Proposal for action

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.

Interesting study from Ball State:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.92e661444313b232e8931de00c29...

"Adult Americans spend an average of more than eight hours a day in front of screens -- televisions, computer monitors, cellphones or other devices, according to a new study.

"The study also found that live television in the home continues to attract the greatest amount of viewing time with the average American spending slightly more than five hours a day in front of the tube.

"The figure drops to 210 minutes a day of average TV viewing time among 18-24 year olds but rises to 420 minutes a day among those aged 65 and older"...

"-- computer video consumption tends to be quite small with an average time of just over two minutes a day."

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.

Portland, Oregon  February 20,21,22   or on the interweb

UnionCamp Web 2.0 is an open space unconference that is self-organized.

We invite you to participate in person if  you can and remotely as interested.

your invitation here at UnionCamp Web 2.0

Best, Mark

p.s. I am trying Diigo.com !

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.

I got back yesterday from a great LaborTech conference in San Francisco. There was a lot of buzz and excitement in air there. I told Steve Zeltzer, the organizer of the conference along with his wife, Kazmi Torii, that I think I know how it must have felt in 1966 or 1967 when the world was on the cusp of a cultural revolution. It seems that the rise of all the powerful new communication tools at our disposal and the looming collapse of capitalism as we know it is creating opportunities for workers to have real influence and control over their own destiny.

What's missing in all of this, I think, is a concerted effort to make sure workers and their leaders know about these tools and how to best take advantage of them.

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.

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.

I recently had my cable service "upgraded" to include another 100 or so channels of (mostly) absolute dreck.  Got me to thinking about the idea of a national labor channel, which I think has been floated by the ILCA in the past but never taken up by any big unions or labor bodies, as far as I know.