Without a Yard

A coworker was far too kind deeming me a ‘truant blogger’ this week.  It’s like working out, the longer you wait…the harder it is to get back into the swing of things… & there’s a reason, I swear….too many amazing events, projects & people…

To say that this year’s SXSW was anything less than fantabrillamazesomeriffic would not do it justice.  So lucky to hang out with Sloane, Colin, Erica, Hugh, Rayanne, Martin, Alison, Mike D, Frank, Alissa’n'Ron, Peg, Lucia, Stef & Nikki‘n’Chris & a gaggle of other ridiculously talented gifted peeps.  Tweeted & Twitpic‘ed every run.  Snagged Dirty Projectors setlist for Amanda, Weezer tour poster for Justobyn, office supplies for Sharon & lil’Mimobot nerdery for yours truly.  So that’s 10 days summed up right there.  Easy peasey.  Let’s look to the future, shall we?

Julie Germany & her amazing crew at George Washington University’s IPDI have been so kind in extending an invitation to attend their annual Politics Online conference, which begins tomorrow.   Very honoured to have been asked, especially excited to reconnect with those fine minds who shared their 2008 election stories with me in November & extremely psyched to check out Sameer‘s new DC digs & hear all about the World Bank.  Will Tweet the sessions I attend & post links to shared presos, sites, etc. to the blahg, with a better upload lag than SXSW.

One of the many conference highlights will be (I’m amazing at predictions, trust me;) Silona’s sharing of League of Technical Voters’ latest undertaking – Citability.org.  The site went live today.  Check out this demo:

Closer to home, ChangeCamp is growing! May 16th – Son Of Change Camp: This Time It’s Federal – Ottawa City Hall.  Register here & please remember to bring a donation for the Ottawa foodbank.

Closer to MY home, The Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy is proudly hosting the book launch for ‘Parliamentary Democracy In Crisis’, a collection of essays about this winter’s meltdown on the Hill at Massey College on May 11th. Register here & please sign in soon (it’s a tiny tiny venue & we can only accomodate 60 or so…)

I’m plugged out.  More substantive eAdvocacy, digital campaign commentary  After Ms. Meegs Goes to Washington.

Howdy.  I know I said I’d blog more about transparency issues – but you can see right through me – I’m swamped.  This entry’s a two-fer & being cross-posted over here at the ChangeCamp blog, too.

Whoddathunkit? ChangeCamp blogger expectedly expressing love of transparency and, plot twist of all plot twists, turns out to be a lobbyist. Yeah, I just dropped the real taboo L-word.

So I’m @withoutayard, meegs to my friends & a registered lobbyist in the province of Ontario. And you may ask yourself-well…how did she get here?

Living in Austin during the last not-quite-as-amazing American federal election, led me to blogging & playing with online communications tools to affect change, raise awareness & spread awesome.  Returning to Canuckistan, I served a tour at the Pink Palace, but never quite mastered the mysterious machinations of political parties.  Unlike @dchartier, I couldn’t cut it in the civil service, even though sound recording policy at Heritage Canada was pretty darn close to a perfect policy-wonkette fit during a brief federal foray.

Combine the forces (read: career failures & bad-fits) & it sort of makes sense, right?  Witnessing the Dean machine go off the rails as a viral video trainwreck, seeing Meetup’s potential beyond UT Japanese exchange & making campaign donations as easy as Amazon blew my mind in ’04 (& broke my heart the night of November 2^nd).  True patriot love of responsible government, parliamentary democracy & social justice/equity brought me home & hoping to see these transformative tools used in a Timmy’s.

I doubt I’ll ever get to geek out in a war room or a party HQ.  Partisan politics brings out the agnostic in me.  The thought of hundreds of thousands of dollars spent during a campaign on balloons, signs, buttons & miscellaneous paraphernalia drives me absolutely bonkers.  Working within the system, keeping abreast of legislative issues, regulatory nerdery & jealously eyeing the open source enthusiasm, technological progress & federal government’s paradigm shift to the South is a great fit for now.

Blogging about the last provincial & federal elections, especially the creative campaigns on provincial electoral reform & federal vote-swapping was encouraging.  A taste.   But not enough.

Enter ChangeCamp. Citizen-initiated, non-hierarchical, collaborative & generally all things old-school civics.  We have the tools, skills & thanks to some shindig yesterday in DC, the enthusiasm & momentum.  So let’s do some heavy lifting & make our standards for transparency and engagement the new status quo.  Liberate APIs, wiki-fy policy docs, de-PDF the whole shebang.  Easy.

What a winter wonderland of political punditry & nerd momentum ramping up across the city.

Not only have I been extra lucky to have returned to TO ready to tackle not one – but two – fab-u events on the subject of citizen engagement in the political process, but south of the border the upcoming Inauguration Day has hearts aflutter for all things civics.

On the micro-level, from a favourite source stateside, I”ll pass on a link to a Sunlight Foundation’s blog post about 2 bills on the books for the new Congress to tackle regarding transparency – The Presidential Library Donation Reform Act & The Presidential Records Act (Bush’s current Executive Order is keeping prez records top secret indefinitely…).  Fingers crossed that this new BaraClimate ushers in an era of openness to public records. Let’s keep an eye on these for practical & symbolic reasons – they’re introduced in  Congress’ 1st week back, they deal with Bush’s undoings/records literally & figureatively & they’ve got a connection to the actual tangible content that will make up American history – digital & IRL.

On the other hand, TechPresident reported that Republicans are using the ‘transparency’ buzzwords to push the Dems to release the proposed $700B stimulus package online for public vetting.  So what is the transparency tradeoff for the Feds?  We are all used to grand idealistic schemes winning hearts’n'votes during a campaign, but once the actual tactics need to be deployed…things aren’t as black’n'white as many hoped. (For some pretty prescriptive practical priorities Brits at MySociety.org have a Top 5 for ‘Next Government’ to implement digital solutions & The Atlantic cites open API – #2 on MS’s list – as the silver bullet to opening up government to the citizenry.)

Going through nutso levels of security & then enduring the Breakfast-Club-style-insanity of our province’s yearly budget lockup to be briefed on the Ministry of Finance’s yearly plans brings to light the importance of some materials, plans & statistics to be kept under-wraps for a certain period of time before they’re mature.

But what about the pre-maturity-time, you ask…the adolescence of our legs’n'regs?  Well, Change.org’s 250K votes submitted as a part of the Change for America contest indicates that citizens are more than willing to contribute their 2cents & I’d assume that they have realistic expectations of the impact their submissions’ll have if they’re not echoed in many others (sorry to the sad interweb user who voted 1.39M times, they have these tracker thingers that can measure that stuff nowadays :S)

The *real* pre stages on the political side are the leadership races & grassroots level riding association cage matches…it’s one thing to encourage open data from the ‘crats…but why do we expect so much less from the politicos?  I was encouraged to read that the Ontario Dippers had increased its membership by 25% ramping up for their spring leadership race.  Think it helps when you’re soliciting sales for those lil’cards that you can promise all members a chance to vote for their leader in what’s called a ‘preferential vote contest‘, which lets voters rank candidates on a ballot (don’t get me started on voting & my love of rankin’family solutions for electoral disfunction).

More posts to come about the events themselves & how these transparency trends will no doubt change the game for government, NGOs, advocates of all stripes online…

Requisite Music Reference – This is the best radio station for hip hop mixes – Cerritos All Stars Live Interactive Mix Show.  Amazing.  Makes me wanna move into a bigger’do & invest in some 1s’n’2s

So here’s the Facebook‘ed cut’n'paste from the cut’n'thrust from the demo-discussion (name removed to protect the innocent).  Some interesting ideas incubating this week, probably as a result of last week’s blowout.  Thinking more about the public consultation process, using digital tools to drive grassroots participation, citizen engagement & how to build better public consultation forums.  But I digress – this is pure politics below.  Comments welcome

Subject: Twitter
Between You and JohnD’Oh

JohnD’Oh
December 5 at 5:31pm

I tried d replying on Twitter, but you’re not following me!

My $0.02:
- I disagree with the coalition. When I cast my ballot for the NDP, it was precisely because I didn’t want to vote for Stephan Dion. Their “62% majority” is counting me as though I support the coalition.

- I disagree with the GG’s decision to suspend parliament. Her role is to let parliament fight it out, and not interfere.

- I think it’s irresponsible and somewhat childish to be doing this at a time when we all need parliament to actually do some real work.

- I’m a little sick of the endless chatter on the news and radio. More talk isn’t going to get things moving

… and if an election were to be called right now, I’d switch from the NDP to the Conservatives.

So whats this event you’re organizing? Sounds interesting.

JohnD’Oh
—-
Meghan Warby
December 7 at 11:16am

Hey! I just clicked follow yesterday – sorry about that! Can I blog about this? May I use your email with or without attribution – it’s a great jumping off point….

I see your point of view on how the coalition was not an ideal governance path for many Canadians, however I respectfully point out that if you disagree with the GG choosing prorogation over a vote (‘fight it out’), which would inevitably lead to a coalition-led non confidence motion/dissolution, that you are now entering cake having & eating mode. We elected a parliament, not a president & that parliament, if left to ‘fight it out’ was prepared to execute a plan they negotiated among three parties to govern.

As for ‘childish’ actions – that’s an at-times-fair but trite & over-used accusation dismissing politicians’ motivations. It is childish (or naive) to believe that you can affect change aligning yourself with an organization anchored in a set of values, policies & actions – these politicos should be duke-ing it out mano-a-mano on Bay Street, right? Or putting aside their differences & working to solve a stalemate through a coalition, oh, wait, that’s what was proposed. I’ve never joined a political party, but I was a card-carrying member of innumerable crunchy-granola-eating-hackey-sack-playing organizations when I was a teenager – I mailed hundreds of dollars to NGOs in mini-increments to contribute to causes in which I believed, wrote letters, organized events – pretty childish to think that I could make a difference, huh?

However, I feel that childish is a fair description of two policy pronouncements – taunting political parties by threatening to remove public funding ($30M per year= a lot of rubber chicken) & an additional jab with a threat to remove the right to strike from public sector workers (why should someone’s employer determine their labour rights so long as they are not providing emergency services or other classifications that have already been laid out provincially?). Outside of the blissfully ignorant economic statement, with conveniently oblivious assertions that we will not run a deficit, these two policies were too much to stomach & assaulted the core beliefs of left-leaning parties, and also a natural (some say crass…) self-preservation instinct for the parties’ administration.

& THIS is what really, really bothers me about blase political critics – feigned exhaustion.

I’m NOT sick of the chatter because it serves to refresh, remind & re-educate Canadians of the machinery – the basics – of our political system. People toss off phrases like ‘plead the fifth’ mindlessly without knowing that in OUR COUNTRY this means that Parliament sets out the MPs’ powers & immunities & it in no way relates to keeping mum after an arrest! Rallies, web campaigns, blogs – this is not just ‘static’ – people have woken from a paralyzing coma that engulfed them during an (admittedly) tepid political campaign & (thanks to ‘chatter’) recognize the power of Parliament. This is empowering, should be encouraged & fuels more ‘chatter’ – it is incumbent upon citizen journalists & mass media outlets to air divergent opinions on the future of our government, because it directly impacts our quality of life & reputation abroad.

I will not even TOUCH the logic(?) behind your threat to ‘punish’ the NDP by voting Tory in the next election.

I will, however, buy you a beverage of your choice (maybe this deserves 2) at an upcoming event, since I’ve unloaded my nerdy enthusiasm for all things political on your unsuspecting inbox.

Your fan,
Meegs

Rediscovering CBC Radio3 couldn’t have come at a better time…mentally & work-ily preparing for the trek back to Canuckistan.  Like a good little borderline OCD nerd, I’ve got a zillion notes & links & half-finished thoughts & nutty schemes that I’m eager to launch.  Need to take a step back & synthesise all the thoughtful answers, interesting case studies & inspiring organizations I’ve encountered over the past two weeks & puree that into some coherent thematically-linked presentation.  Yeah.  Easy.

Well, my colleague Boyd makes it LOOK easy – he has a lovely post on his Intangibles Blog here after attending a lecture by Rahaf Harfoush (Obama social networking/new media strategist) at U of T’s Rotman School of Management.

Boyd’s takeaways beyond Rahaf’s presentation – in brief:
1.  SocMedia platform should improve intimacy among your audience
2.  Integrate, integrate, integrate
3. No off-the-shelf social media solutions
4.  Find the digital sweet spot but prize agility

Would like to add my 2-cents/4-points after a two-week-pre-inauguration-navel-gazing-immersion-course (parantheses-&-hyphens-a-plenty, of course…):

1.  If you build it, they won’t all come, so deal with it – MyBO.com had significant membership (2M, & whether it was a ‘true’ social network prompted a cool debate during a meeting in DC…), but the BO team wasn’t so arrogant as to think that MyBO would supplant a robust presence on existing, popular social networks.  BlackPlanet, MiGente, Hi5, MySpace, Twitter, Eons, Facebook (Esp. ‘Facebook Connect’ w/ MyBO.com application broadcasting actions into NewsFeed), you name it, BO was there (16 sites total, over 5M external site ‘friends’).  (Bitter aside: If the Dean crew had a YouTube channel to leverage in 2004 & hadn’t been, essentially, forced to create DeanTV, it would have been a different ballgame…)

2.  ‘Social Objects’ are more relevant than the networks themselves.  To blatantly rip off TX’n transplant-guru Hugh, our intentions online isn’t to have a solitary experience – it’s to find a human, collaborative, shared space.  BO was successful because *he* became a social object – AntiBushites/Progressives/DeclaredDems/Disaffected*InsertGroupHere* name-dropped BO, & later co-opted his name, image, video clips, iPod playlists, history, narrative, quotes, & everything he represented/touched to coalesce as a group.

3. ( or 2.a)?) Build a digital infrastructure rooted in #1 & #2 – which means developing easy, slick, compelling prompts, apps, sites & materials to grow your audience, on all platforms.  Ex-1. BO’s iPhone app had a two-front visceral halo effect – physically people gather around someone as they demo it on their phone & are then compelled to ask its owner to email them (or vice-versa – people receive content from the app & want to watch it ‘in person/at work’).  Ex-2. Self-starting enthusiasts didn’t wait for permission to help/advocate/volunteer from campaign HQ via MySpace & Facebook – this is unprecedented from a political standpoint & generally with overall advocacy work via NGOs, etc.

4.  And Then? To defy assertions made in this seminal film, there must be an ‘and then.’  BO supporters were happy to take on the campaign gruntwork – logistically & organizationally – now they’re eager to share ideas. How can we use online collaborative tools to improve contact with government officials, link like-minded organizations, create more effective/efficient coalitions & crowd-source solutions?  How can we take advantage of the innumerable free tools, enthusiastic & skilled users eager to contribute?  First step – embrace transparency, design cleaner interfaces for data accessibility & farm-out raw data to organizations that can better organize/mashup/display what is public information.

Shrapnel

• Facebook sprawls:  10M of its 30M users are 30+ years old, 3.3M are 40+ (FB Ads Data) – BO had 3.2M fans & there were 5.4M ‘I Voted’ Americans on E-Day
• Hugh is true: “People respond to genuine social gestures instead of being bombarded with messages.”
• This was the first election cycle where *boomers* were comfortable passing on political information online.  Even if a boomer wasn’t on Facebook, their email list makes them ’21st century political pamphleteers’ – (phrase h/t to Andrew Rasiej, Personal Democracy Forum)
• To quote the first TV Pres, JFK, “Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.” Successful online strategies require the equivalent of successful field strategies – research, manpower, accurate demographics, compelling content and a charismatic leader (or social object).