I’ve been invited to speak at the eCampaigning forum on May 9th at Oxford. In the spirit of open source campaigning, I’m seeking input into what I’m going to talk about. Please make this a kick-ass presentation by letting me know what your idea of a kick-ass presentation would be.
This is an excellent way to ensure the audience gets what it wants and has the added benefit of allowing me to be LAZY while you come up with good ideas.
I’m considering a range of possibilities. Here’s a few scribbles you can bounce off of, or throw in your own ideas.
I’ve worked with Greenpeace since the days when we logged onto our Gopher site with a pair of 300 baud acoustic couplers, so I can yammer on about an awful lot of organizational change that has driven, and been driven by, new technologies. (And how a seemingly harmless thing like introducing a single global Content Management System can lead to all kinds of gosh, I wasn’t expecting that, different ways of working cooperatively)
I can share a lot of war stories. Our first website (1994) and how we used it to expose the secret route of a French nuclear waste shipment. Our first big success with online campaigning against a corporate brand back in 2000 (an effort that not only transformed Coca Cola’s climate-killing refrigeration policies, but brought McDonalds and Unilever along as well) and how that has informed and shaped our current Web2.0 approach to the Green my Apple campaign.
Want me to babble about the moratorium on new Soy plantations in the Amazon and how we pressured a faceless corporate with no retail exposure, Cargill, into backing down? Your wish is my command.
I can talk about the internal challenges that a large successful NGO faces in adopting new strategies and where we’ve gone right and wrong (in my wholly unbiased opinion) in turning a very large ship in some very new directions.
Ask me about the role of innovation in consensus-based leadership models for global organizations. At Greenpeace, we have an, ummm, interesting governance system (I used to toil in that field) which means special challenges in creating global standards. Whenever I get together with folks from Amnesty, World Wildlife, and FOE, we always end up with neck aches from nodding in agreement with each other about this stuff.
Technical, nitty gritty stuff like online competitions and how they can drive recruitment? Let me bend your ear about our Iceland Whales Pledge and how we pitted ten top recruiters against one another for a bunk aboard the good ship Esperanza on a trip to Iceland, and you’ll hear about how we generated 116 million USD in potential tourism income for Iceland, which the Icelandic tourist industry has been using to battle a whaling industry that was only worth 4 million in its heyday.
Wanna talk about the role of forums? Weblogs? The 1% rule and what that means for all of us in benchmarking and measuring success?
But how about the bigger picture? Kathy Sierra asked the provocative question at SXSW about why anyone had actually come to her lecture in person, when several people were live blogging it, video blogging it, podcasting it, twittering it, etc etc etc, and theoretically nobody needed to be there in person except them. And while she may have been talking about the importance of real human contact and interaction, and the screaming need for that in software and web applications, Jon Lebkowsky caught this bit of ripple effect:
I was struck by one comment in particular from the SXSW panel I mentioned earlier. The panelists agreed that their job was not to build online communities, but to drive people away from their computers and into the physical world to recruit, persuade, and get out the vote. I might disagree that you have to leave your computer to connect and persuade, but it’s worthwhile to note that no social technology,however sophisticated, will change the world.
Now there’s something a roomful of e-campaigners can gnaw on for a while.
And then there’s the future. There’s where those 30 million people who stood up against the Iraq war in the biggest protest march the planet has ever seen have gone, and what might get them out in the streets again. There’s how we as ecampaigners can rise to (and ARE rising to) the challenge of inventing the tools and campaigns that will stop and reverse harmful climate change.
Even if you won’t be a the E-campaigning Forum, tell me what you’d like to hear about by leaving a comment. I’m sure somebody will podcast, vodcast, or blog it.
technorati tags:greenpeace, ecampaigning, activism
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3 Comments to 'I’m speaking at the eCampaigning forum: what should I talk about?'
April 20, 2007
As an old Kiwi campaigner I delight in the ability of the Web to bring change – gone are the days when the editor’s scissors could gut an effort to the local newspaper. Gone are the days when the vested interests owning the news media could hold sway – now we can present a full salvo!
My blog here
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-0A0Ny_kzaPeMkwcfgf9_KA–;_ylt=AuT1d26Gt_PryaYkhdeaTU..AOJ3?cq=1
spells out my feelings on a range of issues which I believe weaves a lot of strands.
Society is in overload – we can’t bombard them with doom and gloom – we have to bring in the positives too. At a certain point the proverbial straw will break the camel’s back.
I believe we have to develop strategies – the right mix at the right time in a reasoned well thought way
April 22, 2007
HI Bob, your link fails can you give it another go? I hear you about those editor’s scissors. In my early days as an activist the first goal was “get your issue in the media,” which meant we all learned to talk like journalists. When I see, for example, Ze Frank’s occassional forrays into activist territory, I’m blown away about how he can use a raw, genuine voice to convey outrage in a direct medium.
November 6, 2008
We sent this below to a message from Ricken Patel promoting various causes. The web page led us to this address to leave our comment. Thanks.
Please understand we pay taxes and need to know HOW these wishes you propose may be funded. We agree with many of these needs of our nation and the world, but something has to be cut. It is all to easy to make a list of wants.
Please understand the “We the People” that voted in Obama consist of:
40% of the nation that does not pay any income tax, those who look to more and more hand outs from we who work who are forced to pay
Illegal aliens who may number 12-20 million persons who sap the life blood of our social services from schools to health care and
make up over 30% of our prison population
Inter city welfare slugs who have multi generational records of doing nothing for the nation, the pure takers from society
The immoral to include homosexuals and those that strive to destroy our family values and infect our youth with their sickness
The majority of media, currently standing at 92% as registered Democrats, who long ago stop providing news
Unionized labor like the 21 yr old girl we met last week who as a high school graduate earns $45/hour as a welder while the average wage
in the nation is less than $20/hr. That doubling of a wage by unions is killing our nation
Unionized public school teachers who use the union to assure their jobs despite many being incompetent
Hollywood, TV and other entertainers who like Oprah noted on TV yesterday how she was impressed the drug addicts were at the polls with
her to vote for Obama and wow what a positive thing that was to witness
We are not in any of the groups noted above who voted for the Obama the orator, the man who has not had the experience of managing even a business as small as your corner McDonalds.
We are people that:
Have worked all our life and paid the taxes for the countless, irresponsible slugs and dead beats included above
Have served many years in national service to preserve the freedoms of this nation and extend them to the world
Worked for and earned college degrees and professional certificates to be of more value to our nation
Raised 7 children, 6 engineers and a nurse, all of which work and pay taxes and serve their communities
Nurture 24 grandchildren who we hope none of which will join those listed above but become productive, responsible citizens
Have worked these last 15 years as a volunteer engineer (at no salary) in providing pure water to the rural poor in Africa, Asia
and Latin America
Have served in teaching and leadership positions in our church for over 45 years to try and make people’s lived better
We laud your intent but ask that you think too about the price you may be asking us to pay. Do consider what rot needs to be removed so those funds may be used for a greater good.
Your Engineer In Pennsylvania
Please understand we pay taxes and need to know HOW these wishes you propose may be funded. We agree with many of these needs of our nation and the world, but something has to be cut. It is all to easy to make a list of wants.
Please understand the “We the People” that voted in Obama consist of:
40% of the nation that does not pay any income tax, those who look to more and more hand outs from we who work who are forced to pay
Illegal aliens who may number 12-20 million persons who sap the life blood of our social services from schools to health care and
make up over 30% of our prison population
Inter city welfare slugs who have multi generational records of doing nothing for the nation, the pure takers from society
The immoral to include homosexuals and those that strive to destroy our family values and infect our youth with their sickness
The majority of media, currently standing at 92% as registered Democrats, who long ago stop providing news
Unionized labor like the 21 yr old girl we met last week who as a high school graduate earns $45/hour as a welder while the average wage
in the nation is less than $20/hr. That doubling of a wage by unions is killing our nation
Unionized public school teachers who use the union to assure their jobs despite many being incompetent
Hollywood, TV and other entertainers who like Oprah noted on TV yesterday how she was impressed the drug addicts were at the polls with
her to vote for Obama and wow what a positive thing that was to witness
We are not in any of the groups noted above who voted for the Obama the orator, the man who has not had the experience of managing even a business as small as your corner McDonalds.
We are people that:
Have worked all our life and paid the taxes for the countless, irresponsible slugs and dead beats included above
Have served many years in the military to preserve the freedoms of this nation and extend them to the world
Worked for and earned college degrees and professional certificates to be of more value to our nation
Raised 7 children, 6 engineers and a nurse, all of which work and pay taxes and serve their communities
Nurture 24 grandchildren who we hope none of which will join those listed above but become productive, responsible citizens
Have worked these last 15 years as a volunteer engineer (at no salary) in providing pure water to the rural poor in Africa, Asia
and Latin America
Have served in teaching and leadership positions in our church for over 45 years to try and make people’s lived better
We laud your intent but ask that you think too about the price you may be asking us to pay. Do consider what rot needs to be removed so those funds may be used for a greater good.
Your Engineer In Pennsylvania
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