See What’s Out There

We just launched the first of three videos we are doing for Amnesty International USA on the issue of torture, due process and “extraordinary rendition,” which is a euphemism from bureaucrats for kidnapping someone and sending them to a country that has no problem torturing them so we don’t have to do it ourselves. We had a hard job here, to use man-on-the-street interviews to make a point about this issue and get people mobilized.

Here is the first one released, called Now You Know. It’s the serious one. We are up to about 15,000 views on YouTube in a few days. The next one comes out on Thursday, then one next week. I will write about those when they come out.

I am finishing up here at the Communications Network conference at the Kimpton Hotel Monaco in San Francisco. It has been fabulous. Not only are the people great, but the format of the conference allowed for maximum networking time. Bruce Trachtenberg, the Executive Director of the Communications Network said that in reviewing past conferences he found that people said they loved networking the best, and not having enough time to network the least. So why not make the whole conference networking?

The format of the conference was Open Space, which basically has the participants creating the conference schedule together, in the first hour. It sounds like chaos, but it worked. People stood up and proposed what they wanted to talk about. These ideas were written on paper then pasted on a board. Once everyone was done proposing, people came up and pasted small stickers on the sessions they were interested in. Certain overlapping sessions were combined, the sessions were put into rooms and time slots, and voila, a conference schedule.

I am at the Communications Network annual meeting in San Francisco. They are “the premiere national nonprofit association for promoting the practice of strategic communications in philanthropy.” Basically, communication professionals that work in philanthropy and who believe that communications are important to the mission. Wow. There are some serious people here. I am here to listen and learn, mostly.

And now I can talk about food. I have been on the road a fair amount recently and it’s mostly a drag to travel, but when I tell people I am going to San Francisco the reaction is always a smile, for me too. Can you say Sushi? This is the second trip recently I have been in the Hotel Monaco, and right up the street is Ryoko’s. You gotta love this – they are open 6pm to 2am, seven days a week. So on a Tuesday night at midnight, after I got in, I could eat! Yeah. In Chicago if I go into a place at 9:00 they are telling me the kitchen is closing.

Oprah did her “best give-away ever” to her audience. No, it wasn’t a car. It wasn’t an iPod. It wasn’t her California mansion. Or her other mansion, or some other thing that cost lots of her money or lots of sponsor money.

What she gave away this time was an opportunity for her audience of 300 to play philanthropist. She gave each audience member a $1000 debit card, to be given to a charity. This kind of this has a long history. And, in a move that we LOVE, she gave each one a camcorder to document their philanthropic adventures. Yes, they would have rather had the car – but I like the idea.

Document their experience with video. Yes, I did give Oprah the idea that philanthropy should be documented. And, with any luck, she will thank us on the air.