Always say thank you, part II

The PR Media Blog has a short piece by Thomas Gensemer of Blue State Digital, Obama's web company:

... it had a simple strategy behind it all - find your support, recruit them, give them something to do and then say thank you. And by repeating these steps, changing the calls to action, and monitoring how each user responds, the campaign quickly built an organization of unpredicted scale and commitment to Barack Obama.

Always remember to say thank you

Obama is aware that one of the first things you should do after a campaign is to thank your friends. So he through a ball for party staff - with Jay Z performing I've got 99 problems but a Bush ain't one.

Nate Silverman's description of what it means to be a volunteer member of staff is superb:

Young people generally perform paid campaign work, because the hours are absurd and the pay is marginal. For the vast majority, no job sits waiting at the end of the rainbow. Only the few make it through multiple “cycles,” the term for a campaign period. It is grueling on the body. Other areas of life are suspended or simply dropped. A campaign becomes all-encompassing. From the day you start until at least Election Day, it’s an all-day, every-day job. The sacrifices are sometimes hidden and private, little things you did that only you or maybe one or two who were right there will ever know or appreciate. And it all happens with the possibility that you won’t ultimately win.

Vodcast in PR Week on Obama's campaigning

I've been interviewed for PR Week this week on what Barack Obama's campaigning means for the British government.

The interview can be found here.

My Society

My Society are the most inspiring bunch of internet geeks you could hope to come across.

They sum it up rather neatly:

200,000 people have written to their MP for the first time, over 8,000 potholes and other broken things have been fixed, nearly 9,000,000 signatures have been left on petitions to the Prime Minister...

Fixmystreet, one of their best projects, is simple and effective. You leave your complaint, the council deals with it, and MySociety logs their success (or failure). I can, for instance, see that 100 metres from my front door somebody has reported a badly lit alley, and the council has promised to fix it.