We have a bunch of great webinars lined this month.

RSVP here

Salsa 101 - List Management & Email Blasting: May 14, 4-5pm

Engaging Your Supporters - Donations & Events: May 15, 1-2pm

Making Change Happen - Online Advocacy: May 19, 3-4pm

Spicing up Salsa - Progamming in Sasla Script: May 21, 3-4pm

List Management Basics: May 23, 2-2:30pm

Email Basics: May 26, 2008, 2-2:30pm

Live Salsa Training & Webinar: May 29, 3-5:30pm

All times are Eastern.

Hope you can make the one of these.

Salsa automatically generates a secure URL for pages involving monetary transactions - donations, paid events, storefronts, etc.  However, just because those pages' URLs begin with "https://" doesn't mean they are secure - if you are loading nonsecure files or images anywhere on the "secure" page, the whole page will become nonsecure.  This manifests through a "broken" lock symbol in Firefox, and through pop-ups or other warnings in IE. You don't want potential donors or supporters scared away because they think their transactions won't be secure - so what you can do?

1.  Find out which template your nonsecure-soon-to-be-secure page is using.  You can do this by looking at  the number after the /t/ in the page's URL - this is the template key - or checking  which template is highlighted on Step 1 of your page creation workflow.  If no template is highlighted or there is no /t/ in your URL, you're using your site's default template. To see a list of your templates, go to dashboard -> manage templates.

2. Open up the offending template (edit) and search for "http://" in the template code.  This will help you find all nonsecure files and images your template is loading.  Any one of these will cause your entire template (and any page loading that template) to not be secure.  You can ignore anything that begins with a href="http://..." - these are just links to external sites and won't affect your page's or template's security.

3.  Download all these nonsecure files and images onto your local machine, and upload them to your secure Salsa images directory (website features -> photos/images -> list/upload images).  Click on the newly uploaded files and images to get their new, secure Salsa URL, and replace the old "http://..." URLs in your template code with the new, secure Salsa URLs.

4.  If there aren't any further nonsecure files or images being loaded through your template, your donation/paid event/storefront page should now be secure, and ready to go!  If there are, repeat until you've got them all.

Things to Note

1. Offending files are not just images (.jpg, .gif, .png), but also javascript or other external script files (.js, .css, etc).  Don't just search for one kind of file - search for ALL http:// URLs for potential malefactors.

2. If you are sure that your template is secure but the page calling it still isn't, view the source of the nonsecure page and do a search for "http://".  It's possible that the content of the page itself is loading a nonsecure file or image.  If it is, follow the steps below to upload it to secure link and replace the nonsecure URL.

3. You might occasionally get complaints from IE users that even secure pages are triggering certain security warnings in IE.  The most common of these warnings can be avoided by making sure your secure pages also redirect to secure pages upon submission.  If you don't have an appropriate secure thank you page handy, you can take care of this by not specifying an external redirect path and just letting your page redirect to the default secure thank you page Salsa provides.

Last Thursday, workers and immigrants made a unified call for social justice in honor of May Day. By refusing to work, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union shut down all 29 West Coast ports to call for an end to the war in Iraq. And throughout the day, anti-war and pro-immigrant marches broke out all over San Francisco.

Later that day, I took my video camera out to the Castro, San Francisco's gay neighborhood, to ask people how they felt about these issues, and to challenge the Human Rights Campaign for its recent endorsement of pro-war Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who is running against anti-war and LGBT ally Tom Allen.

It's that time of year - What to get mother!

As you all know, Mother's Day is this Sunday, May 11. If your mom is like mine, she'll say, "oh, you don't need to get me something, a card will do." This is simply a test so see how well I know her. All hell would break loose if I didn't get her something on Mother's Day.

Here are few gift-giving ideas from our member groups. Also consider donating to these groups, or other DIA member groups , on behalf of mom.

- For the hip, feminist mom (Bueller.... Bueller) check out the Feminists Majority Store.

- For the mom that LOVES democracy, necklaces or belt buckles from check out Mainstreet Moms.

- Find a huge variety of items through West Virginia Free.

- Send a Mothers Day card via MomsRising, (followed by a gift of course).

- New mothers will LOVE the stylish shirts, bags and mugs brought to you by MomsRising.

- Fair trade gifts are always a hit and will benefit Women Thrive Worldwide.

For the mom who doesn't need stuff, is pure of heart, or you simply can't please, consider a gift membership from the Women's Learning Partnership, the Women's Funding Network, or WomenInBalance .

If none of these really work, go for the old stand by, single origin chocolate, from Missoula based
Posh Chocolate.. These chocolates really are the best in the West.

Hope this helps!

(so start thinking about your mobile strategy)

That’s right, more Americans in 2007 said it would be harder to give up their cell phone over, well just about anything that truly matters, including internet, TV, landline telephone or watching the Office.

Those who say it would be very hard to give up:
Cell phone 51%
Internet 45
Television 43
Landline telephone 40
Email 37

The study, called
Mobile Access to Data and Information, also concluded that “62% of all Americans are part of a wireless, mobile population that participates in digital activities away from home or work”. Texting was the most popular activity.

If your group works with Hispanics or young adults, you’ll especially want to consider how a mobile phone strategy could benefit your mission. The study showed that English speaking Hispanics and young adults are by far leading the way with handheld mobile devices.

What this means for activists is that you might want to put this on the “to-do” list next year and integrate your mobile messaging into your campaign strategy, website and CRM. A great resource is on this subject is MobileActive

If your organization isn't dialed into a mStrategy, don’t worry, most organizations aren’t for a number of reason including expense and technology. This will soon change, so be prepared by reading the following “Do’s and Don’ts of mAdvocacy”

Or just listen to this great panel from the WomenWhoTech teleconference: Mobile Activism - How can we use mobile technology to fight for social justice issues and raise money for organizations?

The following podcasts are now available at WomenWhoTech

Check it out!

* Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling
* Get Your Local Campaigns On!
* Tooting Your Own Horn
* Build an Online Campaign and Change the World
* Women and Social Capital
* Firing Up Your Online List
* Women and Open Source
* Improve This Blog Pitch
* Mobile Activism
* Web 2.0: Hot or Not?

This is from an article posted by NTEN. It's a distillation of the panel I led at the NTC this year. Attending the NTC was loads of fun and well worth it - see you there next year, I hope!

See full version here:

http://nten.org/blog/2008/04/22/mission-over-membership-in-online-advocacy

Online advocacy at its best is about giving more citizens more power to act together in creating social change. At its worst, online advocacy is a fundraising technique and promotional strategy that can work, while generating some very negative inadvertent outcomes. Organizers working for the common good should do a better job of articulating good online advocacy strategies and resisting demands that our work be measured in dollars raised or a higher public profile.

What we have at stake is not (just) the integrity of our cause or organization, but the effectiveness of our mission. Good organizing is like voting: it always has power, even after the 20th time. Bad organizing is like spam: today’s Viagra message is far less likely to get you to buy some, even though there is more of it out there than ever before.

The conflict between the different ends of the online advocacy spectrum can be captured in a phrase: Mission over Membership.

When we focus on mission, we can sleep well at night, knowing that the actions we request from our supporters will in fact lead to the change we want effected. If on the other hand we use the language of change primarily in support of fundraising and organization building, we run a serious risk: that online advocacy messaging becomes devalued, along with emails from our organizations.

There's more -

http://nten.org/blog/2008/04/22/mission-over-membership-in-online-advocacy

I'm not posting the full article here, so that readers will visit NTEN's site and comment there.

• What Everyone Should Know About Blog Depression
  a nonist public service pamphlet

• The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It
• The Nonprofit Profession Lost Out in 'Oprah's Big Give'
  The show ended up featuring amateur and embarrassing efforts at giving. It passed off as entertainment people wasting thousands of dollars of donated money and did little to help the American public learn what it really takes to change the lives of other
• Fundraising Secret #17: Ask everyone for planned gifts
  Asking for planned gifts doesn’t have to be rocket science. And we don’t have to be estate attorneys. We just need to consistently invite people to talk to their advisors about their estate planning.
• Donation Dashboard 1.0
  Donation Dashboard uses a collaborative filtering algorithm called Eigentaste to recommend a donation portfolio to you.
• Say NO gracefully
• Google AdWords for Nonprofits: 10 Tips About Keywords

• Mobile websites creator - Wirenode
  Build your own mobile web in 5 minutes.
• Leveraging the Real Power of Social Networking
  "You have to meet people where people are, engage, and build up social capital."
• Make it Easy for Bloggers to Cover Your Org
  Just do what the We Campaign(WC) does in its online press room, a model for nonprofit press outreach.

This week's photo comes from a protest against "the new imperialist", China, in London. Protesters demand justice for Tibet and focus on the new Olympic games.

China holds unrivaled influence with the genocidal regime in Sudan. China must immediately use that influence to persuade the Sudanese government to allow a full and robust civilian protection force into Darfur.

If China does not act, in its role as Olympic host and world leader, Beijing will go down in history as the host of the "Genocide Olympics": China will be sponsoring the Olympic Games at home and the genocide in Darfur -- in which it is complicit -- abroad.

Check out what you can do to help at DreamforDarfur.org

• Firefox Extensions for Web Workers
• Doing Well by Doing Good?: A Report on Work Satisfaction in Civil Society
• Testifying @ FCC @ Stanford
• Oklahoma Leaks Tens of Thousands of Social Security Numbers, Other Sensitive Data
  The names, addresses, and social security numbers of tens of thousands of Oklahoma residents were made available to the general public for a period of at least three years.
• PERSONAL FABRICATION: A Talk with Neil Gershenfeld
  The way the world's evolved, hardware has been separated from software, and channels from their content, but many of the hardest, most challenging, and most interesting problems lie right at this interface.
• Top 10 Email Productivity Boosters
• Poll Finds Donors Interested in "Keeping-Up" Through Social Media
  Some ambiguous poll results.

• Hidden spam epidemic among outdated WordPress blogs

All five FCC Commissioners were at Stanford University this afternoon for a panel discussion on Net Nuetrality, so my colleague David and I took a field trip down south from San Francisco for the day. Remember how Comcast paid a bus full of people to take up room at the hearing in Boston in February? We arrived early to make sure that we'd get a seat this time, but there was nothing to worry about - according to Chairman Kevin Martin, who opened the meeting with a statement of the FCC's efforts to include everyone at the table for an "open and transparent" conversation, Comcast (and all the other Internet companies) declined the invitation to dialogue with the public.

During opening remarks, Commissioner Michael Copps spoke passionately about the need to regulate the industry so that Big Business doesn't hijack the Internet. He went on to say that we should bring as many voices into the conversation as possible, and invoked the D.C. adage that "Decisions made without you are usually decisions against you." I couldn't help but notice that not a single one of the Commissioners or panelists on the stage was a person of color. Go figure.

Next was Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who is even cooler than Commissioner Copps. I just now looked up the word "finesse" to make sure that I was using it correctly, and I am. Get this: the man is making opening remarks at an FCC hearing on Net Neutrality, and he also manages in less than five minutes to proclaim "Free Tibet!" AND make a statement against nuclear weapons. So smooth. (This moment was only upstaged by the very articulate Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford Law School, who made a sly endorsement for Obama during his opening statement by flashing a PowerPoint slide with the word "HOPE" when he talked about voting in November.)

I was feeling very encouraged by all this, until Commissioner Deborah Tate got up to speak. Commissioner Tate happens to be the only woman of the five, and I was so excited that a woman was finally speaking that it took me a minute to read between the lines of what she was saying. She started by extolling the virtue of "minimal government interference" and argued that the pressures of competition in the free market would ultimately cause the corporations to regulate themselves. Seriously, I forgot that people really believe that kind of BS. (Do you remember when the Yes Men argued at a WTO meeting, incognito of course, that the free market eventually would have selected a more efficient means of production than slavery if the government hadn't interfered?)

Commissioner Tate followed up with a three minute tirade from left field about child pornography. She told us that, even as we speak, the big corporations are voluntarily working out a way to shut down online child pornography. It wasn't clear to me what she was trying to prove, or how this demonstrated that Big Business could be trusted to keep the Internet free of monopolies. It did raise some eyebrows and questions, tho - it's all smoke and mirrors to distract us from the issues at hand. "Hey - look over here at the children, while we're taking away your rights!" (By the way...pay attention to the children too!)

Even Michele Combs of the Christian Coalition of America saw through it. Although she began her remarks with a short soap-box about her "pro-family" organization (that's code for "We hate gay people."), she argued with fury that grassroots political organizations would be effectively silenced if the FCC didn't take action. In response to Commissioner Tate's message about child pornogoraphy, Combs called our attention to the fact that the pornography industry wasn't in the room to protect Net Neutrality. She said, "That's because they know that if the corporations have their way, they'll have the money to pay." She went on to say that Commissioner Tate's assertion that the free market would pressure the Internet companies to do the right thing was "offensive." Pay close attention to what I'm about to say, because I don't think I'll ever say it again: I whole-heartedly agree with Michele Combs and the Christian Coalition of America. (Did I just say that?) And even tho she also said something nice about Reagan, I couldn't help but applaud when she was done speaking.

The FCC should follow the lead of Commissioners Copps and Adelstein. We need for the FCC to make a clear policy statement on Net Neutrality. As Professor Lessig argued, we need to know that this isn't a battle we're going to have to keep fighting, but that Net Neutrality is a principle that we can take for granted moving forward. And like Commissioner Copps said, we all need to pay attention and hold Congress and the FCC accountable for good policies. We're all very busy working on our own specific issues, but if we don't hold the government accountable to do the right thing on Net Neutrality, we're all going to have a much more difficult time making space for change.

Update (by Jason): Here's Lawrence Lessig's aforementioned presentation, by way of his blog:

"You don't talk about trusting a company, just like you don't talk about trusting a tiger."

"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks." -Mary Wollstonecraft

A couple of weeks ago, there was a thread called "google & privacy" on the lib-techie mailing list Progressive Exchange, commenced with an innocent question about the search behemoth's ubiquitous IP tracking, and losing itself on the fringes of a trackless mire over the relative corporate responsibility of making profitable terms with the Chinese government.

Google makes slick tools, and I've certainly left my own fingerprints all over their logs. But it's pretty surprising the degree to which many progressives are willing to let Google skate with no more accountability than its Wal-Mart-smiley slogan, "Don't Be Evil" -- or even, in criticism, to underscore some perceived failure of non-evilness as a matter for corporate ethos and little more.

Josh Cohen just issued a reply post chronicling a variety of Google's intrusive privacy behaviors. It's a sobering piece, but take a look at some of these subheads:

How Google Tracks You
Indefinite Storage of Data
Secret Government Access
Google’s Creepy Obsession With Your Personal Data

The fact is that it's hard to talk about actual and potential privacy intrusions without sounding like a nut, and Google's benign reputation can pre-emptively close the door on the subject if it stands unchallenged. Google's under your bed, going through your unmentionables! Or ... they might be, someday!

The failure of this discourse, and Josh very pointedly tries to stay out of the trap, is the want of any sort of institutional view ... the fetish of Google itself, whether considered as evil or not, and the concomitant illusion that its social position consists of nothing but millions of individual user-to-Google relationships.

Here's a comment from the ProgEx thread:

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be aware of the private data we hand over, but each individual needs to decide whether it's worth the "price of doing business." As a user of a number of Google Services -- notably Google Toolbar -- I've decided I'm OK with that. Other may decide differently. Certainly, if Google takes a path of abusing personal info, I'll be in a worse position than those who were more cautious.

Bargain individually with massively powerful faceless institutions to whom you're a numberless numbered cog? Withhold judgment of any potential for systematic abuse until one's personal ox has already been gored?

Anyone who would embrace this approach to, say, labor organizing or public health ought to turn in their pwog membership card. Isn't privacy the same race-to-the-bottom situation?

And isn't Google -- as enormous and agenda-setting as it undoubtedly is -- only the emblematic case here for a much more thoroughgoing phenomenon, one shaped fundamentally not by any one company's "heart" but by an ecosystem of competitive pressures and institutional mechanics that can't be meaningfully checked at the individual level?

Especially in an era of overweening assertions of state authority over data, where do we end up if the discussion never gets beyond the condition of Sergey and Larry's soul?

Do you have an organizational page, Cause, or petition to share with the DIA community? Be a fan...cuz we're on Facebook, too!

• Building a successful online team
  Sample job descriptions for building internal capacity.
• Cease-and-desist viral marketing
  A faux C&D is a way of making people feel that they’re important, that they need to post the pics lest the pics disappear and that promoting the pics – and thereby the film – strikes a blow for human freedom
• Army Spies on Blogs?
  Even seemingly innocent personal blogs are on the Army's official watch list.

The "writing from your parents' basement" charge against a blogger (a charge usually hurled by other bloggers, of course) is one of the more pure expressions of 18th century liberal ideology openly used in contemporary discourse: to be in legitimate public discourse, you must rule your own household; economic dependency conflates with weakness and ignorance.

This already consigns the target to the space of childhood, so perhaps it's no surprise that such an emasculating arrangement comes with a specific parent.

• "To get rich off pirates, copy them"
  Pirates are out there figuring out all the ways that products and services might catch on, outside of the realm of the managed, slow-moving corporate environment.
• Author Probes Sex-Obsessed Scientists in 'Bonk'
• Media giants start whisper campaign to kill Fair Use
  Big media companies are trying to convince the world's governments that the USA's statutory exceptions to copyright (embodied in Fair Use) are so broad that they violate a widely adopted copyright treaty.
• Google Unveils Tool To Track Refugees Worldwide
  "All of the things that we do for refugees in the refugee camps around the world will become more visible."
• Top 10 Ways to Trick Out Your Desktop
• How to Use Video in Email
  Do not try to force the video to play in the email window but drive it to a landing page where the video will play.
• Key Elements of Email Design
  The "1-5-10" rule: the reader will definitely give you one second; if you pass, they may give you five seconds, and then if they're really interested they'll give you ten seconds.
• A simple way to simplify email
  Gmail + RememberTheMilk + Firefox + plugin.
• 12 Guilt-free Purchases for Your Home-Office
• Slideshare: A Multi-purpose Web Working Tool
  There are more things that the average online worker can do with Slideshare - if we care to look hard enough.

It's here! In the spirit of providing the best learning opportunities, networking possibilities and progressive leadership for 2008 and beyond, we've been working hard on preparing our first ever community conference.

We're talking two days of hands-on, interactive training from DemocracyInAction staff and your colleagues in other member organizations!

The conference will take place in Washington, D.C. on June 26-27th at the Hotel Palomar. If you haven't checked the location out yet, it's a sustainably developed hotel in the heart of Dupont Circle with fabulous conference space (think windows in every room) and delicious meal plans (vegans and veggies, rejoice!)

See you there!

P.S. Check back on the main conference page for updates on agenda, speakers and other developments.