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the thinking

the skinny.

Registration Team: USSF

I worked with Ana Willem on the registration team for the first ever United States Social Forum in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007. Ana served as the technical liaison to the registration team, developing and coordinating the a registration system that ultimately served over 10,000 people. She also implemented a range of complicated requirements for the entire team and provided on the ground support and troubleshooting during the registration process itself. Ana was an excellent person to work with, providing expertise and skill to a large group of people--including staff and volunteers--with a wide range of technological background and knowledge. She helped to create a database that was accessible, intuitive, and that functioned wonderfully in a highly stressful environment. Thinking back on the challenges of that work and context, I am so grateful for Ana's experience, knowledge, patience and incredible hard work and commitment. I highly recommend Ana to any individual or organization looking for someone with commitment, creativity and expertise! Christina Repoley Peace Education Coordinator American Friends Service Committee crepoley@afsc.org www.afsc.org

It takes a village to grow a website.

Inside the Perimeter

mayfirst/people link

When the United States Social Forum National Planning Committee realized 9 months before the event that they would require a website and communications system, mayfirst/people link came to the fore, and organized a group of radical techie volunteers (of which I was a proud participant). We coordinated and built the entire site and technology systems completely on volunteer techie labor. This organization is one of the oldest internet providers in the industry, and they focus on groups who are progressive and who are organizing in their particular way to change the world. mayfirst/people link functions on a 'membership' (as opposed to client) model, and offers internet hosting with unlimited emails, lots of lists, and a technical support forum and infrastructure..

OpenFlows

OpenFlows is a community Technology Lab based in NYC, and they are who you call when you need something technically complicated, and with a lot of moving parts. They develop the more complicated websites including whole database interface systems for processing data through websites. They are wonderful activists and wonderful people as well as being incredibly competent at what they do.

Daniel Kahn Gillmor

Where to start with Daniel... For starters, I have never met anyone for whom using a proprietary system of software is so painful... Daniel is amazing. Proof: There was a moment during the social forum, just before our biggest registration day) when some major infrastructure connecting our building with one of our server went down. I am to this day not sure how he did it (and fear that I wouldn't understand even if I did know) but Daniel coded a redirect, bouncing off of a variety of server between here and there, and in less than 10 minutes we were live.

Wiser Earth

Brainchild of Paul Hawken (Natural Capital Institute, Wiser Earth is a project ahead of its time, and just in time. Paul Hawken is generally amazing, and has had the privilege in his years as a generally amazing guy to come into contact with a good number of progressive non-profit organizations and businesses around the world. As a consummate systems thinker, at some point he realized that the aggregate of these organizations makes up the body of one of the largest movements in the history of mankind. He decided to start cataloging this movement, and connecting it, and has just recently launched the first iteration of the open source networking tool he created in order to do it. Wiser Earth is an incredible site. If you haven't already, I really recommend giving it a spin.

Local Genius

local Genius is an organization founded and lead by Amy Pilling. Amy is being the community she wants to see in the world more so than anyone I have met. Organizing anything from the regional Bioneers conference in New Mexico, to her city council, to her neighborhood planning committee, to the kids who live down the street, she is making change happen on so many different scales that it's difficult to measure it (plus she's better connected in terms of the sustainability movement than anyone I know). Local Genius is founded on the idea that the experts exist all around us, and that they are better suited to problem solve and generate amazing solutions because any solution worth it's salt comes from the intelligence of the local system.