Web of Change

Our draft agenda is now available. We've identified five key themes, and are in the process of deciding on the best sessions and the best leaders to bring those themes to life.

Likely sessions include:

• Leading with Strategy
• The Art of Building a Team
• Project Management
• Online/Offline Integration
• Cross Channel Campaigning (weaving Web 2.0 tools with offline events)
• Collaboration and Story-telling in Action
• What’s new, hot and worth paying attention to (and what is not worth your time or money)?

With so much innovation and growth all around us in our community of committed change agents, we feel privileged to have the opportunity to catalyze crucial conversations, and to make our work as a movement more useful, and more effective.

Less than three weeks to go until Web of Change, and I am really looking forward to meeting everyone and re-connecting with returning folk. This will be my fourth time at WoC and Hollyhock in as many years.

One aphorism keeps coming up when I think of how WoC re-energizes me each fall. "When you are knee deep in alligators, it's hard to remember that the goal was to drain the swamp." Not the eco-friendliest of metaphors, but work with me.

Spending a few days with dozens of inspiring people doing similar work to mine forces me to step back and re-evaluate what I am doing and why. It also gives me an opportunity to see how other people are draining their swamps - what works, what doesn't and what to try next.

We've been hard at work this past few weeks lining up and confirming the keynote speakers for Web of Change next month. We're very excited about them and we think you will be too!

Our very own Madeline Stanionis will open the conference with an informal chat about her lessons learned from over a decade in the trenches. From door-to-door camaigner to kick-ass online money-raiser, now freewheeling on her book tour after retiring from DonorDigital, Madline never ceases to wow everyone at Web of Change. We're excited to highlight her more formally this year. Check our her bio here.

Our tentative (but fairly solid) agenda is now posted! Check it out. We'll be blogging more details about content in the coming weeks, but the important stuff is all there now, from keynotes to breakouts. We're really pleased with the session ideas that have emerged from all of our discussions with our community, and from the tireless work of the convening team.

Make sure you also check out the participants list, which is being constantly updated. (If your name isn't on there but should be, please let us know!) We've got some amazing people coming, so get inspired... and then get registered. We hope to see you in three weeks!

We are happy to announce that Martin Gil will be joining us this year from the UK as one of our keynote speakers. Martin is the new media manager for Comic Relief, and led online projects for Live8 and MakePovertyHistory.org.

Helping LIVE 8 be Gr8 - Adding a digital interactive dimension to the world’s largest concert

LIVE 8 was a series of ten concerts across nine countries on July 2nd, 2005, that set out to drive issues of poverty and injustice higher up the international political agenda. With Sir Bob Geldorf at the helm, and with Bono and Richard Curtis adding weight to the charge, the arrangements were finalised in the six weeks running up to the date – the weekend before the 2005 G8 Summit in Scotland.

We've been hard at work coming up with great content for this September's conference, and we wanted to post some of what we're working on. Lots of you have been asking for an agenda, and while we won't have a finalized one for a bit longer, we do have a lot of fantastic evolving content.

What follows are brief outlines of some of the sessions we've been tossing around. They're really just a teaser, as the full agenda will include a whole lot more, but this will at least give you a sense of what to expect.

Please know that we very much welcome your feedback, either in the comments, or via an email to info AT webofchange DOT com. So drop us a line!