Unions 21 Technology Seminar 2013

This post is a little late but the seminar was excellent. Held in the headquarters of the CWU, the room was packed with national union officers and lay activists.

Simon Sapper from the CWU kicked off by posing the question what do unions want to achieve online? Is it a organising or servicing tool or is it both?

Paul Hilder (Global VP Change.org & 38 Degrees co-founder and Director) John Coventry spoke passionately about the idea that "anyone can do it" by e-petitions and online campaigning. They gave examples of the individuals who have taken on loan sharks, Amazon tax avoidance and even BBC Newsnight bullying.

I asked a question to them over something which has long been a niggle of mine. "I am a great fan of new social media, but what is the end game of on line campaigning and how will it translate into greater union membership and changing politics since at the end of the day you will have to rely on traditional Party politics to bring about change"? Paul gave a good answer that on line campaigning could justify itself by attracting people to start a journey that they otherwise would not be attracted by. I'm still not 100% sure.

Gregor Poynton (Blue State Digital) gave a slick presentation (of course) on how unions can do better with online campaigns. A ladder of engagement starting off with getting members to spend 15 minutes a day online supporting causes rather than being expected to commit to hours and hours of boring committees and meetings.

Ed Mustill (Labourstart) plugged their new guide on online campaigning (which I bought off him for £3) and compared (rightly in my view) online support for trade unions fights with being on a freezing cold picket line and a passerby comes up out of the blue with hot coffee and biscuits.

Gavin Hayes (Policy Review TV) gave a convincing pitch on why we should consider not spending say £40k on venue and transport costs for 100 people to attend a national meeting and instead £3-4k on setting up an on-line TV video facility.  This could attract a much, much wider participation for potentially peanuts. Makes perfect sense to me.

TUC (Social Media Guru) John Woods (see picture with Unions 21 Chair Sue Ferns) gave a typically lively and informative punt on Unions and Blogging. I loved his analysis that all media works best when it’s from the horse’s mouth. But you can take the horse to Word Press but you can't make the horse blog! (but they can make them appear in Tesco burgers! someone behind me said).

Simon Parry (infobo - right of picture) spoke on which unions perform best online, and the power of the search engine. He had looked at on-line joining union websites and found some sites did not offer full online joining, only accepted Internet Explorer browsers and had poor security. The UNISON website however scored highly. 65% of new members in my branch now join on-line.

Solicitor Binder Bansel (Pattinson Brewer) spoke last about Data Privacy and staying within the law online (I had to declare an interest in this matter)

So Great seminar. Thanks to Dan Whittle, Unions 21 and CWU for organising it.

(you can check out on my twitter feed on the seminar https://twitter.com/grayee for 24 Jan)

Netroots UK 2011

This was supposed to be a "live post" from today's Netroots conference at Congress House.  However, my netbook battery ran out at the crucial time.  Which is typical.

Netroots UK was a hugely impressive and well attended event.

I had my Council surgery first thing so I only arrived at the end of the morning session.  I went straight into the "Engaging with politicians online" workshop.

Picture is of Tom Watson MP, Rachel Gibson (Manchester University), Matthew McGreggor (Blue State Digital) and Mark Pack (Liberal Democratic Voice).  I'll post further details on conference tomorrow.

UPDATE:
Some stuff I found interesting during this panel discussion but was too tired and emotional to blog on my return last night (it had had been a good night).

Mark talked about “drive by democracy”. Problem with e-petitions. He would like to see a Council site were instead of just submitting your view about a planning application it actually links to those who support or who are against the application.

Tom praised the unions for taking the on-line lead and mentioned Unison for having “on-line branches”. Online petitions do not work. Standard campaign email gets standards response. Bespoke gets bespoke response.

Rachel pointed out 16% of voters used political website in the 2010 election compared to 3% in 2005. Small but growing. Rachel also described twitter as possibly being an elite conversation but with Facebook there is a broader appeal (which I agree).

Someone from 38 degrees website defended “Cloned emails” by saying 2/3 of those who send standard emails to MPs have never contacted their MP before. So this is a good thing.

BTW I was surprised bearing in mind this type of conference how many people present were taking notes on the discussion with pen and paper. Next was a brown bag lunch and fringes. I went to the “beyond Obama” fringe and will hopefully blog soon but a teeny-weeny bit busy at the mo.

Progress Labour 2.0 conference – will 2.0 help us win in 2010?

On Thursday evening I was at an important grass roots union and residents meeting in the Isle of Dogs being held in a tenant’s hall.

Yesterday I was back on the Island but this time at the glass and crystal globe of the East Wintergarden in Canary Wharf. Lots of light in the heart of Gotham City (joke). Of course, now that so many of the local businesses are publicly owned I should have felt very much at home.

This conference was organised by Progress and they had 8 sessions with some 26 panel members. That was a lot of information and opinions to take in 11am-5.45pm. I will just highlight some of the things I found interesting.

The opening address was by RH Douglas Alexander MP (who is also the Labour Party campaign coordinator for the General Election). Partly in response to a question that I put to him (which I think he misunderstood - it’s probably me) he suggested that the global Banking crisis last September is an Obama type issue which has changed the world and that it is traditional Labour values of “fairness...solidarity and collectivism” and the “strength of common endeavour” that is the future - this crisis is our “Hope” and “Change” theme (my interpretation).

Joe Rospars, the foundering partner of Blue State Digital was the next speaker and he is of course better known to everyone present simply as God, aka Barack Obama’s New Media Director. He played one of the many inspiring “making the hairs on the edge of your neck stand up” videos. What fantastic stuff. The 13 million supporters, 200,000 local organisers and $500 million dollars raised from 3 million contributors by the New Media Obama machine is an awesome achievement. The decentralisation of the campaign and its “bottom up” nature was key to its success. But as Douglas said with some venom, during question time, the central Obama campaign organisers where not just holding hands and singing “Kumbaya” together each night. They were leading and controlling as well as organising. We should not forget this.

Professor Andrew Chadwick reminded us that yesterday was the 109th anniversary of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) and how the Party started off as a broad church and is still one nowadays. “Pragmatism, co-operation and solidarity”.

Ben Brandzel reminded us that “democracy is not a spectator sport”.

Gavin Shuker that the “narrative” is all important. Complying data without any use is itself useless.

Jag Singh (I finally met Jag for the first time in real life) who despite being unwell spoke amusingly but without bitterness about how as a Hilary Clinton election advisor he had lost his White House cubicle (by 0.5 %!).

Stella Creasy – PCC for Walthamstow has an email list of 2000 names gathered during campaign events which her CLP (usually Stella I suspect) sends out a weekly newsletter. . .......Blimey.

I had a sort of “row” during the last session with panel member James Crabtree (senior Editor, Prospect). He had quite gleefully (in my view) during his presentation predicted that the Labour Party would lose the next election and that they should use the opportunity of defeat to build the Party in order to win in future. I challenged him on this view since I could remember when I joined the Party just before the General election in 1979 I came across people who predicted that the Party would lose and tried to argue that this was a good thing. That opposition would enable the Party to regroup and win next time. This resulted in all these people losing their jobs (Shotton steel workers) and the Tories being in charge for 18 years not one or two terms. James said that he had never said that it was a good thing that Labour will lose the next election. I think he did. To be clear I think we still have a very good chance of winning at the next election. It is not helped by selfish and ignorant defeatist statements.

My big issue is as a Labour Party and Labour movement activist who happens to be a “blogger”. I want to help the Party and if possible help it to win. While I enjoy blogging, is it a useful practical political tool or campaigning weapon? Perhaps not and it is just an enjoyable avenue for activists and theorists to sound off and infuriate internal and external opponents. Or can we actually do stuff of political value to our Party?

What about setting up a central and regional distribution list of labour supporting bloggers who can be sent information and post upon (if they choose to) key issues. What about organising those Labour Party members who blog or post and who would rally to support the Party when it is being “beaten up” on national media blogs and web sites?

Or is there anything else we can do?

At the end of the conference I had a brief chat with Derek Draper (Labour List - right of photo) who I can report in my brief experience as being an extremely polite, constructive and courteous comrade.

Check out these posts on this meeting by panel members Nick Anstead, Andrew Chadwick, Tim Montgomerie (ConservativeHome)