NTEN: Putting feet on the virtual (and real) street

<p>This session includied GReg Nelson from CTSG and Sheeraz from Get Active and Adam from move.on. The talk is ranging around from The MoveOn Bake sales to get active's clients work. I didn't find much take aways from this, other than that when you do virtual organizing you need to do LOTS of meat space organizing to go along with it. Coming from a traditional grassroots organizing background, this wasn't a major lesson.</p> <p>That there is a bar (barrier) to action, if people don't see others taking the lead in online action, they are not likely to take action (or leadership in the action) themselves, but once a few poeple (relative to the size of the action you are looking for) take that action, more people will then take that action. MoveOn's bake sale campaign followed this model.</p> <p>Also, important to give people feedback on their action, after they take action, let them know what it did. If it had no effect, ot not the desired effect, the "failure" needs to be reframed and future goals need to be adjusted to be slightly more "realistic".</p> <p>I just asked a question about traditional grassroots organizers dismissing online activism.<br /> Greg says there IS no substuted for the f2f meat space stuff, but that the online work can augment that, and the efficiency of reaching out on the web is the key.<br /> Adam agrees that there is this problematic dicotomy of thought in the realm of organizing (online vs traditions grass roots) the two can be blended well because of the speed and scaleability of using the internet.</p> <p>He also says a good way to sort out the crazies when soliciting super vols is to ask them to write a short essay, or statement about why they would be good for the role that they are applying for.</p>