I submitted a panel proposal for Austin’s South-by-Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) 2007 titled Inciting Self-Organizing Mobs for Local Progressive Activism

Educated and opinionated, netizens are a fractious bunch. Rarely does on-line irritation translate into “real-world” local activism. With the proliferation of no-cost, net-based infrastructure and the power of the “long tail”, why do so few arm themselves on-line to battle off-line? Or even run for office? Join us in discussing how to rouse your local mob, tap their collective wisdom and promote progressive change.

SxSW is a combined music, film and new media technology (‘blog, vlog, podcast, social networks, etc.) conference spread over nearly two weeks. Local ‘bloggers Ruby, Kirk, ae, Fred, Henry went last year and, I believe, there was total agreement that it was fantastic.

SxSWi organizers have setup a system to let the public at large vote (10 at a time) which panels they’d like to see. I’ll be headed down South next March in any case – working on a panel, though, would be gravy.

Here’s the link if you want to help select the 140+ featured panels.

Voting ends ominously Friday, October 13th.

By the way, Fred has a proposal titled The Long Tail of Identity:

As we embrace social technology, the consequences of sharing our identities on the web are unknown. How will our social network profiles or weblogs affect our future possibilities? Does a search engine or archive really have the final say about who we are online? In the panel, we’ll discuss practical and theoretical approaches to online identity management, how our identity is perceived, and what innovations are serving our yet-to-be-defined identity needs.