Conceptually, encouraging dominant cultures to divesify is fabulous –I subscribe to the DNA model of ecosystems and social spaces, so I support it wholeheartedly. As I’ve said in my book and recent talks:

This is a big one: you need to find people who don’t look like you, don’t necessarily think like you, and don’t come from the same places that you do. Creating a thrivable ecosystem–whether that’s an organization or a whole society–is like the evolution of a species. If you have a bunch of the same DNA mixing together, the species mutates poorly and eventually dies off. But bring in variety–new strains of DNA–and you create a stronger species. It’s no different in idea generation. You get a bunch of the same people talking to each other and making the rules for a few millennia, and eventually you’re going to end up with a lack of meaningful advancement.

We need you to be aware of the privilege you bring to the table – whether that’s your race, gender or your tech privilege – and make sure you’re using it responsibly and thoughtfully. Diversity is a strategic imperative for achieving collective goals. As diversity scholar Roosevelt Thomas notes, we all make better decisions–as individuals and as a society–when we account for differences and tensions.

But Johnson sort of, well, pretty much derails from the outset in his attempt. First, and I’m not going to focus on this too much, but “stalking?” Really? C’mon, we know that the world is loaded, painful and supports a culture of dominant violence. Not okay. But, moving along…

Where the argument really goes awry for me is in Johnson’s othering of the woman he follows. He’s turned her into an exotic creature on display, and taken away a little bit of her humanity. For more on exocitization, check out Racialicious’ extensive archive of awesome. There are plenty of ways to talk about race without placing people into positions that feel more like targets than participants.

This is largely about power relationships. Pretending that they don’t exist or don’t influence our decisions on how we interact with one another — especially when we’re different genders, races, sexualities, etc.– just mires us in he-said-she-said. It also perpetuates our bias, prejudices and social systems into the wild, open frontier of the Internet, and that’s a crying shame.

We’re living like fish in water on the Internet right now: We don’t know, or we’re not willing to recognize, that we’re soaking in the same social structures we’ve been living with for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. We’re porting our understanding of the offline world–with all our prejudices, biases, and hierarchies–onto the blank canvas of the Internet. But all we can see is the blank canvas; we remain convinced that the Internet is a pure meritocracy and that if you just work hard enough, you’ll succeed at whatever it is that you’re trying to do. We’ve got to interrupt this pattern now, with conscious effort and action.

Lest I be a big ol’ bully and just rant about what’s wrong, allow me to offer some excerpts from my book that illustrate what I think is a healthier, more productive way to go about things. I’ll start with an example of where I was called out on my own voyeurism–shortly after the Philadelphia pool incident in 2009, and after listening on Twitter to lots of people of color share stories of childhood discrimination.

To share that kind of intimacy requires some sort of explicit or assumed “safe space”–a forum of sorts, where one can express views without threat of abuse or harassment. Safe space requires a tremendous amount of trust, and that trust allowed the people sharing the stories with each other to extend the conversation past the sound bite moments that get played out in media and other traditional public forums. “Usually when people of color talk publicly, it’s about our feelings, our mistakes, and being frank about our shortcomings,” says Ludovic Blain, director of the Progressive Era Project and a longtime social justice activist. “Often when white folks speak in the same setting, it’s about their initiatives and how they’ll make it right. That’s perverted. In the case of the racist pool, the scene was the same: people of color discussing heart-wrenching issues in front of whites. But those people were also doing a rare thing–publicly discussing what whites had done wrong.” The empathy based on shared experience, combined with trust that the conversation would be productive, brought this moment to a more necessarily intense place.

Additionally, people decided to share their stories for many reasons: to release a painful memory and get it off their chests, to connect with others who had experienced similar racism as children, to potentially educate those who needed to hear their memories, and more. Thus, the voyeuristic aspect of the experience was strong. My whiteness was hidden for a moment (via my silence, not sharing a common past experience), and social networks allowed me to enter a conversation that otherwise might have been altered by my presence. I was able to benefit regardless of whether the sharers intended for me to, and that cultural voyeurism needs to be clear when discussing issues that deal with bias around race, gender, class, and other kinds of privilege.

Later in the book, I discuss the kind of cross-pollination of culture that I believe Johnson originally intended to challenge his readers with.

To be clear, we won’t ever eliminate our biases. But we can begin to be explicit about what we learn about ourselves and our social spheres when bias rears its ugly head. Social technology researcher danah boyd suggests a series of questions for that explicit discovery process: “None of us is going to be unbiased. There is no way to be unbiased. The question is: Can you account for your biases? Can you recognize when they get in the way? Can you open up a dialogue, even if it makes you uncomfortable, with people who aren’t like you?” Opening ourselves up to that process and beginning to break out of the way we’ve been thinking about how we assume the world operates (simply because it’s operated like that for a long time) is crucial. We need to listen as selflessly as possible to what others are sharing and make sure that we’re not perpetuating restrictive social structures. … It makes me realize that often those moments are not about me at all–they are about larger injustices that I have a role in changing or stopping altogether, and it’s my job to figure out how to do that.

…

It’s important for people of all stripes and places to engage with those who are different from themselves, but to be blunt, it’s extra important for those who are a couple of notches up on the hierarchy to go through this exercise. Remember, you’re not there as part of some sociology experiment, but because you get that progress is possible only when we participate.

A crucial part of cross-pollination exercises is realizing that your role as ambassador is not to defend your position in the food chain. That’s where a lot of us get into trouble–I know I have. Your job is to recognize what privilege you bring–whether it’s your gender, your class, your race, your sexuality, etc.–and figure out how best you can use it to enable justice for people who don’t share your privilege. Jessica Hoffman, editor of make/shift magazine, pithily captured our collective responsibility to engage in self-reflection in an article she wrote about a white feminist’s role in other social justice movements: “Inexperienced because of privilege, we hadn’t thought well on our feet, and we’d been in a certain denial about how bad things might get; we’d been pissed and well meaning, but not useful [emphasis mine].” It’s the job of all of us to be useful.

Johnson’s utter failure to be useful is instructive of the larger systemic issues we face, not the least of which is the truism, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” A tweet from last year comes to mind on why this is true.

June 3-4: Personal Democracy Forum, New York City. This is one of my favorite conferences all year because it’s one of the few that blend many worlds well together: Technology, electoral politics, advocacy politics and cultural analysis. I’m giving a 10-minute talk on Thursday, June 3, that will (definitively!) answer the question: “Can the Internet fix politics?” Muwahaha. Other luminaries on the speaking roster include Howard Rheingold, Clay Shirky, Cheryl Contee, Jane Hamsher, Arianna Huffington, Esther Dyson, Anil Dash and many, many more. Register today — I’ve got a code to give you $100 off the registration; just email me and ask for it.

June 7-9: America’s Future Now, Washington DC. A yearly pilgramage to DC for progressives, where we talk strategy and tactics for challenging the right-wing agenda. I’ll be moderating a workshop on Tuesday morning, June 8, on social networking with Toby Chaudhuri, and we’ve actually turned it into a gameshow format: Social Media Jeopardy! Contestants will be Lizz Winstead, Garlin Gilchrist II, Scott Goodstein and Heather Holdridge. Also, Monday night, June 7, will see the DC launch of my book, thanks to Toby and Scott of Revolution Messaging, who are throwing me a killer party. Wooooo! Register today for all the goods.

June 9-11: Making Media Connections, Chicago, IL. I’m thrilled to be keynoting this gathering of non-profit communicators, put together by the Community Media Workshop. This year’s theme is “Storytelling and Strategy in the Digital Age,” which hits home strong for me– it’s through our stories that we have always made change, and our shiny new digital tools give us unprecedented capabilities to tell them. Register today for this amazing conference. (PS — That Friday night, June 11, I’ll be reading at Women & Children First, and having a party afterwards nearby.)

For background, here are the series of posts that sum up the first discussions on Twitter, and subsequent responses:

• An argument about crowdfunding, Quiet Babylonian
• Crowdfunding & Micropatronage Part 2, Quiet Babylonian
• Crowdfunding books, PD Smith at Kafka’s mouse
• Is ‘crowdfunding’ really the way ahead for author advances?, Michelle Pauli at The Guardian UK’s Books blog

There seem to be two sets of argument made against crowdfunding in much of the discussion I’ve seen: one, it reveals the funding seeker as a shameless self-promoter and snake-oil salesperson; two, it destroys the ethos of publishing either by allowing publishers to never have to produce advances again, or by allowing just any ol’ work to be produced without blood/sweat/tears.

What this revealed to me were first some fundamental misunderstandings of my own project, and later, some fundamental misunderstandings–or even outright denial–of the massive upheaval all of media is experiencing. To clarify some points about my own project, for those who are new to the discussion or new to my corner of the world, my professional life as a technologist has largely been spent in industries that accept the ethos of community-supported work: arts organizations, independent media, non-profit advocacy, etc. In these spheres, we’re used to receiving regular appeals for ongoing organizational support, or emergencies, or proposals for new projects. So, it certainly wasn’t a stretch for me to reach out in a similar way to the people who make up that community and believe in that tradition.

Also, some people seemed to think I was “charging” $100 for my book up front, before actually writing it. Mais non! I was using the PBS model of fundraising, where you donate $100 and feel good about yourself, and then you also get the bonus tote bag. (Tell me if you find someone that believes they purchased a totebag from PBS for a hundred bucks. Heh.) Because my community is familiar with the work I’ve done over the years, they understand that the project I was proposing (writing about a fundamental, progressive cultural shift) was ultimately beneficial to our community for their ability to thrive in the new tech era. Many decided to support that, shockingly, without needing me to hold guns to their heads. (Also worth noting is that every person I received a donation from, save one, has a personal relationship with me.)

The focus on who-gave-what-why revealed just how deeply entrenched an exclusively market-based mindset is in our culture. People in the discussion are so focused on the transactional moment–who gave to the project? how much did they give? what did they get in return?–that they are unable (or unwilling) to see both how market forces have long tainted the media process. It’s hard for many to imagine a scenario where someone cooks up an idea, a bunch of others support it, the work gets produced, and everyone lives happily ever after. There simply must be quid-pro-quo or sleight-of-hand somewhere in this process, because that’s how markets work.

As my friend Steve pointed out in his comments, there is a different economy at work–the gift economy. Using that model, people do things because they think they’re generally a good idea. (I wrote about this in my book, since the gift economy is so fundamental to how healthy social networks operate.) To some, I get the sense that they think I’ve stolen my donors’ money–what happens if my book becomes successful enough to make some money? Then I’ve doubly won! My evil plan will have worked. World domination next. No, seriously… I’ve thought about that, and I have made plans to account for it and will reach out to my awesome people if that happens. Which of course, you can say, of course you say that now, but it’s up to you to believe me or not.

Which is the whole point of the gift economy: do you trust me? Do you believe me? What kind of track record have I built up in this economy? Do I donate time and money to other projects? Do I reach out to my connections when someone else is in need? Am I known to have influence in a particular crowd, and use that influence justly? Do people consider me talented at what I do, and I able to get access to more talent from others when needed? All of those things make up my social capital, and I chose to spend my social capital on the crowdfunding of my book. It could have flopped miserably if I hadn’t been a pretty alright person in the world. People made their assessments on their belief in the value of my project and my reputation, and either gave me money, or didn’t. It’s as simple as that.

Each of us being able to make our own decisions about what we value and what we don’t, and then seeing work produced based on our values, seems to be one of the underlying themes that threatens many in the publishing and journalism industries. Book publishing in particular is seen as this time-honored tradition of creating works that go into that Big Canon in the Sky. I know I felt this when I first considered the prospect of writing a book — something else that’s different about my situation is that I was approached by a friend and colleague at the publisher, Johanna Vondeling, who had been asking for some time if I’d ever considered writing a book. Part of the reason I rejected her for at least a couple years was because I was plainly terrified of that idea of producing something to a state of perfection that it would need to be in, in my opinion, to be part of aforementioned canon.

The way this process has traditionally worked is that publishers and others with power/influence deem someone worthy enough to be part of that. Someone (actually, a group of people at the publisher) did that for me, too, but instead of taking their money, I decided to take their process instead, and work out the money on my own. One of the reasons I wanted Berrett-Koehler’s process, over being tossed a pittance–if anything at all–is their committment to producing the author’s vision of the work. So, if I were to go to a publisher who offered me an advance, how much would I have had to change the work I produced based on what the publisher wanted me to do? Too often I’ve heard from friends and colleagues who’ve written books that they were forced to make changes to make it more commercially viable… so that the publisher was guaranteed making up the advance.

That’s another big sticking point right there: one side of this debate feels that allowing “just anyone” to donate their money to my project will give them undue influence over the work that’s produced. First of all, that assumes I’d let that happen. Which, as anyone in my community knows, I sure as hell wouldn’t. Outside of that, it also assumes that works produced in the traditional model have the purest intentions and zero monetary influence. I find that hard to swallow, and there’s certainly enough evidence out there that says otherwise. A multinational company throwing money at little old me isn’t going to have a say over what I’m able to do under their umbrella? Working with Berrett-Koehler, the only restraint I experienced is that Johanna wouldn’t let me even come close to swearing, and my mom thanks her for that. (I wanted to use “BS” at one point.)

So now, it’s not just up to institutions to bless or dismiss projects outright–it can be any conglomeration of people pooling together to fund someone or something they believe in. In many circles, we consider this a part of community building, and are happy to participate when all of our values align. Others don’t see fundraising as community-building, they clearly only see money in the transactional terms I spoke of earlier. That’s a shame. But what’s an even bigger shame is that most of those disagreeing with my tactics don’t seem to believe in community-building at all–they are largely stuck in an old model of broadcast and response, of pedestals and ivory towers… ultimately, of cliques and isolation. Those people will be left behind as the rest of us work on connecting, creating, and conversing.

I’m reminded of when the Publisher’s Weekly story about my crowdfunding was first published, and a stranger on Twitter called the whole thing “tacky.” Curious as to how she ended up there, I asked her. In the following discussion, she came around to the fact that it wasn’t me or my tactic that she was frustrated with, it was the fact that authors are expected more and more to do everything for a book–write it, market it, sell it… and now fundraise for it? This is a painful part of the change process, for sure. Everyone’s roles are changing. Editor’s don’t just edit, for example; this I can tell you for sure from my experience with Johanna the Wondereditor. Anyone working in just about any aspect of media today is expected to have a far wider skill set then ever before: writing, some knowledge of HTML, bonus if you can do online video, etc., for less money than ever before. And many are suffering because of that.

Which brings me back to an earlier point: maybe market models are failing information and media altogether. I had this conversation about possible similarities of journalism and art paradigms with Andrew Golis, who works for Yahoo! News building a blog network… a key point I want to bring into this discussion:

For eons, there have been many avenues the artist can follow: commercial (Hallmark cards, pop music, etc), government-funded (NEA grants, NYSCA grants, etc), foundation funded (Yaddo retreats, what have you), family funded, collective supported, street selling (a form of commercial, for sure)… and any blend of those above is becoming more and more prominent.

Art, despite the instability that Andrew rightly calls out, hasn't disappeared, tho. Art hasn't even gotten worse, just more available. There is always cynicism about popular culture, but that's too easy of a target. There's just more of everything available to us. If you're a musician, for example, it's easier than ever to get your work heard by more people than just your friends. But not paid for by a whole bunch, probably. That's the sticker, eh? A few years ago, as Napster started ticking off the recording industry, someone said that it was clearer than ever what the musician's job is: not to sell records, but to travel around and play for people. That's what they've always done, and that's what they're returning to.

Journalism is grasping at straws for a new model to pay everyone's salaries. The old model, though, was in many ways distorted, and probably distended. Maybe it's not, however, that journalistic endeavors are going to be the new starving artists… maybe it's that news producers and art makers need to get their heads together and figure out how we're going to create not a model, but a whole new system that creates thrivable conditions for creators to get their jobs done.

I created the conditions to have a thrivable summer for producing my book. Nothing extraordinary: I paid my rent, I ate sufficiently, and I visited my parents, all while writing the first 30,000 words of a book. This makes people angry. I’m not entirely sure why; some have pointed to jealousy but I’m not sure that’s quite right. Other people do this all the time; people’s spouses work while they finish their dissertations, trust funds allow for children of rich people to have a good time, etc. It’s something about asking your friends that bothers people. Reaching out to those who already support you most is culturally problematic. Why? What is it going to take to overhaul the way we’re doing business now, in the media industries, to create cultural situations where artists, journalists and authors can thrive? Crying endlessly about the demise and shunning potential for innovation is definitely not a good place to start.

That’s what I want to leave this discussion with: more of these ideas to throw something on the wall and see what sticks. Already, hundreds (thousands?) of people are doing it on Kickstarter for their books, films, records and more. How many other ways can we think of to open up the process of creation to more people? I’m tired of the same ol’, same ol’, and I know I’m not the only one.

Watch the prez live, courtesy of The Uptake:

And let the silliness ensue:

It was also pointed out to me that it seems like I’m saying that confidence and assertiveness are the purview of dudes only. This is a layered argument, one that’s a bit complicated for me to take apart, but let me give it a whirl. First and foremost, I am an ardent, aggressive nay-sayer of anything seeming “naturally” female or male behavior– I believe all our crap is learned, almost 100% entirely. So, M, apologies if it sounds like that in my first post. What I’m doing here is running with Shirky’s version of the argument to concentrate on taking apart a cultural standard that we’re all forced to live by– not one that I believe myself. The fact that dudes hold most of the power, and dudes believe a lot of the ickier stuff in Shirky’s post themselves, etc., reinforces this cultural standard.

In the dept-of-personal-sharing that’s been happening, I’ve also always been one of those outspoken, brash ladies and it’s often served me well professionally. But personally, that’s still up in the air. There are times that I feel damaged and inauthentic when I’ve been acting like an overconfident jerk, and that’s not how I want to ultimately live my life. I wrote this post from that place, of wanting to change the culture so that different personality traits can be rewarded, so that we can have (as I said) a more holistic, welcoming set of standards.

My last point is on the note of personal sharing– just a quick observation, I have been simply bowled over by the number of women who’ve come out of the woodwork in this discussion to share their own stories of self-promo BS, things they were told to do, what not to do, etc. This kind of storytelling and sharing is what’s so powerful to me about our ability to connect, mostly through social networks, and raise each others’ consciousness around these discussion. It’s not just facts and overheard anecdotes, it’s our lives. And that, my friends, is a very very powerful thing.

A post from Internet analyst/author/smart-person Clay Shirky titled “A Rant About Women” has got quite the discussion going around the Intertubes. Read (or at least skim) it before continuing; let me also take this introductory opportunity to do the obligatory feminist thing and thank the dude for taking time out of his busy schedule to wrestle with the giant questions of why don’t women do as well as men at X. Here it comes… thank you. OK, so I’m being a wee bit sarcastic, but seriously: it really is nice to see these conversations happen outside of the usual suspected fora of listservs, blogs, etc, all for and by the ladies.

Much of the resulting discussion has been a bit heavy-handed on both sides– “OMG, he’s totally right!” “OMG, he’s totally wrong!” Some great points have already been well covered by others, especially Jezebel blogger Anna’s point that women aren’t allowed culturally to be the aggressive jerks that successful men are. This was also the place where I had the most visceral reaction — the conclusion that we need to teach women to be more like men: more assertive and aggressive, demanding of what they want and need. This approach to solving the “where are teh womenz” problem misses the mark in a way that 70s & 80s power feminism also missed the mark for me. The “we’re just as good as men” statements and subsequent actions set the wrong frame. It assumes:

• Men’s success and ways of achieving it are the gold standard.
• Women’s lack of success and lack of use of men’s ways is the deviant behavior. (as in, “deviant from the norm,” not deviant as in “naughty”)
• Therefore, women should act more like men to be successful.

Personally, I’m just not that interested in acting more like a dude for the chance that my work gets more widely recognized or that I get paid more to do it, and I suspect many other women aren’t, either. It’s sort of, just maybe, one of the myriad of reasons we haven’t been acting like dudes since women’s lib, y’know?

What’s far more interesting to me is shifting the cultural consciousness around what being successful means, and what it then takes to achieve it. Creating a more holistic standard to which men and women both can hold themselves, and then compete/collaborate, etc., offers us an opportunity to break down terribly unhealthy versions of masculinity and femininity that oppress us all.

Asking women to be more like men (which is different than what Shirky claims we’re doing when we ask men to be “sensitive” and “listen” — that’s just asking for a little humanity, there) falls on a spectrum of prescribing feminine behavior that is dangerous and unhealthy. We’re putting the onus on women to fit themselves into a culture that doesn’t value them enough to begin with. It sounds a lot like misguided sexual assault prevention tactics (“how not to get yourself raped!”), and Shirky goes there himself when he points out the time colleges spend teaching women self-defense. Me? I cringed right there.  Where are the colleges teaching men not to rape women?*

I’ve been looking for an excuse to post about this great piece from Jill at I Blame the Patriarchy, wherein she rewrites one of those email chain letters telling women what to do in order not to get themselves attacked, into a guide for men on how to prevent sexual assault. Now seems as good a time as any:

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work

1. Don't put drugs in women's drinks.

2. When you see a woman walking by herself, leave her alone.

3. If you pull over to help a woman whose car has broken down, remember not to assault her.

4. If you are in a lift and a woman gets in, don't assault her. You know what? Don't even ogle her.

5. When you encounter a woman who is asleep, the safest course of action is to not assault her.

6. Never creep into a woman's home through an unlocked door or window, or spring out at her from between parked cars, or assault her.

7. When you lurk in bushes and doorways with criminal intentions, always wear bright clothing, wave a flashlight, or play "Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)" by the Raveonettes on a boombox really loud, so women in the vicinity will know where to aim their flamethrowers.

8. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If it is inconvenient for you to stop yourself from assaulting women, ask a trusted friend to accompany you when in public.

9. Carry a rape whistle. If you find that you are about to assault a woman, you can hand the whistle to your buddy, so s/he can blow it to call for help.

10. Give your buddy a revolver, so that when indifferent passers-by either ignore the rape whistle, or gather round to enjoy the spectacle, s/he can pistol-whip you.

Don't forget: Honesty is the best policy. When asking a woman out on a date, don't pretend that you are interested in her as a person; tell her straight up that you expect to be assaulting her later. If you don't communicate your intentions, the woman may take it as a sign that you do not plan to rape her.

Men-folk: see how terrible and condescending and infuriating it is to be on the receiving end of this kind of thing? Jill’s list o’ tips makes me laugh and cry a little.

Tactics to solve gender inequality that don’t address the wider cultural discrimination and structural oppression, that only put the problem in women’s own hands, do nothing but perpetuate a system that keep women “in their place.” This is shockingly unappealing to us at the receiving end of said place assignment.

UPDATE, 1/19: Follow-up post is here.

–

* When I was at SUNY-Albany, there was a program for men only called “A Few Good Men,” though I don’t know what the content was. If anyone has references to good programs (though I’m skeptical they’re offered at the same frequency and with the same enthusiastic energy as self-defense for women courses), please post them in the comments.

There are several opportunities we have at hand, and before I run off to a morning meeting, I wanted to address some of the ups and downs of dealing with disasters via technologies. The biggest thing we need to be aware of right now is the role our own egos play in these situations. We have a desperate need to feel useful in situations that make us feel helpless, and the ease with which we can share our thoughts and stories amplifies ways we think we’re being helpful when we’re dealing with emotionally charged material. We need to be aware of our impulses and sort out what’s good and what’s not so good. Here’s my take:

• Getting the word out, the good stuff. People have been passing along word from the Red Cross, Mercy Corps, Yele and other organizations on easy and fast ways to donate money to relief efforts– especially via txt message. You can send a text message on your phone, for example, to 90999 with the word HAITI, and that will donate $10 to the RedCross’ fund. The charge will appear on your next phone bill.
  
  The abilitiy to read and see news coming from inside Haiti via everyday people, like many other situations recently, is also fascinating, and incredibly powerful. We aren’t reliant on potentially corrupt or broken information structures (like government news agencies, for example) to find out what’s happening in real time.
  
  
• Getting the word out, the challenging stuff. The other side of the ability to share information quickly and easily is that the potential for the spread of misinformation is high. We aren’t physiologically equipped to deal with highly charged situations via new technologies, in many cases– our brains are built to rely on a variety of cues to filter and respond, and those cues are often missing when reading updates on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.
  
  Because we’ve established trust with the people that we communicate with online, we automatically assign that trust, or authority, over to situations that don’t necessarily warrant it. Because I generally trust my friends to post smart/thoughtful things, the urge to repost what seems like important information from them in times of crisis without verifying it first is high. We have to change this behavior, and look for ways to establish authority of sources (without falling back on old models of only giving institutions like news orgs and governments the authority) and to verify what we share before doing so.

I wrote about this a whole bunch in Share This!, and I’m going to post those sections this afternoon when I return. Stay tuned…

UPDATE: The relevant sections from the book are now up. Start with “Stop, Drop and … Think.“

I'm gonna start off by telling you a little story from the spring that I wrote about in my book, "Share This! How You Will Change the World with Social Networking." It comes out in June 2010.

It's a Saturday afternoon, Easter weekend, Passover is going on, things are pretty quiet in the world online and off. A lotta digitally-oriented people, when they're bored, will do things like Google themselves and check website stats and whatnot. Authors tend to go to Amazon and check their sales ranks. Now, the sales rank is not just about how many books they've sold, it's also the key to the whole Amazon system. If you don't have a sales rank for your book or product, you don't turn up in search results on the site, for example.

Well, that Saturday afternoon, some authors were surprised to find that they no longer had sales ranks on their books, and that suddenly their books weren't appearing in search results. Murmurs began on Twitter as authors posted their findings here and there, and consumers started posting about failed searches. Someone started using a hashtag to express their extreme dissatisfaction. Who knows what a hashtag is? [If you want to learn more about the power -- and fun -- of hashtags, go watch Baratunde Thurston's video, "There's A #Hashtag For That."]

That hashtag was #AmazonFAIL. ("fail" is a really fun snarky catchall word for "this sucks" events.) Because of that, people participating were able to track all of the related posts about Amazon. Within a few hours, enough information had been gathered to show the types of books that were being flagged: LGBT, feminist, and disability themed sex-positive books. They mysteriously received an "adult" flag while heteronormative sexual books, like Playboy calendars, and anti-gay screeds, remained untouched.

The flames fanned higher, and soon various "web celebrities" took up the cause, using their social capital and influence to share stories about books that were being, in effect, digitally banned. Not long after, several newspapers caught wind of the firestorm… the LA Times blogged the de-ranking Sunday.

The mob stormed the castle all day Sunday. By later that night — Easter Sunday, no less — Amazon was forced to make a statement in response. A spokesperson told Publisher's Weekly that the de-ranking problem was a "glitch," and that Amazon was looking into it.

Now, imagine the same scenario just 10 years ago. Amazon, even then, was a popular online retailer with a good amount of credibility. If a huge swath of books had been removed from the site in 1999, how would people have protested? It would have been through angry emails to the corporate offices. Perhaps op-eds might have been pitched to various newspapers, and over several days and weeks various civil rights groups might have gotten involved somehow. In short, everyday people would have had to rely on a slow-moving hierarchical system with lots of gatekeepers along the way deciding if this was a worthwhile issue.

Instead, in 2009, these voices slipped into the consciousness of the web, created a campaign without any organization or funding, and forced Amazon to respond within 12 hours. And to ice that cake, the mainstream media played catch-up in the following days, hoping to catch the scraps of the story. [Postscript was that Amazon said it was Amazon France's fault; they were updating the catalog over the weekend and accidentally flagged all these books. Which to me sounds a lot like "oh you guys, I totally have a girlfriend, she just lives in FRANCE." But whatever. I digress.]

You've learned about a ton of new tactics and strategies today. But one of the biggest things to understand is that something very fundamental has not changed at all about organizing. Before any organizing happens, online or offline, before you get your phonebanking, your petitions, your door-knocking, your lobby days, your email campaigns, your anything– change starts with stories. Our stories. Storytelling has been the most powerful building block for social change since the beginning of time… think about how long we've been sitting around the campfire! What these tools that you've spent all day hashing out do is give us unprecedented power to share our stories to many more people than we could have imagined.

What happens when you tell stories? Two very magical things: you build trust with other people in your network, and from there you build empathy. It's very important to note that I'm not talking about sympathy. Sympathy is where you feel bad for someone who's had something bad happen to them. Empathy is where you actually share in the emotions that other people have and express. It's a powerful, deeply primal experience.

The trust we create with one another on social networks is what fuels the empathetic response we have to one another, even if we don't know each other that well. That trust-created empathy is what will lead us away from the isolation, and thus apathy, that we've experienced as a culture in the last century's focus on mass communications and market demographics… siloing people and separating them. These technologies are all about connecting, engaging, sharing.

Your presence is required in this work: we need you here in the online social space. Desperately. We are confronting a tremendous opportunity to bring in voices previously marginalized or dismissed when it comes to shaping public conversations. But change won't happen on its own… it requires you to show up, and to participate. Tech will not solve our problems. We will solve our problems, using technology.

If you choose to sit this one out, though, there's a ripple effect caused by your void. Because you're not contributing to the larger, very public conversations about what's happening in the world and how problems should be solved, the conversation will go on without you. Others will be defining and directing the conversation without the benefit of your experiences and knowledge. Y'know, like what's been going on for most of us for the last few thousand years.

Here's the thing: Creating a just society is sort of like the evolution of species. If you have a bunch of the same DNA mixing together, the species mutates poorly and eventually dies off. But bring in variety — new strains of DNA — and you create a stronger species.  It's no different in idea generation. You get a bunch of the same people talking to each other and making the rules for a few millennia, and eventually you're going to end up with a lack of meaningful advancement.

It's time to bring fresh life into the conversations that we're having about social change, and sharing our stories are our strongest bets for doing so.

I think we can change the traditional power dynamics. In fact, I think you will change the traditional power dynamics. But it's not all shiny happy rainbows and butterflies, though.

We're living like fish in the water on the Internet right now: we don't know, or we're not willing to recognize, that we're soaking the social structures we've been living with for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. We're porting our understanding of the offline world… with all our prejudices, biases and hierarchies… onto the blank canvas of the Internet. Especially in spaces that are focused on relationships and social features, we have to be aware of this. Research like that of noted tech rockstar danah boyd shows that people self-segregate online–white people hang out with white people online, even tho, for example a Pew study showed that an African-American online is more likely to use Twitter than a white person online. A Harvard study showed us that men are twice as more likely to follow another man on Twitter, etc., even tho women make up more than have of all social networks' memberships. We've got to interrupt this pattern now, with conscious effort and action.

This is where the storytelling comes in. Lemme tell you another.

In the summer of 2009, a private country club in Philadelphia banned a group of African-American children from swimming in its pool, despite the fact that the kids' camp had paid for their swimming privileges. Capturing the public’s tremendous shock and outrage, comedian Elon James White, host of the popular web series “This Week in Blackness,” opened an episode with the words: "Hi, I'm broadcasting live from 1952…"

When I heard about the incident, I signed petitions, I passed the info along on Twitter and Facebook, and I talked about it with my friends, both online and off. As the dialogue continued, people started to share stories on social networks about the first time they had been discriminated against. I read story after unfiltered, unedited story, written by friends and people I barely knew. Each time, the stories were devastating; so was the fact that I hadn't heard them before.

I realized that without social media, I probably never would have heard those stories. Or, I might have heard one of them, isolated from others. Being white, I have never been the victim of racism, and since many of my friends are white, they haven't either. Prior to social media, I mostly likely wouldn't have ended up in the company of a group of people of color sharing their childhood discrimination stories so openly and honestly.

Social networks offer a huge potential for overlap between groups of people. Even though humans will always be drawn to others that they think are like them in one way or another, sharing powerful stories with one other has the potential to reach across social boundaries and create new kinds of safe spaces.

So yeah, we'll always look for people who are like us, but we'll never be able to isolate ourselves completely from those who are different from us. Social media tools make it easier than ever to dip in and out of social circles. In that space of relatively pressure-free exploration is where the overlap can start to occur.

In the case of sharing stories of childhood discrimination, there was an assumed level of safety through the trust and empathy we had established with one another. I trusted the people I follow on Twitter, and in turn, they trusted me to listen.

I received an education that day. It's one thing to read stories in the newspaper and get upset; it's an entirely different, deeper experience to read friends and colleagues sharing intimate, painful, raw moments in real time. Those shared moments left me feeling not just more passionate about addressing racism, but also more willing to hear what’s being said when I need to listen.

Change does not, and will not, happen in isolation or on an individual basis… we need each other to produce results. As we start to explore with social media, we have the potential to deepen our understanding of one another's life experiences, and in turn, ourselves. Telling our stories in real, authentic ways becomes critical to moving others toward progress and change.

So! To sum up some takeaways for you all:

1. Organizers: you are not reaching everyone if you are just going to the most popular social network of the moment.
2. Don't forget that you bring bias to the table. When you enter a space that doesn't have formal structure, like a lot of the Internet, our own biases will take over.
3. Your stories matter. The stories of your community members matter even more. I hereby knight you with an ambassadorship to a more democratic future. Do you choose to accept this mission?

Thank you!

So! An early New Year’s resolution: I’m gonna try to get on the ball for next year. Already thinking of SXSW, Allied Media Conference, US Social Forum, Personal Democracy Forum, Women Who Tech, America’s Future Now, NonProfit 2.0, NTEN and more; what do you recommend in the social tech, media, politics, activism, and social justice fields? Conferences & unconferences, big ‘n’ small. Leave ‘em in the comments (links to conferences would be helpful), and I’ll publish a big list in the next few days.

Also, I’m doing a series of “Yeah, But…” sidebars to help answer questions. What are your “yeah, buts”?

Here are the fears and yeah-buts I’ve heard most (in no particular order):

• I don’t want people to know about my private life
• I like using social networks to maintain my personal relationships, but I don’t like blending the professional stuff in with it
• I feel like I have to get everything right/perfect before I join an online conversation (most often with blogging)
• I don’t have time for any of this stuff.
• Yeah but… the corporations/government are gathering so much info about us.
• … everything moves too fast. I can’t keep up.
• … media/journalism require money/investment. Social networks can’t replace that.
• … these social networks are all closed/walled gardens. Why don’t we all do something open source?

Maybe one more question, for intermediate and advanced folks: If you could look back at your pre-social-networking self and offer one piece of insight or wisdom, what would it be? Is there anything you wish you’d known before you joined into social networks?

Leave everything in the comments below; I’ll let yous know which ones make it into the draft and the final versions of the book.

I griped a little yesterday about this, and Elana over at Wellstone Action asked me what advice I’d give candidates running for office. Here’s a quick, handy-dandy list of pointers for candidates, from the position of a voter:

• Talk with me, not to me. Twitter is a media platform for conversation, not broadcast. A rule of thumb that’s used for organizations also applies to candidates: only about 20-30% of your tweets should be about you. The rest should be about what your community cares about. Which leads me to…
• Find out what your community cares about. Read what your followers are tweeting and respond with helpful information. It doesn’t just have to be related to the office you’re running for, either… in fact, it’s better if you mix it up a little. For example, someone you follow tweets about heading to a restaurant you love. Respond and say you go there often, too, and be sure to try the blackened sea bass.
• Stay on top of hot topics. Look for people talking about issues you care about with Twitter search. You can either save them as saved search in your Twitter app (Tweetie, Tweetdeck, Twitterific, etc.), or as an RSS feed for your news reader (Google Reader, Netvibes, etc.) Then respond to those tweets, even if you’re not following each other.
• Give back to the community. Retweeting others’ ideas and suggestions is a great way to show appreciation, and to spead the good word.
• Use your own, authentic voice, not a press release voice. I’m a voter, a human, and I want you to be a human too. Robots don’t do so well in the voting booth.
• If you don’t have time, assign a staff person to monitor and respond to items — just make sure they’re clear that they’re your staff person, and not you. For example, NYC mayoral candidate Reverend Billy Talen has a personal account, as well as his campaign staff’s group account. If your staff person uses your account, ask them to note that they’re a staffer.

In short, act like a normal person who cares about the people around them, because we know you do!

–

Note: Bill de Blasio was the only public advocate candidate who responded to my gripe, and he gets extra Twitter points for both that and at least retweeting people once in a while. Go Bill!

This is probably most unemployed people’s worst nightmares, especially given the scarcity of jobs within certain industries and overall economic climate. I can get denied because I had a couple of drinks with friends on Saturday night? Here’s the breakdown of what can evidently keep you from getting hired:

• Provocative or inappropriate photos or info–53%
• Drinking or drug use–44%
• Bad-mouthing previous employee, colleague or client–35%
• Poor communication skills–29%
• Discriminatory comments–26%
• Lied about qualifications–24%
• Leaked confidential info from previous job–20%

As FC’s Kit Eaton points out, I can definitely understand a couple of those. Lying = not okay. Leaking = not okay. Discriminatory comments, while fairly grey here = probably not okay.

The bigger issue with studies like this are the potentially limiting effect that our social network activity is having on changing the culture around us. In a big section of the book I’m writing right now, Share This!, I talk about the huge potential for the overlap between different spheres of our lives to fundamentally change the expectations we have of one another (especially when it comes to gender, race, sexuality, class, etc.), and shift our culture towards values of trust, empathy and shared purpose. The portraits we are creating of ourselves online are fundamentally political and radical. With our participation on social networks, we’re saying, “This is what it’s like to be a person in these shoes.”

What’s emerging is a trend towards more authenticity as we become more transparent about different parts of our lives. It’s not a requirement (or even desirable) to reveal every last tidbit of ourselves, but more an opportunity to share what previously might not be acceptable in different parts of our lives. We belong to numerous social circles Æ’¡" jobs, politics, neighborhoods, hobbies, sports, religions Æ’¡" and now that everyone’s lives are overlapping, the sharing is happening with all of us at the same time.

Sure, there’s a line you have to draw with what you share– there are countless stories now about Facebook getting you fired or evicted, and many of them are within reason (i.e., you set fire to your apartment and you post pictures to your Wall… um, yeah, that’s going to go get you in trouble). As for the more mundane and average parts of our lives? I say the more we can share, the better. (And here are some thoughts about what to share for those just getting started.)

Employers that don’t value this kind of additional information about candidates are setting themselves up for failure in a world that’s becoming increasingly reliant on reputation and recommendations. For one, candidates that aren’t out there establishing their expertise and building their social capital with these tools are going to fall light years behind, skill-set-wise, those who are. Additionally, it’s a rare window into more of a candidate’s personality than what gets presented in an old-school style interview, and employers can see who might match and who might not.

If companies expect us to hide parts of ourselves from semi-public view, it could have a chilling effect on people who are using social networks and media to explore and present identities that are not culturally accepted, or at least roles that aren’t traditional. Could this mean that LGBT lawyers have to re-closet themselves to get hired by a power firm? Or that stay-at-home parents, mostly moms, have to gloss over the fact even more that they’ve been out of the workforce when trying to return? This is dangerous and potentially damaging to the positive, personal-is-political force in motion right now: This is who we are, and we’re here to stay.

In the end, companies are going to have to change the way that they view the information they find on social networks. Ten years ago, a Google search that turned up some TMI might be cause for alarm. But now, especially as younger generations are swimming in all kinds of online social networks, can a company freak out over “inappropriate info,” whatever that is?

Who, exactly, are they going to hire?