About the Conference

Now in its tenth year, the Grassroots Use of Technology Conference has been bringing organizers to build social change and to ensure that they have the appropriate tech tools to make that happen. A broad coalition of non-profits, academic, and community activist organizations have come together with the Organizers' Collaborative to make this happen. The first conference held at MIT identified the need for an effective, easy-to-use, but powerful and free database. The result was the Organizers' Database (ODB)! Now, 10,000 downloads later, hundreds of organizers use the database while developers see it as an essential reference as they build new ones. By the fifth edition, the conference brought together campaigners inspired by the insurgent 2003/2004 Dean campaign to rethink grassroots fundraising and organizing in the Web 2.0 world then in its early stages. The eighth and ninth editions embodied the convergence of media and technology in the lives of organizers while paying close attention to the community building and antiwar challenges of our era. The tenth edition takes the promise and challenge of the new media seriously! But it does so in a time of crisis and hope:

• there is deep economic and social pain across our communities
• young and old yearn for opportunities and dream of a new green economy
• in big cities and small towns organizers and community folk battle to keep people in their homes
• around the globe development and security challenges test peacemakers and social changemakers
• everywhere activists are grasping at the new tech tools to get their work done

The Grassroots Use of Technology Conference brings all these issues and technologies together in both practical, hands-on and visionary ways!