My friend, former boss, current volunteer team member, and local blogger Doug Lacombe wrote a great piece for techvibes.com about his recent trip up to Red Deer to see Michael Geist speak at Red Deer College.
Dr. Geist’s Fair Copyright for Canada still serves as the best example of Canadian internet-organized opposition and activism related to a specific issue: the lack of provisions protecting consumers rights in the now defeated Bill C-61. Although I’m a member of Fair Copyright for Canada, I think the most interesting of part of Dr. Geist’s story is the rise of effective internet-organized activism itself as a phenomenon.
As Doug put it:
The rise of digital advocacy has been meteoric, to say the least. Web 2.0 or “social media” applications such as blogs and Wikis, Facebook, MySpace and now Twitter have given the power to organize and mobilize to the masses. It’s simply easier and more efficient to find people of like-mind and take action.
In other words, as the internet and social media tools proliferate, the transactional cost of organizing like-minded people into groups begins to approach zero. Getting those people to come out in the real world and “take action” on issues they care about is the real potential of the exponentially growing social web and what Ken Kowalski is worried about:
- Barack Obama understood that creating meaningful connections through any and every communications medium would produce results on Novermber 4th 2008.
- Local #yyc (i.e. Calgary) twitter users understand it in their (our) frequent meet ups, like Demo Camp or Third Tuesday Calgary (which I help organize.)
- The site meetup.com is a social media site with the specific goal of migrating connections and relationships made on the web into the real world.
Doug and I understand the power of these mediums too. That’s why we’re working together to get Calgary Reads, a local non-profit organization dedicated to helping struggling grade
two readers, set up in the social media world (Facebook, CR Blog, Twitter) with the goal of helping them promote their annual CBC-Calgary Reads Book Sale fundraiser on May 1-3 . </shamless_plug>
Check out Doug’s Blog: blinking12.ca - social media for the VCR generation
