CampusActivism.org / ActivismNetwork.org

I'm working with several Australian activists who are interested in creating an Australian activism network using this software.

If you want to get involved in this project (eg. if you live in or near Australia) - email me: aaron@campusactivism.org

You haven't seen any serious changes to CampusActivism.org/ActivismNetwork.org as I've been focussing on creating a customized version of this software that would serve as a networking resource for activists fighting power plants.

The Action Center (of Philadelphia, PA) is creating a website that will map all the power plants in the US, as well as connect activists who are opposing them.

We're working with a lot of government data. Developing some fancy searches. Doing some cool things with mapping. So it's a lot of work. There should be a basic version online by June 1.

The goal of this website (CampusActivism.org) and ActivismNetwork.org is to serve both students and non-students.

However, if you look at our list of upcoming events you will see that around 80% of them are student related. Here are several reasons for this:

1. This site is better plugged into student networks. You might think this is the major reason, but I hypothesize that a key reason is that there are a lot more student grassroots activisty conferences than non-student ones.

Yesterday I uploaded the latest changes to the software. Now when you log in it will remember you as the default. Logging in will take you to a personalized home page where you can see:

-Events targetted to your location (includes local events that would otherwise not show up on the website, though you would get them by email)

-Nearby new people and groups

-New resources (same as on the site's homepage)

-Updates from your friends

-A list of your friends

-A control panel

-A status update - "Aaron is..."

The latest version (3.3) of the software is now up and running on CampusActivism.org and ActivismNetwork.org.

So far, I've noticed very few bugs. Users are uploading pictures and filling out parts of the longer profile. So far I haven't noticed as many comments or resource ratings.

As always, you can see a list of features that I'm considering implementing.

Currently I'm on a community kick. So I want to create a better landing page for people when they log in. A page that includes a customized events calendar (including local events), links to their friends, and other info.

Activism Network 3.3 is currently online at www.campusactivism.org.

I'll upgrade activismnetwork.org soon and do a release in a week or so (once I iron out some of the bugs).

Start writing comments, filling out your personal profile, adding friends, inviting friends to join, uploading photos, and rating the resources!

I'm working on version 3.3 of the software!

My main goal is to increase the interactivity/community-building features. Thus I've added the ability to Write Comments. You can write a comment on almost everything. You can delete other people's comments (Ex. if someone writes a nasty comment about you in your profile).

I've added photos. You can upload one or more photos for a person or group that will be displayed with their profile and in a photo gallery.

Currently I'm working on the ability to add "friends".

There are a couple smaller things that I might do now or later - including adding tags, popularity based functions (what resources/people/groups/events are "hot"), and links to your other social network profiles.

This has larger implications beyond the Activism Network software.

Nobody, to my knowledge, has done a good job of creating an activist calendar that is used by a lot of organizations. There are a lot of calendars that are used by only several groups, but nothing with breadth.

(Please correct me if you know of a good example.)

For instance, there are a lot of IndyMedia sites. They generally have a calendar, however the calendar is only used by a small number of groups. An exception to this is Seattle - which is weird because they're actually using a pure text calendar (not calendar software).

What would make you visit CampusActivism.org (or ActivismNetwork.org) more often?

What kind of features would it take to get you to visit once a week?

What would make you more likely to tell your friends about this site?

I'd love some user feedback on these topics!

You can try out the iCal feeds