We're planning a little get-together for people who have worked as part of the Little Green Army, or who are interested in working as part of it in the future. The plan being to decide what sort of projects we want to be doing, what clients we would like to work for, and who wants to do what. But business meetings are boring, so this discussion will happen amidst a day of guerilla gardening and some specially modded LAN gaming (the current idea is to have a Half Life level where it is eco-warriors vs. illegal loggers!). There will also be a bring-a-dish vegan buffet... how can you resist?

I have only been to four Open Spaces events, but they all rocked my world. The first was WTF The Future (it's a recursive acronym), put on by the Udoo/Espians crowd. It was a novel experience. I'd been used to traditional, hierarchical events, in which 'the speaker' talks at 'the audience'.

Participation is the fuel that drives web 2.0. Without people contributing to wikipedia, it would be an empty web database. Without people bookmarking their favourite websites, del.icio.us wouldn't be able to recommend them. Without bloggers posting and commenting on each others' posts, they wouldn't have any value.

The media is powerful, it controls a lot of the flow of information. It can make policy and decide elections. Now the power of the media is being decentralised to the people, and so is the ability to make policy.

This potential is made explicit by the launch of Opening Politics, a wiki for people to write policy together.

March is Veggie Month, an annual vegetarian and vegan initiative co-ordinated by Animal Aid. This year, I've created a Veggie Month website that includes some of the newer web technologies.

VegTube & Flickr

If you tag a YouTube video as 'veggie', then it will automagically appear on the Veggie Month website. We're hoping people will video themselves talking about why they are going veggie, and about any benefits they notice or difficulties they encounter.

Design guru Robert Buckminster Fuller is responsible for many amazing innovations. He created the geodesic dome, which has been implemented in many locations around the world including the eden project. He also devised the dymaxion map, which changes the way people look at the world. He is also responsible for suggesting 'in' and 'out' are more accurate words for what we usually term 'up' and 'down'!

Planting trees in Kenya helps repair the environment and provides food and timber for the local community. HIPPO is a charity with a vegetarian/vegan ethos that wants to plant around two thousand trees nearby to Nakuru. I'm trying to raise the £2000 that this requires, but I need your help!

So why is this organisation called Little Green Army?

It is not intended to be militaristic, as I always prefer nonviolent solutions to problems. Another sense of the word 'army' is a large group of people who have come together with a common aim or purpose.

After a couple of years working exclusively for the NGO Animal Aid, I've decided to expand my horizons. I'll still be working primarily with the animal rights group, but I'll also be taking on new projects and collaborating with other freelancers and activists. Some of these are already underway, including an exciting social networking website and the redevelopment of another campaigning group's website. I'll be posting more about these in the coming weeks.