Grassroots Use of Technology Conference

The Grassroots Use of Technology Conference (GUT-C) brings together community organizers and technology innovators. The goal is
straightforward: To help build progressive social change by:

• bringing hundreds of organizers together
• connecting them to each others' skills and experience
• thinking critically about the state-of-the-art tech tools
• prioritizing economic and racial justice

As you know, for 10 years, grassroots activists and change makers have come together with technology geeks for this exciting conference! Now is an opportunity for you and your members to be key partners in creating this exciting conversation with a cutting edge community of critical thinkers and tech practitioners.

A broad collaborative of nonprofits, academic, and community activist organizations has come together with the Organizers' Collaborative to make this happen.

The first conference held at MIT identified the need for an effective, easy-to-use, but powerful and free database. The result was the Organizers' Database (ODB)! Now, 10,000 downloads later, hundreds of organizers use the database while developers see it as an essential reference as they build new ones.

By the fifth edition, the conference brought together campaigners inspired by the insurgent 2003/2004 Dean campaign to rethink grassroots fundraising and organizing in the Web 2.0 world then in its early stages.

The eighth and ninth editions embodied the convergence of media and technology in the lives of organizers while paying close attention to the community building and antiwar challenges of our era.

This is an invitation to connect with grassroots activists and change makers! It is also an opportunity to share your perspectives with a dynamic community of practitioners. As we build the conversation through the conference on October 16 and 17, 2009, we want your participation!

Now celebrating its 10th  anniversary, the Organizers’ Collaborative is anchoring the conference organizing in close cooperation with the John O’Bryant African American Institute (Northeastern University), Boston Neighborhood Network, Massachusetts Global Action and the National Writers’ Union.

The tenth edition takes the promise and challenge of the new media seriously! But it does so in a time of crisis and hope:

• there is deep economic and social pain across our communities
• young and old yearn for opportunities and dream of a new green economy
• in big cities and small towns organizers and community folk battle to keep people in their homes
• around the globe development and security challenges test peacemakers and social changemakers
• everywhere activists are grasping at the new tech tools to get their work done

All of these facts are realities for society as a whole; our challenge is to ensure that our technology choices and development is both enabling and relevant. GUT-C brings all these issues and technologies together in both practical, hands-on and visionary ways!

Info: http://www.grassrootstech.org/2009/