Well, it’s another Sunday, and another Blog Worker’s Industrial Union & Benevolent Society diary. You’ll notice a slightly different feel to the breeze today, as Stranded Wind has stepped in to author this piece.
There’s been a lot of talk in the air about organizing on a human plane lately and the diary Devilstower did this morning put a fine point on it; it’s human vs. corporations now and they’re way ahead of us. The energy to do something is present, unions have a long history of organizing, but those of us operating virtually have different skills, different resources, and dramatically different requirements and objectives.
I’ve been thinking about this for years, triggered in part by author Bruce Sterling’s fine political thriller Distraction. We have to understand reputation economics a bit if we’re going to actually accomplish anything, and then we need some infrastructure
I’ve written at length about reputation economics here and here. Briefly, what you used to get by knowing your neighbors and them knowing you is now connected to your identity(s) in cyberspace. Think Ebay feedback and your mojo here – those are two common examples.
Infrastructure for a blogger’s union? Well, DailyKos is a pretty good start. It’s got an engaging flow of information, reputation economics (coffee & donuts, anyone?), and the users are involved and committed. There is some organization, but it’s customary, and the site is insular. You’re here for the newly hatched Sunday night union diary because you noticed that Spedwybabs was involved (reputation) and I bet there are other things you ‘do’ on a regular basis.
Oh, and I bet one of those things is …pooties! I reported on these guys before their eyes were open and they’re now sassy adolescents. Babs told me I had to have pooties in this – here are Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and Luna Lovegood.
and of course woozles too...
this is Sadie with Maxie in the background...they live in Florida
OK, now that you’ve got your pootie and woozle pr0n fix, let’s get back to work!
So DailyKos is a foundation for like minded folk – there are multiple, overlapping communities of practice. But think about the interface to the outside world. Let’s take the work nyceve and slinkerwink do as an example. There are action diaries – call this Congresscritter, send that email, do a fax if you can. No issue burns brighter for this community, but how can they tell if people are actually taking action? They can’t, at least not in a deterministic fashion.
I’d like to build some infrastructure for them and in general we need some better means of bringing the power and passions of DailyKos outside these orange walls (because DKos is insular). Babs and I are actually equipped to do that – I’ve got a computer science background and her studies were in communication theory. We called in Larry Bruce, who has a background in running big media and messaging campaigns, and I’m playing phone tag with Chris Dykstra from Zanby.com, whom I met at Netroots Nation 2009. They build community stuff now, they’re not doing anything yet with Twitter, and we’re hoping they’ll collaborate with us – they doing the development and us (that’s you, union members!) working on the specifications, design, and ongoing testing of the product.
And that first product is going to be a Twitter Amplifier. How it’ll work is pretty simple:
You’ll get yourself a Twitter account. You’ll sign up somewhere (not built yet), and then whenever you’re at the computer you’ll leave a browser tab open with a Javascript application running. Every time someone important Tweets your browser will notice and retweet the message using your Twitter ID.
Ah, but who is important? Well, we already have one DKos front pager who spends a lot of time working with Twitter – Plutonium Page. Would you be cool with it if we get this thing built and then have it amplify the front pagers? What about having a committee (of union members, of course!) who’d help pick what was important, then Spedwybabs and Larry would help craft the messaging so it would hit the target groups? Would you write and submit your own supporting Tweets, let someone look them over, and then have them go into the queue to be amplified?
As a first step let’s see who is serious about this. Get a Twitter account if you don’t already have one, then follow both Spedwybabs and Stranded Wind and BWIUBS. Once you’ve got that done, take the URL of this story, go to TRIM and shorten it, then send a tweet using it. Here is an example of a Tweet I recently sent about the union:
Writing about Reputation Economics http://tr.im/... for Blog Worker's Industrial Union & Benevolent Society diary 21:00 EST #bwiuBS <http://twitter.com/search?q=%23bwiuBS>
OK, once you send your Tweet please leave a comment and include the link.