I was doing a bit of work for the NOI. I thought I would revisit this old blog post on campaign and political ideas to see how the Internet has come in providing these tools from scratch. The original post is from October 2003.
1. Self-organizing batch email tool by location (Not Done)
2. Self-organizing phonebanking tools (Advokit - Progress but Not Done. Shows promise needs money)
3. "Bugzilla" for issue identification, policy drafting and ranking (Listible? or Basecamp for Online volunteers)
4. Karma system for blog comment filtering (not done. Why not. Why can't typepad or wordpress allow commenters to filter and score each others comments?)
5. Distributed media production room for multi-media projects (like steve johnsons suggestion) (Oneworld or ?)
6. Clear talking points volunteers (distributing spokespeople) ( Campaigns are getting better on this but still pretty bad)
7. Reminder system to step-by-step participation focus on little things to help ("write your grandma") (Not Done)
8. Ability for the user to opt off all snail mail. User defines methods of communications. (Rare)
9. A way to create small "working groups" or forums where supporters could organize ( Basecamp or campfire potential)
10. Webcams in key offices (rare)
11. Ability of anyone to download and print ANY of the allied literature and posters (never seen it)
12. Lots of UI wish list (calendar, timeline, etc. Easy universal login and profille) (Drupal and lots of WEB2.0 apps will help here)
13. Photos and details on key activists (drupal has really nice user set up_
14. Discussion forum and email listserve
15. Outlook address list upload, FOAF (Forward track is getting there as is linked In - needs to be done in a campain universe)
16. Audio and music files available to download for events..greatest hits and speeches (I have seen more of this..but still to rare..everyone can now play these so they should be a no brainier)
17. Use of guest host, speakers and bloggers (more popular these days)
18. "lunch for Dean" dragging a lunch crew into the issues. (NA)
19. Distributed door knocking tools to create walking list (lots of apps here but I don't know if any of them were ever opened for others to use)
20. Collective document creation (whiteboard and Wiki) It is rare to see campaigns work with these)
21. The continued random acts of associated kindness (dean food program) (Hopefully, we see more of this but I am on a few 06 lists but no one asks non political action yet)
22. Distributed list of elected officials to lobby for endorsements. (I have not seen this deployed yet even at a local level)
23. Distributed Media Outreach tools (I am building these! )
It is a shame we have not made more progress over the last 2 + years to pull these tools together for self-organizing groups.
Link: Network-Centric Advocacy: "Free" Network Tools Wisdom from the Dean Blog.
Jon Stahl pointed out this fantastic thread on Howard Dean's campaign blog, his supporters from around the country (173 comments so far) are dropping great tips for online organizing tools. They already have one of the most successful social toolsets built to date. Dean is dominating the battle for web dominance. In a very open way, they used a thread to harvest ideas and energy from supporters.
