@Organizing 2.0

(Reposted as part of our staff picks from 2009, originally written by Will Urquhart on 12/10/2009)

Last weekend, I attended the Organizing 2.0 conference in New York, put together by Charles Lenchner of the Working Families Party. This conference brought people together to hear from some of the greatest minds in the online organizing world. I came out of it with lots of great footage, and today we are previewing some of it. The majority of the footage, however, will be featured in our Training Tuesday series. So check back Tuesday at 6:00pm for more Organizing 2.0 footage. We are also collecting all our Organizing 2.0 footage onto one page here. But if you are reading this, then you really should find the time to watch these videos.

Whether you've been actively engaged in fighting the good fights online for years, or you are simply a lurker who visits from time to time to read, your intimate knowledge of the workings of the blogosphere makes you a valuable resource for candidates and organizations. This is a quality that is rather unique. As deeply entrenched as the online world may feel, online organizing is still brand new. You can think of it like this, Organizing 2.0 is still in beta format, and it is open source so people all over the world can develop new and exciting features.

The people you will hear from in the videos below, and the many to come over the coming Training Tuesdays, are about as experienced as we can get. They will provide you with many helpful tips and share some of their best practices.

Ari Melber, of The Nation, gave the opening speech:


That was followed by a conversation between Ari Melber and Nancy Scola, of the Personal Democracy Forum:


The last two videos we have for you today are the closing remarks. First, we have Dan Cantor, the Executive Director of the Working Families Party:


And the closing speech, or keynote address if you will, was given by Deanna Zandt, the author of "Share This!":


That's all for today, but check back at 6:00pm Tuesday for our running series of Training Tuesdays when we will introduce our first round of Organizing 2.0 panel coverage!

If you want to read more about the Organizing 2.0 Conference, check out these links:
DeannaZandt.com: Talk: How Sharing and Storytelling Will Change the World
Peoplesworld.com: Labor & community activists coverge @Organizing2.0 (the inspiration for my title, credit where credit is due)
Sum of Change: Musings on Ari Melber's Speech and the State of TV News
Ari Melber: Obama Campaign Organizing & New Media: Presentation to Organizing 2.0 Summit
theCoup.org: Writing for your Digital Audience