Strategy dreams

Quick thoughts and unfinished sentences on politics, campaigning, strategy and living a good life.

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A very useful on-point conversation: asking the vaulable question about twitter and social change.

January #4Change Chat Topic: Campaigning

The January #4Change Twitter Chat will focus on the use of Twitter and other social media tools in campaigning.

About the Topic

Campaigning can mean many different things and we want to keep the definition of the topic fairly open for this chat, in order to keep insights, resources and conversation in the Q/A format as open to valuable input as possible.  Here are some ways that campaigning can be framed for the purpose of this chat:

  • moving canvassing door to door to online networks
  • political action
  • local community building
  • tying communications, partners, and actions together via social media
  • social change projects or programs locally or globally

The way we examine the use of social media in campaigning can be further framed in some of these ways:

  1. change campaigns (internal vs external), also organization type variations
  2. social media change campaigns (specific nuances)
  3. change campaigns vs political campaigns (similarities vs differences)
  4. educational campaigns (organizational / institutional / internet) riffing off of last month’s topic
  5. building campaign coalitions & recruiting campaign champions

How to Participate

Share your ideas now:

You can share your ideas about the topic as well as any resources, case studies, examples, research etc. by leaving a comment on this blog post.  Or, you can tag your resources or posts using Delicious with the tag “4change” and we’ll pick it up for you.

Join the Twitter chat:

  1. If you want to contribute to the conversation, you’ll need to have a twitter account (it’s free).
  2. To follow the conversation (whether you are planning to contribute or not), use http://search.twitter.com or another application to search on Twitter for #4Change
  3. Jump in to the conversation by adding #4Change to your Twitter message
  4. Feeling brave? Check out TweetChat – it’s a great application that integrates with your Twitter account and makes chats more fun! You can turn it off after the chat.

Rules for #4Change Chat

  1. #4Change will be structured around a series of questions which all participants can respond to. Send your questions to @memeshift to have them considered.
  2. Introduce yourself in 1 tweet at the start or when you join.
  3. Stay on topic!
  4. Be cool.

Details

  • Date: January, 14th 2010
  • When: 2 – 4 pm US Pacific Time, 5 – 7 pm US Eastern Time, 10pm – 12am London, UK (Late!)
  • Where: Twitter (search for #4Change)
  • Topic: Campaigning: How is social/new media affecting the the way we build and conduct campaigns? and more!

We’ll update this post with specific questions to be asked during the chat and will capture resources and conversations from the chat, too.  Send us your ideas!

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Published on January 3, 2010 by Amy Sample Ward. 0 Comments

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permalink Maldives ministers prepare for underwater cabinet meeting ‘President hopes stunt will draw attention to climate change’ - At first it struck me as odd that a country going underwater needed a stunt to draw attention. But then it got me to thinking.. This is obviously some very creative diplomacy and a good example for other low lying states. Not just because the message is clear, embodied in the image and as a result the issue is covered internationally. More than that, its a brilliant use of public-fueled soft power. When traditional avenues (the UN, G20 etc) fail to deliver most countries just keep on keeping on. But not this time and not the Maldives. Although this is just a stunt, perhaps it spells the beginning of more countries adopting a broader range of modern (and classic) advocacy tools. It’s not just causes and brands that can build movements behind their causes - countries can do it too. We know this already i.e. socialism vs capitalism, but as with everything - the internet is lowering the barrier to entry. Countries like the Maldives could really benefit from building constituencies beyond their borders. Stunts will help, but larger scale campaigns and a personal social media presence from a country would set their cause on fire (at least for the first few..). If you can convince a country to do it let me know, i’d love to help! Check out the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/07/maldives-underwater-cabinet-meetin

Maldives ministers prepare for underwater cabinet meeting

‘President hopes stunt will draw attention to climate change’

- At first it struck me as odd that a country going underwater needed a stunt to draw attention. But then it got me to thinking..

This is obviously some very creative diplomacy and a good example for other low lying states. Not just because the message is clear, embodied in the image and as a result the issue is covered internationally. More than that, its a brilliant use of public-fueled soft power.

When traditional avenues (the UN, G20 etc) fail to deliver most countries just keep on keeping on. But not this time and not the Maldives.

Although this is just a stunt, perhaps it spells the beginning of more countries adopting a broader range of modern (and classic) advocacy tools. It’s not just causes and brands that can build movements behind their causes - countries can do it too.

We know this already i.e. socialism vs capitalism, but as with everything - the internet is lowering the barrier to entry. Countries like the Maldives could really benefit from building constituencies beyond their borders. Stunts will help, but larger scale campaigns and a personal social media presence from a country would set their cause on fire (at least for the first few..).

If you can convince a country to do it let me know, i’d love to help!

Check out the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/07/maldives-underwater-cabinet-meetin

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permalink Canberra politics every morning
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permalink I’m way too cynical for this. Plus i dont really like music (GASP!).

I’m way too cynical for this. Plus i dont really like music (GASP!).

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Facebook trumps email campaigning?

Me: “Yeah i think the next big question is going to be about how we can harvest emails from Facebook communities’”

Friend: “But do you even need to? Why not just use Facebook to communicate with your supporters. I pay more attention to my Facebook messages than email.”

Facebook has 300 million members globally, nearly 7 million in Australia - and - get this, over 51% of those check it daily and spend and average of 21 minutes on the site.

It is the stickiest site on the internet. It’s where Australians are spending most of their time on the net and yet online campaigners are still in an email collecting frenzy. Facebook campaign attempts have been pithy at best - except by a few corporates.

The usual reprieve is that users don’t value their Facebook messages as much as they do email. But then again, now days an organisation is VERY lucky if 20% of their database even open their emails. I wonder what the Facebook stats would be… especially given most people will get it twice: once in their email inbox and another time through Facebook mail.

The other great (and obvious) benefits of Facebook are that users can take action without ever leaving the system, all their friends will also find out and you can advertise to people based on everything they do on Facebook - (namely their interests, groups they are in, age and location) which can guarantee you a lead community if you have an inkling of knowledge about your audience.

And how about acquiring that priority relationship? It can be challenging at best to acquire a large email list, but to get the rights to email a Facebook’er and have your comments turn up in their feed they just need to ‘fan’ you.

But what about the people, who is even on Facebook? Isn’t it mostly young people?

Well yeah somewhat - but not really. In Australia there are 6.9 million users with a slight skew to females across all ages. Breaking it down with ages:

13-19: 1.4 million

20-29: 2.6 million

30-39: 1.5 million

40-49: 770 000

50-59: 430 000

60-64: 100 000

Rumor (and basic logic) has it that the fastest growing ages are 30 and above, but there are already enough people in all age ranges to comprise major campaigns (even middle age women who make up most of online NGO donor bases).

Seems to me that Facebook is where it’s at and we all need to catch up…. (Ok, i am way over selling this - all i’m saying is that i’m going to spend more time thinking about ways to campaign within Facebook and i hope you will too.)

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permalink HAARM.org - by SEIU

I accidentally (in retrospect) told an Australian Unionist that the SEIU would run a series of great online campaigns. I was wrong again.

monkeytypist:

The SEIU have set up a parody anti-Health care reform site.  I see what they’re trying to do here, but geez.
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permalink Star Wars - The Environmentalists Version

Biting and hilarious commentary on the methods of environmentalists.

The substance is more of a tactics analysis and stick poking of infighthing than enlightening commentary. Still, the production is great and ultimately it warns that steps in the campaign should not become your end goal.
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If you don’t change course, you’ll end up where you’re heading.
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Social Movement Educator’s Workshop

Sydney, Friday 6th to Sunday 8th November, 2009 

The role of education and facilitation in building and supporting movements is vital… but opportunities for us to develop and extend these skills can be rare. Join us for three solid days to:
* Reflect on our experiences and challenges as educators and facilitators
* Extend and develop our facilitation skills and strengthen our confidence to deal with challenging situations
* Understand and apply principles of popular and experiential education and learning
* Develop a ‘toolbox’ of education and facilitation techniques
* Build capacity to support activists, organisations, communities and movements to make change happen.

A significant component of the workshop will be practice facilitation. Come prepared to show your stuff, share tools, and stretch! Together we’ll create a supportive space for experimentation and growth, with considered critical feedback from peers.

This workshops will benefit people engaged in education and facilitation with a community and social change perspective: such as union educators, community organisers, non-violence practitioners, peer educators, and grassroots activists.

The Change Agency is a not-for-profit collective of activist educators. We’ve run hundreds of workshops for thousands of people engaged in action for social and environmental justice. Through the Social Movement Ed2 we aim to build and strengthen a community of activist educators throughout Australia and the Pacific. The workshop facilitators are James Whelan, Holly Hammond and Sam La Rocca. The registration fee is $250 - $600. ‘Pay the rent’ registration is available free to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants.

For full details, flier and registration form, check out >  http://www.thechangeagency.org/02_cal/details.asp?ID=197

~ courteousy of James Whelan (www.thechangeagency.org) ~

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permalink Facebook is slimming down..

Apparently, well so say the advertising team at Facebook Australia - Facebook lite has been developed for countries with poor bandwidth. It will ‘give facebook where there otherwise would be no facebook’.

I was of the assumption that it was a further push to compete with the ultra-lite twitter. Meh.
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