Success as a cause of failure

So after a fair few travels across Europe, the Middle East and back again, here I am in India pondering what’s gone wrong in the meantime and the cause and effect of large dead email lists. Was it murder, and did we do it, or was it collective suicide on a grand scale.

Earlier in the year faced with yet another restructuring, I penned some thoughts about 7 likely environments that would make a step change in list size possible. Mainly to demonstrate to myself, that the office wasn’t doing any of these things, are rather than give folk the space to think about how to deliver on extravagant demands – was burying every creative digitally minded person under a ton of meetings, projects and random red herrings.

So big list growth makes on look sexy in the digital world, and the madness around the Ice bucket challenge will likely inspire management to breath down people’s neck to say well why can’t you do that. Go on make it go viral, I want the fundraising leads. But then I got to thinking perhaps that step change isn’t always a good thing? Maybe it’s the cause of the list death that is of current concern.

Clever, viral ideas reach lots of new people fast, and presumably most of them don’t know what they’re signing up for, and so they are more likely to get irritated by email campaigns faster than say someone who finds the organisation through organic means. Then as open & click rates drop, we change our behaviour, and our style of asks and writing, to maximise the response of a community of people who are desperately trying to disengage.

The idea of being able to design intelligent supporter journeys or activist pathways for these folk appeals but with competing demand, bureaucracy and the usual madness this is never as feasible as one might like. But perhaps there is a strong argument that the success of a big growth period, is not the cause of the growth - I.e. icy buckets but what you do afterwards.

Maybe the extra 1 million + sign ups need to be treated as probationary supporters, i.e. we need to embrace the arrogance of demanding that they prove themselves to us further, before we allow them inside. Go on demonstrate that you actually give a shit, before we let you onto our email campaigning list, do something that demonstrates you know something about the issue, or at least you’re interested enough to learn and then we’ll reward you be inviting you to campaign with us.

I’m not proud I’d love to have the big hit, but before I do I’d like to have a plan as to how to purge the list before the zombies take over. Perhaps a pathway that looks like this;

• Ask them why? Why did you share to grow your fish, sign up, empty the bucket etc
• Give them an easy way to turn viral activism into ‘concrete’ action – and then look to separate out the super activists really quickly.
• Follow up with 2-3 fun asks for the folk affected with the zombie virus, and aggressively tele fundraise off the list during this period. Get them to donate because we invite them to do things they enjoy, or like to boast about to their friends. This could be an asy one off micro donations
• Cultivate those that donate, plan an activist pathway that educates (I usually hate that word) and helps them grow to the point that they understood why they did the dance thing, or whatever it took to get the Star Wars T-shirt
• Bury those that don’t, there’s better places to invest ones energy.

Bottom line don't assume that because they did the viral thing, that they know anything about the organisation, the issue, or that they give a shit - but maybe give them the chance....

I reckon this might find into my opportunistic clever things to do when there’s a crisis / opportunity with a addictive web ask already built, and online to offline ask or pack, and lots of shareable content. I just need a theme and a job that gives me the budget to do it.

Doublethink and Doublespeak

Back in 2010 I set to sea to express confusion that offline activism had fallen out of fashion in a new digital world. Or perhaps I was hoping to learn to swim in that world by practicing my writing strokes – I can’t recall.

The new hope of mobilisation was the evolution into a more people powered organisation, getting the numbers and enabling people to act. Which felt like a previous episode c 2002/2003 casting active supporters into the same offline role – this isn’t exactly another chapter of Revelations.

Then there’s fragmented divisions about what mobilisation means? To the bosses it’s getting big numbers of sign ups, which means fundraising leads, like many marketing asks -i.e. income to fuel dull policy and politics work. To the folk in the trenches mobilisation is leveraging the power of the people to win campaign. Forcing companies to listen to their perception of their customers, or politicians to hear the voices of those they plausibly represent, or the media to magnify the stories of the many till those with power take heed. In summary the objectives of mobilisation was never to be fundraising targets, the goal is not to make money but to win campaigns. If the invisible elbow of mobilisation, i.e. our externality,  is fundraising then that’s excellent., and if winning campaigns encourages people to donate that’s how it should be.

So then is a blog somewhere where I’ve argued mobilisation as ‘getting people to do shit’, or perhaps ‘getting people to do useful shit’. With a personal goal of ‘getting people to do more shit’ against an organisation background of ‘getting more people to do shit’. With a nagging voice that perhaps we should be ‘enabling people to do shit’.

Recently returned from months working in India (something for a retrospective) I was lured into the restructuring of mobilisation teams, online, offline and mobiles into the ideology of the pyramid of engagement. I.e. one team focused on reach / outreach – finding new people to work with the organisation, one team focused on digital platforms and innovation - to enable people to stay active with campaigns and one team focused on engagement - to bring people closer to us, engaging them in discussion and deeper levels of activism online and offline.

Last night’s conversations in the pub about the next global restructuring sweeping our way, is the emerging role of engagement. Merging comms (old media), mobilisation (digital) with fundraising (street), and a hint of offline to do something new? Picking at the role descriptions of say an offline engagement manager, they reveal themselves as fundraising roles – probably representing DD expertise, which bodes badly for the digital roles and the collective engagement structure.

So if the passion and thinking behind mobilisation has become synonymous with lead generation and fundraising. And the new vision of engagement is destined to be subsumed by fundraising then in the battle of Doublethink and Doublespeak we need to invent new words and ideas to describe the work that we do – to give people the power to create change, online and offline, and to keep the wolf from our back.

Gothic Activism

Today’s most intriguing highlight has to be the invitation to speak at this year’s Altfest, the UK's largest alternative festival – and maybe only unless you count Whitby? Topic to be determined, but with the likes of Marilyn Manson, the Cult and VNV nation headlining it’s going to be a fun one. At least so long as they don’t try and find a climate sceptic to argue the toss, like previously organisers at the Synergy Project.

But then I got to thinking about how to tailor progressive and environmental messages to the audience, i.e. the assembled mass of the black clad tribe – and/or how to cope with the post punk nihilism and modern Goth / emo apathy?

After a few moments of fond recollections of the ‘Eco Goths against Apathy’ group that we played with for Witchfest one year, and then reincarnated for the Airplot special interest groups project (an idea I'd like to resurrect) clearly more research is in order.

So tonight heralds hunting for hidden messages in my music collection. I’ll resort to playing songs backwards if I have less luck, and to keep the Christian extremists happy. But VNV have opened well, with the lyrics to Foreward (Futureperfect 2009).

This is your world.
These are your people.
You can live for yourself today,
or help build tomorrow for everyone.

Das ist deine Welt.
Das sind deine Mitmenschen.
Du kannst heute für dich leben,
Oder für alle die Zukunft von morgen aufbauen.

C'est ton monde.
Ce sont tes gens.
Aujourd'hui tu pourrais penser qu'à toi,
ou aider à construire un lendemain pour tous.

Still the night is young, there is plenty to drink, and I am not alone, I am not afraid, I am not unhappy……

Digging and Dreaming

The struggle I have with this blog, is that when I’m doing activism I am hesitant to write anything profound about the why of it - or to incriminate myself, and when I have the energy to write about the why of it - I lack the inspiration that comes from the doing of it. Thus it had been what 2 years since I've visited here which accounts for the dust and the cobwebs,

But of late I have been chasing round the world and burning too much carbon to work with activists, volunteers, communities and organisations from Brazil to India, to the Philippines and beyond. So perhaps there are some new stories to tell, and enough of a pause and a reflection to revive this blog? Or to decide to stick a stake through its heart before heading on to the next narrative in the Middle East.

So here goes, the clock is ticking - if I can commit to composing something before the sun rises then there may be life here yet.

Recipe for numbers

Foolishly on a Saturday morning I checked my inbox, to discover what will undoubtedly be another restructuring of a mobilisation department, not because they want bigger numbers but because they want to build a more integrated structure that will naturally attract bigger numbers - by the magic of management. So my first piece of advice would be to stop with the restructuring already – and get on with the job.

But wiser heads than I, are there to advise. So for the sake of a non-specialist opinion and a memory of a pub conversation here’s my recipe for online campaigns that achieve a step change in the volume of people interacting with a campaign. There’s also a nagging something that this is something an organisation gets one go at, and once they’ve had their big splash it’s much harder to do a second – especially if you relentlessly phone those signups for money – but a different diatribe.

1) Great campaigns – If you’re inspired by your campaign then others will be too. If it has a wow factor, of a 'WTF you did what' moment when you explain it then even better. If it’s focused on some technical EU legislation that you don’t really understand then don’t do it. More importantly you need to be able to explain why someone’s support will actually help achieve change - ideally in under a minute. Big companies do listen to their customers; politicians listen to their constituents but artificial constructs and generic pledges don’t really convince anyone and are much harder work. People powered campaigns are only convincing if the people actually have power to effect change.

If you’re running a big petition campaign and you don’t know what to do with the petition then you’re in trouble. If in doubt ask the people who sign it, what they want to do with it – send it by FedEx, or project it on the side of Sydney opera house. Ideally do several things with it, at key milestones and give people an incentive to tell you what to do next and then to get the numbers to that point. Oh and you can probably cost benefit doing big stunts vs the number of fundraising leads. If in doubt crowd source your campaign plans.

2) Capture the moment – either be reactive or lucky or plan to be reactive. BPs deep water horizon create a storm and the right campaign launching at the same time captured the energy of that storm. Organisations like Avaaz, 38 degrees, Get Up etc , do well at this and are optimised for such ambulance chasing – but anyone can do it. Care 2 and MoveOn do it as a buisness model. But ambulance chasing is a mean description, maybe it’s more like hitching your horse to the bandwagon.

The difficulty is in being reactive, and spotting the opportunity. Tools like ControlShift or Greenpeace X, do a good job of grabbing the space for others to create the opportunity. And I wonder if one can have a couple of campaign packs on standby waiting for the hook and theme. i.e. you desging your innovative digital campaign, stick it in a box, and then open the box when you need it. One could probably do most of the build in anticipation.

3) Unity of focus – in my experience the big numbers come from doing one thing well. And this really does mean one thing, so not a priority with lots of little whippets biting at its heels. But absolute unity of focus. And no you can’t do your rapid response, pet project as well - often as not rapid response is simply the argument for poorly planned, and if it is a rapid respone what are you actually going to achieve or is this simply the need to be seen to do something, to justify the salary.

The old FoE Big Ask campaign had this kind of focus and fro what I understand so did the Argentinan forest law campaign. When the office empties to go out on the streets to collect petitions. When the ED is campaigning next to the volunteers, when every single staff member is working on the one big project and all other output is on hold as the comms channels genuinely reflect the urgency of the situation. Then people pay attention.

4) Cool creative shit – clever new ideas like the Turkish fish game go viral because they’re clever. So giving people the space to surf around, looking for inspiration and then the confidence to build it works. Plan something that creates a buzz, by being buzzworthy. Drowning your talent in day to day Facebook updates, competing campaign meetings, dull legal arguments about risks, and awkward sign off processes doesn’t just clip their wings, it breaks every small bone in their bodies. Let them fly and again do one thing awesomely.

5) Long term capacity building – sometimes the illusion of the moment, and the step change in the numbers of people involved is that an illusion. Cf Kony 2012 or the Obama campaign. After years (usually 2+) of legwork, or building groups, and doing grassroots outreach to build a strong, sustainable network of people the moment comes to deploy that network to magnify the issue 10 fold, and attract new people doing so.

The difficulty comes from building and maintaining that network, which despite what senior management believes is neither easy, nor something that sits on a shelf waiting to be used - we do not have a warehouse full of grassroots activists waiting for the call. If you want a sustained network you have to put the energy in to keep, what is after all a collective of people, sustained.

6) Blind luck – sometimes big numbers just happens. You can plan the above, or do something dull and the story changes, or you’re the last one standing when the media come looking on a dull news day – or the phase of the moon generator is working overdrive, or to be honest to make any of this stuff work you kind of need to just get lucky. Reputations are built on one off successes and often lighting doesn’t strike again.

7) The other stuff – ok buy that lists of leads, spend loads of money on a video you want to go viral, adopt every last celebrity you can find, take on that paid ad on prime time TV. Test your tech and emails to death, try the little ideas and do the best practice – with an eye to list growth as a weekly necessity – what are you doing this week. But don’t expect the great leap forward simply from doing what everyone else is doing – but do this anyway.

So I reckon I've got examples for all of these, and maybe this is to be continued, if I ever get that  break from the machinations of management to propose that new vision, instead of doing any work.

Shards of Imagination

So it’s a funny thing what catches peoples imagination, or at least the media attention which then feeds the public’s sense of what’s important. Today’s action at the Shard certainly did that, and I wonder why? Is the audacity of climbing what is a bloody big building? The idea that all the climbers were woman – not bearded men? Was it the synergy of online and offline activism, and the live streaming Ice Climb – which was well cool? Or was it simply a slow media day?

The organisation has a reputation for dramatic actions, which over the years has grown less newsworthy to a jaded media. Climbing building and cranes, boarding ships and shutting down polluting factories is just as dangerous physically and legally as it was in the 80’s but rarely generated a peep out of the mainstream channels. Is this because the media is bored of such things or is the public (I don’t think so) or is it because our media has slipped into the hands of corporate interests who actively discourage such reporting? And I’d include the Beeb in that camp, who are subject to the most pernicious of establishment and corporate lobbying – the quite chat over dinner.

So why did this resonate? My instinct would be to argue for the digital elements. That anyone could tune in and be part of the protest. And of course the very real concern that they weren’t going to make it – so it was worth coming back for more. One of the conversations on the ground between a friend and some professional riggers who routinely clean the building was that they were simply carrying too much weight – that they couldn’t do it. Including the bloody great big banner and art installation that never got used. His response was that they were failing to allow for determination, and dedication to the issues, which went well beyond the physical challenge.

But the crowds at the base suggested that offline networking still works as well as online. That people hear what’s happening from their colleagues as well as the news and a website. And they feel the need to go be physically present. It seems surreal that the idea of talking to the crowds, or leafleting them, or even signing them up as Arctic Defenders was an afterthought and a last minute scramble. The organisation needs to remember its roots in talking to real people face to face, not just from behind the screen.

And me? Well I was between here and there, back from Ireland and heading to Bangkok to work with an Indonesian forests project. Which put me in a frustratingly non arresatble world running media footage and carrying expensive heavy objects. Which proved to be long, and hard work, compared to deploying ladders or getting arrested doing so – but nothing of course compared to climbing what is a bloody big building. I’m still impressed.

Laboratory experiments in Asia

So I wonder about the sympathetic magic associated with this blog. It started as an argument as to whether digital activism and mobilisation was where my future led, or whether old school organising was still as valid a path to change as ever. Then I ended up working in the digital field.

Now 2+ years later the pendulum has returned, and I seem to find myself back working with offline organisers, volunteer coordinators, network developers and more. With an experimental mandate, and a sack of money (ok a moderate budget), to go out into the world and make good things happen. Folk who believe in chaos theory, the complexities of the modern world, and change management would be delighted by the lack of project plans.

But the challenge is enormous for starters the countries I now working with; India, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, ML China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan I reckon together summarise half the planets population – and I’ve not been to none of them - well not yet.

Equally I’ve been around a while, have an open mind, ask more questions than make assumptions, am scared shitless, think I might have a basic understanding of face, understand some of the uncertainties, and have low expectations that I’m the herald of the revolution so perhaps I can get be moderately useful to people I like – and it’s going to be epic finding out.

Urban Explorers

Over several years the idea of turning ones activist skills; climbing (rope access), boating, the ability to open locked doors quickly, into something as futile as poking around disused industrial sites has had a growing appeal. Finally I tracked down some forums devoted to such nihilistic activities in the form of the UK Urban Explorers Forum.

The link that I followed in was from an idle question about the tunnels under Imperial College, London. Plausibly some speculation about subterranean access to buildings in the area. In a different life I studied there and can attest that there is a range of tunnels running from what was Southside, under the V&A to Queens Tower and beyond. It was a handy shortcut (well a drier detour) to the bar and I can still vividly remember the Victorian brick staircase spiralling down beneath exhibition road, to Neverwhere.

The beginning of the week saw a bunch of us out on the boats, teaching media types (photographers and all) not to do anything stupid in the event of a high speed activity. We ended up out at the sea forts in the Thames estuary, the rusted remains of Red Sands towers, and what was once the lonely haunt of pirate radio stations.

So when time allows, I have some pictures to upload to the forums. Some currency to establish my place in the digital community and perhaps a hook to lure a few folk with the skills necessary to poke around disused industrial sites, to the idea that occupying more useful sites coal power stations and all) has more of a future.

Creative activism

A fair few years ago, various friends got annoyed when Iceland announced it was resuming commercial whaling, with the usual suspects being particularly quiet on the issue.

The creative friend, who used to work for Das Spiegel, pulled together some designs along the lines of ‘Only in Iceland can you eat a tourist attraction’, the practical friend with access to an office printer, turned the designs into A5 stickers, and closer to home the mischievous friend, mobilised some people, organised teams, and spread stickers across Icelandic tourist posters on the Underground.

2 weeks later an Icelandic MP stood up in parliament, to denounce whaling as bringing the country into disrepute, as evidenced by the wave of sabotaged posters he’d seen on his recent trip to London.

The example is not that subvertising works, or that a small group of passionate people can have an effect disproportionate to their numbers, the theme here is the alliance between creative types, perhaps ‘creativists’, and mischievous types, clearly ‘activists’.

There is a wealth of examples of creative brains playing with both campaign themes, advertising spaces, and in many cases simply aiming for a mind fuck. From adbusters, to Banksy, to the space hijackers. From the Billboard Liberation Front, to the Church of the Sub Genius and the Discordians, from the Reverend Billy to the Yes Men, there’s a lot of fun to be had here.

So the issue in mind, is how to connect creative types to the folk who are happy to risk arrest turning those creative ideas into subvertising, guerrilla or uncommissioned urban art. There are lots of design students, aspiring artists and bored graphic designers languishing at ad agencies, who I reckon would be up for doing the creative side. But is the existing activist movement, grassroots and otherwise, up for doing the dirty work – literally in the case of stencils and spray paints.

Perhaps an investigation into the communities that exist, the graffiti artists, the design forums, and the activists – well I know most the latter. Maybe a new tool, or better yet an organi online community, with some logistical support. Finally an idea or issue, to inspire, to generate a tidal wave of creative ideas something akin to deepwater horizon to mobilise both the creative and activist communities to jam the corporate mass media culture of advertising and marketing.

I have the skeleton of a project plan here, now I just need to find some cash, and some web developer time.

Email ends in themselves

Decision makers, especially political ones, respond to public pressure. Sending a lot of emails to an MP has an effect, even if they moan about it. Visiting them in person has a much greater effect, but few have the confidence to arrange that meeting, oh and MPs moan about that too. Taking direct action to stop the decision maker making the wrong decision has an even greater effect, but tends to get you arrested, which means that even if you have that confidence, you can’t do it every week. There’s lots of other activism in between.

Next week folk will be debating mobilisation strategies, and perhaps supporter journeys, for the upcoming campaign, and my question is will that debate be focused on email activism as an end in itself. Is the purpose of the campaign to generate a huge amounts of emails to the target, and to use those email participants to recruit more people to email the target, and then to reiterate ad nauseum, and to repeat with different emails to different targets until the internet melts.

An entire industry has grown up around email advocacy, using the tools of the marketer and one wonders why. My prejudice is that it’s a reflection of the over professionalization of the campaigning caste. That somehow by adopting corporate tools, key performance indices, critical path analysis and endless tracking we will effect positive change.

The problem is that this leads us to only do the things that can be tracked. You can split test an emails subject line, to see what maximises the open rate. You can test how likely people are to respond on a Friday afternoon, vs. a Monday morning. You can plot the frequency of emails, to achieve a saturation effect, than is proportional to your unsubscribe rate, but what you can’t do, is to do so with passion, imagination and the insane ambition that we can achieve change.

My prejudice is that sending lots of emails, is simply an excuse to find people who care that can be inspired into doing something more than just sending emails. The thinking is not unique, there are lots of ladders of engagement out there, but we don’t seem to resource putting this into practice.

How does one value offline activism, or deeper online activism, against the clear numbers game of Avaaz and 38 degrees. What is the value of blockading the Department of Transport – the charges have just been dropped – or having 100 conversations with others in your local community?



Email actions lead ultimately to fundraising leads, but as a tool to effect change they become less effective with every one you send. As decision makers become overwhelmed with standard emails, how long before they say enough is too much. One has to assume that donors think the same.

And if we maximise our ROIs measured about the KPIs set by the same digital consultants the targets are using, then it simply becomes the money game that we will surely loose. We are after all vastly outnumbered by the corporates.

So as a tool email gives me the reach to find people to do offline activism, or new things yet

Skeletons in the political closet

It’s cold outside, and for the sake of distraction I seem to be ploughing my way through the West Wing, and romantic tales of political skulduggery.

On Friday Chris Huhne resigned as Energy secretary, under the suspicion that he may have committed a crime 9 years ago. Yesterday 101 Tory MPs revolt against government policy on renewable energy, and the cause of dirty power surges ahead.

Now I’m not much of one for conspiracy theories, if for no reason than I think such things are difficult to keep secret, but I do believe in the establishment. A disorganised network of the great and good, who went to school and university with each other, who play golf, share lodges, port, cigars and the after dinner scheme.

I also believe in both political realities and the advantages of a journalist sitting on a good story, until it becomes worth something. Nine years is a long time for the police to consider whether a crime has been committed, especially when an MP is involved, albeit 9 years ago he was more of irrelevance to the political process.

So someone has been sitting on the story, and the case for 9 years, and now is the time they’ve decided to roll it out. Innocent or guilty, his reputation is tarnished, and the green agenda has suffered. The question is who? And why? And in the coincidence to the Tory MP rebellion is their a hidden hand of the big energy utilities, the nuclear industry? The fossil fuel lobby? Or simply that network of old chums looking out for one another.

I can’t really conceive why anyone would oppose a clean energy future, but that conspiracy exists. Someone, with money and power, orchestrated the hack on the University of East Anglia, and planned a media strategy around those emails in the lead up to Copenhagen. So if one conspiracy exists, perhaps there is some sanity to thinking the events of the last 48hrs, are the work of the same vested interests.

To conclude I’d hesitate to call Huhne a martyr of the energy revolution, but with a list of 101 MPs to play with, and a new list of marginal to consider, we know where the reactionary bourgeoisie might be found.

Blackout

The week before last, Wikipedia went dark, along with a great many other sites to protest against SOPA, and the threats to internet freedom. During various events of the Arab Spring (I wondered who coined that term), various states turned off the internet, and / or mobile networks. In China internet censorship is routine via the Great Firewall, and undoubtedly things will get worse. The internet will soon be anything but free.

Internally there is a strong rationale for using Facebook as the building block of our activist network. It is the tool people use, where people are at, better funded than our open source equivalence, and yet we hesitate to trust them. Meetup is a more palatable choice, and a more powerful organising tool, but it’s not where people at are – so it’s problematic.

We don’t want to trust our organising structure to a private company with differing interests to ours. The Guardian by-line ‘if you're not paying for an online service, you're not the customer; you're the product’, didn’t help and relying on any tool you don’t control to effect change, makes you vulnerable to the forces that can control that tool – or turn it off.

So in the debate between online and offline activism, if offline activism more robust against such interferences. Traditional freedoms, which may again change, protect the right to assembly, to meet others, to campaign etc. Public opinion is generally against bugging such meetings, police infiltration, and the paranoia of the security state, and instinctively these activities are more protected than my right to say setup a Facebook group to denounce Volkswagens lobbying against climate change laws.

However the near impossible challenges we face, preclude the safe options of robust organising offline, and dictate the risks involved in using commercial social media structures to reach more people, to mobilise more people to bring down the institutions that are herding civilisation to destruction. Risks I’m bound to deliver on, but unhappy about.

Close encounters with activism

At some point in every activists journey, there comes a point where one makes the transition from a nagging concern, or even anger, about the state of the world, into the act of doing something about it.

For most, there’s a period of individual activism, sending emails, writing letters (Amnesty style), making comments on Facebook etc, but then one day you walk into an encounter with a whole load of other people, that to an extent, feel equally annoyed..

Then you run screaming. Or chicken out when they're hard to find, and go to the pub. Or get bored, don't talk to anyone, decide you're not sure why you're then, and then go to the pub. Or perhaps you come back?

Marches – I reckon the first bit of offline activism people do is go on a march. Ben Elton did a stand up performance once that's distorted my thinking ever since (they are mainly crap), but everyone still seems to do them.

A whole generation of youth, was disempowered by the big Stop the War march (the war didn't stop - and god knows where they are now), a whole generation cut their teeth on the big CND marches of the '80's, CaCC still persist in organising December marches (bloody freezing) and the Unions still march for any excuse. Oh and Make Poverty History, after the Bono coup, claimed victory, mobilised loads of people and then achieved very little.

So if a million + people meet activism at a march, how do we rescue them? And should we be organising related events to give us the opportunity to rescue them?

Hippy on a stall – this might be my first. You're at a festival or a fair, and you see some folk campaigning on something you've read in the paper – that's been nagging you to do something. You hang around the stall, ruffle through some paper, they ignore you, and then you go home with a soggy leaflet. Or a band you like tells you go talk to the hippy on the stall, and the experience is much the same.

Or on a sunnier day, someone friendly – and pretty, talks to you, you sign something, give your details and maybe they email you, or more likely someone from the parent organisation phones you up asking you for money.

So again if hundreds of thousands of people are willing to sign something at the stall, and tens of thousands do so pro actively, to the point where they might do more, how do we inspire them to take the next step, either with a better soggy leaflet, or something sparkly – and maybe digital.

The meeting – or this might have been my first, walking into a big Reclaim the Streets meeting stuffed with undercover cops and journalists. Someone made a joke. Or later walking into a tiny Stonehenge meeting, of hippies getting stoned - not that I'm complaining but... Or for newer folk, day long climate camp meetings with lots of wiggly fingers. Kill me now.

How do we engage new people, without hunting them down. Where's the new persons 'trauma' guide to your first activism meeting, or the hotline 'help get me out of here'. Is it reasonable to ask them to do something, to participate, or simply to commit to coming back.

Genuine email asks – my experience is coloured by my involvement on the cusp of the digital age. Most of us now get dozens of emails asking to do stuff, often as covert fundraising asks, ladders of engagement leading to a fundraising ask, clever forms of data capture and often-times campaign asks generated by the marketing / fundraising department. Oxfam leap to mind.

Occasionally though there are real emails. Come do this locally, come meet us – we're nice, this action will actually mean something, come have fun, we'll look after you – but how do these emails stand out against the noise.

Finally the outreach – this cynicism was inspired by a BBC story about young people visiting Occupy London, and the true cannibal in me, suggested going to where the new people are, and stealing them. Or at least intervening to turn what might be a haphazard first encounter into something that leads onto something else.

Then I pondered the resources invested into outreach. Should we be out there, in schools and colleges, parachuting into citizenship classes, working with teachers (and saving them a lesson plan), organising events and trainings (mass NVDA) simply to light the spark on enthusiasm.

And if we do so, without a plan for what to do with that enthusiasm, or a campaign victory to offer (not a war), do we raise false expectations and risk disillusionment and disempowering paths. Or is it fine to spark the touchpaper and step back.

Cynical values

This blog dates from a personal grump with the idea that winning campaigns is something achievable by lots of clicks, and that old forms of activism, should go the way of the Dodo. However it’s turned into a bit of a quest, complete with mythic overtones, to figure out what is possible online and offline to change the world. As an aside, many of the characters I’ve met so far, have been bright shining folk from the new world, and as a precursor to every conversation I warm them that I am a cynical old Brit. A really cynical old Brit, with goffic tendancies.

Here’s a fashionable theory of campaigning, which inspires that cynicism, value based segmentation.

Maslow has been dead for 40 years or more, and yet his hierarchy of needs still has huge credence in psychological circles. It’s one of many theories of motivation, and names I recall include McClelland and Herzberg, and Maslow to seems intellectual simplistic. It seems to deny the ability of people in dire situations – who should be motivated by physiological needs to do great and ‘higher’ things, clearly motivated by self-actualisation.

Campaigning, beyond the world of elite level lobbying and report writing, online or offline depends on mobilising people to do something, involving your audience in the debate, and understanding that audience. To that end perhaps there is space to characterise the motivation of such folk, but I am uncertain that one can do so as neatly as the marketers suggest, into a world of settles, prospectors and pioneers – and I see no realistic prospect of collecting the data to make such a crass assumption. If you wish to understand your audience go talk to them, if you want to shape your communications to be appropriate, go ask them how.

In any case beyond the intellectual inconsistences as to how to split our communications 80/20 between prospectors and pioneers, are we really ready to write off the 60% of the population who are settlers – if such is people’s bias, and the theory holds true.

More so, the constraints of campaigning in an organisation where decisions, and the veto, rest with the policy people, the report writers and the elite level lobbyists, it’s hard enough to get one appropriate campaign ask out of the door, in a language people can understand, let alone different asks and different languages for different motivational segments.

So while the work of Chris Rose, and others on the band wagon, remain intellectually interesting, one has to assume they mainly appeal to the prospector organisations, i.e. those fascinated by new shiny, trendy ideas. My hope is that we stay true to the vision of a pioneering organisation trusting in our sense of what’s right and wrong, remaining self assured, and having the courage to talk truth beyond such academia.

Twelve sons of Odin

Ragnarok is approaching, and to fend off the giants, we wish to marshal 250,000 UK citizens to hold fast against the darkness. Or at least twelve is a good number, and there must be twelve good examples of successful online campaigns (or at least 12 seriously large mobilisations), that together can mobilise that many people. This list may evolve as I think of some more.

1. Argentinian forest law – bloody minded persistent, lots of TV coverage, celebrity endorsements, complete organisational buy in, strong digital aspects in a country not used to such things, persistent repetitive emailing, friend gets friend asks and arm twisting, and some relentless offline campaigning to get 1.5 million signatures
2. Airplot – the big wow factor, based on a cool idea, that’s instantly communicable. Oh and funny. I remember the meeting where we talked about the ‘fuck you’ moment which we kind of failed to capitalize on, but still we managed near 100,000 Beneficial Owners, of which 40-50,000 were UK citizens.
3. Protect the Human – a powerful idea that resonates, promoted everywhere from badges to comedy gigs. Cool graphics, friendly faces, persistent consistent comms over several years, and somewhere near 230,000 sign ups (maybe internationally)
4. Make Poverty History white bands – for a while they were everywhere, a clean distinct image, and something worth belong to. A fashion necessity, huge amounts of celebrity endorsements, TV advertising and 43.7 million apparently took action on world poverty day.
5. The Big Ask – relentless climate change campaigning, with an impossible, then an achievable end game, celebrity endorsements, cross party support and lots and lots of hard core offline campaigning, to get 130,000+ sign ups to something we won.
6. Stop the War march - the moment was right, the coalition including everyone – esp. faith groups, transport was well sorted, the police tried to stop it, 250+ cities contributed bodies, not to mention it becoming the cause celeb of many of the good and the great. Probably 1 ½ million (police estimate 750,000, organisers 2 million) - ok not very online here, but seriously big numbers
7. Nestle viral videos – a neat concept, a cool video, and an enormous social media gaff, compounded by the video they tried to ban. Total views 1.5 million, and a couple of hundred thousand emails, which would have been more impressive if they’d been time.
8. Fuel taxes and road pricing - 590,000 sign a house of commons petition, protestors threatening to shut every refinery in the UK, part orchastrated by big buisness, part by campaigners, and in the main about as grassroots as you can get.
9. Volkswagen Jedi game – a last minute idea, a growing light sabre, rewards for spreading and signing people up (friend get friend again), and some neat online prizes leading to a real life prize – again this could have, or perhaps could be so much more, 490,000 Jedi and counting.
10. Save our Forests - 38 degrees getting big numbers on an e-petition, 540,000 ish, capturing the moment, but hard to quantify the impact. Opotunistic democracy can work but there's more going on here

To be continued – I need 4 more ideas, and to distill the very essence out of these.

Dream of a thousand cats

The threat of climate change to human civilisation is obscene, and the most powerful argument for inaction is that it’s now too late to save our species from drought, famine, floods, water shortages, war and nuclear Armageddon.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’ve not been Jensen’ed yet, it’ll be a while before I head to the highlands, and I’m confident we could bring global emissions under control. It’s just that it’d take an international effort akin to World War II, and I don’t see politicians with the guts to deliver.

Still on occasion one sees a glimmer in a campaign plan, a sense of insane ambition that is passionate enough, if popularised, if shouted loud enough, could bring everything else into place. The promise of a collective dream, that if it came into being, would prove that humanity can do anything.

So how many people do you need to create a collective dream. There are 7 billion of us living on this rock orbiting the sun, of which perhaps some are too young to breathe life into their dreams. 1% of humanity controls nigh on more wealth than the 99%, and their collective dreams have become the paradigm. So if an equal number of free thinkers imagine enough, perhaps we can evolve the superstition of wealth into something sustainable.

OK so I want 70 million people to believe in something, to believe so hard, they are prepared to do something, to create the change they want to see, and to make reality out of such clouds, before things go truly Malthusian.

Google reckons 27% of the population is online, so what 1.9 billion people, which has promise. And whatever your belief about online and offline activism, perhaps these people have the power to spawn that dream. So my numbers change to maybe 4% of the world’s digital generation, or closer to home, 2.5 million UK citizens.

In Argentina (pop 40 million), in the world of the clicktivists, 1.5 million people signed a petition for a forest law. The campaign did so, by doing everything, by making everything subservient to the campaign, and by making the engagement and inspiration of people core to everything they did. This is possible here, we can do this, we just need the internal courage, not so much of the militarists of WW2, but of the Argentinian dreamers.

As a campaign the measly internal, and international, goal of 5 million defenders, still inspires, empowers and would allow us to rethink who we are, and how we do things. If our leaders had guts, we could do this. Or we can dismiss such goals, and the dreams behind them, as unrealistic, implausible and outside the scientific method of campaigning.

We can dream, the dream of a 1000, a million, 100 million or more and we can believe….

Dawning of the fifth world

Welcome to 2012, the conclusion of the 13th B’ak’tun of the long count of the Olmec / Mayan calendar, and perhaps the end of the world (Dec 21st 2012). But don’t panic this is simply the fourth world, which began back in 3114 BC; there is undoubtedly a fifth yet to come.

Or perhaps 2012 is the end of Kali Yuga, the degenerate age of vice, which began back in 3102 BC, when Krishna left the earth, and it’s going to be a year of climate impacts, before the rebirth of the golden age.

When flowers will be begot within flowers, and fruits within fruits, then will the Yuga come to an end. And the clouds will pour rain unseasonably when the end of the Yuga approaches." Then Lord Vishnu in the form of infant Krishna on a leaf will come to earth and again everything will start producing from the beginning

For me 2012 is the year that I can put some of these new ideas for online and offline activism into practice. It’s been several years since I’ve felt that I’ve been at the cutting edge of campaigning innovations – not since the days of the Big Ask, and if those ideas work, then perhaps that hope will return.

Equally so much lies outside my control. Inspiring offline activists to do more online, while safe, tried and tested, takes time, and lacks the Chutzpah the powers that be respect. Online to offline activism, looks like a shining path, and the idea of campaigning hubs is sound, but the process of moving more online activists offline, may be futile without the campaigns to mobilise them. Finally the new world of deepening online activism, of campaigning bloggers, raiders and online organisers is new, may well fail, but could just about possibly herald in a new (fifth?) digital world of activism.

In any case, I’ve been at the campaigning grindstone for a solid six, or nine years now, so I need to reconnect with why I’m doing this. A Mesoamerican sabbatical to explore ancient sites, rainforests, new cultures, and to wait for the return of Quetzalcoatl may well be the inspiration I need to build these new ideas. Or the rehabilitation plan to while away some redundancy money if they fail.

Along came the spider

Continuing my intermittent ramble about the potential for a network of environmental bloggers, and what’s already out there that does something similar – now we come to the politicals.

Lib Dem Voice, now as I understand it the Lib Dems have a more empowered grassroots, and a democratic decision making structure, which beggars belief when one considers how much of a pickle they’ve got themselves into. However Lib Dem Voice and LibDem blogs do a reasonable job of connecting together the disparate voices of the party. Interesting things include:

• Ask that each blogger is a Lib Dem member – we could do this, and it’d be interesting but probably too restrictive. Maybe we could offer a bonus badge / widget to such folk. This might be an idea in itself, as an offer to such folk, to use as they choose.
• There’s a more dominant mix of official blog posts, as features, than the blog roll which is kind of a big list. Given my current thinking as to how official blogs are separated from bloggers and from local folk, I think this would be an authoritarian step too far.
• There’s a link to LibDig which I don’t quite get. It looks like a more primitive form of micro-blogging. I should check out this Digg it thing. However there’s a slot here for video, which begs the question should there be a separate space / blog roll for videos and video diaries.

Still compared to Mumsnet there’s not much to learn here.

Labour have a Campaign Engine room, which I first thought looked like a bloggers machine, but instead it looks like a party political version of 38 degrees, inviting people to start campaigns and gather signatures on an e-petition. Well worth remembering the next time a Labour MP, complains about the worthlessness of such devices.

Labour central offers the promise of bringing all such blogs under one roof but fails to do so, and Bloggers4Labour simply doesn’t seem to work, which is kind of disappointing. How is one to pinch their ideas, if they’re broken?

Finally the Tories have conservative home, which looks a bit dull, a slightly better showing than Labour – it at least works but without the sense of community of LibDem Voice.

Just to make sure I had a quick look in at the Green Party blogs which is very dead indeed although there seem to be a fair few active blogs out there. I guess there’s a lesson here about being too reliant on the grassroots to keep such things up to date.

For now, that seems to confirm Mumsnet is where it’s at, so time to have a chat / setup a meeting and see what they have to say. And /or probably have a word with the Argentinians about the idea of a pilot in a 2nd language.

There’s something out there (in the blogosphere)

Following on from the ramble about why I want to encourage, and support, people blogging the question rises has this been down before, and what works. Some research later.

Amnesty, seemed have to tired something similar and failed. At the time of writing their bloggers network seems to be being reworked / rebuilt, and a friendly email to the head of their web team seem to have gone ignore. I guess the format as was, didn’t really inspire people to blog – which is a good cautionary tale, and a shame as there’s some cool 3rd party resources aimed at encouraging people to blog on a similar themes via Global Voices advocacy.

[updated] The Amnesty bloggers network seems to be online again, although it doesn’t seem any different. There are 430 (ish) registered bloggers, of which perhaps 10-15 have blogged in the last month, so perhaps 3%. Of these 4-5 are staff – which is an interesting idea in itself – to what extent should one encourage staff to get involved, or even to oblige them to be involved (pros and cons). Finally there’s also some promoted blogs – ‘storified by Amnesty UK’ – so one wonders how much these have been edited into shape.

Mumsnet, ok I found this by happen chance, and it looks to be about as good as it can get. There’s loads of people involved, which may be more of a reflection of the size of their community / readership, then the degree to which they inspire people to blog. Still I’m jealous. OK things that leap out.

• The directory is helpful, sortable in many different ways (categories, A-Z, recency, random), and searchable which is probably better than we can manage.
• The ask is that the blog sticks to editorial guidelines, and is updated at least once a month – this seems low, but perhaps as a bare minimum.
• Is there a cross fertilisation option here – can we ask bloggers to register at Mumsnet as well? if they have something interesting to say to both audiances - oh and vice versa - asking relevant Mumsnet folk to register with us as well?
• The product review widget is a nice reward / motivator and a clever bit of advertising. Not sure how to pinch this idea.
• There are some big names here, e.g. David Miliband, and is there an option to outreach to some targeted friendly people, and/or some interesting others – Chris Huhne? Trials and tribulations on being on the inside, and why I think environmental campaigners are now a pain the bum
• There’s either a profile for each blogger, or a description widget that includes a default Twitter link. Probably a Facebook page link would be a good idea too.
• I can’t face counting them, but there’s probably 800-1000 blogs listed here, which if they’ve all been updated within the month is dead impressive, and powerful. If Mumsnet has 1.6 million unique monthly users, then pro rate we should be able to manage 80-100 blogs (in addition to local presences?)
• Backing the blog network up, is a lively forum, with 3-4 topics a day and 10-100+ replies to each post. There is a lively self supporting community here. Equally someone’s on the case responding to folk, so there may be reasonable team of community managers at work here.
• There’s another as to have 4-6 blog posts up before you can join, seems like a reasonable idea.
• There’s a separate Facebook page, which again seems like a good idea, although in this case less well used, but a way to promote active members of the community – by making them admins.
• The split header block / carousel into links through to profiled blog, seems stong - and again worth replicating
• Bloggers Twitter stream seems like a must have / makes sense.
• Dual top navigation bar, which moves as you scroll also cool – but probably technically difficult.
• Local pages interesting – especially the local directory, and the associated online interactivity. i.e. folk can contribute listings, freecycle stuff, act as a Tsarina (online community manager)
• Maybe also an idea to crowdsource local issues
• Some good tips on blogging anonymously, from encrypted emails to hiding your IP address

Next up Lib Dem voice, and the Labour campaign engine room

Beginnings of a blog about blogging

So I’ve touched about some embryonic plans to develop a new network of progressive minded bloggers, with environmental tendencies, so I thought I’d ask myself why, and what else is out there.

The why?
1) With or without a theory of digital memes, the blogosphere remains important as a tool to reach both the mainstream media, and digital audiences. Ideas and stories that get passed around do well on Google (do people still use other search engines – for better or worse?), and magnify the voice of the progressive agenda. Those stories and ideas eventually recruit others into a wider movement, and influence the behaviour of decision makers – through the perception of noise out there.

If there isn’t an organisation goal (campaign or comms) that this serves, then we should write one.

2) This feels like the right thing to do, and is perhaps even morally correct – which is either something Ghandi or Confucius touched upon. Giving people the tools to make their voices heard online, is a mirror of the work I’ve been doing to enable people to influence, and have a voice, within the political system by lobbying their local MP – and/or significant other local decision makers.

On a broader level society and the state, could be tasked to give everyone this power. Being a bear of limited means, I’ll start with the folk who broadly share the same world view as I.

3) If we want to engage digitally minded people in a sustained way, then there needs to be something constructive for them to do, in between short term campaign projects. This is a perennial problem offline, and here we have an open ended invite to involve people in an ongoing way, using their own initative and creativity, to contribute organically to a changing digital consciousness.

As an engagement option, this sits well of a digital ladder, or as a rock within the streams of engagement – for those who dislike ladders.

Or in one line, this is a useful thing to do, the right thing to do and the pragmatic thing to do.

To be continued