Jason Pramas's blog

Recently the AFL-CIO launched a new site called Unemployment Lifeline that uses modern social media to provide a place for laid-off American workers to get some help and to connect - often for the first time - to the labor movement.

The surprisingly colorful and attractive site (sorry, but as someone involved in building labor websites, I notice that many union leaders ask for, shall we say, plain design concepts) offers a variety of ways for people to get involved with actions for national health reform and against giveaways to big business. It also provides forums where unemployed folks can talk with each other and compare notes, a calendar of relevant events nationwide, and a resource page where people can turn for human services and legal advice.

Last month, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters made cutting-edge use of the free streaming video service UStream - which I believe we here at Prometheus Labor Communications had turned them onto last fall - to a live broadcast of a debate between their aircraft industry organizers and leadership of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Organization. The event was called to help inform workers in an Oregon-based unit that is trying to decert from AMFA (translation for non-union folks: leave their old union) and join the Teamsters. Very interesting from both a technology perspective and a union democracy perspective.

The web is a funny place. For the first time in history all sides of pretty much any debate you can think of are present in the same medium with similar ability to ascertain what every other side is up to strategically at any given time. In English, I mean that for the first time in human history it is possible for working people to watch the watchers ... or more to the point, the bosses.

So as I trolled around my various social networking sites I happened upon an alert about an upcoming event at nearby Harvard Law School. It said that a bunch of corporate and military types descend on the place every few months for a special two-day session called "Dealing with an Angry Public" sponsored by Harvard Law's Program on Negotiation.

In my web-trolling for this blog, I happened upon mention on a Department of Labor Grant Program called Technology-Based Learning Grants in a Reuters release of a government press release. The purpose of the grants, according to (the thankfully) ex-Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, is to "increase workers' access to skills training through the Internet, video teleconferencing and other technology-based learning media." In the 2008 cycle, the DOL gave out $10,000,000 under the program.

But funny thing, not a plug nickel of that money seems to have gone to labor unions - many of which, I do hear tell, have just these kinds of skills training programs for their members and even for non-members in some cases.

ArsTechnica, one of my favorite tech news sites, has been reporting for some months now that the much-hyped One Laptop Per Child project has fallen on hard times. This is interesting news for labor techies ... although a little background is in order to explain why.

OLPC was announced at the ever labor-friendly (not) World Economic Forum in 2005. The concept was straightforward - create a small laptop that can be cheaply mass produced and sold to the governments of poor countries for $100 per unit to distribute to schoolchildren and help close the "digital divide."

A couple of months ago at a talk at MIT on social media, I made a point that in a down economy, we should not assume that all the nifty free services we've all come to expect on the web are going to remain free forever. After all, only 10 years ago we still had to pay to have simple listservs and forums. We had nothing like YouTube or Twitter or Facebook and so on.

Yet we know that the business model companies have built many of these major services on - and they are, alas, mostly corporate run at this point - has been advertising-based. That is, these companies offer a service to users like us for "free," but hope to turn a profit based on selling advertising to other companies.

As 2008 draws to a close, I just wanted to say that it's great to see Communicate or Die going strong. Part of the reason is that Steve and I post here regularly, and a growing group of members do too. However, there are lots of folks we haven't heard from yet, and we'd really like to in the weeks and months to come.

In an age when workers in all sectors are making ever more frequent use of mobile communications and computing technology, it is critical for the labor movement to devote a significant amount of time to thinking about exploring new organizing techniques that can take advantage of this development.

What does your union do when it's involved in a media-worthy event? Does it use its own public relations staff to get the union's perspective in the media's eye - and though them, the public eye? Does it hire a labor-friendly public relations company to do press work? And what about taking advantage of new social media technologies of the type we've engaged in an extended examination of here at Communicate or Die? Does your union make use of online social networks to get word out directly to large numbers of people in target markets? Does it have staff dedicated to this new and growing aspect of public relations work?

Oftentimes what's good for people as consumers is also good for people as union members - and vice versa. Case in point, consumers' expectations that quality goods won't, say, explode when they're not supposed to coincides nicely with the elan that union workers demonstrate as regards their ability to produce quality goods. Labor's explanation for this pride in a job well done is that union workers have decent benefits and make fair wages, and because of that are in decent health and spirits. Which all translates to being able to do their best on the job, and results in their production of quality goods.

Sometimes you just can't get a good RSS feed when you need one.

For those of you who missed the memo, RSS stands for (among other things) "Really Simple Syndication" - and is a "microformat" (a little snippet of code) that takes the basic information from posts to a website and and presents it in a way that allows other people on the web to easily monitor new posts to the site as they appear.

A report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project makes it clear that almost half of all American adults who use the internet or have a cell phone need someone else to help them set it up.

Yesterday, the word went out that a huge web hacking campaign hit up to 10,000 servers. The attacks added a simple line of code to the hacked sites that redirects their viewers to one of six servers which then send the traffic to a server in China. That server then launches attacks on viewers computers via major web browsers like Internet Explorer, and other commonly used pieces of software.
 

What is the marketing industry telling corporate leadership about social networking? We're as curious about that question at Prometheus as many other labor movement folks are; so we listened to a podcast from a recent conference called Corporate Communications in a Web 2.0 World for some answers. And the panel led by event host Mark Ragan, CEO of Ragan Communications, was certainly not shy about providing them.

Greetings, CorD fans. While it's gratifying to see people other than Steve or I posting to this site, I thought I should chime in and just say that I haven't disappered for the last 3 weeks. I've just been busy with various Prometheus projects, and then sick for the last week with the fairly nasty cold going around now that weather's getting colder.

I'll be back shortly with new stuff. But if any of you all have labor tech projects going on - especially in unions at any level - you should let me know by commenting to this post. I'm looking to interview some folks on new developments, and how they're working out.