Validation

[cos]

Yesterday I got an unexpected boost for a job well done last year.

You may recall that I spent half of last year as John Bonifaz's campaign blogger and internet person (that link is my LJ post where I link to some of my blog posts that I liked most). We got some good press for our online campaigning, in a campaign that was otherwise mostly ignored by the press. The Boston Phoenix had an article about blogging that said:

Only John Bonifaz, running against Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin in the Democratic primary, comes close to the real thing. According to campaign manager Juan Martinez, Bonifaz has "the only statewide campaign with a full-time blogger." And it shows. Bonifaz's campaign blog has all the proper accoutrements of the medium, [...]

In an article about campaign use of YouTube, they wrote "the real video savant this election year is John Bonifaz", and it got picked up in other papers far away. The only time we got a front page article in the Boston Globe was with a blog-driven story.

The campaign ended when incumbent Bill Galvin predictably won the Democratic primary last September.

Yesterday evening I went to this talk about Darfur * by a Wellesley professor who is also the UNDP's staff historian. After the talk, while some of us were milling around to chat with him, he asked me what I do, and when I mentioned that I worked on John Bonifaz's campaign last year he nodded in recognition. This is pretty close to how the conversation went from there:

me: Did you ever read the web site?
him: Yes
me: I was his blogger ...
him: You were good! His campaign used the Internet really well...
me: I was the Internet person, I posted the YouTube videos, ...
him: Wow. That was a good example of a campaign and issue I probably wouldn't have paid a lot of attention to, or given money to, if you hadn't used the Internet so well.

His wife apparently works at MIT on something related to "new media" and she had also been watching us for how a campaign can use the net well.

* A reminder to call your 2 Senators, Representative, and the White House about this (again, if you haven't done so recently). There is still a genocide going on, for over three years now, and the US could be doing more - would be doing more, if they knew people were paying attention. The International Criminal Court just brought two indictments a few days ago against some of the key organizers of the genocide, which would be a lot more effective if the ICC's legitimacy weren't being undermined by the US, so when you call, you might also mention supporting the ICC (or at least ceasing to undermine it) as one way the US can help.

Comments

Well done!!

[regorfa.livejournal.com]

The next step has to be translating an effective internet campaign into the larger frame of grassroots campaigning. The Bonifaz campaign, to me, signaled that even with the *best* "netroots" campaigning, you need the 1-2 punch of the strong & broad grassroots as well. How do we effectively bridge that? To be honest, I never really expected Bonifaz to win, but I was surprised that he didn't dig into Galvin's numbers a bit more.

Re: Well done!!

[cos]

I was not that surprised, just disappointed because I had hoped for more and he could've done more. The real problem, actually, was money. If I had not run out of my saved money I'd have been able to start right in January and work full time; or of Bonifaz had had enough money to pay me enough that I didn't need to hunt for contracts and do them, I could also have started right in January and worked full time. I'm pretty sure I could have done much much more to organize for Bonifaz if I'd started three months earlier and been able to devote all my time to it. Also, he'd have been able to run a few ads which would've brought a lot more people to the web site. But he just couldn't afford ads or me to the extent necessary to make the most of it :(

I have a lot of ideas about how to connect online and grassroots campaigning, and I've tried some of them out. I wish I'd had a chance to go all out with those things on the Bonifaz campaign, but I didn't. I did get to talk to a bunch of people at the Deval Patrick campaign a year earlier (Dec 2004 - Feb 2005) about how to use the net well and combine it with grassroots, and perhaps if I'd signed on for the Patrick campaign I would've had my opportunity, but a) I was more fired up about Bonifaz' issues, and b) by late 2005 it looked like Patrick was gonna get the talented people he needed whether I joined him or not, and I thought I could make a much bigger difference for Bonifaz. The Patrick campaign *did* put a lot of the things I suggested into practice - I don't know if it's because of the conversations I had with them or if it might've happened anyway - so I saw some of those things working well for a campaign that had the money to make them work well.

With MassForDean in 2003/2004 we had a lot of success without much money, and as statewide meetup coordinator I did combine online activity with grassroots action. However, a) I had lots of money saved up such that I let myself volunteer full time that whole year, without getting paid; and b) the Dean campaign itself did have enough money to run ads and get people interested, and those people fed into our online & offline activities.

Re: Well done!!

[regorfa.livejournal.com]

Are you talking about personal money or campaign money? Because the problem is obviously both.

I had hoped, I suppose, that with such a good understanding of the how to work the internet, that small internet donations wouldn't be far behind.

Re: Well done!!

[cos]

People who have enough of their own money to work full time for 6 months or a year without any pay are rare, so mainly it's a problem of the campaign not having enough to hire enough staff.

Small internet donations are great once people know about you, but that's a circular problem: If only I'd started in January and worked full time and if Bonifaz could've also hired the IT guy full time so he could add donation meters and other features I asked for... then I probably could've raised Bonifaz's online profile early enough to get a lot more donations.

Re: Well done!!

[regorfa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much the cycle I had thought you were implying.

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

wow, that's a nice boost! Congratulations on the recognition and on doing such a good job!

[cos]

Thanks!

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

Hey, cos. Nothing to do with the post, but I'm still waiting on a reply from you regarding the poly MX. Please, could you reply to the message if you got it, or email me to let me know if you didn't? I really want to shut the server down within a week.

[drwex]

Cool beans! Now if it just translates into something concrete...