Youmashtube

Youmashtube is a great website for entertainment.

It takes feeds off Youtube and creates a custom video channel for you - so you can simply listen / watch lots of videos in a row.

Particularly useful for your own custom music channel or watching long speeches in one go.

Currently I'm using it to catch up on the music of Betty Davis, an under appreciated musical genius. If you haven't heard of her she introduced Miles Davis (her husband) to Jimi Hendrix.

Hazel Blears on campaigning

Quite a good bit of advice on campaigning by Hazel Blears on the Progress website:

Make campaigning fun. Campaigning is like sex – if you’re not enjoying it, you’re not doing it right. It should never be a drudge. Make sure there’s plenty of meals, drinks, social events, and a campaign HQ with plenty of tea and biscuits. Tap into the enthusiasm of young people with blitzing and street stalls. High energy, high impact, low cost.

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.

What will an Obama Presidency look like?

Why having ten million friends means a very different sort of Presidency

Almost all the commentary on Barack Obama’s election has focused on his skin colour. His background as an inner city community organiser will be far more important to his style of governing.

In 1985, fresh out of university, Obama spent three years working as a community organiser in the Southside of Chicago. It was a deeply unglamorous, badly paid, job. In his words:

“Sometimes I called a meeting, and nobody showed up. Sometimes we tried to hold politicians accountable, and they didn't show up. I couldn't tell whether I got more out of it than this neighbourhood [but]… I grew up to be a man, right here, in this area. "

His time there gave him a powerful sense that people can’t have solutions given to them by politicians, but have to learn how to take power for themselves. Obama was careful to train organisers from the community, and let them take control for themselves.

Obama’s old colleagues and community members universally remember that Obama always looked for common ground, even when it involved working with his opponents. While he was willing to openly challenge incompetent politicians, for instance taking a large group of residents on a bus one day to the city hall to demand the removal of asbestos, he always did so politely.

So what might this translate to in the White House?

More than anything Obama recognises that a political movement, rather than the one-off election campaigns constructed by most politicians, lives and dies on inspiration and continual communications.

Obama’s email list now consists of around 10 million people, of whom 2 million have given money to his campaign. And he’s still communicating with them, asking them their opinions and telling them what he’s doing.

In parallel to his political campaign Obama has set up a government campaign, so that his time in office can use the same campaigning techniques that his election campaign did. The transition team is making an unprecedented effort to collect supporters email addresses, so that President Obama will be able to continue communicating with millions of Americans every week. When difficult legislation on issues such as climate change and health is introduced to Congress Obama will be able to make his case directly, without using the media, to millions of voters, so that they put pressure on their congressmen.

The desire to involve, not just tell, is also clear from looking at the transition team’s website. At the top of the page is a box inviting visitors to get involved in helping victims of California’s wild fires. A traditional politician would visit, announce some aid and leave. Obama will also visit, and announce solutions, but we can be sure that President Obama will also be continually asking the American people to become part of the solution.