This is a post that’s long overdue, since the time the film was released! I was spurred to write it this morning, as I’m quite excited to be on a panel discussion at the screening of Tactical Tech’s film called 10 Tactics – Turning Information into Action.

The screening is at the Conference Room of National College, Bandra today and is being hosted by Point of View.  I’m often asked what Info-Activism is, and this film is a must-see for all those who are curious about, interested in and work in the area. I’m also often asked whether I’m a rights activist or a digital activist – and I say no, I’m an ethnographer and researcher who is sometimes an accidental information activist. I’d also broaden the scope of the relevance of these 10 Tactics to those who are working in the social media area, and to those in the corporate world, who’s focus of work is in developing products, services and strategies in a world where customers, users, consumers are already exchanging information, having conversations, and learning often much faster than organizations are. Or simply, it’s for those who care and already use these tools – how can you get more involved in making a difference?

From the 10 Tactics website:

What is 10 Tactics?

10 tactics provides original and artful ways for rights advocates to capture attention and communicate a cause. It includes a 50-minute film documenting inspiring info-activism stories from around the world and a set of cards; with tools tips and advice, for you to work through as you plan your own info-activism

The film features 35 info-activism stories told from the point of view of advocates in 24 different countries including Lebanon, India, Tunisia, Egypt, Kenya, Indonesia, South Africa and the UK.

The film is shared at the website as 10 Tactics, along with Tactics cards that cover a case study, a video story, suggestions and tips, and a featured tool. The 10 Tactics are:

1. Mobilizing people
2. Witness and record
3. Visualize your message
4. Amplify personal stories
5. Just add humour
6. Manage your contacts
7. How to use complex data
8. Use collective intelligence
9. Let people ask the questions
10. Investigate and expose

(I’m featured in Tactic 8 – Use Collective Intelligence – here’s the gist of what I said – “We have communities that we have developed over time in several spaces on the web – on blogs, Facebook, Twitter. What these tools allow you to do is network with all of your online communities, to operate as hubs of connected people. So when something happens and you need to respond, it’s about the spontaneous mobilisation of a community that already exists online, through the multiple nodes and hubs that you have created as you leave your footprints on the web.”

Tactic 8 – Use collective intelligence from Tactical Technology Collective on Vimeo.)

The project came about at the Info-Activism camp held in February 2009, which I was very privileged to have attended.

We’ve also used collective intelligence and swarming way back in 2004 when the Tsunamis had devastated parts of Asia and then again in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina – each of these on a different scale, and using other technologies like blogs and wikis and Skype.

If you’re interested in this area, make sure you view the whole film, all 10 tactics! And there are screenings all over the world, so do go for them, and participate in the discussions.

Last week, I attended the Round Table on Assessing the Efficacy of Information and Communication Technologies for Public Initiatives, hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, on 17 June 2009, in collaboration with the Liberty Institute, New Delhi.

The discussion was really interesting, and I do hope it is the start of many such events. It was a great opportunity to share and learn around projects, processes and outcomes! I got to know more about many really interesting projects and the people associated with them – Edwin from Open Space who was the facilitator, Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute that runs EmpoweringIndia, Muthatha Ramanathan, the JaagoRe guys from Janaagraha, Ravi Rangan of Comat, Siddharth Sharma of Intellecap, Nitai Mehta of Praja, Gokul of Mapunity, Gautam John of Pratham books, Meera from the Bangalore-based Citizen Matters, Sanjay Jain of Google, Gaurav Mishra of Vote Report India, a bunch of folks from CIS – Pranesh, Anja, Kiran, and many more!  The Tactical Technology Collective folks were there too, and Allan and David distributed some of their guides and toolkits which were a real hit in terms of content and production values!

Zainab has a really detailed report on the roundtable, the picture above is from her post. The discussion was also live-tweeted under the #cisia tag!

A few things that struck me when reflecting upon the event:

• that there is a need to combine efforts and share resources across the various projects, for instance, back-end integration with the government
• that there’s need to engage audiences in the projects by different ways of dissemination
• that ‘data’ needs to be presented and disseminated in ways that are relevant to people’s lives and in line with their own usage patterns, habits and behaviour
• and that there are opportunities within this diverse groups to help and collaborate.

On one of the breaks, Gautam John, who I enjoyed meeting F2F after following his tweets for a while, introduced me to Sachin Malhan and his team who are working on a really interesting set of projects under the umbrella, Inclusive Planet. I was quite impressed with what they’re trying to do – creating innovative crowd-sourced online services for the differently-abled with the vision of leveraging these services to building a community on the web. The common theme across their projects is ‘access’. Check out Readable, their beta platform that enables the blind to share and access books and materials relevant to their study or leisure in formats totally accessible to them.

Peter and I were also invited to be on a Panel Discussion hosted by  CIS, on Social Media and Mobilisation. It was a good conversation, although not always easy when the audience is so diverse – we had open source geeks nd technologists, online & offline activists, ngo’s, marketers, social media users & newbies. Zainab has a nice synopsis at her blog.

Thanks Sunil, Nishant and Zainab of the Centre of Internet and Society for inviting me to these events, and to Zainab for being such a great host!