Updating the Advocacy Page

With the CIR bill forecast to be out next week, I suggest we update the list of senators and congressmen as soon as possible so we can get started with the research.

^This.

I asked Nick awhile ago and I believe he said they're working on it.

I'm really glad to see that you are interested in this!

I've been working on something with a friend for the past few months. What we want to do is considerably more ambitious than just updating the advocacy section with new congresspeople.

We would like to frame the conversation within our community around building political power, because power is the only thing that brings change to our lives. Bringing meaningful change to our lives, and to the lives of our parents, is the ultimate goal.

How do we build power exactly? What does power even mean in a loosely connected online community?

We'll start by giving you the tools to organize organically, without formal organizations or leaders. You will be able to define your goals and drill down to meaningful targets; targets that have the power to affect the change that you want. You will then have a choice to organize behind actions to pressure that person. No matter how small or local your issue is, you will also see, and have the power to shape, how your issue relates to other efforts within the community.

What you do with these tools is up to you. Change is up to you.

Now, all this probably sounded very complicated. My job is to make this accessible, easy to understand, and easy to use. I and my friend are doing this on our free time, as such we are very careful with the scope of what we're building. There is a tremendous amount of work to make even something simple happen. It's worth it. I strongly believe that this is how advocacy will work in the future.

Here is how we are approaching the project:

* We've started work on a prototype that will test our core assumptions.
* You will have a chance to sign up for a private alpha to test out this platform.
* We really need your feedback on our core assumptions. We want to build something that you believe in.

This is where we are focusing our energy. We're interested to hear what you think.

How is it going to work? Is it going to be like twitter for dreamer? Sound interesting, sign me up for the beta.

^Yes me too! I will try to log in as much as I can for updates!

It will be specialized, but it will be nothing like twitter. =)

There is a cost that comes with social media as we use it today: it leaves you without an incentive to do the actual work.

The minute you "Like" something on FB, for example, you get all the "you're a good person" signals in your brain, you even get the approval of your peers, who themselves feel good for approving your good intentions. Meanwhile, nothing tangible _actually_ happened. No progress has been made, no energy invested, no change can be expected. You've just wasted all that drive to do something on a meaningless click.

We'd like to break that cycle. We want to make contributing easy, but we'd like your contributions to actually matter in the aggregate. More importantly, we want to tie reputation and social signals to meaningful work. Saying "I approve" or "I like" will get you no cred, saying "I've done" will get you a lot of respect.

I couldn't agree with you more. +1!

Sounds interesting Nick thanks

Yes, very! Excited to hear more.