East Bay Papers

GOTV Technologies of 2012

GOTV canvassing is exhausting. Rubbing aching back, sore feet, sunburnt face (I was in Reno), I wished for four technologies to make my life easier.

Segway.

OK, they're giving out Blackberry's to the ACT team leaders, but I can cover twice as much ground in half the time with a Segway. Knocking on doors is the ultimate in high touch campaigning. And on election day it becomes clear that the more people we reach, the better our turnout.   Less sweating and gasping when you talk with the public. Easier to carry supplies. By 2012 they'll either be cheap enough to get for the troops (at least in swing states), or they'll have gone the way of the Delorean. Better ROV (Return On Volunteer) time.

Real Time Voter Status, end-to-end.

"Has Ms. Smith at 123 Acme Court in Sparks, Nevada, voted yet?" Getting her to the polls in 2004 involved 5 distinct persuasive activities:

1. Phone bankers that called.
2. Canvassers that knocked on the door. And dispatchers.
3. Online callers that emailed, IM'd, or texted customized reminders.
4. People who staged and delivered atoms. Postal mail, door hangers, yard signs.
5. Precinct watchers that were supposed to update voter data, quickly run or uploaded to a central system.
6. Helpers. Child/elder care. Rides. Translations.   

Bad data all around (like I can't count). Stale. Wrong.

Result? Redundant and wasted effort. Visits and calls to people who'd already voted. 25 phone banks (both the physical ones and the distributed virtuals ones) calling the same person before noon.

Strategy? Systems akin to FedEx's and UPS's. Everyone in the supply chain, everyone with resources to allocate (their own or someone else's) needs current information on the product, a CRM view of past and planned touchpoints.

The mechanics can be reduced to data standards, web services, security. All things we can know how to do. Two things we can do now:

1. A spec for registrars to publishing vote status. Perhaps Atom or RSS plus a namespace?
2. A location-aware ping server.

These are enough for us to build tools to get, filter, organize and route the data. Lots of innovation is possible with this

The mechanics are easy compared to the organizational issues.

• Willingness to share information.
• Ability to protect privacy.
• 20 thousand local laws and regulations.
• Conflicts of interest between a neutral role as a registrar and service to the political party.

The GOTV teams need voter status right up to the moment a vote is cast.

Even more important, we need the voter to be able to see this information too. Transparency brings self service, participation, and a High ROV.

Bullshit Detector.

Beep! Sorry, maam, but you clearly can leave your soap opera to come vote. Boop! Sorry, sir, I don't think she's sleeping right now. Bing! Thanks for voting! By and large, really nice people, but they don't want to be bothered, and lie to get you to go. Sorry, but your cat can wait for dinner for an hour while you vote. 

Merit Badges.

Just In Time bite-sized political training, please.

Titles I want:

• "Explaining why, even though this is the most important election of your life, you shouldn't drive drunk to the polls"
• "Warm up exercises for canvassers"
• "How to remove bumperstickers without damaging your car"
• "Keeping off 'campaign weight' without diet drugs"
• "What to do when a voter answers the door with a shotgun" (really happened to a fellow canvasser in Sparks)
• "Getting a voter dressed for the polls"
• "First aid for cold weather exposure"
• "How to charge your cellphone using static electricity"
• "Talking someone into giving you office space for a phone bank"
• "How to speak with non-political family members without turning them off"
• "How to unsubscribe from a political mailing list"
• "8 Reasons Not To Date Within The Campaign and Why That Never Stops Anyone"
• "How to say 'Nevada' like a Nevadan even when you're one of those crazies from California"

By 2012 I want my learning:

• ongoing, in small knowledge nuggets, fun, and acknowledged.
• to build from one topic to the next, be organized, and be sharable.
• to be something anyone can make, from scratch or built on other's work.
• creation supported by volunteers who're strong where I need help, skills like illustration, animation, sound, music, test design, writing, pedagogy, or bias checking.
• social, so I can find and talk with others who've taken the same material. And be found.

There is a great joy in the craft of helping your fellow citizens participate in democracy, in something bigger than ourselves, yet for ourselves. All of these technologies are about helping the average volunteer get more satisfaction and be more effective.

The Innovation Case for 527s

Compare the 527 explosion (proliferation of a type of political organization, not an airplane disaster) to Judge Green's 1984 breakup of AT&T.

The results are eeriliy similar.

Green broke up the one and only phone company, AT&T, the trusted and ubiquitous Ma Bell. His ruling split local phone service into Regional Bell Operating Companies, and kept long distance under a smaller AT&T company. It was scary. Many predicted disaster.   

But things got better. For everyone.

There was more innovation, customer responsiveness, competition, and focus. Stock prices zoomed by an order of magnitude as profits grew. Smaller size resulted in less bureaucracy. Customers got new services, like voice mail. I'm smoothing over the details and setbacks, but that's the gist.

Decentralization of control created opportunity.

So what about 527 groups? 

You would think the Democratic Party would be fantastic at core competencies. Register voters, get out the vote, and move like-minded citizens up the ladder of political participation. Yeah, right. Not in the last century.

So 527s like MoveOn and America Coming Together stepped in to fill gaps in the political marketplace. Gaps left by unions and the parties. 

By specializing, by focusing, by innovating, they exceeded expectations. How? For one thing, they are free from wrestling the entrenched bureacracy of the Democratic National Committee or the dinosaurs that jumped on the John Kerry for President bandwagon. For another, 527s picked their own goals, tried their own strategies, and lived or died by their effectiveness and adaptability. You don't read much about them, but many stumbled in their bid for money or volunteers, stalled by the side of the road.

Where's the competition between 527s and the parties?

They compete for resources (volunteers and contributions) across two criteria. Alignment and Competence, hearts and minds. Competence is the best indicator of return on time and money. You put your money where you think it will do the most good. And you give more if a group's values and issues and style fit yours. Do you go to the generic phone bank run by your party every 48 months? Or do you go to the monthly phone bank targeting districts with a strong environmentalist in play? Which one is more likely to have clean data, well-crafted scripts, modern phones, and a prepared leader? If you're a tree-hugger, you get to follow your heart and be assured your time's well spent.

This isn't bad for the party any more than it was bad for AT&T. The party and the Kerry campaign stepped up, cherry picking good ideas for their site and field operations from those used by 527s. The DNC is being pushed faster and harder by outside groups in its own backyard than by the GOP. So it's a better competitor this time around.

We'll see what the FEC and the courts have to say about whether 527s continue after the 2004 election. But this decentralization is breathing new life, innovation, inclusion, and entrepreneurship into the practice of politics. It's healthy. Let's work for it.

The Four Legs of the Political Blogosphere

Riccardo "Bru" Cambiassi interviewed me on 20 October 2004 in preparation for a talk he's giving. Here's the transcript of our chat: 

Riccardo Cambiassi: Hi Phil! I'll be speaking at a conference here in Italy about blogs.My topic's blog and activism. Obviously I'd like to cover also u.s. elections...so I thought of you. if you can give me a very very brief snapshot of how's that going from a blogger/activist point of view.

Phil Wolff: Let me try to divide this up into parts.

First, we have the Alpha Bloggers that are political. Daily traffic in the 10k-100k range. They are becoming focal points, on both sides, for fundraising and for media criticism. They are part of "the Air War" that has traditionally been television advertising.

On the fundraising side, Daily Kos readers have donated more than $500k to political campaigns through his site. http://www.dailykos.com/.

On the media criticism side, we had bloggers take apart incorrect evidence in a CBS News story that attacked George W. Bush, forcing a retraction.

Next, we have blogging as part of the campaigns. Kerry and Bush staff have blogs on their sites, but so do Senate and local campaigns.

When done properly, their role seems to be to tell the unfolding daily story of the campaign, to find new emotional connections, and to help readers connect with the candidates and their families.

Bru: Yes. What's your perception on it? Do you reckon it was useful to make Kerry / Bush feel more "close" to the people or not?

Phil: Mrs. Edwards recently posted to blog.JohnKerry.com. It was great. It helped us pick up her conversational style, and to hear what life is like from a candidate's wife's viewpoint. (John Edwards is running for Vice President with Kerry).

Candidate blogs are also useful in helping volunteers and supporters understand and respond to new issues (and non-issues). It is a way of the campaign telling their followers where to pay attention and why.

Bru: Example of "where to pay attention and why"?

Phil: Electoral campaigns go through three major stages:

1. creating visibility for their candidate (why am i running? who am i?),
2. positioning (why am i better than the other guy), and
3. closure (take action now).

In the first stage, it is all information and recruiting loyal volunteers and endorsements.

In the second it is about messaging and spreading word of the campaign through social networks.

In the third stage, it all about field work. Voter registration. Getting out the vote. Election watch.

As you add each new layer, you have to redirect the energy of your volunteers and orient them to the new work.

You also need to provide feedback and validation that their work is meaningful.

Bru: That sounds definitely quite a good work to be done by blogs!

Phil: Well, it is communication. So you use multiple channels. A combination of weblogs, email, and the tools you put on your web site. Have you ever looked at http://volunteer.johnkerry.com/? They have a dashboard where you can pick different activities to do. That mix of tools has changed as the campaign evolved.

Bru: No, but I'll be there at once!

Phil: Local blogs are playing a useful role too. I'd say they are the third leg of the political blogging table. http://eastbaykerry.com/ for example, is now not conversational at all. It is a channel that answers "What can I do?". The site, started in October 2003, used to be about stage 1 and stage 2 communication. Lots of personality, analysis, context, reporting, etc. Community building.

Now it is entirely focused on GOTV (get out the vote) work.

I think the fourth leg of the blogging table are the voices of independent bloggers, any blogger that has a political thought. Some studies show that nearly all bloggers are read by 5-15 people. Often friends, family,and work colleagues. But the tail of the Power Curve may have more influence than all the other parts. As we talk about the issues that concern us personally.

Bru: OK, so for "local blogs" you mean just those that represent local "active"communities, while independent blogs are the casual (or not so casual) private bloggers that express their political inclinations.

Phil: Right. Local groups. Not the national campaigns. http://oakdems.blogspot.com/

Bru: Yeah, I agree. And then the "tail" elements probably will lead their 5-15 readers toward the alpha-blogger opinion leaders...

Phil: The tail may not even know about the Alpha bloggers. And they may not be talking about the candidates. They may just be talking about much they hate the war, or how much they need a job, or how worried they are about ... something.

Here's the thing: the four legs aren't new. They've always been there in some other form.It's just that blogging makes the communication a) asynchronous (I don't have to be watching live TV to hear the candidate, b) personal, c) measurable (traffic stats, link stats, money), and d) more memetic (easier to spread ideas).

The other big difference is that the communications are omni-directional. You can leave a comment on Senator Kerry's blog, or the blog of your next door neighbor.

Combined with 1-1 email and with email listservs, just about anyone can get involved and make a difference.

Bru: Yeah, that's something that really changes from the past. Well, not really, but makes it much easier to get into it.

###

Wanted: Democracy University and Kerry College.

We're desperately in need of training and testing materials that prepare writers, speakers, hosts, media relations pros, local endorsement seekers, et al. These come in two subjects:

"Product knowledge"

• the candidate's biography
• the first lady's biography
• accomplishments on 20 issues, and the 100 day action plan
• the 300 questions most asked on the street, and answers
• how to debunk the 25 most common lies or misunderstandings
• power phrases and language of this campaign
• 6 elevator pitches for Kerry and how to deliver them

"Field skills"

• The volunteer lifecycle: How to recruit a volunteer, and slowly move them up the ladder of involvement
• Recruiting skilled talent for projects
• Managing burnout
• Resolving personality conflicts
• Working with minors: special concerns
• How to budget your local committee's activities
• How to communicate effectively within your committee
• How to lead an effective meeting
• Raising money for local operating costs
• Grassroots and Volunteer fundraising - basics, intermediate, advanced
• Debating skills
• Local press relations
• Leading a writers bureau
• Leading a speakers bureau
• Leading a new media (blogs, forums, videos, audio) bureau
• Working with local labor
• Working with local elected officials
• Working with church groups
• Leading a street team
• Leading affinity groups: X for Kerry

Why?

We need to improve the quality of grassroots representation and leadership in a way that:

• Doesn't cost volunteers much beyond copying costs
• Keeps knowledge modular, so volunteers can learn just in time
• Provides common ground for volunteers
• Supports both Spanish and English

So that:

• We are effective advocates for John Kerry and the Democratic Party
• We are effective organizers of local volunteers and donors
• We provide a smooth "career path" within grassroots ranks
• Our grassroots organizations can grow as fast as volunteers come aboard

We need these in the form of training kits. Some combination of instructor guides, student workbooks, quizzes, audio tapes/mp3s, video tapes/dvds/quicktimes. We'll need editions for printing out and others for interactive instruction via web.

It's not just the content, it's the structure and pedagogy. There's a whole practice of curriculum development that puts knowledge into formats that work, that take advantage of the psychology of adult learning. I'm sure we can recruit a dozen volunteers, corporate trainers and professors of education, to put this together. There's also the profession of Instructional Technology that specializes in the software for delivering the curriculum.

The branding could be fun: Democracy University. Kerry College.

Decentralization tactics in the Kerry Campaign?

Mena Trott asks: How are you using the tool? To elect John Kerry. Specifically, here's how I want to use it:

1. I want to set up a weblog for every meetup-zone in the United States, at least one per county. Say 500 or so. A zone like Alameda County in California has seven or eight John Kerry meetups.
2. I want to invite local Kerry volunteers to take editorial control of each one. Most areas have 5-50 local leaders who chair meetups.
3. I want them to invite as many local people as make sense to use the blogs. East Bay Kerry (a TypePad weblog) has more than 60 volunteers in its writers bureau, 10 in media relations, 50 in the speakers bureau, and committee chairs with events to publish and promote.
4. As their groups grow, and many of them now have hundreds of volunteers, I want them to create sister weblogs for working groups and committees and projects. Our local Swing State Initiate could use its own presence to improve Coordination, Collaboration, and Communication both within the team and with other teams around the country.
5. I want to see them with common categories, the better to aggregate after the fact.
6. I want to create plug-ins to all the blogs to create special data structures for events. Events are the most important web content we create. They draw attention, get people out of the house, and create urgency. Event features we need, including the ability
   • to have an event post followed by a regular post followed by an event post (not in separate blogs),
   • to generate vcalendar and Apple iCalendar files for export,
   • to sort by date of event (vs. blog post date),
   • to filter-in events within a range of dates (e.g., today-1 to today+45)
   • to wrap in RSS/Atom feeds
7. I want to add a ping server for these blogs, the better to run an aggregator and newsreader
8. I want geocoding of blogs and posts and feeds, the better to find nearby blogs.
9. I want domain names for each of these blogs.
10. I want support for moblogging (quite popular among Kerry folks in Los Angeles)
11. I want blog-to-email setups that also set up locally admin'd list serves.
12. I want blog admins to be able to communicate with their authors. The user account UI should let you send an email to all/selected active/registered users of a given weblog. "Dear bloggers, we're going to write about how oil prices are affecting us in greater Canton, Ohio."
13. I want TypePad-like TypeLists for MT that can be created/edited by other authors. Photos, link lists, book lists, etc.
14. I want a user account API, so other systems can automate account creation and updates. One registration should get let you join a private wiki, subscribe to a listserve, and become a blog author.

There's more, but you get the idea. Grassroots work calls for collaboration (events, comments), communication (blog, email), and coordination (project blogs, wikis).

Rapid Response: Memetic Engineering in the 2004 Presidential Campaign

Initiative. Voice. Democracy.

We got'em.

We're gonna use'em.

John Kerry's Media Corps is a new site on JK.com.

http://www.johnkerry.com/onlinehq/mediacorps/

So let me tell you about the Rapid Response Model, how Kerry's Media Corps builds on it, and what makes this a beta release.

The Rapid Response Model

Most of the money in this election will be spent on television ads.

Every presidential campaign staff has a political director and a communications director. Typically a political director picks the ideas, issues, facts, and positions that will win voters to the candidate and money for the campaign. Then the communications staff wraps them up in events for the media to cover, things for voters to read, oratory for the candidate to propound, and all the other stuff that gets the word out. Advertising and branding, product management and media relations. Promotion.

Campaign communications are dynamic.

Hot items in the press change a campaign's message strategy hourly. For example, right now Rumsfeld is defending his performance in Iraq instead of attacking Kerry's war record. While a candidate's staff is small and agile enough to respond to attacks, it's not enough. Once leveled, an attack can fester in the air for weeks. And character attacks are best fought by anyone but the candidate.

That brings us to "rapid response."

Rapid Response has four parts:

 
1. Prepare
 
2. Detect
 
3. Respond
 
4. Feedback

Preparations include:

 
• Write, edit and test talking points
 
• Recruit a cadre of first responders
 
• List traditional media channels by locale
 
• Write procedures for responding to each channel/program/publication.
 
• Building training materials for effective response
 
• Set up a database of responders

Detection in three steps:

 
1. Notice an attack, through surveillance.
 
2. Report the attack to your rapid response network
 
3. Prioritize the attack.

The US has about 300 million citizens, about 106 million voted in the 2000 general election [US Census Bureau]. There are tens of thousands of newspapers, radio stations, television channels, mailing lists, and web sites. Two "free" strategies:

 
• Volunteers adopt a program/publication. "Mike will read the Business   Section of the Miami Herald."
 
• Automated clipping services, like   Google News Alerts.

Response. Every attack should be met with a swift and effective response. Prioritize only when you don't have the resources to respond everywhere. When you choose among multiple attacks, watch for the attacks which:

 
• are coordinated,
 
• reach a bigger audience,
 
• are authentic,
 
• are more potent, or
 
• open a new channel or issue.

Join fights:

 
• You can win.
 
• Where you can be seen or heard.
 
• Where you need to learn something from the engagement.

Response has three steps:

 
1. Assign. It doesn't make sense for everyone to respond to the same thing.   Make sure your response team covers all the attacks worthy of response, and   that people are matched to the assignment.
 
2. Draft. Every attack is a little different. So tailor your response.
 
3. Engage. Mail the letter, call the show, post to the bulletin board.

Feedback serves four goals:

 
• Risk assessment. Attacks going unchallenged? Attacks with disruptive   potential?
 
• Message improvement. What's working? What isn't?
 
• Resource allocation. Where should we drive volunteer time and attention?
 
• Channel/medium profiling. What can we learn about media outlets to improve   our effectiveness?

Prepare. Detect. Respond. Learn.

The John Kerry Media Corps

Embracing the decentralization message, volunteers put together the Dean Rapid Response Network in 2003. Last week John Kerry's staff launched the Media Corps, their first cut at rapid response.

Components:

 
• For each message (presumed weekly)
     
  • An assignment
     
  • A deadline
     
  • Background
     
  • Feedback email link
   
   
 
• Other tools
     
  • Research materials on the assignment
     
  • Recent television ads
     
  • Link to the D-Bunker (removed after the first week)
     
  • Tips for     writers and     callers
   
   

That's the anatomy. What's the whole?

 
1. Media Corps is a boundary communication channel. It   pushes memes to volunteers. The campaign's politics and communications teams   design messages. Media Corps throws them over the wall.
 
2. Media Corps is an end run past the political press corps. It tells   volunteers to take the memes and run with them. To local media. To audience   participation channels. To letter writing and other P2P channels. Can you   spell disintermediation?
 
3. Media Corps is a memetic amplifier, making messages   louder and reaching further. No longer are TV ads the only place   you're likely to experience the campaign's message. The community reinforces   broadcast memes with their own versions. This improves what advertisers call   reach and penetration. 
 
4. Media Corps minimizes memetic drift, keeping   volunteers on point. Its centralized and standardized seed   message is the reference version. Unlike a game of "telephone" where   messengers garble the message, Media Corps always gives a public point of   origin.
 
5. Media Corps is a localization strategy, tailoring   messages. Politics remains local. No   national message works everywhere. Most advertising is wasted just trying to   find its audience, let alone delivering the right message. Volunteers   translate
 
6. Media Corps is a memetic biodiversity play, a lab   for new ideas. Media Corps pushes its memes   through thousands of channels, each reinventing the message. Some versions   will spread further, survive longer, and have more impact than others. No   single campaign office or market research firm can imagine or test all the   variations the way the Media Corps can.

Why does it matter?

 
• Money. Every minute of "free media" is a   minute more trusted than advertising. But the payoff is dollars that don't   have to be raised.
 
• Message Innovation. Marketing sciences   are all about developing the right sequence, timing, and presentation of the   right messages for the right people. The right message is the hard part. Media   Corps is a force multiplier for the communication team.   
 
• Measurable Results. Powering the feedback   loop. Managerial gold. 

Challenges?

 
• Deeper-memes. Can you build a sequence of   messages that assert an underlying value or point? For example, can   "competence" and "character" be built in to how we talk about economy,   environment, security?   
 
• Listen well to feedback. Listening doesn't scale, that's why we vote. And   why we summarize. You need a combination of structured ("on a scale of 1 to   5...") and unstructured ("What did you say?") input.
 
• Positive Reinforcement. Bring volunteers back for new message cycles.   Acknowledge people and teams for effort, creativity, and results.
 
• Experiment with the Process. This means   consciously trying messages and talking points with different characteristics.   How many words can fit in the bumpersticker version? What's the best day of   the week to launch a campaign? Best time of day? Can we run two at once? Four   at once? Does it have to be a whole week, or can we run one from start to   finish in 48 hours? Test. Measure. Test again.
 
• Tailored Experiences. Support both high and low energy volunteers.
 
• Speed. Keep the cycles short. Look to IM and   SMS for alerting to new threats.
 
• Memory. Help volunteers expose successes and   failures to each other.
 
• Quick Help. Attacks aren't homogenous. In   addition to research for this week's campaign, put response research for the   25 most common attacks, and 5 responses on each issue.
 
• Training. Build volunteer knowledge and   skill. It's summer: recruit 50 high school teachers to craft tutorials on each   issue, on each medium. Interview successful writers and callers for their   story. Feed lessons learned back to the volunteers. 
 
• Attack. Initiate an issue. Seed the   conversation. See how long it takes for big media to pick up a meme. See how   long other groups take to respond, both friends and foes. Change the rhythm,   put opponents off-balance.

From HQ to volunteers to the mediasphere.

Talking points.

Issues of the day.

Attacks recorded.

And the tools to put them to use.

We have five months
    to bring the message
        through the volunteers
            to the voters.

A hypothetical Bridge Commission

No grassroots organization is an island.

We are in an ecology of groups.

These are my imaginings of the role and operation of a NorCal Kerry Bridge Department.

• Harvest new institutional relationships that can add value to the campaign. (Build bridges)
• Sustain those relationships through communication, activity, and reciprocal support. (Keep bridges)
• Exploit relationships to accomplish campaign goals, in concert with other departments of NorCal Kerry. (Use bridges)
• Retire relationships when they are no longer of use. (Close bridges)

There are hundreds of relationships to manage, just in the Bay Area. I imagine your recruiting volunteers to establish committees to manage the bridge life cycles for specific types of orgs.