Reshma For Congress...

I came across the most remarkable woman running for Congress. Since I wrote about supporting professional women last week, I thought this was a good follow up.

Resham Saujani is running for Congress in the 14th district of New York City which encompasses the East Side and Queens. She is using social media to help spread the word about her campaign and being transparent every step along the way as she talks about her campaign on her website and on Twitter (you can follow her @reshma2010 or join her campaign by texting JOIN to 646-807-9932).

She writes about herself:

My name is Reshma Saujani. I am a dedicated Democrat, a community activist, a Yale University legal scholar, and an attorney in New York City. But first and foremost, I am the daughter of political refugees whose story embodies the promise of life in America. For questions or more info email info@reshma2010.com.

She is exactly the type of candidate I want to see. She has the experience to get the job done, the passion to want to and the background and family that make her a standup person and member of society. While I can’t vote for Reshma myself (I’m not registered to vote in NYC), I support her for Congress and will do what I can to support her from the sidelines.

What other organizations do you know about that support women in politics? Leave a comment or message me to help out with a future blog post!
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Reflections From The First International CrisisCon...

Back in January, when the earthquake happened in Haiti, I felt like I do in all catastrophic disasters. Sick to my stomach. Human suffering is always hard to see, but for me, I’ve always been really sensitive to the suffering of others, and my whole life these instances had left me feeling like what could I do to help. Me, only one person.

As I’ve grown into my activist and humanitarian roles, technology has helped me find a place where I feel like I belong in the response. It’s not my primary profession, per say, in life. But it is a place where I feel like I can make a difference.

How?

Sometimes, from using our voice. Our voice online has the ability to multiply and make a bigger impact. Using your voice on the internet (and this could be Facebook or your own blog) is a way of standing up for what you believe, asking questions, and seeking answers.

That’s what happened to me in January. The earthquake happened and I turned to the Internet to see what the response would be. I had heard of Transparency Camps happening last summer, but only pieces, as I had been in the Philippines on my Kiva Fellowship. I had heard more about CrisisCommons from friends like Alex Rose and Chad Catacchio and with my incessant need for information learned more about the Camps. I started to see them pop up around the country and people were reaching out to me, since I now lived in New Orleans, asking to connect with people who had been instrumental in the response for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and wondering when there would be a CrisisCamp in New Orleans.

From the bottom of my cause-filled activist heart, you could say this is how I was roped in to creating CrisisCampNOLA.

I was helped by Robert Fogarty, who himself has a nonprofit focused on evacuation techniques called Evacuteer.org and by Barrett Conrad, who leads up a monthly developer event in New Orleans and could tap into those networks to get developers to attend.

So I had Alex and Chad rooting me on, and Robert and Barrett partnering and helping shoulder the load, and the local New Orleans community donating space (LaunchPadNOLA), food (Naked Pizza) and press/promotion (New Orleans Tech) and all of the pieces were coming together. But more than all of that, all CrisisCamps would be remiss not to mention Heather Blanchard.

Heather’s passion for creating CrisisCamp and moving CrisisCommons into a viable entity were never far off from the overall goal of having a successful campaign.

http://www.vimeo.com/9385869

We held CrisisCampNOLA, we invited local Haitians to come and tell their stories and we built a local response and also helped on the national scale. It was, by all means, a success.
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What Mobile Application Would Change Your Life?...

I’m on tour! It’s not quite the Cause It’s My Birthday madness that Doug Campbell and I created last fall, but it’s an exciting opportunity to meet and connect with EXCEPTIONAL techies (along with friends new and old) in five cities this summer. It’s an opportunity to help promote a company and a product we believe in, and help make the launch as viable as possible by sparking conversation and creating content with influencers and those most apt to purchase and develop this product.

The concept went something like this. Erica O’Grady and I wanted to create a unique opportunity for a company to get in front of their target audience, minus the top-shelf sponsorship cost. After all, what does “sponsoring” an event mean? It’s creating a place to get in front of the people that matter to you, right? So if we could do that for you, circulate a room and find the influencers and voices you wanted to reach, evangelize your product, sing your praises and back your endeavors, provide your with leads to follow up with after events that can lead to the same quantifiable ROI, what kind of sponsorship opportunity would that create?

The Party Crashers was born. And for our first project, we are party crashing Mashable’s 5-city SummerMash where awesome-super-amazing-client Microsoft has sponsored us to promote the Windows Phone 7. At each party in Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC, New York City and Chicago, we’re asking the question (and capturing your answer) to the question:

“What Mobile Application Would CHANGE YOUR LIFE?” (more…)

Runner’s Adrenaline...

Does running make you high? What do you think about when you run? Usually, for me, it’s the greatest endorphin and adrenaline high. I get thinking, creative, have big juicy ideas and in general feel any clouds lifting from my shoulders and feel like I’m back in charge. Back in control.

So yesterday when I went running, and found myself conflicted, I had to wonder why. And it was because I was thinking about the oil spill, thinking about what I could do, more ways that I could give back now that Gulf Coast Benefits has wrapped (and we successfully raised just under $50,000 for Gulf Restoration Network).

My friend Jolie worries that people are burning out on the topic, Citizen Effect is creating a platform where we can participate in ways to keep the topic current and on Monday (as I mentioned in my post yesterday) Pepsi’s Refresh Everything projects launches a special Gulf Coast edition giving out $1.3 million in loans.

I ran along the Mississippi (listening to Obama’s Hope speech as a DJ-mashup) and thought to myself, “I love New Orleans and American too much not to keep fighting and pushing forward in the name of humanity, of cause-filled living and of helping people.”

And so I shared those thoughts, raw and unedited, while they were fresh from my mid-day run.

Gulf Coast Benefit Concerts on CNN’s iReport...

A huge thank you to Jill Foster, Geoff Livingston, Dan Morrison, and May Yu. Through Citizen Effect’s #CitizenGulf campaign, they came to explore the Gulf Coast, meet with nonprofits and find out how they could best help the efforts going on here for recovery and to encourage citizen philanthropy (a favorite topic of mine you all know).

Since I’m smack in the middle of co-producing tomorrow night’s Gulf Benefit Concerts (85 and counting in 11 countries), I couldn’t be with them during the day as they went to St. Bernard Community Center, to visit Catholic Charities and other wonderful groups, but we did get together for dinner last night at Cochon to talk about giving, New Orleans, my experiences here (and frankly travel stories I hadn’t told in awhile including tales from my Burma trip last summer).
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Oil Spill Update: Ways to Get Involved & New ...

President Obama made a stop in the Gulf Coast region two weeks ago to survey the damage and while he was here issued a 6-month moratorium on new offshore drilling. Major news organizations have extended their stay on Louisiana’s coast, citing what residents already know, that the environmental and economic impact are far greater than anyone could fathom or dare imagine.

The “Crude Awakening” as it’s been called is causing a lifetime of damage to the Gulf Coast, spurring over 45 rallies nationwide to demand BP step up and take responsibility for its actions and that the government pass stricter regulations on offshore drilling. The spill, which occurred on April 20th, still hasn’t been stopped, and crude oil continues to spill into the Gulf Coast region.

In the mayhem and despair, citizens and activists are in a constant state of emergency and disaster mode. Anne Rolfes, Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told me, “Our office is bombarded every day by phone calls and people who walk through the door wanting to help in the face of this impossible situation. We are putting them to work to document the problem – gathering data, making the people-to-people connections that will help the real story be told. When the spill stops BP has a public relations machine ready to minimize this and pretend it didn’t happen. We don’t have a machine but we have something better – real people who are passionate and determined.”

The first week of June marks another important date for the Gulf Coast region. It’s the official start of hurricane season. With wetlands and marshes already under attack, meteorologists and hurricane experts warn this year’s hurricane season is more dangerous than ever. Imagine cities not only suffering water damage but covered in oil.

It’s hard not to be despondent, and worse, not know what you can do to help. Listed below are organizations making a difference and bringing together technologies being used to stop the oil spill from spreading and tracking the spill, providing a dataset open to the public.

Consider supporting these organizations and finding a way to get involved.

http://www.vimeo.com/11734964

Grassroots Mapping, a creation of Jeffrey Warren from MIT Media Lab’s Center for Future Civic Media, is producing imagery created by volunteers and owned in the public domain. By using balloons and kites equipped with inexpensive digital cameras, these “community satellites” are able to georeference and create maps with 100x higher resolution than what is available on Google to be used in the environmental battle and litigation proceedings in the coming years. Orientation sessions are being offered in New Orleans or a DIY wiki is available on their website.

What you can do: Grassroots Mapping is currently running a Kickstarter project to raise money for more kites and helium tanks to put in the hands of volunteers in New Orleans. They are looking to raise $5,000 in the next 20 days. A donation of $10 or more gets you a print of any photo in their public domain dataset.
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Treme Is Live: The Early Reviews...

Yesterday, before the premier of Treme and the City of New Orleans anxiously anticipating the first episode of HBO’s stellar lineup this season, creator David Simon wrote an op-ed in the Times Picayune talking about inaccuracies and the story lines of Treme. He writes:

That we will be held to certain standards by New Orleanians goes with the territory. Beginning tonight, you are the ultimate arbiters — the only ones we really care about — on the question of whether our storytelling alchemy has managed to make anything precious or worthy from the baser elements of fact.

Your sensibilities matter to us because we have tried to be honest with that extraordinary time — not journalistically true, but thematically so. We have depicted certain things that happened, and others that didn’t happen, and then still others that didn’t happen but truly should have happened.

It’s most fascinating living in a city that seems to be constantly under the national microscope. First a new mayor for the first time in 8 years and then the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras and now Treme. Living here is certainly taking its toll on MY descriptions of the city to outsiders and welcoming guests into visit but having to (constantly and consistently) explain myself and why I’m here and why New Orleans matters to me. I thought it fair time, even with just this thin swatch of Treme, to see what others thought and had to say for a change. I’ve gone in search of reviews of Treme and its authenticity and this is what I found:

Gathering to Watch Their City’s Star Turn, NY Times
“People here have spent their lives watching bad film and television about New Orleans,” he said in an interview, referring to Dennis Quaid’s attempt at a Cajun accent in the 1987 movie “The Big Easy.” “For people from New Orleans, it was a tremendous opening show.”

Treme on HBO, LA Times
“…you have not so much a television show as a modern American opera, full of flop sweat, spectacle and something that looks suspiciously like hope.”
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Networking 101 at Operation Hope NOLA Tonight!...

I’m excited to be giving a talk tonight to the local chapter of Operation Hope about networking and basic skills to get the most from your networking. I’ll be posting my slides from the talk later this week, but if you’re in New Orleans and want to come out tonight:

Details: Free seminar: Key to Networking-Make the Most of Your Contacts
Date: Tuesday, 3/30 @ 5:30 pm
Address: 1215 Prytania Street, New Orleans, 70115
RSVP: (504) 309-6153 x4

Follow Operation Hope NOLA on Twitter.
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Who Dat Nation Takes Over!...

The Saints won the Super Bowl and the city of New Orleans has barely taken a moment to breathe since. It’s been parade and celebration and second line and high fives and hugs and everything you could imagine and more here in The Big Easy ever since Sunday night.

In honor of the true excitement of the big win, here is little video (part 4 of 4 videos I did on Sunday) right after the big win, on Bourbon Street, in the madness. See the bottom of the post to more videos leading up to and including the mayhem.

(You’ll never see Katie Couric get this excited)

Flickr Video

There’s more. Have you heard about all of the 44 craziness from Sunday? Check this out:

• Sunday was Super Bowl 44
• Obama is the 44th president
• There are 44 days from Christmas to the Super Bowl
• The Saints franchise is 44 years old
• Sunday was 4 years and 4 months since Katrina
• Saints won NFC Champ in 4 minutes and 44 seconds in overtime with a 40-yard field goal

Crazy, right?
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Hub Culture: Davos 2010 Interview with Sloane Berr...

While at the World Economic Forum in Davos, I walked by the Hub, a central meeting place for the Wall St. Journal writers and also where the Hub was interviewing Young Global Leaders, CEOs and social entrepreneurs about Davos and their experiences. They were gracious enough to ask to interview me and readers of The Causemopolitan might remember that I’m only now growing into liking myself on video. I’m being honest! It’s the third medium that I’m adjusting to (after writing and photos). Submitting the MySpace Journal video was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, it was really putting myself out there and without the help and support of friends here in New Orleans I don’t know that I would have had the courage to do it.

That said, big thank you to Edie Lush and Hub Culture for the interview above and for all you New Orleans readers out there, check out the interview starting around minute 3 where I really get into WHY I love New Orleans and what is of the most value in being here and being part of the community.
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