“One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.”

What do OneWebDay and BlogActionDay.org have in common? Power in numbers!

Once a year, bloggers from around the world come together to write about a single issue.

This year’s cause is “Poverty.”

You can join the many folks who have already registered their blogs at BlogActionDay.org.

Even if you don’t have a blog, you can help promote this collaborative project. See their Promotion page to learn how.

Mark your calendars — Blog Action Day is October 15, 2008.

By MARK A. HART

Special to the Tribune

Published: September 20, 2008

Seven months ago I needed my teenage son to explain YouTube to me. Now I’m not only appearing on YouTube but also writing proposals for others to do so.

So it is with a sense of bemusement that I anticipate the third annual OneWebDay on Monday, touted by Internet activists as akin to an Earth Day celebration focusing on the impact the Web has had on participatory democracy.

Much like the advent of cable TV in the 1980s brought us public, educational and government stations, the Internet is vastly expanding the amount of public information available to ordinary citizens.

As a former newsman, I find the way digital technology is eroding some of the revenue base for traditional journalism alarming.

However, it’s hard to argue with millions using e-mail to contact Congress, activists using social network sites like Facebook to organize rallies and raise money for causes, and 175,000 new blogs being created daily.

It’s new media, not news media, provided the public can get it.

For example, the Federal Communications Commission recently sanctioned Comcast for blocking traffic sent over its network via a program frequently used to share video.

Meantime, telecom companies make no secret of their plans to create fast and slow lanes on the Internet, steering the public towards their preferred Web sites. Likely left behind will be those on low incomes, rural communities and the elderly.

So mark OneWebDay by e-mailing Congress and the FCC to bridge the digital divide and ensure Internet freedom.

Mark A. Hart is statewide organizer for the Florida Media Coalition. The pro-media advocacy group is based in Tampa.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/sep/20/na-ask-for-internet-freedom-on-third-onewebday/

If it can be said that there’s a theme running through this OneWebDay celebration this year, it’s “let’s actually use this thing to change the world,” as OWD founder Susan Crawford put it to me this afternoon in New York City’s Washington Square Park where just under a hundred or so people gathered to celebrate the global network. Praising the seemingly useless iPhone beer app, Harvard Law School’s Jon Zittrain joked that he saw OWD as the “celebration of the fertile crap” the Internet produces — crap that fertilizes the web’s “goodness” without much caring which is which. That’s long been the web ethos: let’s throw everything we’ve got to the wall and see what sticks.

See the full text at techPresident

Vint Cerf posted the following blogworthy comment on another post:

Congratulations to celebrants of OneWebDay! Depending on how you count, Internet has been around operationally since at least January 1983 and for Bob Kahn since early 1973 and for me a bit later when he asked me to help figure out what open networking might look like. September is a significant month for the Internet. The first paper on the idea was presented in September 1973 at the University of Sussex and a more refined version published in May 1974. Thanks to the invention of the WWW, the net has become a major nexus for about 20% of the world’s population.

Susan Crawford asked for anecdotes. Here’s mine.

Last year, my wife and I went on a brief vacation that included houseboating on Lake Powell near Page, Arizona. As we approached Page, we and our friends began to discuss what meals we should plan while on the lake. Since there are no grocery stores on the lake, we needed to purchase all the food we would need before departing from the marina. Someone asked if we could make paella. I love paella but I thought “Gee, that needs saffron. Where are we going to find saffron in Page, Arizona?” So I hauled out my trusty BlackBerry and found I had a good GPRS signal so went to the Google home page and typed in “saffron, page arizona, grocery store.” Several choices came up so I picked one and called the telephone number. A voice answered and I asked “May I speak to the spice department please?” This was probably the owner on the line, “This is the spice department,” he said.  ”Do you have any saffron?” I asked. “I dunno but I’ll check” he replied and soon came back to confirm that he had the spice on the shelf. We followed the map on the web page to the store and I dashed in to purchase $12.99 worth of saffron (.06 ounces). What struck me later was that this was a perfect example of the value of geographically indexed information. In real time, my browser on my mobile was my window into knowledge about the local area. I got information when I needed it about what I needed. It reinforced my appreciation for being able to get useful information as required. Someone had take the trouble to share this information and I took advantage of it. So it goes as the world shares its knowledge and the search companies help us all to find it.

Here’s a report on the OWD event in Melbourne.  To see video, view the original post here.

Posted 23 September 2008 at 18:50

As part of One Web Day, the City of Melbourne held a breakfast event above the Eureka Skydeck to share the experiences of the innovative, participatory consultation process used to develop the Future Melbourne Community Plan. Additionally, City of Melbourne Lord Mayor, John So, also contributed this blog post as the 55th ambassador to One Web Day - this post also appears on the One Web Day site.

Appearances - Andrew Gill (MC), Councillor David Wilson, Keynote: Dr Mark Elliott, Director, Collabforge

Panel discussion - Geoff Lawler, Director Sustainability & Regulatory Services, City of Melbourne, Paul Rees-Jones, Manager Planning Insights, Clemenger BBDO, Dr Mark Elliott, Director, Collabforge

Part 1 - MC’s welcome, City of Melbourne representative address (Councillor David Wilson).

Part 2 - Key note speaker address, Dr Mark Elliott.

Part 3 - Panel discussion and questions to the panellists.

Students enrolled in Janna Anderson’s Reporting course in Elon University’s School of Communications were asked to write a short piece about the Web’s influence for them, personally, and to also shoot and post a short YouTube video with the content.  Five of these pieces were used in the print edition of the Greensboro News & Record Sunday September 21, along with a few other submissions in response to Ms. Anderson’s earlier appeal in an op-ed column to News & Record readers to share their Web stories.  The stories and YouTube links will be published intermittently on the OneWebDay stories blog.

Thanks to Spot.Us for participating in OWD.  Here’s an exciting update from their mailing list.

Hello all!!

Once again: We are still celebrating the HUGE victory of raising $2,500 from 74 contributors. The money is being used now to hire reporters who will fact-check political advertising for the upcoming SF election!

Today we are publishing the SECOND article in the series. It is no coincidence that we are publishing it on One Web Day. We recognize that this reporting would never have been funded without the web. So… thanks inter-tubes!!!!

The two reports we’ve already produced can be read now.

• Invasion of the Policy Pushers: http://blog.spot.us/2008/09/09/sf-election-truthiness-first-article-invasion-of-the-policy-pushers/
• A breakdown of all 22 propositions on this year’s SF ballot: http://blog.spot.us/2008/09/21/san-francisco-…ons-for-nov-08san-francisco-voter-propositions-for-nov-08/

Expect a third report later this week!!

We are also very happy to announce that two print organizations have approached us about re-purposing our content for their publications. This would mean that our reporting will be read by more people - furthering our goal of informing the local community before we hit the polls.

Moving forward!!!!!

The editorial team have had conversations in the last few days about pacing
these stories. We have been increasingly convinced that we’ve got to stay focused on our original mandate, which is to scrutinize ads. A regular schedule is less important if it means we will miss the ad deluge later on. We want to attack these ads opportunistically, as they come into our mailboxes. So please, save all your SF political fliers between now and Election Day and share them with us. Also, if you hear or see ads on broadcast, alert us, and we’ll try to hunt down copies.

Finally: Want to give even more? (because you are just soooo cool)

Our fourth and final pre-alpha spot.us pitch is 27% funded. We only need to find 29 more people to donate $25 each. This investigation will look into how cities in the Bay Area are planning to cope with the increase in retired people as the baby boom generation creeps into the golden years. Smart planning now could avert a public health disaster and other issues in the future.

Your donation of $25 can enable this reporting. Learn more and take action:

The Longevity Revolution: http://wiki.spot.us/longevity

Sincerely,
David Cohn
Spot.Us

Our 55th ambassador is Lord Mayor John So of Melbourne, Australia.  He writes about the Future Melbourne project, an innovative experiment in online participation in democracy at the city level.  See the post it in its original context here.

Lord Mayor John So

We are extremely proud and excited at the City of Melbourne to be involved with One Web Day 2008. As an OWD ambassador, it is an honour to be publishing this blog on the eve of what will be a series of events around the globe to celebrate the empowering nature of the internet. I’ve watched with interest as this year’s list of participating cities and countries has grown over recent months. To commemorate this year’s event the City of Melbourne will host a breakfast for invited government and industry representatives where speakers will discuss the innovative, participatory consultation process used to develop the Future Melbourne Community Plan. In hosting our event we hope to inspire other organisations to follow in our footsteps.

This year’s One Web Day theme of ‘online participation in democracy’ is closely tied with our use of wiki technology, a key component in finalising the Future Melbourne Draft Community Plan. We believe the decision to use a wiki to enable anybody to read, discuss and directly edit the plan represents a world-first on this scale and a significant step towards participatory governance. We hope others will be interested in what we’ve been able to achieve. Read on and see what you think.

Our decision to use a wiki was initially driven by the desire to engage more closely with the residents and users of the city and to also utilise wider knowledge networks than ever before. The Future Melbourne model involved a wide array of authors from both within and outside the City of Melbourne who could each provide unique knowledge and ideas. The possibilities of the wiki technology allowed these authors to collaboratively develop the draft plan.

The decision to enable public editing flowed naturally after settling on the wiki platform. Directly and creatively engaging the city’s residents, workers, students and visitors in the plan’s development was an essential requirement driving the project’s success. Enabling direct participation can accelerate public ‘ownership’ of a plan and thereby increase its likelihood of long-term success. In other words, when someone takes an active role in creation, this investment tends to stimulate greater affinity and concern for the outcome.

So what were the results?
Well, during the formal consultation period we witnessed a tangible contribution from a wide cross section of the community. Between 17 May and 14 June 2008, the Future Melbourne site received more than 30 000 page views by nearly 7 000 individuals. More than 200 edits were undertaken to the plan by members of the public. These spanned the spectrum from corrections of spelling and grammar through to extensive well-considered contributions on the future of the city. When compared to traditional consultation programs which often involve town hall meetings and hard copy documents, we were extremely happy with the level of accessibility and interest in the plan stimulated by the wiki and the sustainability of the process.

Interestingly, during the four-week consultation period the site did not receive a single incident of spam, off-topic posting or offensive content. We were pleasantly surprised that we did not need to refer to the legal safety net of our Terms and Conditions. This was perhaps because the consultation period was not simply a case of City of Melbourne leaving the front door open before heading off on a four-week holiday—so to speak. Instead, council officers were actively editing and engaging with wiki participants throughout the consultation period. People were able to learn from experts by discussing and witnessing the real-time incorporation of their contributions into the plan.

Perhaps most exciting about the process was the possibility to draw upon a global pool of knowledge. We saw registered users from Nepal to New Zealand and India to Indonesia. It’s true that many of the challenges we face as a city today are global challenges also being experienced in many other cities around the world. The potential to collaborate on this scale with those who possess specialised knowledge and ideas opens exciting new horizons for city planning.

While the Future Melbourne wiki was a major tool in the public consultation period, it’s important to also note it was just one of many tools. We were careful to ensure that traditional opportunities for engagement were also available for those not able, or not willing, to participate online. These included face-to-face Question and Answer sessions with the public, a variety of public forums, opportunities for written submissions and distribution of hard copies of the plan to local libraries and community centres. Since June 2007, more than 15 000 people have been consulted in some way, shape or form as part of the Future Melbourne project.

The next step for us will be an in-depth review of the wiki consultation process involving interviews with wiki participants as well as extensive quantitative analysis. A decision is yet to be made on future applications of the technology.

The City of Melbourne prides itself as a progressive organisation, intent on embracing world’s best practice and indeed, leading the development of best practice. We’ve demonstrated that direct and open public participation in policy development is achievable. We now hope other organisations will feel empowered to take the next step and we challenge them to follow our lead.

From all of us at the City of Melbourne, have a great One Web Day 2008.

Lord Mayor John So