Campbell

ohthehugemanatee> ok, let's op you

<BarrettBrown> we've gotten like four new recruits today alone

* ohthehugemanatee gives channel operator status to BarrettBrown

<ohthehugemanatee> great! how are we getting them?

<BarrettBrown> including one who's particularly brilliant/useful with a UN background

<BarrettBrown> several ways

<BarrettBrown> mostly through my articles

<BarrettBrown> I did one this weekend at HuffPo and The Faster Times that ended with call to join and my e-mail

<BarrettBrown> hadn't been recruiting in that fashion for a couple of months, but now we're finally ready to start bringing in people in bulk

<BarrettBrown> in addition to our participants we also have people who have reached out to me or who I know from my work in some way or another

<ohthehugemanatee> fantastic

<BarrettBrown> such as Barry Eisler, a former CIA special operations fellow who's now a bestselling thriller writer

<BarrettBrown> and who's done some startups in California and JApan

<BarrettBrown> and Jamie Kilstein, a comedian

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<ohthehugemanatee> sorry, that's my firefox client

<BarrettBrown> and Robert Green, a producer with whom I'm working on stuff for Will Ferell and Adam McKay's production company

<ohthehugemanatee> writing a quick howto for the new irc people on your list

<BarrettBrown> great, thanks

<ohthehugemanatee> updated my info on the "staff list"

<BarrettBrown> very good

<BarrettBrown> meanwhile, you can use that list

<ohthehugemanatee> Opera singer, with a day job as project manager specializing in internet strategy and development for large non-profit, educational, and activist organizations. Prominent clients include Mozilla Foundation, Jane Goodall Institute, Pew Research, Johns Hopkins University, and Earthday.org .

<ohthehugemanatee> any other relevant info i can add there?

<BarrettBrown> I think that will do it

<ohthehugemanatee> :)

<BarrettBrown> I wasn't aware of most of that

<ohthehugemanatee> I wasn't sure if I'd mentioned it

<ohthehugemanatee> as an added bonus, my day job company is entirely virtual

<ohthehugemanatee> we have employees and execs all over the world

<ohthehugemanatee> paris, bratislava, adelaide, cambodia, south korea, salt lake city, DC...

<BarrettBrown> one of the things we've been doing as sort of an attachment to our Africa program is thinking about methods by which to help such organizations better collaborate

<ohthehugemanatee> so the distributed workforce thing is definitely a known issue for me

<ohthehugemanatee> do you mean africa-centered organizations? or just activist organizations?

<BarrettBrown> activist in general

<ohthehugemanatee> there is a wonderful group called InterAction - one of my clients, actually - that specializes in something similar

<BarrettBrown> oh, good

<ohthehugemanatee> they're the shadowy board of figures behind non-profits

<ohthehugemanatee> when there's a major disaster like the floods in Pakistan, someone has to make sure that the Red Cross doesn't duplicate, say, habitat for humanity's work

<BarrettBrown> we'll want to take a look at what they do exactly

<ohthehugemanatee> that's interaction

<BarrettBrown> right

<ohthehugemanatee> they're pretty targeted at hardcore relief efforts, but there are definitely lessons we can take from them

<ohthehugemanatee> actually i'm just rolling out a feature for them that makes for better online collaboration and document sharing among working groups of organizations

<ohthehugemanatee> finding a link

<ohthehugemanatee> check out http://haitaidmap.org

<BarrettBrown> a lot of what you're doing has potential for us, it sounds like

<ohthehugemanatee> this is a map of the efforts they're coordinating in haiti

<BarrettBrown> basically we've been trying to solve the same problem

<ohthehugemanatee> It's an important problem to solve

<BarrettBrown> in terms of online collaboration and working groups

<BarrettBrown> yes, absolutely

<ohthehugemanatee> but i don't think the most important one

<ohthehugemanatee> when you look at the problems in Africa, they are legion

<BarrettBrown> well, it has implications for how other problems are solved

<ohthehugemanatee> all the aid efforts in the world... sometimes it feels like a drop in the ocean

<ohthehugemanatee> imo the bigger issue is that these organizations can't focus enough of their energy on the problem they're hitting

<BarrettBrown> that's why we're concentrating on designing aid that will be self-perpetuating

<ohthehugemanatee> the vast majority of their effort and attention goes towards getting money to pay the bills

<BarrettBrown> yeah, I can see that

<ohthehugemanatee> yes, that's exactly the way to go

<ohthehugemanatee> the poor red cross... they get hammered for the fact that their overhead is something like 70%

<ohthehugemanatee> can you imagine if we could reduce that

<ohthehugemanatee> hm was it the red cross?

<ohthehugemanatee> ayway you get my point

<BarrettBrown> well, I'm going to set up a team that will include you and Charles Johnson and probably Todd Essig that will help to take my schematic and figure out if it needs tweaking

<BarrettBrown> yeah, and I think we can reduce it

<BarrettBrown> we've got a great deal of talent already and we're focused on taking best advantage of it

<ohthehugemanatee> I'd love ito get to talk to those guys

<BarrettBrown> we have no overhead

<ohthehugemanatee> both very very smart people

<BarrettBrown> and we'll hopefully have a pretty good method of collaboration that will be at least a small improvement over all others

<ohthehugemanatee> i'm very curious to see that

<BarrettBrown> in the meantime, the makeshift system we've developed is more efficient that that used by most organizations

<BarrettBrown> such as TED

<ohthehugemanatee> the makeshift system - ie google docs and now an IRC channel?

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<BarrettBrown> yeah, a combo of google docs, irc, e-mail discussion groups, and weekly gchat meetings

<BarrettBrown> it's all sort of developed procedurally based on our needs

<ohthehugemanatee> we have an advantage over TED that we're a smaller, newer organization

<BarrettBrown> yeah, plus TED is poorly-run, a girlfriend of mine works there

<BarrettBrown> she'll actually be working with us too, I think

<ohthehugemanatee> great

<ohthehugemanatee> looking at the task list

<ohthehugemanatee> is hosting decided on?

<ohthehugemanatee> I happen to rent a couple of servers of my own that we could use to start with

<BarrettBrown> you'll have to ask Tim Ellis about that

<ohthehugemanatee> and after that... i really don't recommend dreamhost

<ohthehugemanatee> ok, I'll write him

<BarrettBrown> Another thing you could do - write a brief summary of what InterAction does so that our participants will have a good idea of what we can learn from them

<BarrettBrown> and so we'll be aware of what other services are needed

<ohthehugemanatee> sure

<BarrettBrown> and if we can't think of any other services we could develop, perhaps we'll just get involved with them or suggest to organizations that they get in touch with them

<ohthehugemanatee> I have a friend there who might be interested to come in and have a chat with us

<BarrettBrown> that'd be great

<ohthehugemanatee> we could set up a conference line and she could do a QA

<ohthehugemanatee> assuming she's interested :)

<BarrettBrown> also, I imagine you have several contacts who might be interested in working with us

<ohthehugemanatee> I don't know about asking the really senior people... in some ways, we're proposing competition for them

<ohthehugemanatee> I have to get a better idea of what we're doing before I can talk to anyone about it

<ohthehugemanatee> I need to see the communications platform, or at least the spec

<ohthehugemanatee> and really wrap my head around how project africa works in relation to that

<ohthehugemanatee> otherwise we're just another aid project

<BarrettBrown> also, you have the authority to bring in anyone you think will be helpful to Project PM

<BarrettBrown> and to communicate on our behalf if needed

<BarrettBrown> so no need to ask my permission to do anything

<ohthehugemanatee> cool, thanks

<BarrettBrown> also, that list of participants

<ohthehugemanatee> but i will definitely be waiting until i really understand things to bring people on

--
Regards,

Barrett Brown
512-560-2302