UC Irvine hosted a budget write-in this week and I can’t imagine why we’re still putting pen to paper.

While delivering letters in bulk to our state legislators is much more civil and respectful than the protests and disobedience that have been observed around UC campuses this past month, aren’t there more innovative, collaborative and effective ways in which to communicate our dismay with the state of the State and University?

After all, isn’t the University of California the top public institution in the world?  Don’t we produce Nobel Prize winners and Fulbright Scholars, life-saving research and game-changing technology?

Advice to UC students.  Take what you know best — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter — and turn it into a campaign that legislators can’t ignore, toss aside, or hand to an aide to craft a scripted response.

The write-in would have been a good opportunity for student leaders to flip out their mobile phones and interview each other about the personal impact the fee hike will have on them come the new academic year.  It was a chance for students to plead their hardships, share their personal stories, and talk about their needs… and to tell their stories through a new medium to legislators and public citizens alike.

If just a 1,000 students from each campus joined a Facebook fan page or custom website that integrates Facebook Connect (or the like) and allow students to voice their concerns online – that would be a collective power of 10,000 voices telling their story to the public. The public and media can then help pay it forward and tell tens of thousands of other people how devastating the fee hikes are.

A letter only goes to one person, and your voice may or may not ever be heard.  But new media content can be shared, redistributed, repackaged, emailed, linked, tweeted…  The same effort put into a letter can be put into a message that has the potential to be heard across the world.

And all it takes it the one story that becomes viral.  The one story that tugs at the hearts of the voters of California, the philanthropist across the globe, and the legislator who votes on the UC budget.

How about a video profile of how much it costs to be a bio major:  How much are your textbooks?  What additional lab fees do you pay?  And how are you able to afford the expensive rent around Westwood, Irvine, Santa Barbara?

Letter-writing campaigns didn’t even work in my time as a UCSA Legislative Affairs member or ASUCD External Affairs Chair.  What worked were the face-to-face meetings with the educational committee members, staffers for the legislators or better yet the legislators themselves.

Today, students have the best tools at their fingertips: new media and social networks.  Whether it’s a student, parent, professor or staff member speaking, why aren’t we using these innovative communication mediums, which are either no-cost or low-cost, to effectively lobby the State and its citizens?

A collective voice is a powerful thing when used the right way.

Protesting and rioting may have worked in the 1970s.  But times are different. Technology is different.

The UC’s budget is an obvious mess, and I have strong personal opinions about it.  What it boils down to though, is there’s plenty of blame to spread.  But I don’t think it’s too late to make a new media move — the right move — to influence change from the ground up.

Picket signs, the wood sticks and magic markers to poster board is so last millennium, and so un-ecofriendly.  If you want to be heard, to be green, to be innovative with your message, take a lesson from the 2008 Presidential elections.  That wasn’t that long ago…

Creative Commons

According to the Creative Commons, the law makes it virtually impossible to waive the copyright automatically bestowed on creators.  CC0 is a universal waiver that may be used by anyone wishing to permanently surrender the copyright and database rights they may have in a work.

Personal Genome Project, is one of the first adopters of CCo. Read more about CC0 at the CC blogpost “Expanding the Public Domain: Part Zero“.

So, that begs the question – what are the terms of any Creative Commons license? Is it life + 75 years like copyright?

UPDATE from @plagiarismtoday: CC Licenses, if they aren’t changed, last as long as copyright as it is a copyright license, not a change to copyright law.

But then again, I’m not in the targeted age-group, nor do I watch much TV. And with TiVo, even less commercials…

Exciting news! From the folks at Creative Commons comes an announcement that you can now CC-license your tweets via TweetCC!

It’s simple, just send one of the following tweets to @tweetcc, depending on which CC license you’d like to use (click on the link for an instant tweet):

CC Zero Waiver: @tweetcc: I dedicate my tweets to The Commons by waiving all copyrights under CC Zero Waiver http://icnhz.com/cc-0

Attribution: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution http://icnhz.com/cc-by

Attribution Share Alike: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Share Alike http://icnhz.com/cc-by-sa

Attribution, No Derivatives: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution No Derivatives http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nd

Attribution Non-Commercial: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Non-Commercial http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nc

Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nc-sa

Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives: @tweetcc: I license tweets under CC Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives http://icnhz.com/cc-by-nc-nd

Even cooler is they don’t ask for your password:

We don’t ask for your Twitter login or password as this password anti-pattern practice teaches people how to be phished. Don’t scatter your passwords around like chicken feed.

Join the founders of TweetCC – @malarkey and @briansuda – and some 1,300 other tweeters who have already licensed their tweets!

Some protests are taken to the streets, others through petition or boycotts.  Today, an issue a half a world away is gaining momentum online through social networks and new media platforms.

The New Zealand Internet Blackout – which I first read about on Read Write Web (@rww) – is an online social media movement that asks Kiwi’s and non-Kiwi’s alike to protest against the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A‘ :

…that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This is due to come into effect on February 28th unless immediate action is taken by the National Party.

Find out how exactly to update your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Web site profiles at the Creative Freedom Blackout page.

Here are some images you can use for your profiles. Just right-click to save to your desktop and upload to your profile pictures:

I’ve blacked out Twitter, Facebook and this blog.

Thanks to the new Internet, the young are making history and telling the story as it happens…

In some ways, I think we are also now predicting history as we piece together the actions of the masses who post their continuous status – whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or other online social mediums. We document history through blogs, tweets, loopt, etc. and will do so more exponentially as geotagging becomes prevalent over the next few years.

Take the disaster in Mumbai, for example and the microblog buzz about it hours before any major news outlet reported on it this past fall.  Or the story of @jamesbuck who tweeted a single word, “Arrested” from Egypt and ignited action across the globe in Berkeley, CA.  I had just started using Twitter and did not understand it’s power, until I heard the story of @jamesbuck… and I was glued to the story and my Twitter account for days.

What is a hybrid economy?  I don’t think too many people have a grasp on this concept yet, even though we are living in the midst of it RIGHT NOW.

I did a Google search on hybrid economy and the results mostly revolve around the economical nature of hybrid cars.  One other search result – an article from 1993 – describes a hybrid economy as the convergence of the public-private sectors.

But the hybrid economy that I refer to is about the remix of real business and crowdsourcing, as Lawrence Lessig describes in short:

Commercial entities leverage value out of sharing economies, and vice versa.

Flickr is a service that depends on the content of its users and is highly successful.  Many third-party companies have spawned off the success of Flickr such as Moo, Imagekind, QOOP and Blurb.  Even Capital One is leveraging the power of the hybrid economy through Flickr by allowing users to create personalized credit cards.

Mass collaboration, crowd sourcing and social media has already proven to the market that people are willing to contribute for free or at little cost to organizers.  It’s also become evident over the last several years that the new generation of consumers are willing to put in labor and sweat equity for the reward of having simply participated, or being part of the design (ala Wikipedia).  Often times all anyone needs is due credit and publicity; sometimes to jump start their career or get their name on the map.  I’m one such individual.

New businesses here on out would be remiss if they ignore the potential of sourcing their customers.  @AdamAinbinder brought up a good example tonight with Friendster and their inability to reach the success that Facebook has.  First mover advantage has no advantage if you are unable to allow your community to feel that they are an integral part of the product or service.  Likewise, imagine where Apple might be today with the iPhone had they not opened up application development to the masses.

Whether it’s starting a very 1.0 business such as a recreational facility, or a 2.0 lifestyle business (i.e. MarthaStewart.com, Livestrong.com), the ability to interact with those most interested in your arena – the hobbyists and the connoisseurs – is what will feed the momentum, and thereby business awareness, growth and success.

More to come on this thought…

Lessig was on The Cobert Report this week and did a great interview!

And since then, there have been a few remixes, including this one.  (Lessig is tracking other remixes on his blog entry about this.)

Good times.

In essence:

• The funds would go toward subsidizing the hybrid and environmentally conscious vehicles that these automakers are making;
• Which will in turn bring down the costs so that the vehicles will be made more accessible;
• And if more people drove hybrids or hi-mpg cars, the enviromnental damage will decrease; and
• Thus saving the government money in the future on environmental issues, as well as saving our environment.

What would happen to the Detroit autoworkers?

• Many of the autoworkers could get jobs at the Toyota, Honda and Mercedes plants, and
• Suppliers could compete for contracts with these auto builders and continue to stay in business.

I realize that this doesn’t address the many jobs that will be equally impacted including restaurateurs, barbers, etc. in MoTown.  No plan will ever solve all of the problems and trickle-down effects.  But if we can make a positive impact on two different, yet closely intertwined areas – automobiles and the environment – why the heck not?

How to get past the big bullies in the room… the oil companies?

Moya Watson gives a great recap on her blog.  Here are some highlights that I enjoyed from the recap:

Web meets the president

“Were it not for the Internet, Obama would not have been elected President,” said Arianna Huffington in Friday’s great panel, The Web and Politics (with John Heilemann, Arianna Huffington, Gavin Newsom, and Joe Trippi). “It wasn’t the age of the candidate that mattered in this election,” she continued, “It was the age of the ideas.”

Web meets (dirty) politics

We’ve just experienced the terrible flipside of “truth into our living rooms,” which is that the Internet can also be used, with devastating effectiveness, to spread attacks and lies into our living rooms. Here are some specific examples from the fight against Proposition 8 — all true:

• Videos propagated on YouTube in which the official “Yes” campaign equated gays with Hitler
• No On Prop 8’s Web site attacked by denial-of-service (which we overcame mightily, thanks to our Web techs)
• Personal attacks from people in the blogosphere throughout open, unmoderated threads (when another side might have had closed threads)
• Videos propagated by the official “Yes” campaign using children without their parents’ agreement or permission
• Gay people (and straight alike) getting anti-gay “Yes” ads served on their site because the yes campaign invested heavily in Google AdWords

Web meets TV

“TV is the biggest medium in America that hasn’t been democratized yet,” said @ev. “Twitter changes how people connect with people – if you expand that to a very large user base, it can change culture.” Pointing out that it’s not just social, Evan continued, “it has potential to see aggregate real-time information, like during the election.” Add Current TV to the mix and what happens?

“With Twitter and this broadcast model together, what happens is that you can get alternate viewpoints WHILE they’re being broadcast” -@ev

Green is the new Web

Calling himself a “recovering politician,” Al Gore took stage late at the summit to a standing ovation, saying that the “redeeming quality of the election” was that “all humans are created equal” and that this “would not have been possible without the Internet.”

Web meets the iPhone

AND more…. read the whole blog post and video/photos links here.

Hoping to get to the Web2.0 Expo in the spring.  Anyone wanna’ go with??