FUN FACTS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING ??? REALLY ???

Weighing scales with an attitude !

Look what i found ! A really fun online tool that creates word ‘clouds’ of any text you provide it … Greater prominence is given to words that appear more frequently ! Check out Wordle !

The above Word Cloud is what i generated out of the tags on my delicious account !
This then is Meeeeeee !! Whoooo hoooooo !

The Big Bangalore Protest Unit took it to the streets last Sunday, as a motley bunch of musicians, DJs, restaurateurs & pub owners, artists, theater people, music lovers & party animals gathered at the Mahatma Gandhi statue on MG Road to raise their voices against the ban on live bands, ban on dancing in nightclubs and the 11:30 pm curfew in Bangalore. You can read more about the protest here & here.

What started as a small group of disgruntled musicians choosing to assert their right to creative expression by making music at the Gandhi statue the previous Sunday, grew in the space of a week into a full blown event of 300 to 400 people with local media in full attendance, live national press coverage & debate … even police protection.

It was beautiful… A happy, peaceful way to be seen, to be heard, to make a point.

Now, here is the interesting part. The first protest took place on Aug 3rd, with 15 people gathering … Soon after, one of the main organizers created a group on Facebook called the ‘Big Bangalore Protest Unit’. Within a day 70 people had joined the group. In two days the number of members on this group had reached the 300 mark… by the end of the week there were 1500 supporters on the group, with 521 confirming their attendance of the next protest.

Facebook was what these guys used primarily to get together ! This is FASCINATING to me !
Having always been super skeptical about social networking sites and suchlike (“Way too many people out there i don’t really want to have much to do with” kinda feeling) the power that this website gave these people is calling me to do a rethink !

Would these guys have come together without this online group ?… perhaps…. but definitely not as easily, as quickly and as effectively as they have.

Facebook has allowed these guys to converge as a community much faster then would have been possible otherwise. It supports their action by facilitating many-way conversations, essential for growing the community. It enables them to plan, coordinate and execute actual action on ground. This is when things get really interesting i think… when the virtual and real world intersect.

You might differ with these guys on their views. But thats not the point.
The point is that they have managed to :
a. Come together as a community of people with like concerns
b. Develop their strategy and argument by building it over various conversations within the community
c. Leverage the advantage of numbers to get seen, get heard and to get a conversation with authorities going
d. Use existing resources within the community to further the cause – well produced creatives, contacts & experience with the media etc.

It is beautiful to see people standing up for what they think is right. Its about taking a stand about something that is important to you… about something that affects you personally. Getting the conversation going …

And tools that allow people to do this in better more effective ways are very very cool me thinks ! I might just get me that Facebook account after all !