This year's Grassroots Use of Technology Conference will feature a presentation by Emerson College Professor Paul Niwa on his work on the BostonChinaTown.org project.

What if the media viewed urban communities in a more holistic way? Instead of presenting a polarized community with one side for and another against this or that issue, what if it was able to capture the nuances and connections between residents, organizers and activists? Would stories be different?

The Organizers Collaborative is proud to announce that Nick Jehlen of Action Mill will be joining us this year on June 28 to draw lessons from his recent work on the Winter Soldier campaign organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War. Visit our Presenter Bios page for more information.

The 2008 conference themes--making technology relevant to communities, online politics 2008, uniting movements for social justice--come together under the heading, "Connecting, Collaborating and Communicating" ...with each other, with our constituents and with a wider audience as we work to spread our messages of social change out to the public. This year we expect 150 participants. The deadline is for preliminary proposals is Monday, April 28, 2008.

“Economic Analysis, Elitism or Ignorance?”
by
Mary Lynn Cramer, BA, MA, MSW, LICSW

This week, the Sunlight Foundation unveiled our draft of what could become model transparency legislation -- the Transparency In Government Act of 2008. Here's the twist: Instead of immediately approaching lawmakers to sponsor the bill,
the Foundation decided to first post the bill online at http://PublicMarkup.org in order to solicit public input to further shape, refine and edit the bill.

Participate in this collaboration. You don't have to be an expert. Just tell them what you like, and what you think about what they have drafted.

Developing this model bill via PublicMarkup.org offers an exciting opportunity to experiment with collaborative bill-drafting online. In addition, they hope the public evaluation of the draft bill will increase attention to the critically important issue of transparent government. Our hope is that the final product can be used as a model for transparent government.

After months of development and testing by a few dozen folks, Open Media Boston, the new progressive news, views and arts web portal, has just launched and is now ready for your participation. Please check us out today at http://www.openmediaboston.org!

The Basics

Aiming to cover Boston's community, political and arts scenes using a balance of social media (anyone can publish to our Open Forum) and editorial control (we have an edited front page), OMB is easy to use. See the basic instructions below this message for more information, or just follow the instructions throughout the website.