Many people have been saying this for a while–we have the tools to create a whole different world at our fingertips and we are still tied up with all sorts of outdated institutions that are causing more problems than they are solving. The US elections are a good example of how much time, energy and resources are wasted by this type of nonsense–but we are not here to talk about that. I would like to point to another possibility. I am sure many of you have heard about net neutrality and how important that is for all of us, there are many reasons for that….

If ever there was a time to create a direct democracy the time is now and the open-source movement is doing just that. I won’t be surprised if blogging and social media become something that, in the future, we all have a personal obligation to do to a certain extent. We all need to put our two cents into the pot–perhaps it will even replace voting. One of the things I like about open-source is how feedback is encouraged and sought out. There is a dedication to working towards creating solutions to problems and an excitement around that. This is a huge contrast to the desire to bury and hide mistakes, problems or things that don’t fit into what is expected–as we have under our old institutions.

With all this in mind, I would especially like to encourage people who are working to feed themselves and their families good wholesome foods to start a blog and get on twitter and put their experiences out there. We need to hear more from the people who are getting their fingers in the dirt and who don’t have time to be blogging and twittering and what have you–I know you guys are busy doing important stuff, but we need to make more noise out there than those idiots who keep trending Justin Bieber!

When we get #rawmilk and #realfood trending on twitter, then we know we have a chance to create a better world for future generations (and ourselves!).

Kelly the Kitchen Kop had a particularly good idea with her Save Farm Freedom Friday in which she got a flurry of posts going to support a couple of community dairies that are under attack by the FDA. This was inspired by Kimberly Hartke’s post Wanted: 50,000 Big Hearted People to Save Artisan Dairy Farming, which takes the micro-financing ideas of organizations like kiva or the Carrot Mob, and applies them to community supported farms and dairies. With this type of fundraising we can all donate, blog, twitter and just cause a general stir to support various dairies struggling under the irrational attacks of the FDA.

For anyone who doesn’t have a blog but would like to try out blogging for a while, Hella Delicious will accept articles, recipes and experiences. We have various levels–from a regular contributor to someone who just sends in an article or recipe once in a blue moon. For folks who want to become a regular author we will help you learn how to use wordpress to post articles and upload photos etc. If you decide you want your own blog, wordpress is very useful to know and that will help you when you are ready to set up your own website. It is very easy to set up your own blog using www.wordpress.com for anyone who wants to get started right away. Most of us soon find that it is easier to get more traffic by being part of a community of bloggers, so you may want to send in a guest blog post once in a while anyway 🙂

For anyone interested in getting involved with the conversations going on at twitter, I highly recommend having a look at this excellent free tutorial. Nikki Backshall from WebMums takes us through simple steps in getting going with twitter. We use hootsuite as a very good interface for serving a wide variety of social media profiles which she also talks about in the tutorial. Currently I have also started using amplify which is very easy to use, but be sure you link it up to your twitter profile as well. Ubuntu also has another free program called Gwibber which is also quite a useful for organizing your various profiles. Twitter can actually be quite an exciting experience especially if you have a mission and a group of people who are working together–so it isn’t just you twittering about how many cups of coffee you have had in a day!

I just want to mention here that although I ideally like the idea of free wireless internet for all, wireless frequencies are damaging to our health, so we need to find ways to get this resource to everyone without causing illness.

The open-source operating system Ubuntu is completely free and is very easy to use. There are communities in many cities around the world who help provide support to new users. We are particularly fortunate in Vancouver as the local Ubuntu group here has a very strong and fun community push, as a result, I have been using Ubuntu since 2008. Most cities have a freegeek centre or some kind of a computer recycling station where you can volunteer some time and get a free refurbished computer. The computer I use is all second hand stuff from various family members, on which I am running programs for organizing my photos, edit video, email, skype and whatever else all with free programs. The only thing that is asked in return is that if you have a bug or some problem that you let them know so that they can fix it for the next upgrade.

A couple articles about Ubuntu can be found here:
How Does Ubuntu add Freedom,
Community and Humanity?
Ubuntu = No More Student Debt?
Using Open Source Ubuntu

If you would like to know more or get involved, please send us a comment.