If you haven’t checked it out yet, have a good look at Message in-a-Box “A toolkit for communicating your cause”.

It’s relevant to anyone that needs to communicate in life and work.

When Nodestone was commissioned by the Tactical Tech Collective earlier in the year to help bring it together, I faced a somewhat overwhelming task as you might imagine when you see it.

What is it? A rather large online resource for learning how to communicate better, to put it simply.

More specifically, it’s an international educational platform for people in NGOs and campaigning organisations that demonstrates how to use low-tech and high-tech tools and tactics to work on some of the hardest issues of our times.

We show you how to think strategically (about goals, resources and time) and then know which tools and tactics (eg. images / print / audio / video / internet / mobiles and media) to choose to get your message across.

Here’s how Tactical Tech describe it:

“…a set of strategic guides to using communications tools for social change, together with a suite of open source tools to get you making your own media. The toolkit is designed for small and medium-sized NGOs, advocates, and citizen journalists to help them create and distribute content for their advocacy efforts while exploring the constantly evolving world of campaigning and communications.”

The feedback has been excellent around the world. A much needed resource.

Here’s an example of how it works:

Quick Guide to Images

This section helps you find out how others have used images effectively and creatively. It helps you learn how to find, create, edit, share great images, with an emphasis on photographs, comics, maps and simple animated images.

You will also find the power of images throughout Message in-a-Box, eg. in websites, blogs, guerilla marketing, video and animation.

Images add impact to stories, blog posts, websites, posters,brochures, email campaigns – whatever campaigning channels and tools you are using.

What do you need?

Essential: ideas, creativity, imagination, a strategy.

Extra: people to help, internet access, mobile phone and/or a camera (digital or other), source books/comics/cartoons collected from anywhere or commissioned.

Read more…

Sokwanele – interactive violence map

Having worked in communications as a consultant, writer, activism and educator for (gosh!) over 20 years, it was a dream to be able to put these threads of life to good use. To make something practical and tangible.

Message-in-a-Box is about the power of PR being brought to the people who have historically had least access to it. Things were all explained in the simplest possible terms with examples and free software downloads. From human rights abuses to clean water – NGOs on little or no budget obviously need education and support. It’s an egalitarian Aussie’s delight.

In London, Botswana or Mumbai, Message-in-a-Box is now available for free, 24/7. A print version with DVD software is also being distributed. It’s actually a good resource for anyone a clear (hopefully) perspective on getting your message across.

Along the way we got to massage the words and ideas of some great folk like Becky Faith, Dr Dan McQuillan and Heleana Quartey. Hopefully to first incarnation is already being put to some good use.

Once thing I’m hoping Tactical Tech do soon is to improve collaboration and “stickiness” on the site. Feedback, registration etc… Also the use of images and stills, sound and video clips to make the resource more visual and interactive – to practice what we preach!

Over the years we have increasingly worked on projects that pass positive screens for social / eco accountability. Put another way… that feel good. Like:

• widgets for TrickleStar and the BBC
• social carbon measurement for Global Action Plan
• edu-marketing for the Guerrand Hermes Foundation for Peace
• teaching blogging to communities and companies
• setting up The Big Love Gift Guide
• running a massive campaign for TV Turn Off Week.

Client links and feedback here…

But as long as you aren’t arms dealers, we can usually find or create some positive values in just about any project. Get in touch if you want to know how Nodestone can help you feel good about your work.

New dates coming soon…

Your chance to get > share > use radical knowledge for positive impact. More information…

It all started when Digg responded to a DMCA takedown notice issued by the MPAA and AACS Licensing Authority, the body responsible for managing the DVD-HD rights managment system. Digg administrators deleted the offending posts, a fairly normal operation, in line with Digg’s terms and conditions. All ok so far.

But Digg users responded negatively to these deletions, adding links and the key text to Digg in a flood that eventually caused Digg to reconsider and capitulate to the community. Kevin Rose, Digg founder, wrote this blog entry, ending the revolt:

…

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Since the revolt, the once-secret key that the MPAA and AACS LA were trying to keep secret has been spread far and wide all over the internet. You can now find it as a tag in almost all social sites, in picture, video and song form. It is posted widely in email groups and on websites. Guess it isn’t ever going to be a secret again.

But the actions by Digg are intriguing… They’ve decided to go and fight the takedown notice in court, rather than shutdown the site temporarily or just wait for it all to die down. I guess they feared that the revolt might not stop quickly or easily, and they’d lose users in droves if they kept trying to control the revolt.

I guess at some point the key was spread so widely, and digg did try and control it initially. The cat is now fully out of the bag and it is going to pretty much impossible for the MPAA and AACS LA to try and get the key removed from everywhere it is now visible on the Internet. And if they try; they antagonize the Internet community again and it will undoubtedly get spread even further.

So, right now it looks like a victory for users and another proof that hidden keys or secrets are never going to work as a copy protection system. As soon as the keys are discovered, they are spread widely and then you can forget about the copy protection system. This is another proof of the point Steve Jobs used in his essay Thoughts on Music which, we presume, in part precipitated the EMI/Apple no-DRM music deal:

The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music. They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets.

Steve was talking only about Music. Maybe we are about to see another essay called ‘Thoughts on Video’ from Steve shortly.

I wonder what the MPAA are thinking? They are going to have to move extermely carefully now and take wise counsel. It is clear that the Digg Revolt has engaged users and amplified their civil disobedience.

Maybe DRM-free everything is now not that far away.

And just like TV, if you’ve got stuff downloaded, it just plays video clip after video clip. And downloads in the backgound and all that sort of goodness.

But that is not all. This comes from the Participatory Culture Foundation, the software is open source, and there are other tools to make it participatory:

• Broadcast Machine is used to make channels of your own videos and photos – and it makes distribution by BitTorrent really easy.
• Video Bomb is a collaborative filtering internet video site. The more bombs, or votes a video gets, the higher up the list it gets.

This is a nice set of tools. And it really does point the way to the future. Give us all lots of bandwidth and connections to anwhere in the world, and we no longer have to live with those few free-to-air channels. We have choice. And we can take part by making and adding our own channels. I like it.