Blog Action Day 2009 Climate Change: Technology in the Climate Movement
Today's Blog Action Day 2009! The annual event's focus this year is Climate Change, an the issue that will impact all of our lives. 9,428 blogs from 150 Countries with 12,896,974 Readers and counting are participating -- you can still join the effort!
The debate about what impact the online world has on offline action gets smashed when you look at these numbers and think about the over 12 million people around the world who are raising their consciousness by reading more about climate change and how they can get involved with their local communities.
We'll do our part in joining the effort by talking about -- what else? -- technology! The Climate Change movement has embraced technology for all the good it can do.
Here's a few highlights:
- Social Media and Climate Change: #4Change, the Twitter-based chat, recently tweet-chatted about social media in the climate movement. Amy Sample Ward recaps the lively discussion and shares some excellent resources like this Climate Debate Map, the Drupal.org profile of TckTckTck and the Climate Lab Wiki.
- Social Network Collaboration: Focus the Nation*, 1Sky, and Energy Action Coalition have decided to bridge their social networks onto one platform called The Climate Network using the community software tool Zanby. So, let's say you're Focus the Nation user; well, now you'll be able to see 1Sky's local events and news and join their lists as well. No data is shared between organizations unless the user agrees to it first. We talk about collaboration a lot, but this is a true collabor-ACTION, mirroring the desire to work together seen across the climate movement.
- Online/Offline Integration: If you're my Facebook friend, you know I participated in Climate Ride 2009, a 300-mile bike ride from NY to DC. (And thank you to all those who supported me!) Besides this being an awesome cycling journey with stellar folks, it was a super example of what can be done with a few computers, lots of smart phones and video cameras to build buzz around an in-person event. With little lead time, a few Climate Riders pulled together a site that aggregated all the action into one place at Climate Ride Live. In between cycling up some tough hills, riders snapped tons of photos, emailing them direcly to the Flickr feed, sent tweets tagged with #climateride, and posted to the blog at night. (Not to mention all the personal updates that were happening through folks' Facebook profiles, Twitter, and personal blogs.) All this buzz building culminated with Climate Riders rolling onto the capital lawn with 8 ambassadors, a bunch of live spectators, and many more following along on Climate Ride Live. Instead of just 125 riders, we became a much larger presence due to all the word-spreading each of us did individually. The most powerful part of all is the message that continues to resonate across the web with videos and photos sharing the Climate Ride story long after the event was over.
As I write this, I keep learning about more and more NTEN Members and NPTech-ers joining Blog Action Day. Check out Peter Campbell's Sane Proposal and Deborah Elizabeth Finn's post about nuclear disarmament's relation to the climate and then go read more posts and join Blog Action Day!
*Disclosure: I am a member of the Board of Focus the Nation.
