+1 571 641 3029).

All help greatly appreciated!

The world is grappling with a set of very serious problems ranging from climate change to HIV/AIDS to a food crisis. These problems are particularly difficult because they are global, spanning governmental and organizational boundaries; stretch our organizational and technical capacity; and require coordinated response by many people. At Forum One we see our role as helping our government, non-profit, and foundation clients use the internet to respond to these kinds of problems faster, smarter, and better. One approach we are exploring is development of multisided software platforms; what Evans, Hagiu, and Schmalensee call "Invisible Engines." In short, can we do in the social sector what Microsoft Windows has done in personal computers, Sony has done with video games, or DoCoMo has done with mobile phones? Can we use software on the Internet to engage multiple stakeholders to promote more innovation, increase scale, and do it all faster?

We used this approach for a proposal in response to a request from the Conservation Fund's Forum on Children and Nature. The goal of the program is to reconnect children with nature and has implications for, at least, obesity, mental health, and conservation. We proposed development of a multi-stakeholder, multisided, online platform that would help engage all the groups potentially involved in the issue from the National Parks, to non-profit conservation groups, to children's safety experts, to commercial vendors (not just REI, but Burger King and McDonalds too). The idea is that by providing services to support the specific needs of these divergent groups we could link them together and thereby dramatically increase the scale and efficiency of response, promote innovation throughout the system, and do it at amazing speed.

The proposal was accepted into the second round of the competition. However, we decided we didn't have the internal resources to carry it out and declined to take it further. We learned that two of the implications of this approach are deep-pockets and patience -- tough for a small online strategy firm.

Nonetheless, we continue to think about these approaches and encourage others to as well. We have released the proposal, "Nature Commons: Building a shared online infrastructure to help engage children with nature," under a creative commons license as a case study and concept, hoping that it generates ideas for you. Please take a look and let me know what you think -- the document is short and reasonably clear.


Nature Commons: Building a shared online infrastructure to help engage children with nature by Forum One Communications is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Tomorrow (10am EST) we'll be hosting an online interview with Alexandria's own Dennis McDonald. Dennis is an independent consultant who has been focusing on how collaborative "Web 2.0" technologies can and will influence a range of organizations and topics including associations, corporations, project management and disaster response. Please drop by now to ask a question and come back at later to participate in the live interview. Also, check out Dennis' blog for background on some of his work.

While you are poking around, visit the transcript of today's live interview hosted by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The interview focused on the demography of two of Africa's largest countries, Ethiopia and Nigeria. It featured a PRB expert with comment by demographers in Ethiopia and Nigeria.

I saw a job listing yesterday that captured a modern dilemma -- should I hire a webmaster or a web editor? The job listing for a "technology manager" asks for someone who can provide technical computer assistance for staff, provide software training from Microsoft to Photoshop, produce web traffic reports, and develop web features including social networking tools. Stuck in the middle of the responsibilities list was "writing and editing content" and manage editorial calendar.

The thing is, these are (almost always) two different people. Traditionally websites had "webmasters" who took care of the magic of HTML, Photoshop, Flash, and that darn email list. Webmasters are techies dealing with computers and software, data and code, and only if they have to, users. With the increasing sophistication of content management systems that make day-to-day management of websites much easier and the increasing importance of the web for programs and purpose, the role has shifted. Now, for their websites, organizations need well written, timely information that promotes their mission and programs. They need a web editor who is journalist, community manager, topical specialist, and a little techie. The role is more writer, networker, and project manager -- someone who knows, understands, and cares what is going on inside the organization and can translate it for use by an audience on the outside.


Oh, and did I mention the job is part-time?

The Center for Global Development's just-launched website on carbon pollution, CARMA, is getting great news coverage. One of the most interesting articles so far is a Reuters story, Greenpeace Shuts Down Australia Power Station. Reuters says, "A team of 15 activists from the environment group Greenpeace entered the Munmorah power station, north of Sydney, in a dawn raid, hanging banners reading "Climate change starts here" and "Coal kills". It goes on to explain, "The Greenpeace protest came after a report by the U.S.-based Carbon Monitoring for Action database (CARMA), found Australia was the world's biggest carbon emitter per capita, and ranked seventh in terms of overall carbon emissions."

The Google News count just hit 200 news articles. See for yourself!

(Image from Javno)

I had a little culture shock moving from the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City on Friday to PBS's Showcase in Dallas the following Monday. The PDF was chock full of politico-webbies who brought the wifi to its knees with live blogging, twitter, and back-channel chat. PBS's conference rooms didn't offer wifi. At the PDF Lawrence Lessig spoke to a full house about the importance of getting copyright right while at the Summit the focus was on "The War" though there was some confusion about which war (turns out it is "The Great War"). In New York talk was about elections. The last panel featured web staff from Bush & Kerry 2004, and Obama, Clinton, Romney, McCain, and Edwards 2008 who talked a lot about how they were using social networking sites to build support. While in Dallas, maybe a third of attendees stuck around to listen to new VP of Interactive, Jason Seiken, late of WashingtonPost.com and AOL, promise that introducing a PBS social network was one of two top priorities for 2007.

This last bit caught my attention, and not only because it helped fill the room for the panel I was on about social media. Listening to the PDF crowd talk about whether it is legal to repurpose video of presidential debates (it is determined by the debate broadcasters!) and MoveOn's attack on censorship at MySpace. I yearned for a trustworthy and civic-minded host for our democratic dialogue. We are sure that politicians will increasingly rely on online services to deliver and develop messages. Right now the online services they use are commercial – Youtube owned by Google, MySpace owned by News Corp, -- or partisan (re: MoveOn.org and Townhall.com). Who will provide us an "honest platform" for learning, discussion, and debate? PBS has the distributed network of member stations, a public outreach mission, and the trusted brand that would be perfect for this role. All that is missing is the gumption. Maybe Seiken and a small group of PBS innovators can make it happen.

I should also say that PBS had better schwag. I particularly appreciate my "Best of Austin City Limits 2007" CD!

Forum One is sponsoring "The Policy Commons: Democracy When the Owners Take Control," a breakout session at Politics Online Conference 2007.

There is a great set of panelists including Rick Hinton from Red Hill Group, Conor Kenny from the Center for Media and Democracy, Greg Shnipel from Ashoka, and me. It will be moderated by Alan Rosenblatt from the Internet Advocacy Center. We'll be discussing how groups and individuals are coordinating online to identify and solve social problems with and without the involvement of government. We expect it to be an invigorating discussion of social production and politics.

If you haven't already, you can register online. Use this Forum One discount code (polc031507) to receive $245 off the standard rate.

The Washington Post says that Seventeen magazine has teamed with online community powerhouse MySpace to launch a contest for teens to create public service announcements. I talk about how this is an example of online collaboration for social production in the Online Community Report.

In addition, this can be an avenue for your mission-driven organization to get youth more involved with your topic. We can expect hundreds (thousands?) of videos to be submitted to Seventeen over the next six weeks. Why not ask teens for a PSA about you; give them background information to explain why your issue matters; provide messages, audio, and video for them to use; and then ask them to share their video with you?

In any case, it is certainly a good time to think about MySpace as a tool for engaging with youth.

The Washington Post's article on the growth of traffic to community websites sent me to the bookshelf to dust off my copy of net gain by Hagel and Armstrong. It was published in 1997, a year after we started Forum One. net gain helped inspire many online community tools and services including ours, the "Forum One Index," a search engine for web forums. The Index didn't survive the bursting bubble, but Forum One did.

Now it is blogs and RSS instead of forums and "push" but the rationale is much the same -- the power of people. We're very excited to see the market catch up with the ideas and applaud the success of the new generation of community sites.

Oh, and Hagel's books is still worth reading....

Oscar responded to the last post saying "The power of online collaboration is how much you can get back by giving up control" -- a really good point. The distinction I want to make is between "giving up control" and "sharing control (and responsibility)". Many groups that should seriously consider collaborative approaches are afraid of what might happen to them and their message if things go bad.

These fears must be taken seriously. We've seen a couple of examples where collaboration has gone so bad that sponsors probably regret their initiative. Two cases in point:

• the Bush/Cheney "sloganator" in 2004. Here is a wonderful memorial to that very funny campaign.


• the LA Times 'Wikitorials' experiment which was quickly shut down.

I'm not sure how Chevy will assess the net results of their marketing effort. I expect that it will be determined by how well and how quickly the anti-SUV community organizes around this opportunity. The potential certainly exists for wide distribution of many off-message ads. (This gets back to my suggestion that a good directory to the funniest ads is needed quickly. In the mean time, check out Sustainablog, Climate Change Action, and Grist for some examples.)

In all these cases, the problem wasn't the idea of collaborating online, but that necessary elements of how to share responsibility and control were poorly thought out or implemented.

There is huge potential in letting internet users help you to achieve your mission. Whether it is writing powerful software like Linux or delivering knowledge around the world like Wikipedia, the internet community has resources and skills to contribute. However, because you let people contribute doesn't mean you'll get what you want...

The most recent example of collaboration gone bad (well, at least from the sponsor's perspective) is Chevy and The Apprentice marketing a new SUV by asking users to create commercials. Turns out that fancy prizes (a summer vacation, NASCAR races, and country music) weren't enough to keep all participants on message.

A lot of the contributions, some egged on by an anti-SUV environmental community, while creative, were probably not what Chevy and The Donald were looking for. Here's a few examples:

• Some things you just should know


• Joe


• Don't be a sheep

What lessons can we draw?

• It is hard to run a collaborative exercise without either careful moderation or carefully implemented community control.


• Users can tell when you are being too self-serving and prizes (even expensive ones) won't be enough to seduce all participants.


• This is a nice interface for a roll-your-own video tool. Discovery Education, are you watching?

Probably the most important lesson? -- It is darned hard to find a listing of the best spoof commercials. We clearly need someone to roll out a "rank the commercials" site quickly!