mentioned or implied enhanced online collaboration. In "Democratic Trifecta", Chris Bowers wrote
Producing this whip count should have the following benefits:
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2. Positive Activism: I have grown pretty tired of almost always opposing legislation that has appeared before Congress these past eight years. This system should provide us with a road map to help pass progressive legislation. By letting us know which members of each committee need to be flipped in order to push good legislation out of the committee stage, and onto the floor of the House or Senate, we can advocate on behalf of good legislation, rather than just opposing bad legislation.
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Anyway, that's the idea. We plan to start it up when Congress convenes on January 6th, and it has us pretty excited. It will be accompanied by some neat maps and activism tools we are working on, too.
In "Next Open Left", texas dem wrote
What are needed are spaces that are expressly designed to allow people to collaborate on specific, defined, short-term projects. Blogs are a powerful platform because of their speed, their permanence, and because they rely on the action of individual free agents -- both bloggers and commenters. They are very good; but we should add to them the ability to facilitate and support group productivity, by adding connected spaces designed for that purpose.
Translating the above into a specific implementation of what an online collaboration environment would look like involved guesswork, since I had no clear set of requirements or use case scenarios to work from. Nevertheless, as a starting point, I believe the sharepoint sites I put together can both enlighten many people as to what sorts of collaboration-friendly web functionality is available, and serve as a useful point to start discussion of what a better solution could look like.
Update: for more context on why this is important, please see Amy Alexander's The Color Line Online in The Nation
We're now at the midpoint of our first, more-leisurely-than-anticipated mutual guest blogging series. Thanks to Melissa McEwan, Sara Robinson, Pam Spaulding, and rikyrah for their time, energy, and extraordinary posts. In retrospect, our original plan of getting all the posts on OpenLeft and the mutual posts on the guest bloggers' blogs all in one week was a little over-ambitious. Oh well, live and learn.
Another thing that didn't go as planned was that we didn't stick narrowly to the initial topic.* Pam and the Jack and Jill Politics folks both said they'd like to take a more forward-looking approach than in our framing. Since our primary goal is diversity of voices on the front page, I said "sure." Apologies to all for not having communicated this better, and thanks to desmoinesdem, sb, dr anonymous, and Paul for their replies when plukasiak brought this up in rikyrah's thread. Apologies also to any who see this as resulting in false advertising, biased discourse, or disrespectful towards the concern of feminists/womanists; that wasn't the intent, but I can see how it could look that way. OpenLeft readers had said they wanted to hear from these bloggers, and I thought their proposed subjects related well to the initial theme. Was this the right decision? If not, what should I have done? It's a good discussion for the comments. On the communications, all I can say is "oops".
We're going to be kicking off the mutual guest blogging next Monday, with participation from Pam's House Blend, Jack and Jill Politics, Orcinus, and Shakespeare's Sister on the topic of "feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton's withdrawal from the race -- and why this matters to progressives". Something to look forward to!
And it's mutual: several of the bloggers have invited OpenLeft front pagers to post on their blogs as well. We still need to work out the details of this. If any front-pagers reading this have a post they'd like to make on the topic, please say so in the comments.
As the astute observers on this site have no doubt noticed, we haven't had the vote yet on followon topics. As an experiment, we didn't put the nominatino thread on the front page ... and it didn't get any action. Oh well, live and learn. And this week, with all the stuff going on with FISA, it felt like it wouldn't have gotten much attention.
Speaking of FISA though ... wouldn't that be a good topic for mutual guest-blogging?
As we head to the start of mutual guest-blogging next week, it's time to start working on the follow up. The topic discussion thread led to a bunch of great suggestions, all of which fit our basic criteria:
important for the progressive movement in general as well as the November election
very little good discussion of these to date in most of the progressive blogosphere
consistent with and reinforcing Chris, Matt and Mike's goals and strategy for the site and the movement
Please make sure to vote in the poll! For related threads, see the guestblogging tag If you're on Facebook, please join the group!
Things have been going extremely well on the mutual guest blogging project. Thus far we've got acceptances from Jill Tubman from Jack and Jill Politics, Pam Spaulding from Pam's House Blend, and Sara Robinson from Orcinus. The idea's steadily improved, and response has been consistently positive. It seems to me like we're on track for a major success. (Additional details below; invitation list and discussion here.)
We'll be going live the week of June 30, with a sequence like the following:
Recapping the first-round blogger guest-blogger nominations so far, bearing in mind that the topic is "feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton's withdrawal from the race -- and why this matters to progressives":
Melissa McEwan of Shakesville (nominated by Taylor, 3 recommendations); her For the record post is a great articulation of the feminist perspective, and Shakesville's 100+-and-counting "Hillary Sexism Watch" series has been tracking this for months.
Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend (nominated by Paul Rosenberg, seconded by Populista; 6 recommendations for this and tw others combined)
Orcinus (nominated by Paul Rosenberg, 6 recommendations for this and tw others combined) featuring Dave Neiwert and Sara Robinson
Talk2Action, also a group blog (nominated by Paul Rosenberg, 6 recommendations for this and tw others combined), where recent posters include Bill Berkowitz, Rob Boston, Frederick Clarkson, Bruce Wilson, and Richard Bartholemew.
Egalia of Tennessee Guerilla Women, "Fighting to end sexism in Tennessee and the nation" (nominated by Sadie Baker and enthusiastically seconded by johnieb, 1 recommendation)
These all seem like great potential guest bloggers to me, and there's good diversity in a lot of dimensions, so I think we're off to a fine start. I propose inviting all seven of the initial nominees, giving them the option of whether they prefer starting with this first round or waiting for another topic.
Thoughts on this? And does anybody have any good connections with any of the blogs and bloggers?
Increasing diversity
The number of nominations was small enough that we've still got several empty slots -- we wanted to choose at least 10-12 to allow for some deferrals and cancellations -- so it's worth asking what additional perspectives we'd like to see represented here. A few things to think about:
(This diary continues the discussion of mutual guest blogging. This is an exciting proposal, and your opportunity to make suggestions about the shape it should take. Please join in! - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
There was a lot of support for starting the mutual guest-blogging project with a topic related to feminist and womanist perspectives on Hillary Clinton's withdrawal from the race -- and why this matters to progressives. So this thread is to collect nominations for potential guest-bloggers on the topic. Hopefully, it will also serve as a useful resource for those wanting to explore the issue themselves.
Please put your suggestions in as comments. The next steps will be to discuss, then filter the initial list, discuss, and then vote. We're going to leave this thread up for a couple of days to give people time to think it over; feel free to come back and add more later.
More on the nomination criteria and a few examples, below the fold.
For other discussions of mutual guest blogging, please see:
(Here is a second diary to advance our thinking about the mutual guest blogging proposal. The previous one focused on the "who," this one focuses on the "what" and "why." - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
This thread is to collect potential topics for the mutual guest-blogging project. There's no shortage of good ideas; we've starting out with eight possibilities (included below).
Let's use this thread to discuss more potential topics as well as the criteria that we want to apply to choosing the best ones for mutual guest-blogging.
(Here is our second American Blogger winner from this week. A very timely followup to my previous post in the "Women's Voices / Women's Struggles" series. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
We propose that OpenLeft feature 5-7 guest bloggers each week, prioritizing diverse voices and perspectives not usually heard on the front page. OpenLeft front page posters will reciprocate, by blogging on the guests' sites, and the combination will (with luck) create a temporary hub in the progressive blogosphere. The result is improved mutual understanding, links with other tightly-connected networks, and a base for more collaborative and effective strategic actions.
Note: This diary entry refines several ideas from the "American Blogger" thread including input from Taylor, Syrith, me, and several others who asked to remain anonymous. Thanks to all the reviewers of the earlier versions!
From Dictionary.com, here's some definitions for capitulation:
1) the act of capitulating.
the document containing the terms of a surrender.
2) a list of the headings or main divisions of a subject; a summary or enumeration.
3) Often, capitulations. a treaty or agreement by which subjects of one country residing or traveling in another are extended extraterritorial rights or special privileges, esp. such a treaty between a European country and the former Ottoman rulers of Turkey.
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