Anarchy in Dublin 3….
December 12, 2010 at 8:29 pm
Last night I realised that I am now in fact an Anarchist! I always thought of those people as black jumper wearing, nail biting, nobodies, but I am now one of them.
Why do I say this?
Because I firmly believe that we need to make a paradigm shift in the way this country is run. When Lehman Bros bank collapsed, I thought it might have been an opportunity for the world to shake up the banking system and realign it to represent what is needed today, utilise technology to match those with money and those who need it, and remove a lot of the fat.
But that didn’t happen.
Now I am certain that a paradigm shift needs to occur in Ireland to ensure that what is happening now NEVER gets a chance to happen again.
What do I want to see?
The best people for the job in each of the main depts – Finance, Health, Education, Justice. A system that’s based on a model of social principles, and commercial efficiency. Not one that is based on old school party politics. I support many of the things that Fintan O’Toole asks for in his petition – you can read and sign here.
I was told last night that what I describe is Anarchist - – if that is so, let that be my new belief system. This revolution will not be televised. We know that. But it sure as hell can be Facebooked, Tweeted, Flickrd, blogged, and of course Youtubed. I’m ready and willing to my bit if I’m asked. But there seems to be a lot of talk, and nobody doing the asking.
What do you think?
Tags: Anarchy Ireland, Ireland IMF Scandal, Politics Ireland
Obama’s Online Campaign
October 8, 2008 at 10:14 am
The keynote speaker of Saturday’s conference was Zack Exley who is pretty much The Guy you want to get in to run your campaign if you’re serious about running for political office. He directed the online campaign for the British Labor Party’s 2005 re-election, was Director of Online Organising and Communications at Kerry-Edwards 2004 and before that was an adviser to the early Howard Dean campaign. He spoke about Dean and how his use of the internet changed politics. That’s all well and good but it’s history! I was more interested in what he had to say about Obama’s use of online to engage communities.
When you first visit the Obama website, you can’t get in without giving your email, your name and your postcode. I didn’t see any footnote about how my vitals will be used and whether or not I’ve now subjected myself to a whole heap of communication, but I’ll report back on that later.
The next page is trying to get you to donate. “Contribute today and help change Washington”. There’s a big form on the right crying out for me to give it my credit card details. It’s also asking me to quality myself further – they want to know my employer and my occupation.
Interior Pages of Obama.com. Says Zack:
Once you get into the website the calls to action are very clear. There are hundreds of thousands of people taking these actions. It’s not just about donating. Neighbour to neighbour campaigns are pretty interesting….
Neighbour to Neighbour Campaign : Utlising Freely Available Election Lists in a Web Savvy Way
Built on the belief that everyday Americans, once organized, can change their country.
Supporters are encouraged to log in, print walk lists and get on the phone or start knocking on doors. Walk lists are lists culled from voter registration lists of all the people in your area who are registered to vote. You can download scripts to use when knocking on doors or making phone calls. There are flyers you can print off and leave behind. And most importantly, there’s an interface to collect all the data:
- Who did you visit?
- What they did ? Signed card, support Obama, leaning voter, etc
- What did you go? Speak with the voter, asked me not to come back, etc.
This field campaign is highly organised and is bringing together all sorts of people towards a common goal. There’s volunteer training where the motto of “Include and Respect” is instilled in everyone and a T-shirt at the end of it. There are a variety of roles to suit everyone. And all of this valuable information is input into the system and available to view at campaign HQ in real time. All of this was done in 2004 during the Kerry campaign but the information was lost. The difference now is that the tools have made it into volunteer’s homes to connect them to the main database. Most are using Google spreadsheets and sharing with their next in command.
I can imagine how this information will be used. Swing voters will be revisited closer to the date of the election. Perhaps a visit by a more persuasive operative/volunteer. Homes with non-English speakers will be assigned a foreign language volunteer.
It sure is impressive. Not least for the organisation, but also for the fact that it’s rallying people who never knew each other before to work towards a common goal. I’m almost wishing we had the same kind of thing in Ireland…
But we do. And it’s called canvassing
So said Suzybie during questions. However, I disagree. I don’t think it’s comparing like with like because Obama’s community campaigning is open to anyone. Just log on and get involved. I’ve lived in Ireland for a large part of my life and I wouldn’t have a clue how to get involved with canvassing in the run-up to an election or a referendum. Would you?
I imagine you’d have to show up at long dull meetings in draughty rooms attended by men with little hair and grey suits. Pay your dues. Toe the party line. Hardly an attractive proposition.
But Libertas’ successful Lisbon campaign showed that Irish people will respond with their ballots to a well thought out and communicated campaign. I personally found it offensive that the main political parties simply wheeled out their leftover election posters and stuck the word Lisbon at the bottom of them.
With questions being asked about the fruits of the last decade of economic growth (or lack of them), maybe the time is right to introduce Obama-style community campaigns to this country? Maybe the introduction of web-savvy campaigning will bring some much-needed new blood and ideas to politics on this side of the Atlantic.
As Zack concluded,
Obama should never have gotten the nomination. He’s too new. An outsider. And African American. He would have been rejected as a radical in the past. But because of the ability of mavericks such as Obama to raise money online, he’s been able to run.
And sure we might even see him as President…
Which begs the very interesting question indeed… if Obama is supported by the blogosphere as he attempts to enter office. What happens once he’s in office? What happens when he’s making decisions that are tough to bear or unpopular amongst certain groups? What then? Will the bloggers continue to support him? Or will they start blogging to get him out?
Tags: Canvassing, Obama.com, Zack Exley
Social Activism Online
October 5, 2008 at 10:27 am
Damian O’Broin gave an excellent presentation on the A-Z of social activism. Here follows a list of campaigns that have worked for various not for profit organisations. If you are involved in this sector (as I am), you’d do well to go through the list and ask yourself ‘now how can I adapt that to suit our story?”
Social activism presentation can be viewed here.
Here are my notes from the talk:
- Act Blue – tool that raises money for democratic candidates in the US. Contribute to campaigns, can fundraise, etc.
- Bloggers – NGO blogs don’t tend to be that great. Many are uninteresting and read like PR. One exception: Adam Shelton in the UK. A blog that talks about relevant issues to the issue of shelter in a well written way.
- Coca Cola Life – set up to utlise the CC distribution network. Using it to distribute rehydration salts to people who need them desperately. Campaign to bring pressure on Coca Cola to allocate one shelf on their carts for items more important than fizzy pop!
- Doggies – how to engage supporters in an imaginatve way. Doggy Snaps – like Flickr but for people who love their dogs. Including Pooch Personality… 7,000 views.
- Email – email campaigns by Amnesty International are just brilliant. Email sent, less than a week later, an update… then a final follow up letting people know their action is taking effect.
- Friends of the Earth – actforclimate campaign to 1500 email database. Asked people to make a submission, link to a form, where you could build your submission and it was sent to Dept of Env. 500 took action. when you make it easy, it’s powerful.
- Greenpeace – Virtual March on Whaling 2005. Were having a march in Japan/Korea, encouraged supporters to take pics of themselves with no whaling signs, these were added to the site, and printed to be carried by the marchers.
- Hard facts. Intelligent Giving – rates UK charities and talks about issues in an upfront way.
- I First Aid – great use of podcasting by St Johns Ambulance. Can download first aid advice and take a course via postcasting.
- Japan – new types of barcode (QR Codes you can see them on here: url.ie)
- Karaoke – campaign by UK homeless agency, send a singer – christmas corporate fundraising. Raised £1 million + last year.
- Life is for 2nd life! American Cancer Socity – relay for life second life. raised $200,000 by holding a virtual sponsored walk in 2L.
- Mark Thomas – UK political comedian. Sprang up after he got enraged about demo’s being banned.. mcdemo’s…
- National Rifle Association – NRA Blacklist.com – decided to make it a badge of honour to be a part of the NRA blacklist. By signing the petition you are adding yourself to the blacklist (campaign against legal guns)
- Obama – if you want to look at good email campaigns, sign up for his…
- Profanity – bollocks to poverty campaign by Sinead. In tunes with bebo and FB users. Run in tandem with make poverty history. Video, music, auctions, etc. Action oriented, youth focussed. No dusty-ness
- Qwitter – social tool to help people give up smoking!
- Remembering – THT to remember all those who died from AID. Nice campaign to remember 17,000 people who have been lost to AIDS. Friends can create an online lasting memorial to that person. Thousands of ribbons.
- S – I didn’t get this. I was zoning off, but hey it was the middle of the afternoon and I was alert for A-R!
- Twitter – dogstrust – not pushy, nice way of building a community – updates
- Unconvinced – Actionaid – my action aid – allows you to take part, join community…sounds like a nice idea, potential? mycharity.ie allows you to do that for a range of charities. Are poeple going to bother? Doesn’t ahve the critical mass. Better to migrate to a group in FB.
- VAT – run by Irish Charities tax reform gruop a few years ago.. vatcampaign.com – try to change it that charities have to pay VAT (must pay but can’t claim it) – campaign to zero rate charities. 13,000 took part, 12,000 supporter dbase.
- Wolves – defenders of wildlife action fund. Email re. Palin’s wolf killing record – put it on the agenda. really good use of email to raise funds for specific action
- Xmas trees – born out of desperation from homeless charity from Edinburgh… buy a tree now, they buy those trees and you collect the tree from the depot…bethany’s care shelter in edinburgh.
- Youtube – source of many great videos carrying messages.
- Zack Exley – next up
The list of links may be found here:
http://delicious.com/damianob/socialactivismpres
Now I’m going off to look at each of these in more detail. Excellent presentation with lots of meaty thought provoking content by an excellent presenter.
Tags: OAI, Social Activism
Soundbites from Social Activism Day
October 4, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Organise Activate Influence took place in Dublin today.
Firstly a message for European Commission Vice President Margot Wallström Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy. Your comment at the end of your video address was totally incorrect. You said that it’s such a pity there aren’t that many women bloggers. Well you should research the audience you’re speaking to because in the audience today we had Martha Rotter, Red Mum, Maman Poulet, Alexia, Krishna De, The Raving Reporter, Sharon Fennell and more… your comment also brought a roar from twitter and a word in my ear from Sharon who was sitting beside me to say “Women don’t talk about blogging, they just get on with it”.
Here are some of the main nuggets I took from the speakers on the day – who were I must add – all of a very high quality:
Donnacha de Long – Amnesty International
Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, etc. all worked with the Chinese to build the great Chinese firewall. It also emerged that Yahoo! had provided information to the Chinese authorities on what political agitators were doing via their yahoo mail accounts. The launch of the Chinese Google opposes everything they said they stood for. They say they stand for free speech, but here they are launching an engine that censors information.
On 45th anniversary of Amnesty International in 2006, they launched a campaign called irrepressible.info. People can add a widget to Facebook or their site that shows snippets from sites that had been censored. 80,000 + people signed up to this.
Irrepressible campaign major outcome – the big 3 companies stopped saying there was nothing wrong with what they were doing. They came to the table in Jan 2007 with Amnesty International and Reporters San Frontiere to discuss freedom of speech. These talks are ongoing. Results are a year overdue, but expected soon.
It’s not just repressive regimes that black the internet. Two years ago, the FBI seized Indymedia’s servers in the UK to take a couple of photos allegedly showing police in agent provacateur positions. Authorities across the world think they can do what they like when it comes to online. It’s only by joining in the campaigns against that they can be stopped.
Love Amnesty. And they rock online.
Next up: Joe Zefran – RTE head of internet development and Senior Editor
- He subscribes to the RTE news Twitter feed even though he doesn’t know who set it up, or where it came from!
- Common belief was that Lisbon was going to pass. But people online knew more was going on. RTE tried to utlise the RTE site to reflect the vibe and dialogue that was going on about Lisbon that wasn’t getting heard on traditional media.Because there was no exit poll taken, RTE teamed up with Rock the Vote and went to polling stations around the country with video cameras on the day. Social media changed the way the Lisbon story played out.
- RTE’s blogging servers were only purchased because the young people’s channels wanted a blog! It’s an uphill struggle with the powers that be in Montrose in terms of switching on to youtube, blogs, etc. But they are realising the marketing potential because the blog is helping their SEO ranking.
- The good news is that Broadcasting Bill currently before the Oireachtas will allow RTE to use license fee money for online. But it’s the same pot of money to be split across tv and radio and move some into online. We must agitate to get RTE to stop funding crap TV and radio shows and fund online. All forms of traditional media are dropping both in revenue and in usage, but the online is growing every year by about 70% and is still not considered part of mainstream media by the powers that be.
- In questions – why is crappy Realplayer used on RTE? Because it’s not platform specific. But the new RTE iPlayer will be Flash based.
NEXT UP: A Great Session From Damian from Askdirect.ie about the A-Z of guerilla activism campaigns. So good that it warrants a separate blog.
Following lunch I attended the workshop on journalism and blogging.
Harry McGee the political correspondent from The Irish Times – the Irish political blog only started this summer. Deaglun de Breadun and himself write for it. So far in this country there has been zero impact of blogs on election coverage. There is only a small audience interested in blogs. Is growing though.
Richard Delevan – tells story of how he was covering the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis the year that the sisters came down from Belfast. In quiet periods, he was writing blog posts. They got huge traffic and that really showed to him that news gets traffic. Mentions crowdsourcing – if there’s a lot of news going on, the opinion of the crowd will find the correct story.
Joe Zefran commented that RTE blogs are behind firewalls and are not accessible by journo’s out on a story.
But during the election coverage, there was some fun news that wouldn’t make it to the news, that made it to the election blog. The 4 year old who gave Enda Kenny lip at a barber’s on election trail.
The day ended with an interesting session by Zack Exley. I was very interested in his comments about how Obama is engaging with communities in the run-up to this presidential election. There was a lot of questions after about the Irish blogosphere and how can we get more of a say when it comes to politics. My own thought on that is that the answer is ‘eircom’. As long as they maintain their stranglehold on the network, we will be constrained by broadband. As long as that remains the case, there will only be a minority who are online. Take from that those who don’t care and you are left with a tiny number. No way are we going to shake up the state.
