There are already some great Google-focused activism ideas floating around like Identity Woman’s proposed Million Persona March. Looking at the list in my original post about ways for #privchat to have an impact, here’s a few things we could do:

• inviting somebody from Google and/or reporters who are covering the issue to a discussion
• because of the range of opinions on #privchat, raising the bar of overall discussion by having groups of people advance well-reasoned arguments both for and against pseudonymity on Google+
• helping build momentum for promising ideas and brainstorming new ones
• highlighting #privchat regulars like Hibe and Pidder, which provide pseudonymity-friendly alternatives to Google+

ACLU, BORDC, CDT, EPIC, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and many others are all part of the broad coalition opposing HR 1981, and EFF, Demand Progress, and other organizations already have active campaigns. So just by providing a ten-minute segment for the different groups working on the issue to share their different campaigns and talking points, , #privchat can help make connections. Sharing talking points and understanding about who the key votes to influence in the House and Senate can make everybody more effective. And once again, our range of backgrounds is likely to make our discussion particularly interesting — for example bringing in corporate perspectives both from the US and abroad. Beyond that, who knows: an initial conversation would probably lead to interesting followup possibilities.

Thoughts about any of those?

jon

From an activist perspective, it’s a great chance to spend a few minutes discussing the issues with allies, and at the same time get the word out to people who aren’t likely to be aware of what’s happening. BORDC’s tweet about “material support” is a great example, providing a pithy summary of an issue that’s often overlooked. EFF and others got a fair amount of retweeting so even after #privchat discussion moved on to the other questions, tweets about the PATRIOT Act kept showing up.

The energy stayed high through the rest of the hour, and I thought it was a great chat in general — including good discussions of mobile app privacy, data retention, and a surprise guest appearance by @RedTapeChron (Bob Sullivan of MSNBC) in the discussion of the Epsilon privacy breach. So a good experience all around!

Coincidentally or not, the PATRIOT Act call-in day was a huge success. As the PATRIOT Act battle heats up again over the next month, and Congress starts to consider a host of other privacy-related legislation, it’s exciting to think of the possibilities for #privchat!

first of all: thanks a lot for your effort to assemble the ideas. I look very much forward to point 2 (getting the basic infrastructure in place) – that way it will be easier to catch up in case one missed a chat. I would like to add to that site a list of privacy related organizations, sites, applications/software and events. How do you feel about a Wiki so that we all can contribute?

Transcripts are a good point. You can get privchat transcripts from WTHashtag, but it’d be great if they were all collected some place tool.

Thanks much, I’ll update accordingly!

jon

Their first Twitter chat was held by their @KickButtsDay account and was promoted on both Twitter and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=484545409128).

The topic of the chat was Smoking & the Movies: What is its impact? And what can we do about it?

Its main purpose was to arm the tobacco control community, particularly the youth advocacy segment, with information about the impact of on-screen smoking and to lay out the organizing strategy for getting smoke-free youth-rated movies in the United States.

Although I don’t think the @KickButtsDay account has held a Twitter chat since then, it worked incredibly well and generated some fantastic conversion. The conversion carried on after the official chat ended, and turned into a small brainstorming session for organizing for smoke-free movies.

One of the things I think they did really well, and that I’ve seen a few other well-run Twitter chats do too, is archive the chat for those who might have missed it and for future reference. They set up a wiki: http://kickbuttsday.pbworks.com/ where they recognize a list of some of the chat participants, and provide a very easy-to-read transcript of the chat.

Several organizations, including the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, have also held Twitter chats for advocacy and organizing purposes.

Tweeting my #ff’s this morning, I realized that this is another low-hanging fruit areas. It’d be great for the @Privchat account to #ff everybody who tweeted during privchat each week — and for individuals to #ff other #privchatters as well. Once again this helps deepen the community.

While we’re on the basics of blocking-and-tackling, we should also have a well-publicized twitter list. There might be one for all I know, but it’s not on the @PrivChat page or WTHashtag.

I’ll update the recommendations with this over the weekend…

> Nobody listens to individuals, especially the competition we’re up against. Combined effort, therefore, is essential.

One of the things that’s exciting about #privchat is that there are individuals there who get listened to, at least sometimes: journalists, startup founders, VPs of marketing, advocates who get quoted widely. So that further increases the value of combined effort. Like I said, a great opportunity.

> All individuals within a group have their own individual agendas. With any group effort, to some extent or other, these are all compromised.

Not necessarily. The best group efforts allow each individual to advance their individual agenda — and also to learn skills, help their career, network, have fun, and make new friends. Keeping all of these aspects in mind is crucial for getting involvement something like #privchat, where everybody’s doing it in their spare time on busy schedules.

Nobody listens to individuals, especially the competition we’re up against.
Combined effort, therefore, is essential.
All individuals within a group have their own individual agendas. With any group effort, to some extent or other, these are all compromised.
But if a generally satisfactory direction can be negotiated, something productive can be created.
A clear, initial, jointly agreed strategy is essential in this regard.
After that, reach out to other bodies and repeat the process.
Create a massive united front, then begin the lobbying through elected spokespeople that can be trusted to adhere to agreed format.