May 26 2009: Mitch Kapor writes:

I’m excited to let everyone know I’ve taken on a new responsibility as Board Chair of OneWebDay. OneWebDay is an annual, global event which is celebrated every September 22. Much like Earth Day, which inspired it, OneWebDay provides an opportunity for communities to celebrate the power of Web for positive change, to take action to protect what is precious about it, and to educate the public and policymakers on how the Web works.

The major news I have to report is that OneWebDay has new institutional support, new leadership and a new theme for 2009.

[Read more →]

On Thursday, January 8th, from 6-8 pm, we’ll be holding a face-to-face meeting in New York to discuss OWD’s web strategy for 2009 and beyond.  We’ll be discussing how best to support the 2009 vision and evaluating some options that are already on the table.

If you’re in town, come join us at Britt Blaser’s apartment (also known as Open Resource Group Headquarters):

303 East 43rd St., apt. 28a (corner of 2nd Ave.)
New York, NY 10017

Please RSVP to mattcooperrider /at/ gmail /dot/ com, so we can have plenty of quality snacks and beverages.

If you’re not in NYC, or just feel like staying in your PJs, we welcome you to join us virtually by calling our conference line and tuning in to our webcast:

Webcast: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/owd

• No login required to view the video stream or chat using a generic username
• Create a UStream account if you want to use your own username while you chat (we’ll have the UStream chat up on the big screen here, so we’ll watch your comments as they come in)
• UStream typically has a 3 to 5 second delay on audio and video

Conference Call: (218) 844-8230, access code 742647#

We need you to vote for OWD’s proposal at Change.org’s Ideas for Change in America project. The project is a citizen-driven effort to identify the best ideas to effect the change the Obama Administration has promised.

“One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.”

What do OneWebDay and BlogActionDay.org have in common? Power in numbers!

Once a year, bloggers from around the world come together to write about a single issue.

This year’s cause is “Poverty.”

You can join the many folks who have already registered their blogs at BlogActionDay.org.

Even if you don’t have a blog, you can help promote this collaborative project. See their Promotion page to learn how.

Mark your calendars — Blog Action Day is October 15, 2008.

By MARK A. HART

Special to the Tribune

Published: September 20, 2008

Seven months ago I needed my teenage son to explain YouTube to me. Now I’m not only appearing on YouTube but also writing proposals for others to do so.

So it is with a sense of bemusement that I anticipate the third annual OneWebDay on Monday, touted by Internet activists as akin to an Earth Day celebration focusing on the impact the Web has had on participatory democracy.

Much like the advent of cable TV in the 1980s brought us public, educational and government stations, the Internet is vastly expanding the amount of public information available to ordinary citizens.

As a former newsman, I find the way digital technology is eroding some of the revenue base for traditional journalism alarming.

However, it’s hard to argue with millions using e-mail to contact Congress, activists using social network sites like Facebook to organize rallies and raise money for causes, and 175,000 new blogs being created daily.

It’s new media, not news media, provided the public can get it.

For example, the Federal Communications Commission recently sanctioned Comcast for blocking traffic sent over its network via a program frequently used to share video.

Meantime, telecom companies make no secret of their plans to create fast and slow lanes on the Internet, steering the public towards their preferred Web sites. Likely left behind will be those on low incomes, rural communities and the elderly.

So mark OneWebDay by e-mailing Congress and the FCC to bridge the digital divide and ensure Internet freedom.

Mark A. Hart is statewide organizer for the Florida Media Coalition. The pro-media advocacy group is based in Tampa.

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/sep/20/na-ask-for-internet-freedom-on-third-onewebday/

If it can be said that there’s a theme running through this OneWebDay celebration this year, it’s “let’s actually use this thing to change the world,” as OWD founder Susan Crawford put it to me this afternoon in New York City’s Washington Square Park where just under a hundred or so people gathered to celebrate the global network. Praising the seemingly useless iPhone beer app, Harvard Law School’s Jon Zittrain joked that he saw OWD as the “celebration of the fertile crap” the Internet produces — crap that fertilizes the web’s “goodness” without much caring which is which. That’s long been the web ethos: let’s throw everything we’ve got to the wall and see what sticks.

See the full text at techPresident

Vint Cerf posted the following blogworthy comment on another post:

Congratulations to celebrants of OneWebDay! Depending on how you count, Internet has been around operationally since at least January 1983 and for Bob Kahn since early 1973 and for me a bit later when he asked me to help figure out what open networking might look like. September is a significant month for the Internet. The first paper on the idea was presented in September 1973 at the University of Sussex and a more refined version published in May 1974. Thanks to the invention of the WWW, the net has become a major nexus for about 20% of the world’s population.

Susan Crawford asked for anecdotes. Here’s mine.

Last year, my wife and I went on a brief vacation that included houseboating on Lake Powell near Page, Arizona. As we approached Page, we and our friends began to discuss what meals we should plan while on the lake. Since there are no grocery stores on the lake, we needed to purchase all the food we would need before departing from the marina. Someone asked if we could make paella. I love paella but I thought “Gee, that needs saffron. Where are we going to find saffron in Page, Arizona?” So I hauled out my trusty BlackBerry and found I had a good GPRS signal so went to the Google home page and typed in “saffron, page arizona, grocery store.” Several choices came up so I picked one and called the telephone number. A voice answered and I asked “May I speak to the spice department please?” This was probably the owner on the line, “This is the spice department,” he said.  ”Do you have any saffron?” I asked. “I dunno but I’ll check” he replied and soon came back to confirm that he had the spice on the shelf. We followed the map on the web page to the store and I dashed in to purchase $12.99 worth of saffron (.06 ounces). What struck me later was that this was a perfect example of the value of geographically indexed information. In real time, my browser on my mobile was my window into knowledge about the local area. I got information when I needed it about what I needed. It reinforced my appreciation for being able to get useful information as required. Someone had take the trouble to share this information and I took advantage of it. So it goes as the world shares its knowledge and the search companies help us all to find it.

Here’s a report on the OWD event in Melbourne.  To see video, view the original post here.

Posted 23 September 2008 at 18:50

As part of One Web Day, the City of Melbourne held a breakfast event above the Eureka Skydeck to share the experiences of the innovative, participatory consultation process used to develop the Future Melbourne Community Plan. Additionally, City of Melbourne Lord Mayor, John So, also contributed this blog post as the 55th ambassador to One Web Day – this post also appears on the One Web Day site.

Appearances - Andrew Gill (MC), Councillor David Wilson, Keynote: Dr Mark Elliott, Director, Collabforge

Panel discussion - Geoff Lawler, Director Sustainability & Regulatory Services, City of Melbourne, Paul Rees-Jones, Manager Planning Insights, Clemenger BBDO, Dr Mark Elliott, Director, Collabforge

Part 1 – MC’s welcome, City of Melbourne representative address (Councillor David Wilson).

Part 2 – Key note speaker address, Dr Mark Elliott.

Part 3 – Panel discussion and questions to the panellists.

Students enrolled in Janna Anderson’s Reporting course in Elon University’s School of Communications were asked to write a short piece about the Web’s influence for them, personally, and to also shoot and post a short YouTube video with the content.  Five of these pieces were used in the print edition of the Greensboro News & Record Sunday September 21, along with a few other submissions in response to Ms. Anderson’s earlier appeal in an op-ed column to News & Record readers to share their Web stories.  The stories and YouTube links will be published intermittently on the OneWebDay stories blog.