Vision

OpEd News Vision, New Developments on OEN , Polling, Community....

OEN is not just a news site. It's a tool for activists, a virtual community, even a collection of communities. Learn a bit more about the tools we offer to help your organization or group, and what's new.

OpEd News and YOU-- as part of a living, evolving community--  even a tribe or collection of tribes
One of the books I read on my vacation was about community. Our community here is in some ways a brand new experiment and in other ways the oldest form of tribal connection. There are stages to becoming a community and staying one, and to becoming a community member. It's a process, which, like the hero's journey, involves waking up, facing some negative experiences and becoming a new person, or, for a community, a new entity. I'm still reading the book, still digesting the ideas. But one thing is clear to me, OEN is something special that is continuing to evolve, with new, emerging qualities and characteristics we will continue to experience and discover-- a real adventure. It's good to have you along to share the ride. One thing I learned early on was that the more YOU, the members, are involved in the process, in helping to define the "DNA" of the creature OEN is evolving to become, the better OEN gets.

OEN, as I've discussed below, has been built with a vision for supporting organizations, groups and tribes within the bigger community. With gas prices and air travel going through the roof, digital, virtual communities are going to become more and more important to us all.

Funding OpEd News 

 First thing. We've gone over a week without asking for contributions. The good news is that seven or eight people had set up monthly subscriptions, so some money did come in. But we're dangerously behind, at this point, for the month. Your support is urgently needed. Please consider investing $200 or $100, $50 or $25 or $8 (It is 2008.) Click here to donate or set up a regularly scheduled contribution today

 

Trouble Accessing OEN

A lot of people particularly our dedicated editors, who did a yeoman's job worthy or massive gratitude while I was away, had trouble accessing the website, particularly the control panels. We learned that as the content and functions on the website have grown, we need more RAM. So we're tripling it, from 2 to 6 gigs. That'll raise our cost of hosting by $60 a month. We've done a lot of research and our dedicated private server hosting company is the most reasonable we've encountered. If you need  this level of server, let me know. We get a nice referral fee and you may find that you're saving a lot of money. 

Remember-- OEN is more than a media/blog/ aggregation site. We're a Tool for Activists and Advocates.

We've built many of the features of our site with the intention to support activists and advacacy organizations all over the world, by providing tools and technology you just don't have on your own private blogs or organizational websites.

While I was away on vacation, I brought over a dozen books with me. One that really grabbed me was Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World. The movement he refers to is the growing list of hundreds of thousands of organizations advocating for social justice, the environment and life on earth.  It's given me a lot to think about, including a book idea and the realization that hundreds of thousands of organizations could be using OEN as a tool to further empower their efforts.  If you have a non-profit or advocacy group, I encourage you to set up a group account on OEN.  Then invite your members to join.  Use OEN polls to make decisions and get a feel for where your members stand on issues. Use our Events Function to list and announce your organization's events. Put it on your OEN group and personal calendar. Send out a press release through OEN, that's written as an article that meets our writing standards, and it will be picked up by the major news search engines. Create a diary/blog and have your members comment on the issue you are discussing.

 

Creating Polls On OEN and including them in Articles

We'd like to see more of you submitting polls-- either free standing or part of articles. Remember to try to keep the questions simple. You really don't want to do a push poll, unless you are doing a poll that is funny or satirical, and that's also okay. So ask away-- questions you'd like to what other people think about things.

We're working our tails off building our polling system on OEN. Our goal is to make it the most sophisticated one on the planet.  Now, you can create a poll AND include it in your article. You use the MEDIA SUBMIT button, then click on Manage your polls. You embed a poll in an article the same way you embed a video, image or audio.

Soon,  very soon, you'll be able to do a poll, have your group members take it, and see the results for just your group members. You'll also be able to limit access to the poll to your group members. Imagine. You put a link to the poll on YOUR organization's website. Then, your group members take the poll at OpEd News and we will be providing code so the results from the poll will be automatically accessible on your website. 

Soon, in a few weeks, you'll be able to see the demographic data for the poll... if and only if you  provide your own demographic data.  That means you'll be able to know how people voted based on gender, age, locale, ideology, religion, etc.

 I'm going to try this one more time:

We've gone over a week without asking for contributions. The good news is that seven or eight people had set up monthly subscriptions, so some money did come in. But we're dangerously behind, at this point, for the month. Your support is urgently needed. Please consider investing $200 or $100, $50 or $25 or $8 (It is 2008.) Click here to donate or set up a regularly scheduled contribution today