• E.U. | Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition
  Last week a document on Internet policy has been realeased by the Spanish Presidency of the EU Council. The document addresses Member States about illegal activities and how to fight them, but there seem to be a little confusion: copyright infringments, racist speech and child pornography are all together in the "Internet frame". A way to justify the imposition of Internet filtering?
  Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder of the advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, has very strong words on the issue, defining the document 'disturbing'.

In the 2008 election, women turned out in droves to raise money and to cast their votes.

Still, they were unpredictable till the end, making up 60 percent of all undecided registered voters just two weeks before the election.

How do you harness a constituency that is engaged and looking for real answers -- not to mention one that’s too big to ignore?

You can start with one group: mothers. In 2006, the U.S. Census estimated that mothers make up 55% of women ages 15-44, and 80% of women 40-44.

Thursday, July 23rd at the PdF Network
Forging Alliances Online: How MomsRising Built a Versatile Activist Force
1-2 p.m. EST

Join the call!

Since it was founded in May 2006, MomsRising members have taken over a million online and on-the-ground actions on issues ranging from paid sick leave, to healthcare and fair pay. MomsRising works with over 90 aligned organizations, leveraging its grassroots base to achieve their shared policy goals.

Earlier this year, the customizable “Momsrising.org Mother of the Year” video went viral. It gained more than 10 million views to date -- and more than tripled the organization’s membership in just a few days.

This Thursday, Rosalyn Lemieux of Fission Strategy and Katie Bethell of MomsRising will show us how they’re using technology to band moms together nationwide.

Join the call!

Upcoming PdF Network calls:

Aug 6 | Journalists and Bloggers: Navigating the Changing Media Landscape | Scott Rosenberg, co-founder Salon.com & author of "Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters"

Sept 10 | How to Harness Changes in African American Participation Online | Cheryl Contee, Fission Strategy & JackandJillPolitics.com

Sept 24 | Measuring Online Advocacy & Fundraising: Learnings from the 2009 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study | Marc Ruben & Karen Matheson, M+R Strategic Services

RSVP here!

Oct 8 | Thirty Staffers and No Office: How to Make the Virtual Organization Work, the MoveOn Model | Ilyse Hogue, MoveOn.org

Oct 22 | Mobile Volunteers: How to Harness Microvolunteering for Your Cause | Jacob Colker, The Extraordinaries

Dec 3 | A $10 Challenge Turns into $25 Million: The "Nothing But Nets" Case Study | Shannon Raybold, UN Foundation

RSVP here!

Missed a call? Listen to a podcast of any one of our previous calls and learn about how to Google for votes, fundraising and organizing through Twitter, evaluating returns on investment in social media, how to pitch (and not pitch) a political blogger, building a social network, longtail nanotargeting, and more.

This session originated with a paper by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen that I saw him deliver more than a year ago at the Politics Web 2.0 held in England at the University of London, Royal Halloway. His paper was called "The Labors of Internet-Assisted Activism: Overcommunication, Miscommunication and Communicative Overload," and while he disguised his ethnographic field research somewhat in the paper, it was clear that he was describing the chaos of a presidential campaign in the final weeks before a big-state primary.