Without a Yard

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).
  

Sad outcome of trip timing is missing the biggest event for an NGO near & dear for the past three years.  Tonight at the Four Seasons a group gathers to celebrate parliamentary democracy.   Every year the event grows significantly, presents inspiring speakers and recognizes outstanding public servants.  Here’s my contribution to the programme about our silver anniversary theme:

The Twenty-Fifth Annual Churchill Society Dinner theme – Women in Politics – was selected to recognize the leadership of women in parliamentary democracy in Ontario and in Canada.

Our award winners, the Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell, and Keynote Speaker Celia Sandys represent the breadth and depth of women’s evolving role in the political realm.  In Canada, women gradually won the right to vote and run for office, yet remain underrepresented federally and provincially.  As Canada’s nineteenth and first female Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell’s Parliamentary career demonstrates that women have gained significant ground since 1921, which marked our first federal election with women voting and running as candidates.  Following in the footsteps of Agnes Campbell MacPhail, the first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1921, female politicians in Canada gain ground and seats with each election.  This year’s federal election had 68 winning candidates (22%) that were women, which resulted in a record number and percentage of MPs in Parliament.  Across the country, almost 81% of ridings had at least one woman on the ballot.

Although challenges remain for achieving parity - such as securing nominations, cultural expectations for familial responsibilities, Parliamentarians’ travel demands, and unbalanced media scrutiny of politicians’ appearance – the greatest challenge bridges the gender gap:  re-establishing respect for the profession of public service.

The Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy is honoured to host a roster of impressive female Parliamentarians at our Silver Anniversary Dinner, and looks forward to recognizing politics as an important profession worthy of Canadians’ respect.  Hopefully, once we demonstrate a greater appreciation for the dedicated citizens choosing to earn public office, regardless of gender, we will encourage the cultural shifts necessary to attract and retain a greater number of women in politics.