Unconferences, Twitter, and @SocJustCampDC

After campaigning for Obama in rural Iowa just before the 2008 election, I came back to DC and heard about a conference called Rootscamp 2008.

I forget where I heard about it.

My first unconference, Rootscamp was amazing. I found myself in an extremely talented people cloud: Chris Hughes of Facebook, Marshall Ganz out of Harvard, and Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum, and were all in the orbit.

Since Rootscamp, I've been averaging roughly an unconference a month: EDemocacyCamp, Participation Camp, Gov 2.0 Camp, Social Change Camp, Crisis Camp, Accessibility Camp, Congress Camp.

(I've been thinking about what a unconference rehab program might look light).

Along with a number of friends, including Greg Bloom of Bread for the City, I am now helping plan Social Justice Camp: "A participant-driven conference in Washington, DC convened for the creative pursuit of social justice through technology and collaboration."

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So far, I have used Twitter to help publicize and pull people into the fold and it seems to be having some traction.

I wanted to post about how easy Twitter makes it to penetrate existing communities and simultaneously build rapport with people while pushing message.

I think the main thing twitter allows you to do is let people know that you're listening to them...and that you are interested in their interests.

It's been really useful mining twitter feeds to examine folks social graphs, interests, and geographies.

@SocJustCampDC is currently up to 125 followers on Twitter.