Activism 2.0, Cloud Computing, Mobile Technology

Just finished reading Activism 2.0: Creating Casablanca in Copenhagen, The Fresh Air Center by Chrissie Brodigan.

It is an interesting look at what happened (or didn't) in Copenhagen and more specifically at the Activism 2.0 techniques of TckTckTck's Fresh Air Center.

I love the technology side of just about anything and social activism + technology = good shit. A couple topics that come to mind are:

Cloud Computing - The usage of cloud computing to support activist networks. These networks can be permanent or temporary and in both cases scale based upon short or long term demand. A couple tools I can see coming into play based upon my event cloud computing experience:

Amazon EC2 - To boost processing and server capacity to support a wide range of services from data, web to mail and instant messaging. Take advantage of various server sizes of server, load balancing, security groups, machine images and other areas of Amazon EC2. Amazon Cloudfront - Use to deliver content such as HTML, PDF, Pics and Streaming Video Content. This can be used to deliver content in the field or produced content to other news sources. Amazon S3 - Use to store large amounts of data gathered during operations.

Mobile Networks - As we enter this "real-time" world of news and reporting our mobile networks are becoming more and more vital. Current mobile networks are already taxed and often don't hold up up at events or gatherings of any type. For events and gatherings it makes sense to utilize existing DSL and T1 and extend using 802.16 or wireless Metropolitan Area Networking (MAN). Then provide localized 802.11 wireless local area networks for people to connect with laptops, webbooks, and handhelds (IPhone and Android). Just some random thoughts about how to use cloud computing and mobile technology to support activism events. Will have to transfer much of the knowledge from conferences and events, and apply to support activism events. I just added this area to my research and blogging topics around cloud computing.