Ok, so it took me awhile to get around to posting about ETech again. I’m at the Phoenix Film Festival this weekend and a film Friday night prompted a major theme from ETech that I wanted to talk about: Activism.

ETech 08 was still very Web 2.0 centric. This time, instead of cheerleading for new companies joining the 2.0 bandwagon in an innovative way, it was about focusing 2.0 technologies on real subjects and impacting change. Sure we can share music listening habits, photos, create our own entertainment communities and generate maps with data that is uniquely meaningful to each visitor but can any of that same technology be used to tackle real issues?

The answer at ETech 08 was not only “yes” it was “check out what we have already done”. The two main areas where change was being demonstrated through Web 2.0 technologies were Governmental Reform and Global Warming.

Social Web methods are being employed to collect massive amounts of carbon emissions data in order to promote and gauge change. Screen scraping and API technologies are being leveraged to generate websites that are positively affecting Copyright Law. And now, a new political reform movement has been born by the author of the Creative Commons project.

What does that have to do with the film I mentioned? Well, it was all about activism.

The Orange Chronicles documented the Ukrainian presidential elections of 2004. Ukrainians saw a chance to overthrow leaders with heavy Russian influences and went for it. Fear tactics and numerous instances of voter fraud were perpetrated by the Russian backed candidate to “win” the majority vote. When the results were announced a revolution erupted in the capital and spread through the country.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians peacefully demonstrated for something like three months…in the heart of winter. Fucking crazy. People from both sides of the line filled the streets and through all of the frustration and passion there were no riots, looting, police brutality, etc. It was inspiring to see a nation’s people band together and force positive change.

I realized I had heard very little about this at the time. I remember the Dioxin assassination attempt on the Ukrainian favored candidate, but that’s about it. Nothing about the scale of this movement. At one point there were millions of demonstrators in the capital city. It didn’t surprise me though, our country had endured a flaky election just a few years before and the same genius was up for reelection. Unicorn forbid the US population sees that a successful, peaceful revolution is still possible in today’s riot shield and rubber bullet world.

It got me wondering if all of this technological activism that was displayed at ETech 08 will lead to a revolution in its own right. It’s kinda awesome to think about. Geeks leading the way

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