A lot of interaction these days happens online. You probably spend a significant portion of your day reading and responding to email. You may even have a system for sorting your email - by project or topic. And sometimes, you’ll take a break from email to catch up with people on Twitter and Facebook.

After a while, these platforms can become a blur and you may feel like getting your inbox to zero unread messages is an elusive goal. Instead of building your day around tools, what if your day was centered around people?

Growing people-centered organizations is the reason NationBuilder exists. One of the great things about working here is that we don’t just build a product for other organizations to use - our own work centers around our nation, particularly the individuals and communities we serve.

NationBuilder is stronger because of our networks of talented partners who help customers design and implement beautiful websites. We've recently added new free themes such as Victory, BusyBiz and Civitas for customer self-service, and several new NationBuilder Architects - certified design consultants who use HTML, CSS and Liquid to launch sophisticated custom sites.

Whether you're building for a political campaign, NGO, corporate home page or a city government, our Architects can help.

At NationBuilder, we believe that everyone has leadership potential. Usually, political organizations just focus on the people at the top with the most power. But every once in a while an organization understands that real change comes from the bottom up. 

We say kudos to the New American Leaders Project for doing just that. In their new report, RUN LOCAL: The New American Electorate and the 2013 Municipal Elections, NALP credits local elections for giving new voices a chance to influence American politics.

NationBuilder VP of Engineering, Dan Walmsley is at SXSW and he will rock out your party or panel with his brilliance and comedy stylings! Today, he's on a panel at Interact ATX evaluating 100 of the brightest entrepreneurs at SXSW. Here's where he'll be next:

You can catch him tonight on the Startup Bus all-star judging panel laying down his tech startup knowledge for some budding entrepreneurs:

WHEN: Friday, March 8th from 9 pm to midnight
WHERE: Champions, 300 East 4th Street at Trinity

Tomorrow he'll be at the SX SendGrid Extravaganza drinking beer and taking names:

WHEN: Saturday, March 9th from 4 to 9 pm
WHERE: The Tap Room, 311 Colorado St; Register here.

Dan wants his social calendar busting at the seams so if you'd like him to make your SXSW get together the coolest ever, or you just want to be impressed by his technical knowledge and insight, email sbevers@nationbuilder.com. 

Thanks, Texas Progress for the great photo of Dan at InteractATX!

Primary victory means a great time on election night - but the celebration shifts immediately to planning for what's next. Last June, we saw candidates like Richard Bloom and Eric Swalwell place second in primaries, build nations, then beat establishment opponents. Bloom defeated Assemblywoman Betsy Butler and Swalwell turned a 36 percent primary finish to a 53 percent victory in the runoff. 

In Los Angeles and other cities holding low turnout spring primary and runoff elections, your digital field strategy is even more important. Using NationBuilder's tools it's possible to identify and reach a significant portion of your runoff turnout voter universe.

Grassroots organizing paid off for proponents of term limits in West Hollywood, as Measure C took 62 percent of the vote last night. A similar measure failed in 1997 and incumbents have lost only twice in the city's history. Measure C received 2,690 votes of approval.

In other small cities in Los Angeles County, NationBuilder customers also stood out. City of Commerce elected Joanna Flores to its council by a margin of 20 votes.

Leaders using NationBuilder cleaned up in yesterday's city elections in Los Angeles, as Eric Garcetti moved to the mayoral runoff in first place and in the Hollywood area, council candidates Mitch O'Farrell and John Choi also advanced to the May 21 city election.

Garcetti's District 13 council seat was the city's most competitive - eight candidates hoping to succeed him used NationBuilder, including the first six finishers. O'Farrell took 18.4 percent of the vote, and Choi took 16.5 percent. Fifty percent was needed to avoid a runoff.

In conjunction with the launch of our new control panel, we're in the process of refreshing our support site. We've created two new introductory videos on founding and building your nation. In our new Founding Your Nation video, C.J. from the Community Team walks you through installing your nation, creating a website, and shows how your website connects to your people database.

If you're just getting started with NationBuilder and need to get up and running quickly, this video is for you. 

Stay tuned as we roll out more updates to our support materials and website over the next few weeks.

Over the last few years, you have all shown what's possible with NationBuilder – and told us what would help make your experience even better. We've been listening. Today, we are proud to unveil our new look.

Most of the control panel functions the same way, but we've updated the design to make it easier to navigate and understand. For example, new searchable drop-down menus will help you navigate long lists of tags quickly.

One big change is in how adding and removing people to lists work. The shopping cart concept is completely gone (yay!) and now you select the list you are working on directly from the add & remove buttons. Much easier to understand. There are more details in this updated how-to guide.

Along with the new control panel, we've updated and restructured our support site.

1. All the how-to videos of the old control panel have been replaced with detailed how-to guides of the new control panel that are easier to skim and find what you are looking for.
2. The FAQ has been re-organized around topics and you can ask questions directly there now.
3. There are two new introductory videos on founding and building your nation. Definitely worth sending to your friends and colleagues who are just getting started with NationBuilder.

We know how hard you all work every day to make big things happen. We hope this makes it a little easier. 

Mike Thornton is off to U.K. Parliament after winning a by-election that saw the Conservative candidate pushed back to third place. Thornton has been a local parish and borough councillor since 2007.

NationBuilder's mission is to make everyone a leader and our vision is to unlock the potential of a connected humanity. You can see this vision in action at The Bully Project, organized around the film "Bully", which aims to reach 1 million children in 2013 to stop bullying.

The Bully Project will be featured on Anderson Cooper 360 tonight on CNN at 10 p.m. EST.

The project's website (warning - it's really hard to not tear up on the movie trailer) uses NationBuilder's tools to great effect, highlighting your personal network on the homepage as soon as you authorize Twitter and Facebook. It also offers badges like "The Upstander" for spreading the world. As soon as I got the badge, I also unlocked great anti-bullying resources like this "10 Ways to Be An Upstander" guide.

Right now we’re busy putting the final polish on a fresh new look for NationBuilder. When you log into your control panel later this week, you’ll see a sleeker, more modern style. This update doesn’t fundamentally change how NationBuilder works, but it’s purpose is not simply cosmetic either. We are setting the stage for ongoing improvements that will make community organizing more accessible to all types of leaders.

If you want to see more...Adriel will be looking for bugs showing off the new look during NationBuilder Live (our daily webcast) today, Wednesday and Thursday at 4pm ET.

PS Engage is a one-day conference that focuses on public service renewal and bringing new ideas to Canadian federal government employees. For the last event in November, the aim was to explore new ways of working.

NationBuilder VP of Community Adriel Hampton gave a presentation on apply community organizing principles to public service. If you're working in government, this talk will help you identify and empower your front line innovators to help tell the story of your organization. 

The folks at the Food Co-Op Initiative recently interviewed Peter Frank of the Kensington Community Food Co-op about the organization's use of NationBuilder. The Google+ Hangout covers:

• Setting up a new events page on your website - no technical knowledge required;
• Recruiting volunteers for event shifts;
• Segmenting email blasts;
• Figuring out workflow and assigning point people;
• Contact logging and database tagging;
• Accepting paid memberships; and
• Essential organizing strategy for co-op growth.

In case you missed it on Wednesday, here is a recording of our webcast with Gov 2.0 Radio founder and NationBuilder VP of community Adriel Hampton.

This video is for you if you want to:

• Learn how governments can encourage citizen engagement using digital tools 
• Improve the efficiency of your constituent communications and the effectiveness of your customer service staff
• See innovative examples of how government offices are implementing NationBuilder's new Government Edition to log and track issues, send email newsletters, build their websites and manage social media communications