Today, Boyd is faced with a world in which he sees that broadcast culture has taken over society and the political process. Everything is about the fight, he says—everyone watches politics, but no real people engage. It is as if the political elites are doing a performance for the rest of the world. This situation leads to cynicism, which leads to passivity, which leads to a sense that the whole political system is in effect “hollowed out.” The only people playing the game are the extremists, and the pros who represent them.

MoveOn’s top issues in 2001 were campaign finance and energy/environment. Post 9/11, international issues came to the fore (not to mention, says Boyd, issues about “fear.” In 2003, the issues that MoveOn members delineated as most important are, war and security, energy/environment, and freedom.

MoveOn’s approach, different from most other folks in Washington, is as a service business—he is not looking for a bigger soapbox, and is not interested in telling people what’s what. He sees that the real talent is outside Washington, and works to bring those resources in to the political debates. MoveOn engages in, simply enough, listening—playing the role of a leadership node takes a lot of listening. In designing their organization they have built into the system ways to remind them to listen, such as reader-rated forums which bring the most salient and resonant issues and comments to the top of the pile, where Boyd and others can “listen to” them. Trust is another essential ingredient of MoveOn.org. Boyd tells that part of listening is bringing people in to the system, and giving them enough resources that they can actually do meaningful work themselves. For example, with the “Bush in 30 Seconds” ad project, MoveOn trusted the public to create advertisements, and choose the top ad.

Boyd is particularly concerned that in today’s world, the ability to connect with people is at risk. For example, he says that“you would think that you could buy speech,” especially where increasingly, all content conduits are commercially owned. However, they found themselves unable at any price to place the winning Bush in 30 Seconds advertisement on CBS during the Superbowl, due to a dubious network policy of not showing political ads. They have run into similar troubles in placing another advertisement on MTV, and finding a place to host their “inspections work, war won’t” ad on billboards owned entirely by Viacom and Clear Channel. Many say that even as our town squares become private malls, we still have the internet. But Boyd points out that speech is threatened here too—MoveOn.org’s mailing list, for instance, runs the risk of being labeled “SPAM” if someone decides they don’t like a mass-email they receive. If all these avenues of speech are blocked, says Boyd, what will we be left with?

Currently, there are about 1.2 million registered members of Meetup, with 4000-5000 meetups occurring every month on around 4000 topics, around the world. Anyone can organize a meetup about almost anything (see Joe’s post from earlier this evening—the permalink is acting up). “Politics found us,” said Weissleder, Meetup wasn’t at the outset trying to create a political tool. He points out that even a politically oriented meetup doesn’t “feel like a political event,” or at least not a traditional one—people are meeting at the bar or coffee shop, not the dark and dusty town hall meeting room.

Weissleder also dispelled five common myths about meetups: (1) not just kids, (2) not just internet (meetups are advertised through posters, newspaper listings, and radio announcements), (3) not just a “Dean thing,” (4) not just Democrats (although, as was commented later in the session, the vast majority of visitors to political websites are in fact Democrats), and (5) not just bottom up (organizations use meetups from a top-down angle as well).

Organizing online is about reaching out to an unaffiliated audience, converting them into engaged, active participants, and retaining them. There seem to be two broad strategies for online organizing. First, the conventional model – an established organization sets an agenda from the top and builds constituencies from grassroots, reaching “down” to group the unaffiliated together and mobilize them. Some examples of this model include the AFL-CIO’s unionvoice.org and Planned Parenthood’s Action Center. Second, the emergent democracy model - decentralized groups engage in self formation, using communicating tools to aggregate constituents from the fringes, from the bottom, and build up power. Some examples include moveon.org, workingforchange.com, and meetup.com.

But which model to choose? Organizations have a lot of choices in front of them, and each strategy has its strengths and weaknesses. Pease pointed out various lessons learned from the web. On one hand, new organizations with creative structure and goals can take on exciting new roles in the political system. But there remains a strong argument for building on structures that are already in place, the pre-existing hubs of power which continue to be effective. Hierarchy is not bad, says Pease, because it allows for distribution of tasks, giving groups a potential competitive advantage

Pease points out some items that should be a part of any effective online organizing strategy. The linking of on-line and off-line activities (seen at meetup.com, or moveon’s bake sales) provides people with the opportunity for true political engagement. It is important to support crucial networking roles—clusterers (fostering strong local ties), connectors (establishing ties across groups), and leaders (to model innovations). Don’t just create networks of people create networks of networks! And finally, for maximum message, develop coherence among groups in a single issue area.

Now, how to do this in the real world? Hmmm.... good thing we all got to hear from representatives for two of the most effective and well-known online organizers, MoveOn.org and Meetup.com!

I wonder where else meetup.com could be an issue... China seems to be a good candidate. Any other ideas out there?