We promised an example of someone making great use of DemocracyInAction's coding flexibility. This isn't only that. Brave New Films' web site for its flick Wal-Mart: The High Cost of a Low Price is as tightly designed a site as you'd ever want to see. And their villainous take on the Wal-Mart smiley might have you waking up in a sweat at night.

For their house party event, they're using our API to pass data from their own pages. This is something you've gotta do on your own -- it's not for everyone, but it's brilliant if you can program it.

NTEN's travelling big top rolled into D.C. yesterday for a more
energetic session than the New York version a few weeks back.
NTEN's shifted this year to packaging events thematically (an idea that
has met lukewarm reception); D.C. had the ambitious charge of "Pulling It All
Together: Data Integration's Impact on Raising Money and
Fulfilling Your Mission." It's safe to say that as the sun set
outside the Marriott, All had not been fully Pulled Together for most attendees. Hey, it's a journey, not a destination.

Juicy Fitzgerald indictments
might put Harriet the mouse on the back-burner in Washington buzz.
Pending that, there's ample perplexity about how to react to this
manifestly lightweight nominee, and the conservative true-believers'
sense of alienation (arriving with impeccable timing as the Bush administration collapses) is sparking blogstorms.

Hilarious.

More substantive hilarity to be found in right-wing blogs' anguished flagellation over the pick.

A roomful of Washington liberals plotting to get back in power is
just the place to be when news comes down the pike that Tom DeLay's
been indicted. Simon Rosenberg made the announcement to a round
of applause at the latest New Politics Institute forum
-- good events worth coming out to if you happen to be based in
D.C. You can lay hands on the video from the last one, if you're
favorably inclined to chatter about the "Post Broadcast Media" world
(not as boring as it sounds); unlike the live performance, the .wmv
version doesn't come
with free lunch.

Reform Ohio Now, a DemocracyInAction client, made the front page of DailyKos today with the endorsement of DavidNYC as the most important thing happening this fall.

Meanwhile, the president's dutiful drones at Little Green Footballs fronted Codepink's One Million Reasons to End the War in Iraq petition
as "A Petition to Lose in Iraq," recalling to mind Alinsky's
observation that "power is not only what you have but what the enemy
thinks you have."

After a couple months of murmuring sweet nothings, Network For Good and Groundspring finally took the plunge with a merger, the former in effect absorbing the latter.

We have no official take on this outside of "wait and see." Groundspring's happy-face FAQ on the matter is here.
Network For Good is a larger, apolitical institution with a general
mission of connecting people with nonprofits. Groundspring's
mission is similar to DemocracyInAction's, helping nonprofits
communicate, and it has had a progressive tack since day one --
although things have been (to keep things nautical) listing
recently. DemocracyInAction absorbs periodic lifeboats from
Groundspring's Advocacy Now module, which went to Davey Jones' locker a
few months back; the rest of its toolset is regrettably "siloed" but it
will, at least, continue to exist for now.

Yup, we're hiring again. Come be our Web Developer. The great atmosphere and frenetic pace of those bygone dot-com startups, and we don't pay in stock options.

Got an organizational blog?  Thinking about one? 
Wondering about the ramifications for your time, your institutional
identity, your programs?  What about internal blogs and podcasting?

This is Global PR Blog Week 2.0. 
Refresh the link all week for informed navel-gazing from folks who
should know on the dignified subject of "how new communications
technologies are changing public relations and business
communication."  Hmmm.  Sounds like there might be some
opposition research nuggets there, too.

Over on Personal Democracy Forum last week, Kate Kaye logged an interesting observation about media disdain for Internet letter-writing campaigns.

We've reported previously
in this space on Congress' struggles with online communiques. The
larger picture is one of old modes of formal communication between an
individual and an institution -- the letter to the editor; the
constituent appeal -- metamorphising in the chrysalis of technological
change. One can already make out the contours of the new creature so
uncouthly emerging: communications standards ordering and even
mechanizing
the medium; the letter to the editor slipping into a long dotage as
blogs erode the value of papers' opinionmaking real estate.