![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Mr Lloyd, live and direct from the heart of the revolution
I am here ensconced in the outskirts of Oxford. A hard core of radical dissidents and professional trouble makers have seized control of the conference facilities of an innocent aid agency. From here we will plot our path to global supremacy. Here are assembled the evil genius' who came up with such plans as
Waiting for people
Standing outside coffee shops
and sending letters
More details on this as it happens. We are already unco-ordinated through our unconference format. We are independent, we are unified, we are sitting around and talking. Nothing can stop us.
Except maybe the business of dividing ourselves into groups and finding chairs.
(If anyone knows how to do that below the fold thing in LiveJournal please leave me a comment).
Session 1 : Campaign Impacts
I am shouting questions. Does New Media have an impact? Has anyone checked?
Video / viral
Carving up the Congo : Part of a campaign directed at the world bank, which few people know or care about so immune to traditional brand attack. Aim was to make supporters understand a bit more and care a bit more about the detail of the campaign.
CAFOD explain the Darfur conflict for teenagers
Such things can be a thing to hang your hat on and refer people back to during the life of a campaign. But how do you differentiate this kind of stuff from the impact other parts of the campaign are having? Seems to be a strong feeling that these are good education tools (side note on comics as a very good medium for educating people about complex issues).
>> Consider these things as tools toward well defined incremental goals. If the plan calls for x number of active supporters how many did you manage to get online?
Email
Has anyone had much impact with email campaigning?
- Not a lot. But things like the Million Faces campaign from Oxfam / Amnesty did have the desired impact. The UN have agreed to implement an arms treaty. Did get well over a million signatures, which were delivered to the UK to provide a mandate for the policians. Allowed them to claim to be representing a democratic constituency.
Petition was a mixture of online and offline. Online was raising awareness of the campaign, and providing follow up information for people who have been signed up offline.
Importance of targetting. Getting the right people to express an opinion is more important than just getting good numbers.
Driving local action
Starbucks campaign was helped by getting people to talk to their Baristas. Worked quite well despite few people participating.
Long term value of awareness raising. Jubilee campaign created a level of awareness that allowed others to get the political changes put through later in the day. Similar example would be the UK climate bill which is only possible because public concern about the issue is so high. But, Make Poverty History have been running a three year survey on awareness of poverty, turns out the awareness increase didn't last very long. Awareness has a short half life, so a commitment to turning awareness into immediate change in the short term is very important.
With humanitarian work you can see impacts in a day, in development work 5-10 years, in campaigning could be thirty years.
Supermarket Campaigns have been very successful based on raising awareness about the practices of the supermarkets. Once there is a market being asked for the supermarkets will move to provide it (e.g. more organic produce, seasonal vegetables, sustainable fish).
Value of new media as a co-ordination tool, allows faster turn around of campaigns and building stronger relationships with supporters. But, is there a risk that as people start doing their activism online we starve the grass roots.
Could you track how much awareness someone helps raise. Tracking email forwards? How far did your message go through people's mailing networks. Reflect this back to people who have looked at this. Pyramid schemes for activists... Think about things like people who sign up the most get a prize.
At this point I got distracted and pulled into a conversation about campaigning toys and techie bits and bobs. May try to convene something on this later...
Hmm, we had a short break and everything ground to a halt. According to the rules this is a) perfectly OK and b) the only thing that could have happened.
* Update * Now talking about http://www.Nabuur.com which is very cool indeed.
Waiting for people
Standing outside coffee shops
and sending letters
More details on this as it happens. We are already unco-ordinated through our unconference format. We are independent, we are unified, we are sitting around and talking. Nothing can stop us.
Except maybe the business of dividing ourselves into groups and finding chairs.
Session 1 : Campaign Impacts
I am shouting questions. Does New Media have an impact? Has anyone checked?
- We do have statistics, damned lies. Can we base our investments on that? We need to know this stuff is worth doing.
- Who should measure, campaigners? Web editors?
- What are we looking for, behavioural change, policy change?
- Some people do research before they start campaigns, the fiends! But there are problems, how do you separate out your impact. Do e-petitions work, do they change minds? Maybe not.
- Need to be more creative, more original. The revolution should be good enough to put on television (Canadian MTV in this case). Content matters.
- Can you engineer viral things? No-one seems to think we can
- If it's fundraising it's money
- If it's campaigning it's harder. Impact is change at the end of the day. What *difference* have we made. Problem is you end up measuring outputs (no. of signatures etc.) more important to look at actual change achieved.
- Is raising awareness an impact? Yes
Video / viral
Carving up the Congo : Part of a campaign directed at the world bank, which few people know or care about so immune to traditional brand attack. Aim was to make supporters understand a bit more and care a bit more about the detail of the campaign.
CAFOD explain the Darfur conflict for teenagers
Such things can be a thing to hang your hat on and refer people back to during the life of a campaign. But how do you differentiate this kind of stuff from the impact other parts of the campaign are having? Seems to be a strong feeling that these are good education tools (side note on comics as a very good medium for educating people about complex issues).
>> Consider these things as tools toward well defined incremental goals. If the plan calls for x number of active supporters how many did you manage to get online?
Has anyone had much impact with email campaigning?
- Not a lot. But things like the Million Faces campaign from Oxfam / Amnesty did have the desired impact. The UN have agreed to implement an arms treaty. Did get well over a million signatures, which were delivered to the UK to provide a mandate for the policians. Allowed them to claim to be representing a democratic constituency.
Petition was a mixture of online and offline. Online was raising awareness of the campaign, and providing follow up information for people who have been signed up offline.
Importance of targetting. Getting the right people to express an opinion is more important than just getting good numbers.
Driving local action
Starbucks campaign was helped by getting people to talk to their Baristas. Worked quite well despite few people participating.
Long term value of awareness raising. Jubilee campaign created a level of awareness that allowed others to get the political changes put through later in the day. Similar example would be the UK climate bill which is only possible because public concern about the issue is so high. But, Make Poverty History have been running a three year survey on awareness of poverty, turns out the awareness increase didn't last very long. Awareness has a short half life, so a commitment to turning awareness into immediate change in the short term is very important.
With humanitarian work you can see impacts in a day, in development work 5-10 years, in campaigning could be thirty years.
Supermarket Campaigns have been very successful based on raising awareness about the practices of the supermarkets. Once there is a market being asked for the supermarkets will move to provide it (e.g. more organic produce, seasonal vegetables, sustainable fish).
Value of new media as a co-ordination tool, allows faster turn around of campaigns and building stronger relationships with supporters. But, is there a risk that as people start doing their activism online we starve the grass roots.
Could you track how much awareness someone helps raise. Tracking email forwards? How far did your message go through people's mailing networks. Reflect this back to people who have looked at this. Pyramid schemes for activists... Think about things like people who sign up the most get a prize.
At this point I got distracted and pulled into a conversation about campaigning toys and techie bits and bobs. May try to convene something on this later...
Hmm, we had a short break and everything ground to a halt. According to the rules this is a) perfectly OK and b) the only thing that could have happened.
* Update * Now talking about http://www.Nabuur.com which is very cool indeed.
<lj-cut text="Clicky here for more text">More text</lj-cut>
(material to be hidden)
</lj-cut>