Something is really wrong with our political and online level of discussion when people think it’s ok to greet the news that our Prime Minister’s father has passed away, by making really vile and hateful statements on Facebook and Twitter.

I am not an Labor party supporter, but I am a supporter of acting like a decent human being online and offline, and I’d like to ask that if you feel the same way, you join with me in saying enough is enough.

This problem is bigger than just politics too. We’ve seen some pretty rough examples of online harrassment and bullying recently, such as what happened to Charlotte Dawson. Part of the reason extreme situations like that happen, is that we tolerate bad behaviour online everyday. We need to stop doing that.

If our political conversations in Parliament House, in question time, or just on social media between every day people are a reflection of who we are as a nation, I really want us to do better.
I’d like to ask you to sign my online petition, and pass it along, but I’d also like to ask you to do more:

• Check your own behaviour. Don’t participate in hostility, abuse or bullying online.

• If you see people you know (friends, family, members of your online community) being abusive jerks online, tell them it’s not on. You’d tell them if they’d had too many drinks and were acting like a jerk at a party. It’s ok to tell them online too.

• Get in touch with your MP, and let them know that you’d like them, their party and all politicians to help lead by example by making a commitment to lifting the tone of our political and online debate to a more civil level. (Here’s how to find your MP’s details)

Want to get more involved?

I am starting to contact politicians, journalists and community leaders to inform them of this campaign and to ask for their support. If you’d like to get involved, please contact me via Twitter (@stokely) or leave a comment here.

Thank you for your support!

Inspired by @sweden, @newzealand, and of course local accounts @WeAreAustralia and @IndigenousX, I really wanted to see a local version. Melbourne is a town so in love with itself, how could we not take this opportunity to share the things we love (and hate) about our city?

I’ll be selecting people with an eye for diversity – and once you have the keys to the account, it’s all yours for the week. If you want to come out as an instant coffee drinker or Collingwood supporter, you won’t be censored. I just ask that you make sure you tweet at least once a day to make sure the account keeps ticking over.

If you’d like to volunteer for @WeMelbourne, please send a tweet to that account, or leave a comment here with your Twitter name. I would also really love it if you’d make a suggestion of the Melbourne people you’d like to see tweeting from @WeMelbourne. Thanks!

Now, I believe sporting activities and achievements, like all cultural pursuits, do give benefits back to society. Having winning athletes brings attention to sport and encourages people, especially young people, to play. In my case, watching the amazing US women’s gymnastics team – Mary Lou Retton and Julianne (“Julianne truly can!”) McNamara at the 1984 summer Olympics got me into gym classes when I was a kid.

I don’t have stats to back this up, but after Pat Cash’s 1987 Australian Open and Wimbledon victories, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see an increase in kids playing. His Wimbledon victory was the first by an Australian man in 16 years, since John Newcombe in 1971. (Of course, Evonne Goolagong Cawley had won in 1980).

I have to admit that given Australia’s sports mad reputation, I was a bit surprised to read in Crikey on 6 August poll results that:

When provided with the numbers on spending on elite Olympic sports, 58% of voters think we spend too much, and only 19% think it’s “about right”. Even voters who believe it is important that we win gold medals thought we spent too much: 49% versus 25% who thought current levels were “about right”. (Essential: We’re relaxed about the Olympics)

But I’m not seeking to just be anti-sport and say, we’re spending too much on sport. What I would like to see is more equity and less medal-shopping in our spending, and way more of an emphasis on everyday participation in sport and active recreation.

I would also note  that in the same Crikey report, Greens voters were reported to be the least interested in the Olympics:

30% of Greens voters say they have no interest in the Olympics compared to 14% of all voters, and 37% of Greens voters think winning gold medals is “not at all important” compared to 17% of all voters.

So perhaps the suggestions I’m making here might be relevant to Greens policy on sports and recreation funding.

What I would like you to consider is:

 1. Invest more in the participation of the 99%, not the elite 1%

Investing in young people’s participation in sport (and active recreation, eg orienteering) across the board, not just those who have Olympic potential. Let’s reallocate some of the money we currently use to train our elite Olympic athletes back into schools, and aim to increases more sporting participation across the board, and especially in a way that would encourage and enable female participation.

2. More equity in the funding of elite sport, less determined by chances of medals

Go look at the funding chart in The Age article linked to at the start of this post (seriously, go look) and tell me why swimming should be so grossly overfunded compared to the rest? If you were any athlete outside of swimming, wouldn’t you feel disheartened?

The Australian Institute of Sport made a call about 2 years ago that their current girls gymnastics cohort weren’t Olympics chances so they defunded their program and the girls who’d moved to Canberra, whose families had shifted their whole lives around to accommodate their girls’ sporting training, were chucked out and had to try to find places in other gymnastics programs in order to try to keep training. How is that fair? Call me crazy, but can’t we invest more evenly, and just field our best athletes in each sport, rather than defunding the ones who might not be medals chances, because we want to ensure we get a swag of gold medals in the pool?

3. Female participation

It drives me nuts that Australia is so devoted to sports which exclude women and pays relatively little attention to female-dominated sports even when we excel. One of the reasons tennis was my chosen sport (apart from the fact that I loved it and was reasonably good at it) was that mens, womens and mixed games are part of all elite tennis competitions. It seemed much more inclusive, although I know that inequality of prize purses has been an ongoing bone of contention for women in the game.

AFL is perhaps Australia’s favourite male dominated sports, and it does provide a female participation pathway for mixed and single sex participation for girls. I note they recommend that after 14, girls move into girls-only competitions.

I wasn’t even aware that AFL excludes girls, until I read a letter to the editor in the weekend paper in Melbourne a few years ago in which a mum said how crushed her daughter had been when she reached the cut-off age and couldn’t play with her (presumably mixed, maybe Auskick?) team anymore. It’s just not right.

(I note that a little research shows me that there is a modified Women’s Australian Rules Football game. Have you ever heard or it or seen it on telly? I certainly hadn’t, but I’m not a footy fan.

3. Legislation to ensure more equal opportunity and funding for girls sport in school and uni

Let’s consider the way the US has addressed female participation in sport – through the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act law (commonly known as Title IX), which mandates that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance”.

When introducing Title IX in 1972, President Nixon spoke mostly about how it would stop racial segregation on buses, which was still happening (!) but it seems to have had its most public and most ongoing impact on school and college sport. Wikipedia tell us:

One study, completed in 2006, pointed to a large increase in the number of women participating in athletics at both the high school and college level. The number of women in high school sports had increased by a factor of nine, while the number of women in college sports had increased by more than 450% (Unfortunately the citation leads to a dead link in Wikipedia).

An amusing sidenote for the feminists in the audience: I learned of the existence of Title IX last year through a recent episode of a TV show (I believe it was the Matt Perry comedy Mr Sunshine) in which an elite basketballer or footballer pisses off the female protagonist he’s on a date with by bellyaching about how Title IX has taken money away from real (men’s) sport.

So anyway, that’s a lot more than I thought I’d have to say about sport and the Olympics. I admit that I don’t follow any sport anymore, and I would welcome being corrected on any factual errors or assumptions I’ve made in the above. But the overall point I’d like to leave you with is this: If I have a daughter, I want her to be able to play any sport she wants, whether for fun or to excel. I’d love to see our funding, support and participation in sport to reflect this goal.

Here’s the draft social media policy I’m working on at the moment. It’s part of a larger communications policy. I’d welcome your thoughts on whether this frames the organisation and its team’s rights and responsibilities clearly enough.

The use of social media by [organisation] and its projects is supported by [organisation], and any official [organisation] or project presence on social media is subject to this communications policy.

Personal social media accounts of our staff are not bound by this policy. We respect the privacy and maturity of our staff, and trust they’ll reciprocate by ensuring that if they talk about [organisation] and its projects in any public forum (including social media) they’ll do so in a professional manner.

Comments or examples of ways to do this better would be welcome!

If you’ve ever chatted to me, or read my blog, you probably know that I love to connect people. I do it in my work as TACSI‘s Connector/Communicator… I do it in my volunteer work, I do it for fun (like when I was online matchmaking through 100 dates!).

So it’s no surprise that my latest idea is a new way for people who do good stuff to meet each other. #4good brekky will combine a bunch of my favourite things – breakfast, great coffee, and conversation with people who have great ideas & are working to put them into action!

There are a lot of great meetups already happening in Adelaide, (hello NetSquared! hello Socadl!) but I’m hoping this meetup won’t just be technology/social media people (much though I love them and certainly identify as one of them!). When chatting over this idea, Katy from Connecting Up commented to me that she really needs to spend time with her “hands in the dirt” doing stuff to make social change happen and she wants to connect to other people like that, and I totally agree. So please, help me spread this invitation online and offline to people who are doing good stuff in Adelaide. Renew Adelaide, I’m looking at you! Radelaide, I’m looking at you! Format, I’m looking at you!

Inspired by the wonderful community building of Kate Kendall who started #socialmelb brekky in Melbourne, #4good brekky will happen before work on a Friday morning. For many of us, meetups during work hours just aren’t doable – and swapping ideas when you’re freshly caffeinated in the morning can be a really inspiring start to the day!

If this sounds appealing, pleas come along for a coffee or brekky before work! The first #4good brekky will be on Friday, 5 August from 8am at Big Table at the Central Markets.

Hi there,via a couple of friends of mine who are using Google+, I understand that Google is starting to enforce a “real name” policy for Google+. I’m really disappointed if this is the case.

Many people online choose to use pseudonyms to keep their professional life separate from their personal life or hobbies. Or they are trying to protect themselves from abuse. As a woman who’s written about feminism online and received anonymous hatemail and death threats for doing so, I would like to preserve my right to post under a pseudonym to keep myself safe in the real world and if I choose, so I’m not identified as a woman online in places where it might not be safe to do so. I don’t believe that getting rid of anonymity online will stop bad behaviour like the abuse and death threats I’ve received. I do think that getting rid of anonymity and pseudonymity online will make it easier for people like myself to become targets of abuse and potentially put us in danger.

Quoting from the Geek Feminism blog post on Pseudonymity:

“Persistent pseudonyms (those used over many years and perhaps across multiple sites) can accrue social capital and respect just as “real” names can, and be subject to the same social pressures towards civil behaviour if the community has a strong culture of respect. Without a culture of respect, real names won’t help. With it, real names won’t matter.”

Thank you for listening to my feedback, I hope you will change your policy and allow anonymous and pseudonymous accounts on Google+ (which. by the way, I’m loving so far). Cheers!Sarah Stokely (my real name!)

I have a new job at the Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) which is located in Adelaide, South Australia (you can read the blog post introducing me if you like). It’s mission is to “identify and support the innovative ideas, methods and people that will contribute to and accelerate positive social change”. The team at TACSI describe it as a “do-tank” (as opposed to a thinktank!) for helping make social innovation happen.

How did this come about? I just happened to see a tweet from @totocol about a Social Innovation job… I clicked on it, and reading the job description gave me shivers – I felt like they were describing ME!  I had to apply…

The job was for a Connector/Communicator:

” the ultimate connector: someone who can animate a community (be it geographical or topical) around an idea or event. As our Connector/Communicator you will search out people, groups and organisations and connect them with the work TACSI is doing, with inspiring ideas, methodologies and people, and continue to build a community of interest for social innovation in Australia. These connections could be through events, through partnerships, through media – you name it! You’ll be working within an organisation dedicated to doing things differently to what’s been done before. Apply only if you’re passionate about working differently.”

(you can see the full position description if you’re interested – it’s on PDF)

Everyone who applies for a job says they’re passionately excited about the opportunity, and says they have references. Ho hum. But I really was passionately excited. I decided not to let a couple of pages of resumé do all the talking for me. I called on my network.

Over the next couple of days, I contacted a number of people I’ve worked with and volunteered with, telling them about the exciting job I was going for, and asking them to recommend me on LinkedIn. They very generously took the time to write recommendations for me. (Thank you, Sophie, Donna, Emma and Catherine!). I started peppering the TACSI folks with my recommendations by email. I guess it was a risk that they’d think I was an overenthusiastic self promoter, but fortunately they appreciated my enthusiasm!

One of the reasons I was excited about TACSI was the presence of Dr Nicholas Gruen on their Board. I met Nicholas briefly through my volunteer work with eDemocracy website OpenAustralia around the time he was chairing the Government 2.0 Taskforce. So, I took the bold advice of the wonderful Pia Waugh (advisor to Senator Kate Lundy) and emailed him directly to express my interest in working at TACSI. Again, I took the risk of coming across as a self promoting spammer. Again, the approach was received positively. (Thank you Pia, thank you Nicholas.).

A couple of weeks ago, I had a wonderful interview which felt more like an energetic brainstorming session with TACSI CEO Brenton Caffin and Program Director Erin Green. They’d asked me to prepare a presentation on what I thought their Communications program should look like for 2012. I had so much fun preparing it. I drew a lot of inspiration from one of my mentors in the open source community, Leslie Hawthorn, whose approach to community building is full of generosity and practical support. Thank you Leslie.

This seems to be turning into a Paltrow-esque Oscars acceptance speech, so I’ll just add a couple of final thank yous… to Donna, Sophie and Kat (from OpenAustralia) for being my referees. Thanks to Caroline Siler and the team at Keep Left PR for giving me some valuable experience in corporate Public Relations. Thanks to David Lee and the team at Nuffnang Australia for the opportunity to work in advertising land as their community manager. Thanks to Mark Davis and Bryony Cosgrove for letting me fulfil my dream of teaching at the University of Melbourne. And thanks to Raul (@totocol) – for tweeting the job opportunity. If I hadn’t seen his tweet, I wouldn’t have known about the job, and I wouldn’t be looking forward to 2011 nearly as much as I am.

In short, it was a whole social network who helped me get this job, I’m humbled and grateful and so damn excited for 2011 to start. Thanks everyone, and hello Adelaide and TACSI!

Direct contact to government

Phone Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s office (02) 6277 7700, and Attorney-General Robert McLelland’s office ((02) 6277 7300 and tell them you support free speech, due process and expect them to provide full support to Julian Assange in his upcoming legal battle overseas. [When I called the AG's office, they suggested also putting it in writing and provided the email address: attorney @ ag.gov.au, so a quick email is suggested as well]

While you’re at it, why not look up your local MP and call them and tell them too?

Financial support to Wikileaks

They are still accepting donations via their website. I’m looking into alternatives too. Or if you prefer to support an organisation which has a clearer legal status, why not join or donate to Electronic Frontiers Australia, which acts to protect online civil liberties (disclosure: I recently joined the EFA Board).

Events in support of Assange/Wikileaks

(I’ve used strikethrough to denote past events)

ADELAIDE

“Protest the government betrayal of Wikileaks figurehead Julian Assange”

Date: Sunday, December 12, 1pm – 2.30pm

Venue: SA Parliament House

BRISBANE:

Date: Monday, 13 December, 6.30pm

Venue: QUT Gardens Point B Block, Rm 224. Contact: Bec (0401 785 942)

Date: Friday, December 10, 12 noon.

Venue: Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, 295 Anne Street, Brisbane CBD. (Information via Green Left)

Emergency Protest to Defend Wikileaks & Julian Assange

Date: Thursday December 9, 5:30pm

Venue: Brisbane Square, Top of Queen St Mall, Brisbane

HOBART

Protest to support Julian Assange & Wikileaks

Date: Saturday, December 11, 12noon – 1pm

Venue: Parliament Lawns, Salamanca, Hobart

MELBOURNE:

Defend Assange & Wikileaks on Human Rights Day – Friday 10 December, from 4.30pm, State Library.

Julian Assange, Law & Politics: A meeting to discuss Wikileaks’ Julian Assange’s legal and political position

Speakers: Julian Burnside AO QC, Peter Gordon, John Faine and Professor Spencer Zifcak

Date: Thursday 9 December 2010, 5.30pm.

Venue: the Law Institute of Victoria, 470 Bourke St, Melbourne

PERTH

Date: Friday, December 10, 6pm.

Venue: Wesley Church (cnr William & Hay Sts, Perth) (Information via Green Left)

SYDNEY

Australian Public to Rally in Support of Wikileaks

Date: Friday, December 10, 1pm.

Venue: Sydney Town Hall.

Online ways to support Assange/Wikileaks:

Sign the Avaaz petition “Wikileaks: Stop the Crackdown”

Sign the GetUp petition “Media on Trial”

Sign the open letter to Julia Gillard by Jeff Sparrow Elizabeth O’Shea and at the ABC website (leave your name as a comment).

The Justice for Assange website has support banners you can download and display online.

I also love that someone has suggested nominating Julian Assange for Australian of the Year. You can also vote for Assange as Time’s Person of the Year, but it doesn’t actually influence who the Editor picks.

EDIT 13 December: There’s now a petition to nominate Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize and there’s also a new Brisbane-based website, Help Julian Assange which has an online petition and will soon offer the ability to contact politicians and post letters of support to Julian Assange.

Background Reading

Yesterday the EFA published their statement “Julian Assange and Wikileaks Deserve Protection.” I also interviewed Colin Jacobs, Chair of EFA on RRR last night (available for download as a podcast).

One of my passions, as a longtime journalist, publishing employee and more recently, a digital media lecturer, is finding new ways to fund writing online. In fact, I spoke at the Sydney Bloggers Festival on this very topic only last week.  This is why I’m so excited to see so many different crowdfunding initiatives being launched or mooted in Australia right now.

The highest profile, and most ambitious of these is New Matilda. Here’s why I’ve chosen to support New Matilda, and why I’m chosing to pass on the other crowdfunded projects on offer – at least for now.

New Matilda has a track record as a web publisher. We have seen their team, led by Editor Marni Cordell, produce New Matilda over the past few years. They’ve (finally) taken the bold and bloody steps of paring down to a skeleton team, and seeking funding for that team. We know what we’re getting. And I’m confident that they”ll deliver what they promise.

They’re also being quite smart – they’ve resumed their email service during this fundraising period. The website is showcasing their new content, as well as prominently promoting the progress of their fundraising activity. They’ve giving their audience something to talk about and share with others, who may in turn become financial supporters. This is crucial.

I believe it was Cory Doctorow (@Doctorow) who tweeted the other day something along the lines of ‘I like your ideas but if you haven’t run a mag before, giving you $100,000 to do it isn’t going to make it work’. Bingo.

Show the proof, show you can do it, start to build an appreciative audience around that, then the money will follow. Not the other way around.

The recently launched Australian version of Spot.us, Youcommnews has a couple of wildly expensive story pitches up there at the moment. Mumbrella points out that while they’ve gotten one story published, overall they seem to be struggling to attract funding. Seems crazy to go out to the public (even the civic-minded, monied public) asking for $9,500 for an investigative piece on forestry policy on the Solomon Islands, when you are are a new and green publication (or community, if they’re styling themselves that way) in the scheme of things. Surely you need to have built up a strong community of readers/funders to ask for that much? I hope that Youcommnews does build up such a community. But in the meantime, hopefully they’ll do a good job of promoting successes with smaller, cheaper articles, to start building a community which trusts them.

If I ever get my life back from the two (no wait, three if we count freelance!) jobs I’m doing at the moment, I’ll be tending to my new baby, the Digital Writers Festival. This will be a crowdcreated, and hopefully crowdfunded event. But it’s going to start as free media. There’s no way I’d *start* building this festival by going out and asking for $40,000 (or whatever it will end up costing). Show the proof, show you can do it, start to build an appreciative audience around that, then the money will follow. Not the other way around. I’ll be curating the Digital Writers Festival blog, and a Digital Writers podcast. This will help build a participating audience, and show people what kind of event we want DWF to become. Then, I think, we’ll have earned some trust as well as some interest. Then, hopefully, financial support will follow.

So, although I would love to read more from Clem Bastow, and suspect she does have a cool creative team working with her, I won’t be signing up to her newly launched Fundbreak application, to set up a print magazine called Elsewhere magazine. Putting aside the fact that I’d rather be paying writers, artists and photographers for their work rather than for printing a paper magazine, I would just like to see some smaller Elsewhere productions first. I don’t even mind if you want to charge me something for it.  Give me a taster first, please. A website? A fundraising evening at the pub a la Cherchez La Femme?

I wish all these initiatives the best of success. If this post offers up even one small idea for how to make this projects more successful, then I’m really glad. And, I’m still looking for one other person to join me in becoming a New Matilda supporter (they emailed me asking me to find two friends to join up, and I took the request seriously). So if you’re of a mind to join up to support New Matilda, please do so. And, if you’re in Melbourne, I’ll cook you dinner as an added incentive.