January 2010
1 post
A very useful on-point conversation: asking the...
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...
October 2009
3 posts
Canberra politics every morning →
September 2009
23 posts
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...
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.
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.
“If you don’t change course, you’ll end up where you’re...”
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...
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.
“…if you like importing oil from Saudi Arabia, you’re going to love...”
– Thomas Friedman on American skeptics and the energy independence movement.
Something we need to be mindful of, well - American climate activists in particular.
The Guardian: Pared-down UN summit will force... →
I agree this is good planning and it’s nice to see that the UN has thought critically about how to run the event, but this article is overblown.
The Guardian: Airlines vow to halve carbon... →
‘Exclusive: Industry will offer cut at climate change summit to avoid tougher action’ (psssst: they are afraid of taxes emerging from Copenhagen)
Decent task management via Gmail? →
Not really. But it’s a good integration attempt by ‘remember the milk’. If i was looking for task management software this would push me over the edge.
Unfortunately i already purchased (GASP!) ‘Things’, which i love.
"Rat Bites Baby" - a lesson in framing
Imagine this headline in the metro section of a major urban daily: Headline 1. “Rat bites baby” The story is set in a housing project in the black inner-city community of a large city. It involves a single mother who left her baby in the crib while she went down to the corner to cash her welfare check. The door was left open so her neighbors could hear. While she was gone, the baby was...
On happiness and beauty
(…a response to a post on the need to make a better world)
I’m not sure beauty can ever be found outside of ourselves. Whether we are conscious of it or not we govern, through our interpretation, how beautiful the world is. How beautiful our thoughts are is precisely how beautiful the world appears. Which means that to live in a blissful world we need to master inner bliss. Of course...
“The message, so firmly, is – don’t give up. Don’t hang with the cynics, the...”
– Guy Dauncey
“It’s not too late at all. You just don’t yet know what you are...”
– Mahatma Gandhi
Hazelwood protest included ‘ordinary people’, not...
…tipping point?
‘Yesterday’s protest at Hazelwood power station was billed as a day of “community protest and non-violent mass civil disobedience,” and yet despite the small numbers, what was remarkable was the ‘ordinariness’ of the crowd.’ Check it.
Perhaps that’s an exaggeration. But outreach by the grassroots climate players is increasingly wrangling in...
A place for strategy in the household?
I was thinking just now that maybe people in sharehouses should do more strategic planning. You know what i mean; put aside some time and crank out a couple of house powermaps on issues that are important to them, do a stakeholder analysis of the house, or develop mini-campaigns to get their housemates to do the washing up, stop having loud sex, clean a common area etc.
Most of us fail to change...
User journey planner?
I like the way this lady thinks and i think we could take it a few steps further, but i will explain later. See if you can understand what she is talking about:
“ In a campaign, we always give supporters next steps to take action. However, it’s sometimes hard to assure that after completing a certain stept, all the other actions are offered to the supporters.
Is there a tool...
A fresh party invite
I just received this party invite and loved it. It was different enough to stand out in a crowded inbox of goodies.
It reminds me of a campaigning tactic used in the US nominations race. During the height of an online fundraising push one candidate sent out a 2 sentence email to their supporters asking for urgent donations. The email was signed by the candidate personally and lacked any fancy...
I love it..
I found a cool site today whilst hunting down well produced candidate portals. Check it: http://www.thompson2009.com/
I love the colours and simplicity. Although as one friend pointed out; its not very ‘movement’ orientated yet. I’ll be watching to see how/if that changes, given he just won pre-selection.
It was made by Blue State Digital, clearly very inspired by Obama’s...
Strategy Stories
A while back i was in the US on a national study tour, trying to glean what i could from the remnants of the Obama campaign and general best practice organsising.
Through a friend of a cousin (or some other inconsequential distant relation..) we were intro’d to Michael Margolis - a larger than life New Yorker. Most of our meetings were organised with the usually politico strategists and...
February 2009
1 post
