The last week of July was a busy time for online advocacy conferences on both the left and the right.  Netroots Nation, the largest gathering of progressive online activists, and Right Online, a newer conference (founded by three years ago by Erik Telford to train the rightroots), occurred on the same weekend in Las Vegas.

As a nonpartisan person who has worked with individuals and groups from both sides of the aisle, I had the opportunity to absorb new ideas and people at each conference with an open mind.  Part of that experience involved speaking on a panel called What’s Next: Emerging Trends and Tools at Right Online.

Instead of outlining new companies and applications that will inevitably become so last week, I wanted to walk the audience through some of the factors that I look for before I adopt a new tool, application, or website for our clients here at DCI Group. I look for new tools that:

Connect online relationships, interests, and activism to the offline world (and vice versa). I never underestimate the importance of real relationships in driving action. For some, the more important relationships are those we develop in the real world. For others, the kinds of relationships that develop over all-night multi-player gaming sessions on World of Warcraft might be just as real. I want tools that help activists use the kinds of positive peer pressure that develop from those relationships to persuade their friends to take an action, similar to the way that Obama supporters used the campaign’s My Barack Obama application during the 2008 campaign.

Decentralize/distribute the role of the leader. I want tools that enable supporters to, “be their own generals,” in the words of Nate Wilcox and Lowell Feld, authors of the 2008 book Netroots Rising.  Last year researchers at the University of Cambridge used mathematical models to look at swarming behavior – the kind of situation that may occur during a successful protest or online movement. Their research has helped them identify two new characteristics of effective leadership. The first and most applicable characteristic is the ability to distribute the role of the leader to as many followers as possible. MIT Tech Review blogged about their findings in July 2009.

Move an issue organization from just informing people to engaging them in activism. Many organizations are good at using new tools as part of the messaging process to push out talking points and headlines to a target audience.  We can achieve a much bigger impact when we use those same channels and relationships to generate activity and engagement in our issues.

Break through the filters we are building around ourselves.  A few weeks ago on the DCI Group blog I wrote about a phenomenon called “email apnea” and the practice we all seem to be engaging in of deleting, blocking, avoiding, or flagging unwanted messages as spam. As we struggle in an online and offline environment in which we are constantly interrupted and wired to multiple communications mediums 20 hours a day, many of us have started to develop techniques that filter the noise, including unwanted, unnecessary, unexpected, faceless, impersonal communications. What new tools can help us reach people in ways that email or Twitter perhaps cannot?

Aren’t limited to one website, social network or device but can be taken everywhere.  I’m very skeptical of new tools or applications that limit users to one website or anchor them to one device, like a desktop computer or mobile phone. I’m more interested in new tools and applications that can be used across multiple channels and on many devices to connect people to each other, as well as to news, information, and potential advocacy opportunities.

With these factors in mind, some of the new things I’ve been playing around with (or want to play around with) when developing tactics for our clients include:

• Layar, an augmented reality browser that uses your mobile phone’s camera, GPS, and compass to identify your location and retrieve data about it.  We are using it now to build an iPhone app for one of our clients that will allow activists to tag the physical location of their MOC’s congressional office with a message.
• TwittARound, which allows you to see live tweets pop up on your iPhone based on location. 
• Augmented ID , developed by Swedish software company TAT, is a facial-recognition technology that pulls data points from a user’s social networking profile. Users create a profile. When other People hold their phones to you, they can see the data you’ve associated with yourself, drawn from your business card, Facebook profile, Slideshare presentations, etc. (watch a clip)
• Kimbia , an online fundraising tool that helps your supporters create their own donation pages and post them anywhere – on their blog, website, Facebook profile, etc.
• Meeting platforms from Facebook Townhall, Google Moderator, Microsoft Townhall, and Meetup Everywhere all allow you to set up your own online townhall programs, and in the case of Meetup Everywhere, help people organize their own events for your issue or organization all over the country.
• Codeathons, real world events that non-profits and advocacy groups have been holding to harness the collective power of the developer community towards solving a common problem or goal. Sunlight Foundation holds Apps for America contests with cash prizes. Last year’s winners included Filibusted.us, which tracks Senators who block legislation, and Legistalker, which trackers online activity of Congressional Members.
• Square, a tool launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and entrepreneur Jim McKelvey that allows iPhones to accept credit card donations for non profits and political candidates. Just plug Square into your iPhone, and it turns into an instant fundraising device. Square was launched at a political fundraising event for a political candidate named Tommy Sowers, who is a running as a Democratic Congressional Candidate in Missouri. 

The most important new tools and tactics aren’t necessarily the trendiest. Rather, they help our clients meet real goals, enhance resources and capabilities (instead of draining them), and enable supporters to become activism leaders. A little less emphasis on flash, a little more emphasis on function.