October 9th: ONE/Northwest Breakfast

tiffany — 2008-08-28T17:00:28Z

These are exciting times for the environmental movement and for ONE/Northwest!

Please join us on Thursday, October 9th at 7:00 am for a breakfast event to benefit our work in the community.

More details, including RSVP information, can be found here

Update on DNS outage

jon — 2008-07-09T19:33:58Z

GKG.net provides domain registration and DNS hosting services to many ONE/Northwest clients (and to ONE/Northwest itself). On July 8th, beginning around 8AM PDT, GKG suffered a hardware failure that knocked them completely offline until around 2:30 PM PDT.

During that period of time, any ONE/Northwest clients who had DNS services at GKG had their websites and email services become unavailable. ONE/Northwest's servers were still up, but with no DNS service from GKG.net, client domains couldn't be resolved successfully and the sites became unreachable.

We offer our apologies to anyone who was affected by this outage. Downtime is never fun, and this was no exception.

DNS hosting is generally a very reliable service, and GKG has had an excellent track record over the past few years. Unfortunately, that solid record got a pretty big black mark today.

Here's what we're doing to make sure this doesn't happen again:

We're moving all of our clients' DNS records from GKG to a master ONE/Northwest account at ZoneEdit.com. ZoneEdit is an alternative DNS provider we've been using for a while, and we'll now make them our only primary DNS provider.
We'll also maintain backup copies of the DNS records on a ONE/Northwest-controlled server, so they can serve as a backup if ZoneEdit ever experiences this type of failure (very unlikely).

We'll be able to make these changes automatically in the background.

Video from Email Crafting and Best Practices Workshop

tiffany — 2008-07-03T20:16:32Z

We had a great turn out for our Email Crafting and Best Practices workshop--thank you to our speakers and to the brave folks who let us dissect their emails. If you want to check out the video from the evening, click here.

Campaign Season and Technology Notes

tiffany — 2008-04-04T20:03:43Z

ONE/Northwest Program Manager Jon Stahl captured notes from our event on Campaign Season and Technology on his blog.

Here's a copy of them:

[18:00] I’m liveblogging from the event ONE/Northwest is hosting tonight, titled “Political Campaigns and Technology.” We’ve got about 50 people in our office here in Seattle, gathered together for a fast-paced peer-to-peer learning session in which we’re going to explore the various ways that political campaigns are using technology to build and sustain relationships, and what nonprofit activist organizations can learn from the fast-paced world of political campaigns.

Gideon Rosenblatt — ONE/Northwest Executive Director

Gideon is welcoming people, explaining the concept, how it relates to our work. We’ll have three speakers, followed by some group discussion and general socializing.

Karen Uffelman — ONE/Northwest Program Manager

Questions to audience:

In the last 12 months, how many have seen a candidate website? Lots
How many have been contacted by a candidate? Lots
How many have taken action on behalf of a candidate? Lots
How many would have 4 years ago? Lots (!)

[18:05] Karen: dramatic changes in how candidates are using technology. Karen posed several discussion questions for people to consider in small groups, which they are now doing…

[18:10] Report outs:

Group one:

What’s the most innovative use of interactive media you’ve seen this campaign season?

Viral videos used to hold candidates accountable for what they’re saying

Group two:

Have candidates lost control of their message because of new media?

Yes, but some campaigns have done a better job than others at using new media to get their messages out there. The technology itself is beginning to shape how candidates present themselves and their communications style. Think that Obama is less concerned with controlling events, more focused on explaining things as they occur. George Allen’s “macaca” video is an extreme example of loss of control. Control models are going to work less and les in the future.

Group three:

Have candidates lost control of their message because of new media?

You can’t control what people say about you online. The blogosphere has some tendency towards self-correction, though. Retractions and debunkings can happen very quickly.

Most innovative use of interactive media?

Email from Obama campaign: you’ve donated before, would you like to match a first-time donor? Can send personal message to the first-time donor, and they can respond to you. Very gratifying way to make a small personal connection with a fellow supporter.

Group four:

We talked mostly about the “relentlessness” of the Obama campaign’s online organizing work this year. In 2004, seemed more episodic than continuous. Lots more use of video from candidates; e.g. video of Obama on his donation page. Very slick.

Group five:

We talked about some of the tools we’ve seen on Facebook and their longer-term potential. How social networking has been used as a fundraising tool, ability to raise money very quickly. Rapid response of Ron Paul campaign around specific issues. Blast updates vs. segmentation.

Group six:

Increased turnout of youth vote during primary cycle. Challenge ahead is how to translate election excitement downballot and to ongoing long term issues. How can we get people to care about the fights that follow. League of Young Voters Facebook application attempts to find people through the campaign opportunity, get a sense of issue priorities as well.

Group seven:

Unexpectedly viral things. Change in tone of campaign emails from “donate now” to fake(?) insider emails. New phonebanking tools. Washington Trails’ experience creating a small Facebook application.

[18:25] Three Speakers

Brett Horvath - Your Revolution

A new nonpartisan nonprofit.

Show of hands: who has a Facebook account? (Many) Who actively uses it? (Few)

Your Revolution: building a Facebook app focused on voter registration. Hope to scale up voter registration efforts by leveraging the reach of the Facebook platform.

What differentiates Facebook from other social networking platforms: Facebook is a “social utility” that allows people to actively do things. Some stats about rapid growth of Facebook.

Massive protest in Colombia, organized via Facebook. Something different is going on here that’s not going on elsewhere.

Big difference between a website and a web presence. Facebook gives you access to lots of people who are already nearby and comfortable consuming information there.

Obama online: my.barackobama.com — allows users to self-organize, plan events, build groups. Houe parties, fundraisers, phonebanking etc. All outside of the control of the campaign.

Quick rundown of Your Revolution features:

Register to vote from within Facebook
Tell you which of your friends are registered to vote
Send a reminder/invite to your friends to get them to register to vote — peer pressure!
Ask about issue interests during process
Connect you with groups that are working on what you’re interested in.

Your Revolution gives nonprofits some collaboration and project management tools for their constituents.

Working with students to bring online voter registration to states around the nation (!) (Now: WA and AZ are the only two states that allow it, but Rock The Vote has technology for generating paper forms online.)

Questions for Brett:

Q: What kinds of privacy safeguards are there? How exposed is your personal information?

A: You can control how much info people see on Facebook. Your Revolution doesn’t keep or use any data from FB.

Q: Is hard to get off of Facebook?

A: Actually, yes. Hard to fully delete all of your profile information. This is generally pretty true of anything you put on the internet these days.

Q: How do you prevent voter reg. fraud?

A: Require valid drivers license info, which is verified by Secretary of State.

[18:50] George Chung - Win/Win Network

How Democratic Party technology has trickled down to interest groups.

An example: anti-immigrant ballot measures in Washington in recent years. Hard to defeat hot-button ballot initiatives like this. Insight: find all the people who voted against a previous anti-affirmative action initiative. Problem: it was virtually impossible to find, and we had to start from scratch. A “learning moment.” Each campaign should build long-term organizing capacity, win or lose.

Democratic political campaigns have consolidated their voter file databases and interfaces. Catalist, Voter Activation Network are two companies that were started by major Democratic party donors to consolidate disparate voter file, demographic and consumer data and then provide sophisticated applications built on top of that, e.g. phonebanking systems with real-time feedback. Trickling down to state parties and the precinct captain level.

Campaigns don’t end when the election is over. Then we go to elected officials and push for policy change. More thinking about cycles of accountability. Elections are means to policy ends.

Win/Win Network - started by Washington Progress Alliance. Goal is to defragment progressive issue communities at the state level so that we can work more powerfully together. Shared services, e.g. voter mobilization tools from Catalist/VAN.

[19:00]

Q: Doesn’t sharing of names among organizations like this pretty much amount to spamming people without their permission and run the risk of inundating people?

A: Learning from the work the environmental community has done here, how to get the word out without violating permission. We don’t actually share emails among groups.

[19:15] Steve Andersen - ONE/Northwest

I work on CRM systems for environmental groups. Constituent Relationship Management. Technologies and techniques for helping organizations develop relationships with their supporters. Companies use CRM to sell stuff. Nonprofits use it to build power. We use Salesforce.com as our main CRM tool; it’s not nonprofit-specific… it’s used by businesses, political campaigns, and nonprofits.

Four very quick demonstrations of how political campaigns use CRM.

1) Raising money…

… and reporting on that fundraising. A core component of any CRM system, but also one of the least interesting. Moving on…

2) Managing speaking opportunities

Candidates need to keep track of where they and their surrogates are going to appear, from a huge field of opportunities and possibilities. Nonprofit activists have the same problem. We’re currently working with Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center on a system for managing hundreds of speaking requests per month.

3) Influencing key decision makers

e.g. Superdelegates and precinct leaders. (Or, after the election, running issue campaigns for nonprofits). Quick demonstration of a system we built for Futurewise to track their success at influencing regulatory decisions around land-use. The same model can also be used to track efforts to secure endorsements for a candidate. Track decision makers, people & organizations who influence those decision-makers, whether they support or oppose us. Campaigns to our members who relate to that decisionmaker. Share all of this data with the campaign team.

4) Media tracking

How to keep track of all the blogs, viral video and online news coverage that campaigns are getting? Can’t just follow three networks and a few newspapers anymore. Quick demo of a media tracking tool we built for Futurewise. Media clips are connected to decision campaigns (above). Simple bookmarklets make it fast and easy to save items that you find in your web surfing.

“We haven’t had the need to clip YouTube videos for very long.”

Salesforce lets us build little tools like this really quickly. Took us about an hour to be able to clip & watch YouTube inside of YouTube.com.

[19:25] Questions

Q: Can you spit back out stuff that you capture?

A: We can get stuff back out through Salesfore’s APIs and show it via a website to the public, or pull it into an email message.

Q: Can data be linked to projects? Groups of people that might take action?

A: In principle, yes.

Q: How do you assess if an organization is ready for powerful new tools like this?

A: It’s hard.

[19:30] Gideon Rosenblatt - Thanks, Closing and General Hanging Out Time

These are the facets of a new kind of democratic process emerging. It’s all about putting power back into the hands of self-organizing groups of people.

With that, your loyal liveblogger went off to get a well-deserved beer.

Campaign Season and Technology

tiffany — 2008-03-20T02:53:14Z

From Ron Paul’s YouTube Channel to Obama's Facebook Page, the political season explodes with creative outreach and organizing using the latest technology and online resources.

What are some of the lessons we can take from political campaigns? What tools will live beyond the first Tuesday in November? Can strategies and tools borrowed from candidates make a difference on environmental issues like global warming and food safety?

ONE/Northwest has been thinking about the possibilities and we'd like to invite you to a join us in a conversation about:

effective calls to action
recruiting members, activists or actions through peer groups
managing information and relationships with existing and new constituents

Come share your thoughts with other smart people who are changing the world. We’ll have pizza and beer to fuel the discussion, a few speakers with specific examples, and an informal conversation on the possibilities that we’re seeing during this exciting political year.

UPDATE: Live blog of the event.

News and Events

October 9th: ONE/Northwest Breakfast

Update on DNS outage

Video from Email Crafting and Best Practices Workshop

Campaign Season and Technology Notes

Campaign Season and Technology