The reactions to President Obama’s election, the recession, the debates on health care and global warming, have all brought out the worst in people. What has been laid bare is a shocking lack of compassion and empathy for the suffering of others. Our selfishness and greed have been exposed, and we revel in a sense of unprecedented entitlement, especially at the expense of others. Bald-faced lying and red-faced screaming have become the basis for debate. Racism, ignorance and unfounded fear of the “other” are trumpeted, as if these are qualities of which to be proud.

The mood that surrounds me has plunged me into depression. I have been battling my loss of hope, that this country — or even this species — will survive our own fear, anger, greed and short-sightedness.

So on this Thanksgiving, I must remind myself that I have to put into the world what I want to get out of it. If I value compassion, I must show compassion in all my actions. If I want to feel respect, I must behave respectfully. And if I want to feel joy, I must give joy to the world first.

Even if we are all doomed, and there is nothing I can do about that, there is still one small thing that I can do. I can do everything I can to make this world a better place. Because that is what I want for myself and for the people I love — for all people, really — a better place to live our short lives.

I hope that if anyone is reading this, the next time you find yourself reacting with anger and outrage and fear, that you will stop, take a moment, breathe. And remember: what you put into this world is what the world gives back to you.

Finally, I am linking to this even though I am sure you have seen it already, simply because it made me happy.

Image via Wikipedia

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

–Macbeth, William Shakespeare

When something is a precious commodity, necessary but sometimes hard to come by, you tend to become obsessed with that thing. For me, that thing is sleep.

I have been plagued by insomnia, off and on, for pretty much all of my adult life. In most cases, it takes the form of nocturnal awakenings: waking in the middle of the night and then having trouble falling back to sleep. More rarely, it presents itself as onset insomnia, difficulty falling asleep. In either case, I usually tell myself stories to try to trick myself into falling asleep. Usually, I end up obsessing over things not done or still to do.

I never take the commonly given advice to get up and do something when I have insomnia, unless I am very wide awake and my brain won’t stop racing until I do something to quiet it. I think that advice is dangerous. For one thing I believe we doze more than we think we do, and some sleep is better than none. I’m also worried I’ll miss that magic window when I drift back into real sleep if I am not lying down in the dark.

Once I saw a fim about a DJ who made himself stay awake for 8 days and nights. I will never forget his face. He turned into a pyschopath before my eyes. At the end, he was sleeping sitting up with his eyes open. No wonder sleep deprivation is a form of torture. We need our sleep.

Even worse are periods of sleep paralysis, which may be caused by sleep deprivation, among ohter causes. I have these occasionally. Usually, I believe that I am lying in my bed and someone enters the room to attack me. I cannot scream or move — I am paralyzed. This phenomenon is actually quite common. It occurs when the mind wakes from REM sleep but the normal body paralysis persists, so you are consicous but unable to move. People used to think that demons were sitting on their chests stealing their souls, and that’s why they could not move.

I have recently learned about segmented sleep. Before there was electricity, people often went to bed at dark and stayed there until dawn. In the winter, this could mean spending 12 hours of the day in bed. After a period of deep sleep, they often awoke a few hours before falling back asleep again. This period might be like a meditative period, relaxing and pleasant. It was even a time for reflection, prayer, talking, visiting and making love. I like the idea of a middle-of-the-night quiet period. Unfortunately, I don’t get several more hours to sleep after a period of insomnia, as I have things to do in the mornings.

More:

• Insomnia by Faithless (video)
• Deep into Sleep (Harvard Magazine)
• Dreams Deferred (New York Times)
• Healthy Sleep (Harvard Medical School)
• A slew of sleep articles (LiveScience)

If there is any right more misunderstood and more abused than the right to free speech, I believe it is copyright. It doesn’t help that copyright law is insanely complicated and has become conflated over time into a grotesque overprotection for big corporations’ stranglehold on intellectual property, rather than what Thomas Jefferson originally intended it to be: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” What Jefferson actually intended was to provide an incentive to creative persons to make their work public by enabling them to earn something from their work for a time, after which it time it would enter the public domain and thus enrich all of human knowledge. I know, crazy, right? This is America and there’s money to be made, so screw human knowledge.

Of course the corporate world quakes in their underpants at all of the flagrant copyright violating occurring in the Wild West that is the Interwebs. I mean, people are posting videos of their toddlers dancing to Prince songs. However will Prince earn a decent living with that going on? In many cases, it seems that these exuberant pursuits of copyright violating are way too exuberant. Take, for example, my current favorite Keyboard Cat video, which has had the soundtrack removed due to copyright violation. Leaving alone the notion that the sound violates copyright while the accompanying video is perfectly okay (scratching head at the logic behind that one), Keyboard Cat is clearly parody, which falls under fair use. And I’m not just saying that. There is such a thing as fair use — you can look it up.

Besides, videos like this one could actually help some flagging careers. (When was the last time you even heard of Hall & Oates?) Take that wedding dance video that has recently gone viral. Chris Brown was struggling with some minor publicity troubles, but now all is forgiven and his song is getting record downloads because of some cutesy home video that got posted on YouTube. Copyright, shmopyright — he’s raking in some dollars now.

Even when there are legitimate copyright violations, such as when the clip of the brilliant William Shatner reading Sarah Palin’s resignation speech on Conan O’Brien was reposted everywhere, it doesn’t make much sense to have it taken down (which NBC very quickly did). It’s a 6-minute clip from a television show — it’s not going to keep anyone from watching Conan or his advertisers. In fact, it may just help get viewers for the show. Publicity agencies bend over backwards to come up with dumb tricks that they hope will result in a viral video that will promote their movie or TV show, and often it lamely backfires. When you’ve got a genuine viral phenomenon on your hands, don’t look it in the mouth, is my advice.

The Interwebs is officially out of your control, corporate America. You can’t stop all those crazed fans from loving on your content and wanting to share it with their mailmen and former kindergarten teachers on Facebook. So why fight it? Surely you can figure out a way to make money off of it instead. Isn’t that what you do best?

I have had a peripheral involvement in OPEN as it has developed, contributing ideas and writing when needed, and I have watched it grow from a germ of an idea with interest. Of course, I do think there will be some natural synergies between the project I am heavily involved in, developing open source HR information systems for managing data about health workers, and the goals of OPEN. I am looking forward to seeing how that all shapes up.

OPEN is all over the web, so if you want to learn more, here are some ways to do so:

• OPEN website
• OPEN on Facebook Causes
• OPEN on MySpace
• YouTube channel
• Follow OPEN on Twitter

Image via Wikipedia

Probably one of the best innovations of the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon is tagging. A tag is “a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information” (source). Tags can be used to identify blog posts, bookmarks, photos, videos, presentations, events, etc., and are supported by pretty much every Web 2.0 tool. Tags are generally assigned informally and without regard to a structure of categories; they are more like annotations and are often assigned in addition to categories, such as on blog posts.

The genius of tagging is that it organically builds connections over time between seemingly unconnected content. If my blog post and your video and his bookmark and her photograph all have the same tag, then we can start to see how they are related in some way. This leads to a bottoms-up classification system for web content that is often called a folksonomy.

The problem is that tags are arbitrarily decided on by the content creator, and with language being what it is, one tag can mean many different things to many different people. Take the word development, for instance. In my own little industry, it can refer to the process of creating software or giving aid to low-resource countries. In other contexts, it might refer to child development or personal development or a large and ugly subdivision.

The nonprofit field has bypassed this limitation by coming up with some unique tags to identify our content. If we use these tags consistently, we can easily locate a wealth of content in our particular niches. Here are some of the most useful tags I’ve come across:

nptech: Short for “nonprofit technology,” this tag refers to nonprofits’ use of technology, mostly internally rather than as part of the program offerings.

Examples:

• nptech room on FriendFeed
• photos tagged nptech on Flickr
• Top 50 nptech blogs on Facebook

ict4d: Stands for “Information and Communication Technologies for Development.” Refers to groups that are using technology in their development programs, usually international development.

Examples:

• ict4d RSS feed
• ICT4D portal and resources
• ICT4D wiki

web4dev: Using Web technologies, mostly Web 2.0, for supporting international aid and development.

Examples:

• Web4Dev blog
• Web4Dev conference
• Wiki presentation on SlideShare

km4dev: Stands for “Knowledge Management for Development.” Using knowledge management tools and techniques to support international development.

Examples:

• KM4DEV web portal and wiki
• KM4DEV discussion group
• km4dev channel on YouTube

m4dev or m4d: Using mobile technology to support internatonal development.

Examples:

• first international conference on m4d
• m4dev bookmarks on delicious

I’m sure I haven’t discovered all of the tags being used by nonprofits using technology, especially in international development. If you know of any other good ones, please leave a comment.

View the presentation

About Web 2.0

• The Machine is Us/ing Us — a video explanation of Web 2.0
• Best Practices in Using Web 2.0 in Nonprofits – a wiki explaining Web 2.0 tools and how to use them
• Guide to Social Media – a wiki specifically for nonprofits wanting to understand and use social media tools
• NetSquared – a TechSoup project supporting responsible adoption of social media tools by nonprofits
• Resource Sheet: Organizational Blogs – a long collection of resources about organizational/nonprofit blogging

Blogging Tools

• WordPress
• Blogger

Nonprofit Blogs

• IntraHealth Informatics Blog
• The INFO Project Blog
• MobileActive Blog
• Oxfam International
• Poverty and Growth Blog (World Bank)
• UNICEF Fieldnotes
• OrangePolitics.org

Blogs About Nonprofits Using Web 2.0 Technologies

• Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
• Nonprofit Technology Network Blog
• Social Signal Blog
• The Bamboo Project Blog
• Wild Apricot’s Nonprofit Technology Blog
• Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

The Blogosphere (finding blogs of interest)

• Technorati — Find tagged content on all blogs
• Global Voices Online — Aggregates content from blogs from non-Western locations
• Nonprofit Blog Exchange – Aggregates content specifically from nonprofit blogs and about nonprofits that blog

Into Web 2.0

• Tumblr – microblogging site
• Twitter – microblogging site that integrates with text messaging and instant messaging (IM)
• del.icio.us – Tag, organize and share bookmarks
• Stumble Upon – review and rate web content
• Digg – read and vote on web content
• NGO Post – read and vote on web content discussing social welfare initiatives
• Flickr – share, view and comment on photos
• YouTube – share, view and comment on videos
• SlideShare – share, view and comment on presentations
• Wikipedia – world-famous collaboratively written encyclopedia built with a wiki
• Wikibooks – collection of collaboratively written textbooks written using wikis
• Facebook – well-known social networking site originally focusing on college students
• LinkedIn – professional networking site
• Dogster – social networking site for dogs
• Causes on Facebook – nonprofits using Facebook to promote causes and raise money
• IntraHealth Informatics’ Flickr site – nonprofits can share interesting photos to generate interest