10:30 Friday session with Wendy Harman, George ??, and Aaron Smith – moderated by Marcia Stepanek. (I’ll try to get the slides up soon from Marcia too)
Slacktivism has a mixed and debated history.
Lots of folks see slacktivism as superficial.
“What plagues most slacktivism campaigns is their unrealistic assumption that, given enough awareness, all problems are solvable” -Evgeny Morozov
Evgeny’s article on the topic set off a flurry of discussion on the Progressive Exchange list.
Examples:
- Project NOAH
- Free Rice Game
- Invisible People -> un-stereotyping
- Armchair Revolutionary – a social game
- Do Something – teen activism program with over 35K active users – encourages on the ground action.
25% of online population is participating in online civic actions and participatory civic culture.
Wendy – shares that she was having a crisis before the earthquake. Red Cross had great presence, but she still felt that people weren’t  meaningfully involved. The mgive text2give program restored her faith, though who knows if it’s replicable. This is a great reminder of the importance of being present before a crisis.
Discussion of the importance of collecting data as you engage with people.
~5% of the 100,000+ Haiti text donors opted in to receive future communications from Red Cross.
Qs from Marcia: What’s a safe bet, the top two things that are sellable to higher-ups to do things differently?
George – the idea that followers are potential money, votes, tangible results. What works. Demonstrate where involved people came from.
Wendy – Facebook Fans doubled and Twitter Followers tripled after Haiti, but what does that mean really? Almost nothing unless you figure out how things connect to and fulfill your mission.
Aaron – Inform people for five minutes a day. If you can engage people meaningfully for a short period you are filling a need and on the right track.
Marcia – Important to be crowd-wise. Chose the right tools for the right task, experiment, start slowly, measure, iterate for success, and keep it fun.
Wendy on ROI – keep stakeholders’ goals in mind and your own ROI will be met. Listen and be part of every conversation going on. Use the tools and live in the communities where you issues are being discussed. (If you can do that and stay sane! There’s another #10ntc session for that.) I pressed Wendy on that a bit and her thought was that you better staff up and get equipped to enter all those conversations if you aren’t already. Make it a business priority.
George – think 90% story, 10% tool
Book recommendations – Zilch, Clay Shirky’s – Here Comes Everybody, Marcia’s – Swarms
