http://www.mixedink.com/educators/

Now teachers can easily invite their students to write together, evaluate their classmates’ writing, and learn from their peers. Here’s a short video with more information about how you can use MixedInk in the classroom:

The educator package offers a collection of teacher-friendly features.  Now teachers can easily:

• Password protect projects
• Pre-register students
• Use student reports to track individual contributions
• Create ad-free projects
• Customize the rating rubric
• Moderate projects
• Export content

See what teachers are saying, take our collaborative writing tool for a spin, and then get started using it in your classroom!

In celebration of our launch, we’re offering the first 150 teachers who sign up a 25% discount when they use the code “EDU LAUNCH.”  Spread the word on Twitter!

As always, we’d love to hear what you think! Leave a comment below, or send us an email.

One Web Day was founded in 2006 by Susan Crawford, who now advises President Obama on science, technology, and innovation policy, and has grown into a global event, with activities taking place in cities around the world on September 22nd. You can get involved by organizing or attending an event on One Web Day, editing a Wikipedia article, donating a computer, or joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation, just to name a few options.

This year, the focus is on a key internet value: online participation in democracy. This is something that really inspires our work, here at MixedInk. Looking back, here have been some highlights in public participation and engagement:

• The Netroots Platform: Even before our public launch, a group of online activists used MixedInk to write a progressive political platform – a piece of which was included in the actual Democratic platform. See the ABCNews and Wired articles covering the project.
• GovTrack, a non-partisan group that tracks legislation, invited its community to write a collective letter to Congress opposing a gun control bill. This letter was converted into a petition, signed by over 3,000 people, and delivered to several members of the House.
• Congressman Anthony Weiner invited citizens to help generate a set of health care principles to help inform his work on the subcommittee on health.
• The White House invited the public to help craft open government policy, including how to make the federal government more transparent, collaborative, and participatory as part of its groundbreaking Open Government Initiative. You can hear me talking about the project on Federal News Radio.

In each of these cases, we’ve been so inspired by the ordinary people who have taken time out of their busy schedules – who have spent their precious nights and weekends – to do the hard work of writing policy, expressing their priorities, and participating in democracy. It has been a lesson in true citizenship.

Carlos Campuzano, a member of the Spanish Parliament, just invited constituents to weigh in on immigration law. In the next few weeks, the City of San Francisco will invite residents to weigh in on local policy issues. At MixedInk, we look forward to watching these projects unfold and are thankful for the opportunity to play a small role in this movement.

Check out this video about One Web Day and then get involved!

So we’ve started using Twitter to share news about MixedInk in smaller, bite-size pieces.  We’ll still post here at our blog, but those who want to hear the latest should definitely follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/mixedink.

As a teaser, here’s our latest tweet…

It’s a huge honor to be selected as a finalist from among over 400 entries.  But win or lose, the We Media conference will be a fantastic opportunity to meet and pitch MixedInk the entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs who are shaping the media of tomorrow.

You can vote for our contest entry here: http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/16890

The judges will be taking the community’s votes into account when they make their verdict, so your votes will make a big difference.

I’ll be representing MixedInk at the conference in Miami.  If you’ll be at the conference and would be interested in meeting up, drop me an email (david-at-thisdomain) or just stop by our booth in the gallery.  Hope to see you there!

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Belated update: MixedInk finished in second place (the judges said it was tantalizingly close) behind SeeClickFix.  They’ve created an online platform that lets citizens point out non-emergency issues, like potholes, and enables public officials to manage the complaints and respond in transparent fashion.  They were a worthy competitor, and a fun bunch of guys to boot.  Check out their site at www.seeclickfix.com.

It was great hanging out with all the contest finalists in Miami, as well as leaders and innovators from across the social media spectrum – we heard about some very cool projects in the works.  Hope to see everybody back at We Media again next year!

The project earned quite a bit of attention from the media and blogosphere.  One person, taking advantage of the fact that the inaugural addresses were published under a creative commons license, even created a free e-book from all the different submissions.  See our recent buzz for more highlights.

One last thing to bring to your attention – here’s Slate’s Michael Newman being interviewed on the WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show about the project.

He does a pretty nice job of explaining how MixedInk’s process works.  We also thought this “word cloud” that WNYC created using from the People’s Inaugural Address was pretty cool:

All in all, this was a pretty innovative project, and a great way to kick off the grand adventure that is MixedInk.

A big thanks to Slate – and to all who contributed!

‘Nuff said!

Update: We’ve just been written up at TechCrunch!   (As a bonus, our site seems to be humming along despite the additional traffic…we’ve heard horror stories).

Check it out:

Let us know what you think!

On behalf of Team MixedInk, a very sincere thanks to my wife Sarah for lending her fabulous voice to the cause.

Joining me on the panel will be Michael Yaki, the National Platform Director for the Obama Campaign this year, and Brian Young, Senator John Kerry’s Internet Director.

Here’s the event description:

In 2006, with less money and less name recognition than his opponent for Senate, incumbent Orrin Hatch, Pete Ashdown took an innovative approach to his campaign website. Harking back to a tradition of elected representatives being delegates of their constituents will (rather than trustees), Ashdown included a wiki on his website where voters could edit and develop his campaign platform. This collaborative process, made easy by the web, foreshadowed a growing practice of letting large groups of citizens to collaborate on developing political messages and policy platforms.

But why should we let the crowd do this? According to James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, large groups of people are simply smarter than small groups and individuals, on average. For example, Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, in The Spiral of Silence, shows that long before asking people in surveys “who they will vote for” can effectively predict an upcoming election, asking them “who they think will win” will get the prediction right.

Join us on Thursday, October 16, 2008, from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm for the Internet Advocacy Roundtable as we discuss crowdsourcing message and policy platforms with a panel of speakers who have managed crowdsourcing programs and developed new software to make these programs more effective.

The Center for American Progress is a progressive think tank, but people of all political stripes with an interest in the democratization of politics and policy are welcome.  Note that an RSVP is required.

See here for details:

http://www2.americanprogressaction.org/o/507/t/124/event/index.jsp?event_KEY=20520

Hope to see you there!

The different approaches can be grouped into the categories of venting, crowdsourcing, and crowd empowerment.

Venting. An organization that wants to engage stakeholders can get surprisingly far simply by providing a forum for its users to express themselves and interact with each other – in essence, to vent.

Even without committing to incorporate, respond to, or give prominence to what users have to say, an organization can enhance its image and build a relationship with stakeholders simply by giving them an outlet.  Since only a small segment of very passionate users will bother to read the ventings of others, the organization can engage users in this way without giving up real control of their message and without assuming much risk from stakeholders who criticize their host.

Most comment systems and discussion forums fall into this category.  Comments allow users to react and converse with one another beneath a blog post or news article.  But comments are given far less prominence than the original content they address, as they often are only accessible by a “view comments” link [link to view comments], they are located further down the page, and they are often visually distinct from the main content.  Thus, comments provide an outlet for social venting but do not provide users with significant control.

Crowdsourcing. A more substantive way of enabling users to have significant real-world impact is to draft them in the processes of writing, research and analysis that are part of an organization’s core work.

Talking Points Memo asks readers to search through thousands of documents to find useful information relevant to current political issues.  Assignment Zero invited the public to participate in writing a long-form news article, for example, by conducting interviews and providing transcripts and quotes to the professional journalists.  A pilot program run by the USPTO solicits citizens’ help in evaluating patent applications.

These initiatives allow content submitted by citizens to move out of the commenting and feedback backwaters.  Unlike with pure venting, here the crowd’s collective effort can actually help to shape institutional policies and public debates.

But the crowd’s control is still limited – these initiatives still leave decision-making power in the hands of the organizer or host.  For example, when Mitt Romney’s campaign asked supporters to produce a TV ad and John Kerry’s campaign asked his email list to submit radio ads, the campaigns collected content from users and narrowed the options down internally.  Only then did they let their supporters choose the winning entry from among a small number of options they had determined were “safe.”

Empowerment. While the previous categories ultimately leave the designation of content as significant or impactful to the organizer, a few bold initiatives actually let the community make that decision itself and pledge to stick with the results, even if counterproductive to their institutional interests.

Most of these, including Digg and Wikipedia, were structured democratically from the start and have grown specifically because they are participatory.  But there have also been a few large organizations to introduce democratic policies despite the risks.

MyStarbucksIdea and Dell’s IdeaStorm, which let users submit and vote on ideas to determine which are popular, are excellent examples of this, as Vanessa wrote recently.  The prominence of an idea is determined solely by users’ votes, and users have their own interests, rather than the company’s interests, at heart.  So, plenty of criticism of each company and its products has risen to the top of the idea list.  For example, one of the most popular ideas was from a user named “MsTexas”:

Instead of spending mucho $$ on advertising, just lower the prices a little. Old customers will return, new customers who are frightened by everyone who talks about “$5.00 for a cup of coffee!?!” will be lured in, and existing customers will feel ’special’.

Though Starbucks is responding to other ideas above and below this one, it’s unlikely the company will act on this suggestion – and they would obviously rather not have attention brought to how high their prices are.  Yet by allowing in the criticism, Starbucks assures users that it’s the users who are in control.  That breeds trust, which in turn drives greater involvement with the site.  The exchange builds the company’s brand and reinforces customer loyalty among those who participate, and even among those who don’t.  It also allows Starbucks to see which of the many obvious changes are customer priorities (like free wifi), as well as giving the company great ideas they might not have thought of themselves.  My personal favorite:

For the iced coffee drinks. Make them with ice cubes made from coffee. This way the coffee does not become diluted and tastes so much better all the way to the bottom of the cup!

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These three models offer a ladder of participatory engagement and risk.  As our tool is flexible, MixedInk can be applied within each paradigm – and we expect it will be.  But over time, we will encourage organizations to pursue the most democratic approach possible, moving from the venting model that gives users a largely symbolic outlet, to the empowerment model that places real control in their hands.  While it will take time for our collective norms to shift toward a much more participatory economy, politics and media, the rewards clearly outweigh the risks.

Whether you agree with the Netroots or not, there’s no denying that the final result is a remarkably eloquent 29 pages of rhetoric, ranging from the lofty to the highly specific, that seems to capture the community’s viewpoint pretty well.  Check it out!

www.NetrootsPlatform.org

The project’s been covered in the political and tech blogosphere, including DailyKos, MyDD, and TechPresident. [UPDATE: it's also been written up at ABCNews.com and Wired!]

From Nancy Scola’s write-up at Tech President:

How do you effectively harness the wisdom of the crowds when the goal is political ideas, not pinning down the weight of an ox at a county fair? [link added]

Does MixedInk point to a way of governing that effectively harnesses the intelligence and energy of bigger groups than we’re used to? It might offer some direction to a campaign like Obama’s that claims to tap into the wisdom of, for example, more than 300 foreign policy advisors. Managing all that smarts can’t be easy.

Here’s the press release we put together with a few members of the Netroots Platform committee.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PROGRESSIVE ONLINE ACTIVISTS ENGAGE OBAMA CAMPAIGN ON POLITICAL PLATFORM

Netroots Develop Policy Platform Aimed at Influencing Obama/DNC Platform Using Participatory Online Process

WASHINGTON, DC, August 13th, 2008 – Members of the “Netroots” – a loosely affiliated group of progressive bloggers, activists and private citizens-released their political platform this week, after three weeks of online collaboration.

The Netroots Platform was first proposed by Jerome Armstrong, a prominent progressive blogger and founder of MyDD.com. “The idea was for the Netroots to speak to the Obama Campaign and the DNC with a collective voice.” The project seemed to take on a life of its own after being introduced to the progressive blogosphere, as members of the Netroots used progressive community blogs, listservs, social networking sites and the MyBarackObama site to invite greater participation and keep each other updated about the Platform’s progress.

The platform was developed entirely online at www.NetrootsPlatform.org, a site where anyone was able to participate in the process and contribute their ideas. MixedInk, an Internet startup, created the democratic, collaborative writing tool that was used for the project. The company aims to empower the public to participate meaningfully and democratically in discussions once limited only to political insiders. “The process itself was truly a metaphor for the Netroots ideals of openness, transparency and democracy,” said Armstrong.

The final Netroots Platform includes 10 different policy planks addressing everything from National Security & Foreign Policy to the Economy to Food & Agriculture, in addition to an introductory “General Principles” section. Community members contributed by writing new planks, editing existing submissions, and remixing the best ideas from different versions to create new ones. Contributors also rated planks on a scale of 1 to 10, and the version with the highest average rating within each category at the end became part of the final platform.

While the official DNC draft platform and the Netroots platform overlap significantly on some policies, including net neutrality, the patients’ bill of rights, and greater federal investment in renewable energies, other policies advocated by the Netroots – amending the recently passed FISA bill, military budget cuts, and the abolishment of the electoral college – diverge significantly from the official Democratic party line.

“The people who participated support Senator Obama overall, despite some differences in our approach and results,” said Ellen Mendlow, one of the platform’s contributors and a member of the organizing committee. “Our platform is unique because of the collaborative way it was drafted. It’s a very positive step forward that we are part of the process, and I think we are all looking forward to developing even more rigorous opportunities for two-way dialogue between citizens and our government in the future.”

According to MixedInk, over the course of the process, thousands of people visited the site, 246 registered, and 164 contributed a total of 167 planks and over 925 ratings. “The Netroots Platform covers general principles as well as very specific language advocating the expansion of “the Nunn-Lugar program to guard nuclear weapons” and “catalyzing innovation by private space entrepreneurs.” “Some really smart and well-informed people participated in the process,” said David Stern, co-founder of Mixedink.com. “The fact that the most articulate ideas rose to the top shows how wise a crowd can be.”

The platform site launched on July 18th, in tandem with two workshops held at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin to introduce the idea and discuss the process. It ended three weeks later, on August 9th, with the submission of the platform to the National Democratic Platform Committee. The committee has acknowledged receiving the document and will be holding a conference call with the activists shortly.

The Obama campaign had previously asked supporters to contribute their platform ideas through its “Listening to America” initiative. Small groups of supporters met all across the country to develop short planks to be submitted through the campaign’s website.

“This project dovetailed nicely with the Listening to America platform sessions but with a spin that’s unique and that fits the collaborative, ensemble nature of the blogosphere perfectly,” said Mendlow. “We’re fully transparent and democratic in our approach to politics.”

# # #

About the Netroots Platform Committee

Support for the Netroots Platform was loosely organized by an ad-hoc committee of citizens that formed at the Netroots Nation conference held in Austin, Texas, in late July. It initially consisted of six individuals and grew to nine members over the course of the project.

To contact the committee or schedule an interview with one of its members, please email netrootsplatformcommittee [at] gmail [dot] com.

About MixedInk

MixedInk LLC is an Internet startup that provides an online tool for democratic, collaborative writing. MixedInk enables large groups of people to brainstorm and express a collective point of view by weaving their best ideas and opinions together.

The company was founded in April 2007. After launching in September 2008, its application will be available for free at www.mixedink.com. A white-label, enterprise version of the service will also allow organizations to integrate the application within their own websites.

For more information about MixedInk, or to schedule an interview with one of the founders, email press [at] mixedink [dot] com.

Got ideas for how MixedInk could be useful to YOUR group?  Send us an email at info [at] mixedink [dot] com!

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Update – an fairly heated exchange about the Netroots Platform is happening on some of the leading progressive blogs:

Chris Bowers at Open Left

Natasha Chart at MyDD

Jerome Armstrong at MyDD