Parallel Presentations

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Parallel Presentations

The Parallel Presentations are three 30 minute presentations that run in parallel and event participations choose which one they attend.

The style of the presentation is decided by those making it, but presentation that involve input and dialogue tend to be more interesting.

Presentation topics can be proposed by anyone. Once a presentation is proposed, event participants need to express their interest in those topics they are most interested in and provide input for those presenting.

Presentation Selection

If there are more proposed parallel presentations than space available, then the presentations will be decided based on which are the most popular based on sign-ups on the wiki pages.

From Last Year

Some of the ideas from last year's event are likely still relevant. If so, re-propose them.

Proposed Presentations

Add your proposed parallel presentations here by pressing edit above (or via the comments box). Be sure to include the name of the person who will do the presentation and any other information to attract supporters for the presentation.

Writing a good presentation proposal is especially important if more than three presentations are proposed since there is only time for three, those three will be decided based on how popular they are up until the week before the event.

**eCampaigning after a progressive election victory: the Australian: experience** --Ed Coper, Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:52:45 -0600 reply

Ed Coper - GetUp?. Australian progressives have been struggling with a new political dynamic after a decade conservatism came to an end over a year ago - now the US find themselves in a similar situation. A couple of campaign case studies to show how campaigners can use a range of tactics to set the agenda and show what we are for, as much as what we're against.

Campaigns clinic – Jackie Schneider --Jess Day, Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:38:19 -0500 reply

Merton Parents for Better Food in Schools is a group of concerned parents who’ve driven real change in their community, including a new catering supplier for the borough’s primary schools. http://www.mertonparents.co.uk/ New media have been crucial in helping the group organise themselves. Jackie is now working with Sustain to help parents across the UK to mobilise themselves in the same way. They’re currently piloting a social network at http://parentpower.ning.com.

Campaigns clinic - Ruth, Drugscope --Jess Day, Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:12:57 -0500 reply

Wed 9.30 seminar rm 1 How can we use new media to capture and harness the experiences and stories of people in recovery from drug abuse to support campaigns for better services etc.

Campaigns clinic - Wendy Hoenkamp, Oxfam Novib --Jess Day, Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:16:32 -0500 reply

Wed, 9.30am Seminar Rm 1 How can the Big Promise widget reach the widest possible international audience?

Oxfam’s Big Promise aims to push international leaders to keep promises to meet the Millennium Development Goals on health and educations. The new widget allows people to make their own promises in support of the campaign. What forms of promotion can we use for this, especially in key target countries, with a limited budget? Take a look at the widget at: http://widgets.thebigpromise.org/.

Online actions that really work --patrick, Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:47:44 -0500 reply

Online actions that really help benefit beneficiaries

Who came to the group and what they were interested in

Lisa – climate campaigns are not working so well while specific campaigns - like palm oil and Unilever worked 100,000 – why do some actions work and others don't?
Gill, Care International – just purchased advocacy online
Sabrina – amnesty – research and policy – keen to learn
Caroline – from Accord in Nairobi – email – access to email low – write to Mps -
Rebecca – MP researcher – soon to go to Prison Reform Trust
Rochelle – stop climate chaos, mostly offline stuff
Stacey – living streets, how to encourage people to walk all or part of journey to work?
Darwin – Torchbox - how to use online "asks" to effect behavioural change
Kay – Woodland Trust, recording and monitoring
Paulina – Finn church aid, development, advocacy, two year campaign,
Rebecca- Mencap – what works when emailing your MP (from both perspectives) – how to use the web to inspire local action
Ruth – Drugscope – drug misuse – attitudes to drug users – attitudes how to engage service users to share their experience
Nina- Clean Clothes Campaign – labour rights in garment manufacture

What distinguished actions that worked from those that didn't?

"Refer your friends" action

Make it easy to upload your friends' details
Plaxo have api (gmail, msn) – to allow you to share email addresses
make sure message is editable
content is key though

2)MP actions

all campaign actions are reliant on engaging the MP's researcher
Critical mass (ie volume of emails) is key
Personalisation is also really important - even if the personalisation is just one line
MPs? mostly correspond via paper - full postal address is key

3)Discussed the case of Woodland Trust

Trying to sign people up to watch their local woods
To be eyes and ears to protect against planning applications etc
identify and tell us what is happening in your local wood
Could you put up physical sign in woodlands – be a woodwatcher
Take a picture if your – get a badge
feedback on the web – interactive google map

Gemma – mencap

working with coalitions – asking others
one strong ask vs multiple asks in an email - which is best?
Changing Places campaign– used google maps for parents and carers to see where they could change clothes, help with personal hygiene
not huge traffic but will be main feature of learning disability week

Stop think and resist – carolina and nina - trade justice

Looking to connect farmers and build a pan african solution
Felt like a very big question - need to microscope down more targeted actions
SMS actions?
engaging with UK/european based young farmers
National farmer unions
how to mobilise people to generate civil society
build a regional movement – create spaces for them to meet –
Nina talked about uniting worker organisers in Africa and Asia together to show how they fit into the global supply chain
nothing beats real time conversations in person
consider using an external copywriter to write email actions
one action vs multi "asks" in emails? Not sure which is best

How to use online action to effect beneficiary change

try loads of things and see which stick
make sure you split test

ruth at drugscope

change attitudes to people who receive drug treatment
getting people into recovery – house, jobs, treat
People into recovery – who are now blogging and writing about it
Encouraging their sense of pride of making progress
Currently considering a speakers' bureau
forums – changing perception

Stacey at Living Streets

campaign around walking to work
Developed microsite – calories, carbon etc saved by walking to work
send tips - ask them to pledge to walk to work – competition to win an ipod round favourite song to walk to
often what inspires is the positive feedback for others

**Are there any original campaign actions left - Patrick at Action: Medical Research** --patrick, Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:23:08 -0500 reply

Who came to the group and what they were interested in

Jeanelle – academic – new technology has helped
George – Amnesty Canada - what can we get people to do once they have taken the traditional ecampaigning actions?
Emily – targeting the government – tackling ecampaigning fatigue
Joel – Oxfam Intl – think there are new ideas –
Lynne – Oxfam Quebec – here to be inspired
Yakov – Dutch ONE campaign – agency perspective
Kit- Enable – what new action coming up
Robert – Oxfam Germany – likes Osocio
Jonathan – Help the Aged – original ideas – campaigner
James – Care international – advocacy – online campaigners (new person starting)
Joss – greenpeace – lot of fatigue – how to ensure campaigns have practical relevance not just symbolism
Gerhard – political campaigns – fresh ideas
Veronique – amnesty
Alex - Dphil student

What we discussed

Are symbolic actions a problem?

Fatigue – do you see fatigue -

Over-ambitious response expectations?

Overlap between campaigns

Is the problem brand building vs improving the lives of beneficiaries?

What makes a campaign action novel?

Taking actions – feeling of a way into a problem
Action should have an impact
This action is "the right thing to do"
novelty vs impact – we must have confidence in the stories we tell
amusing – subversive
the way in which existing actions are combined is the novelty
Greenpeace's Greenplot doubled website traffic to Greenpeace – had 40,000 people sign up to own a piece of land in Heathrow 3rd runway
We all want to own a piece of campaign – feel we are doing our bit
actions that offer something tangible and physical can work well
connecting to real stuff – house party, land, me having a house

-As we saw with the Barack speaker, the woman hosting a house party felt she was influencing health policy

when does a campaign becomes a movement?

free hugs – global movement – free hugs -
all campaigns need to integrated
Obama – the biggest story of the century (and clever execution)

pairing e-campaigning and offline organising

campaigners learning from ecampaigners
urgency is key

Case study - Care – sexual gender based violence in conflict zones

Case studies, video, join our facebook, twitter,
Resolution 1820 – by UN - coming up for discussion
Care's actions were leading up to this
this was a subject that was difficult to ignore,

General points raised

Responses to human stories likely to be worse than animals
Simple but compelling story telling
need to try and tie activity to specific policy changes
if you can't show an immediate return – show impact -
Greenpeace experience games get lots of hits, but poor conversion
remember not all people are IT savvy
pigs of god campaign
testing with key audiences – quick feedback – 3,000 young people – what t-shirt do you like, etc opinion gathering,
tasks need to be meaningful
sometimes a small list can be more useful that a big one
the moment in time is key – scaffold
crowdsourcing – spreadtshirt.com – campaigners can learn from the private sector
rules and structure are key -
online and offline aspects – atheist bus and mega mouth
tangible – something that means something to people – giving money to an atheist is difficult but giving to an atheist bus makes sense!
tap into people's existing hobbies - like a ukulele group – doing something fun and creative – with existing hobbies- tapping into existing interests
tango dancers for afghanistan
kite flying – afghan women in the hague – media stunt - around violence against women

case study - Amnesty Canada

offer campaigners opportunity to be creative

– writeathon (write letters)

– host an event, write on your own, or with friends

online could share ideas and reports of what they are doing/they did

– business got involved - a dollar off your haircut, if you write a letter for Amnesty

– a priest ran a sermon on Amnesty and then tea and letter writing

blogs.oxfam.org

Case study - Amnesty

1:10 women affected by rape, domestic violence

– difficult issue, accompanied by long report

Amnesty sought one stat that could be easy for people to connect with

– used this as basis of engagement online with social network

– change the avatar – facebook status – trending on twitter really quickly – word spreading very quickly – moment in time crucial

Could have been better if had allowed people to mashup the content
novelty, relevance, impact

Viral 'vs' Name collection - what do you prioritize? --joelbassuk, Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:36:09 -0500 reply

Joel opened with description of recent Oxfam Big Promise widget, which will support their Health & Education For All campaign http://www.oxfam.org/en/campaigns/health-education - during development of the widget, the campaign had much discussion about whether to prioritize the (potential) viral-ness of it -- that is, creating something

slick that users can easily pass around/embed in their social networks -- or to collect names, so as to be able to continue comm's with supporters

amnesty uk - glossy waterboarding 'ad' - looked like an ad, but then

told hard story
got picked up
planned for months

VIRAL = just chance / luck

people say: ' i want to make a viral video '

but there's no formula!
cool, timely content/actions just get picked up, passed around
but people still think there is a formula

so best to be fast & cheap

and funny / off the wall
people are more likely to share with friends

Example of sending a video to their list, to seed it

they got some small media coverage
then a column wrote a small article about it
then more papers picked it up, then bloggers

How does YT decide on their featured video?? - Oxfam GB example, where YT-UK picked up their video, - then YT-US did - then YT-Australia, India etc etc etc - Oxfam GB ended up with 250k views in a week

Question: does title make a difference? tags?

Yes, be smart about your tags/titles, for SEO

Jason - friends of canadian broadcasting

Example: they got a few comments on really obscure video
in one day, they went from 6 to 15,000 views
they tagged the video with name of each celebrity in the video

Video for Fair Trade Flowers (rebecca / MENCA) -- had a video featured on German YT home page and they got loads of views

once you're at the top, you get pushed down as other videos gain

Laura / GP -- will follow up on finding out how YT decides what they feature on their home page (is it automatic/algorithm, or editorially chosen)

You can now capture lots of info on YT through their internal stats

e.g. demographic info, age

Gene/GP - is going to focus on getting people to jump from FB to their main/micro/nano-sites

Gene/GP - his team developed a 'Tell your friend too' tool -- to pull in addresses from the address book of the user's email providers (e.g. yahoo, gmail)

pulls in from ~200 different email providers
their list went from 0 to 200,000
but then they hit a ceiling
so now they have incremental instead of exponential growth, as individual networks grow slowly

Once the users come to their corporate sites, they can do 10x more stuff (vs FB), so even though they had attrition, and so now smaller community but those people are doing more

...how do we turn that buzz into emails? how to transfer a google SMS group into an email group? how to migrate your supporters from one platform?

one-off action on facebook....

Gene/GP -- no way of knowing if they are reading our stuff
but FB lets you talk to them where they are, good for organizing
example: Climate Campaign through FB - communicated all thru FB, people organized themselves
users organize events, then at the event, org try to capture their details

Campaign to 'buy a multinational' -- went viral

basic website w/ send to a fiend
it was timing, and a bit strange

Greenpeace / campaign to 'buy land at Heathrow'

got 30k signups in first day
went viral, but also they did have media coverage

Douglas / Savethechildren

asked people to text 'Ceasefire'
got 200k texts in 6 days
also did press & outdoor media
9 ourt of 10 forwarded to friends -- so very viral
they then followed up with phone calls to EACH PERSON, and asked for money
went down amazing well -- 10% conversion that gave $$
and virtually no one said 'don't contact me' !!

Dave / Commission in World Farming

started with 10k on their list
celeb appeared on 3 tv programs, each time abt 40k people pledged (w their emails)
ended up with 150k on list
now giving them actions to do
email your MPs?
open rates 30% - email 100k people and 30k take action

Auture / KEPA, Finland

internet game, re biofuels and effects on world hunger
6-7k played the game
link to campaign site

Campaign in The Hague, Netherlands

US said they would attack the Hague if Bush was going to be charged
public could sponsor figures (statues) on the beach
hugely popular, almost everyone in the city knew about it, came down to the beach

Risk taking

Established organizations are afraid to take risks!
You have to stay small, to be flexible, and to be able to take risks, get sign off

Gene/GP -- ' i won't let my team get bigger!"

Global Day of Action for Climate change videos on YT / Kaye, woodland trust

flood YT with every video has the same FRONT page
try to get comments on your vid
top 3
2 guys came up the idea, led by Greenpeace
only need 1,000 to get to top of YT
so now they plan to go back to all those people who had commented
idea being simply to get the envirnoment as the most talked about thing on YT

Gene / GP == Google Bombing

they knew that on 23 March, they wanted people to get people to land on their page, not the Tata site (who was announcing big news)
spoke to everyone they knew in blogsphere...
every time time you leave a comment on a blog
circulated a few bullet points
go forth and multiply
not in top 600 at start, but on day of launch they were #6 on Google
Question: how many visitiors did you get as a result, on 23 March?? (Gene will let us know....)

GP - India -- they build issue microsites

a micro-site
an event nano-sites, if it is for a very limited time event
at end of campaign, they began to contact the people through email, to let them know results

session attendees 'take away's':

don't be afraid to take risks
use FB to start raising funds -- we don't need to capture to emails -- by driving traffic to elsewhere
do SEO
YT comments, generate a dialog
be creative, and need mind-time.... to be original
combination of timing and luck & fast and cheap
google bombing
useful to hear that others are trying to tackle the same questions

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Parallel Presentations