Google Plus for Advocacy: More Resources and a Tuesday Webinar

Digital maven and veteran activist Ivan Boothe has sent over an invitation to what promises to be an excellent examination of the implications of Google+ for political advocacy, along with a comprehensive list of related articles (including the early Epolitics.com overview — thanks, Ivan!). Both the invitation and the article list are reprinted below for your enjoyment. FYI, I’m now on Google+ if you want to connect in that brave new land.

Google Plus for Nonprofits and Social Change

Tuesday, Aug. 2
6:30 PM US-EDT (UTC-4)
Online: http://phillynetsquared.org/live

For those of you in Philadelphia, you can find us at the Friends Center, 1501 Cherry Street in Center City. Note: In-person event in Philadelphia will begin at 6:00, while the program and video stream will begin at 6:30 local time.

View on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=187758664619220
View on Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/phlnet2/events/26359001/

In addition to the live video stream of the event in Philly, we’ll be encouraging participation through a Twitter backchannel — hashtag: #phlnet2 — and likely Google Plus as well. Read more at http://phillynetsquared.org/live

What we’ll cover

• What is Google+ and how does it work?
• Why is Google+ important (or not)? Will it rival/surpass Facebook? Will it fade away or remain a niche network?
• Can Google+ help nonprofits and social change?

We’ll start off with some demonstrations of Google+ and its features, exploring circles, sparks and hangouts. We’ll talk about how Google+ relates to other Google products. We’ll discuss how we can use Google+ to help our organizations and causes. And we’ll speculate about where this is all going.

This will be an informal, interactive discussion. We’ll be prepared with some basics, but we need your help by doing one or more of the following:

Just come (in person or online). Your presence and perspective are more important than you may realize.

Get your hands wet with Google Plus. During this beta phase, you must be invited by another user. If you don’t have somebody to invite you, please contact info@phillynetsquared.org for an invite.

Read up on Google Plus. There are lots of articles and blog posts, and more coming along every day. Here some good starting points:

• Wikipedia’s evolving article
• “How to Use Google Plus” from Read WriteWeb
• “What is Your Plan For Google + Experimentation and Exploration?” by Beth Kanter
• “Google+ and Nonprofits: No Worries If You Have Not Yet Been Invited!” for Nonprofit Tech 2.0 by Heather Mansfield
• “Security and Control: Early thoughts on Google+” by Amy Sample Ward
• “Charities Explore Potential of Google+ Social Network” from the Chronicle of Philanthropy
• “Ways Google+ Can Help Nature and Wildlife Lovers” from the National Wildlife Foundation
• “What Google+ Means for Political Advocacy and Campaigning: Initial Thoughts” by Colin Delany
• “Google+ for Crowdsourcing Crisis Information, Crisis Mapping and Disaster Response” by Patrick Meier of Ushahidi and Crisis Mappers
• “Inside Google+ – How the Search Giant Plans to go Social” by Steven Levy for Wired
• “Google+ Best Practices for Nonprofits” by Heather Mansfield for Nonprofit Tech 2.0
• “Google Plus Deleting Accounts En Masse” by Violet Blue for ZDNet (Mostly, they are deleting accounts for violations of the “real name” policy — that accounts have to be created under a person’s real name.)
• “Why it Matters: Google+ and Diversity” by Jon Pincus (Why the “real name” policy of Google, like Facebook’s, has implications for activists and organizations working with communities who can’t organize in the open.)
• Beth Kanter’s Google+ discussion on using Google+ for social change/activism
• “How is Google Plus like Facebook and Twitter (Infographic)”

We gratefully acknowledge our sponsors for this event: The American Friends Service Committee and Chevy Volt.

– cpd