opolitics

Papadizi played by Israeli actor Menashe Noy, a goat shepherd from Macedonia who is looking for an American wife. The short videos were released to the internet via youtube and are part of a viral marketing campaign by producer OUri Sasson

MISTER GOOGLE FIND ME AMERICAN WOMAN
hello internet village
i am papadizi
and i will kill my self
if i dont fined
american woman

חשיפה: מי זה פאפאדיזי ?

Israel. The war against the Hezbollah in Lebanon and bloodshed are having their toll on the population. The majority of the Israeli general public support the war and numbers haven’t declined since it started, 3 weeks ago.

The other day Gili challenged me and asked me if I could help her with an online petition. I said that I don’t write code, but I could help her and find a solution.

Orit and Gili have been petitioning the government for a ceasefire and needed way to collect signatures in an easy way.

The WordPress Blogging software is very easy to skin. You can create and design your own theme very easily if you have basic knowledge of HTML and CSS (PHP is also usefull).

How to create a petitioning software with Wordpress?

1. I used the default WordPress theme Kubrick and changed the commenting system and internal instruction to a form for adding names, emails and addresses. I shortened the comment field and labeled it as the place for entering the address.
2. I added a Page template that creates a list of all the signatures collected.

Basically this is it. The first version was in Hebrew I started working on English one adding a printer friendly version and thinking of other features.

Shortly, I will post the Wordpress Petition theme \ code on the internet and share with others.

Here is the English test site and the Hebrew working version of the petition, calling the Israeli government for a cease-fire and the opening of negotiations with Lebanon.

an audio (podcast) update on Open Politics in Israel

Read my open politics implementation.

I am a new media strategist to MK. Dr. Roman Bronfman and the Democratic Choice Party. I started in August 2005 after a friend; Eran Vered introduced me to Dan Goldenblatt, Dr. Bronfman’s political advisor. Vered showed me the proposed site of the party and complained about the backstage user-interface.

The design wasn’t exciting but not bad just a standard party website (here is the new russian site). Goldenblatt invited me to the meeting with the website developing company. During the meeting Eran Vered lost his patience and complained about the unfriendly editing interface, which was really bad. I calmed them down and said that it wasn’t that bad and we can work around it, I suggested a few new features like blogging and content syndication (RSS), Eran added a forum. We decided that I would produce an outline and a plan. I started to work on a web strategy.

The first thing was to implement a blogging system and Wordpress was my choice. The developing company didn’t respond to my requests for database and server access and it took them 3 weeks till they obliged to do so. I spent less than 20 minutes installing the Wordpress weblog software. I started experimenting with wikipedia mediawiki as a social software system. Dan organized a meeting with Dr. Roman Bronfman and I presented my web strategy. Bronfman was excited with the blogging idea and asked if it could be and audio one. Yes, I replied “it is the coolest thing on the net called podcasting“. After inviting friends to experiment with the wiki. I got to the conclusion that it was to complex, and I swapped the mediawiki software with the Drupal based civicspace. Wikipedia is popular in Israel as an encyclopedic source, like anywhere else, but there is only a minority of people whom are tempted to edit it. Drupal/Civicspace uses conventional content posing structure people are less hesitant to publish content. Elections were called for the end of March 2006. If we were not in a tight campaigning schedule I would have continued with the wiki.

I discuss my Open Source Political strategy for MK. Dr. Roman Bronfman and the Democratic Choice Party. Building a community, Adding interactivity and transparency to the way politics are done.

Podcast: MP3 Audio file