Category: Professional
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“A very special Ad Astra holiday” 2.0
For those of you who have gotten to know me over the last twelve months, Ad Astra (Analysis and Development of Awesome STRAtegies) was a grassroots strategy/culture change project I led at Microsoft. Its positive focus, wiki-centricity, and network-oriented strategies foreshadowed a lot of work on Get FISA Right and the Voter Suppression Wiki; it’s…
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Creating the future: Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009
From conference co-chairs Cindy Southworth and Jay Stanley’s Call for presentations, tutorials, and workshops: The 19th annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference is now accepting proposals for panels, workshop sessions, and other events. CFP is the leading policy conference exploring the impact of the Internet, computers and communications technologies on society. It will be taking…
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A proposal for Obama’s new CTO: Require independent review by technical experts
Yesterday my former Microsoft colleague Matt Lerner, now at FrontSeat (“software for civic life”) sent out mail about the new ObamaCTO.org site, a user-powered forum for gathering and prioritizing ideas for Obama’s new CTO. Anybody can register, vote on ideas, or submit your own; in a twist from digg-style rating, each person is limited to…
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Radio, radio. You’re gonna hear me on your radio. Tonight!
On Saturday, Jon hosted a major organizing conference call that became a strategy session for countering voter suppression nationwide. And, so, in a bit of marvelously self-reflexive irony, with Jon’s help, we’ll be using that same approach to make this hour of our show into a kind of national town meeting of the air, by…
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Announcing a last-minute workshop on “Last-minute strategies for reducing voter suppression”
Heading into the last ten days before the election, it’s clear that is there are still huge opportunities to reduce voter suppression. How to make best use of this time? There are so many groups doing great stuff here that there are lots of opportunities for synergy; at the same time, there’s also a lot…
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Live from Madison this Sunday: social network activism and the Voter Suppression Wiki
I’ll be appearing on John Quinlan and Harry Waisbren’s show Forward Forum this Sunday from 8-9 CDT, on the air in Madison and streamed live at WTDY. I met Harry working on Get FISA Right, and so we’ll be discussing social network activism in general, looking at some of the experiences I discuss in Reflections…
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Voter Suppression Wiki: 40,000+ votes at risk in North Carolina, please help get the word out
Executive summary 40,000 votes at risk in North Carolina; please help get the word out for future action and media alerts, please join the vswiki-alerts Google Group feedback, please, from activists, bloggers and voters about our action alert Details After posts by me on Pam’s House Blend Sunday night and Baratunde Thurston on Jack and…
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“e-Deceptive Campaign Practices”
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)’s Technology and Democracy 2.0 report on “e-Deceptive campaign practices” is getting released on Monday, along with a parallel report from Common Cause and Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights covering the legal and policy issues. Contributors include computer security legends like Peter Neumann (of Bell Labs, SRI and comp.risks fame)…
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Friday on Meet the Bloggers: James Rucker, Brad Friedman, and me
When it comes to election protection and voter suppression, there’s perhaps no one more knowledgeable than Color of Change’s James Rucker. That’s why Rucker will be our special guest on Meet the Bloggers this Friday at 1pm Et/10am PT, as we discuss these critical issues. Joining Rucker will be Jon Pincus (Liminal States) and Brad…
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Voter Suppression Wiki: Introductions, Help Wanted, and Strategy
Cross-posted on Oxdown Gazette and Pam’s House Blend The Voter Suppression Wiki is a non-partisan hub of information and action around efforts to suppress votes in the 2008 U.S. elections. For more information, please see our strategy and talking points, Baratunde Thurston’s launch post on Jack and Jill Politics, and my series of posts on…
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danah boyd joins Microsoft Research — computer science *is* a social science
Guess who has a post-dissertation job? [Yes, that implies I’m actually going to finish this *#$@! dissertation.] ::bounce:: In January, I will be joining the newly minted Microsoft Research New England in Boston, MA. w00000t!!!!! I couldn’t be more ecstatic. — danah boyd, I will be joining Microsoft Research in January, apophenia, September 2008 “Breaking…
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Obama’s YouTube video page hacked!?!?!!?
Just saw this in a thread in the One Million Strong for Barack Facebook group: the Barack Obama Keating Economics page on YouTube appears to have been hacked. It’s fixed now … but here’s a screenshot: The Part of: link at the bottom apparently went to the McCain ad “The One.” (No, I didn’t click…
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Rant: I hate software
also posted on Pam’s House Blend. for a good time, compare and contrast how Soapblox (there) and WordPress (here) display the URLs in the quotes 🙂 As a “grand old man” of the software engineering field of defect detection, I sometimes take it personally when I run into bugs or usability problems. My IM friends…
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Vegas, baby! Iron Chef Black Hat
Draft posted August 14. Substantially revised August 17. The second of a two-part series on the Black Hat USA 2008 security conference. Back when we lived in San Francisco in the 1990s, we were huge fans of Fuji TV’s Iron Chef, then shown with subtitles on a local cable station. When local chef Ron Siegel…
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Vegas, baby! Black Hat, glitter, and pwnies
The first of a two-part series on the Black Hat USA 2008 security conference. Vegas, baby! Continuing my tradition, I was in Las Vegas for Black Hat but didn’t attend the conference proper. My brother was able to come up from LA to meet me, so I decided to hang out with him instead —…
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Mutual guest blogging: intermission and discussion
Second draft, posted on OpenLeft with a different poll. the version on OpenLeft continues to evolve please link and comment there rather than here. Originally posted July 17; revised July 18-19. We’re now at the midpoint of our first, more-leisurely-than-anticipated mutual guest blogging series. Thanks to Melissa, Sara, Pam, and rikyrah for their time, energy,…
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Get FISA Right: Paging Clay Shirky
Wow, what a weekend. Friday, the Get FISA Right campaign was on CNN a couple of times (including a brief clip by me on American Morning that also got picked up internationally and a great discussion of Obama & Get FISA Right Activism by Ari Melber on CNN headline news where he challenged the left/right…
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“What’s an activism campaign these days without a Facebook presence?”
Mail to the Senator Obama – Please, No Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right mailing list. See the wiki for more context. 2200 members and growing… Update, July 1: 8600+ members on myBO — moving into #2 in the top 10 groups. Coverage in The Nation, Wired, Slashdot, The New Right, and zillions of other…
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Make desire more important than fear: “Change the Way You See Yourself (Through Asset-Based Thinking)”
Kathy Cramer and Hank Wasiak’s new book is out, a gorgeous and well-focused follow-on to their Change the Way You See Everything, one of the Microsoft Ad Astra project’s signature giveaways.* In May 2007, we did an amazing two-day workshop with Kathy, Hank and his colleagues from the Concept Farm, and folks from Extreme Arts…
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CFP08 trip report (2): Dear Potus 08
Part 2 of a series; please see CFP08: trip report for part 1 If the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy community wrote a letter to the next President of the United States about our priorities for technology policy, what would we say — and how would we get him or her to read it? There’s only…