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Reflections on the Web of Change Conference

A couple of weeks ago, I took a plane, train, rental car, ferry, water taxi, and sea plane (no kidding) getting to and from Cortes Island in beautiful British Columbia.  I ran that transportation gauntlet to attend the Web of Change conference at Hollyhock, a one-of-a-kind convening of great minds committed to social change, held in a one-of-a-kind place.

Officially, “Web of Change connects the foremost thinkers and do-ers in social media, technology, and social change. Together we are growing a community of leaders working for transformation of our organizations and our world.”  It is a conference of progressive tech geeks – people working for social change by leveraging opportunities presented by technology.  The people there were brilliant, committed, and breaking new ground.   They included some of the impressive folks at ONE Northwest, a nonprofit dedicated to helping environmental organizations in the pacific northwest have a bigger impact on policy, and Jason Barnett, an activist forging a new model for citizen journalism at The Uptake in Minnesota.  Representatives from organizations like Conservation International and 350.org intermingled with hard core political types like the incomparable Joaquin Guerra of SEIU and Adam Morecai of Advomatic, a firm figuring out innovative ways for organizations to connect activists with their elected officials (among other things).  Of the ninety-plus people there, I didn’t meet any I didn’t learn from.

As someone a little bit out of the tech geek circle – I’m a political strategist, organizer and communications specialist first, and an online aficionado only insofar as online moves my (and my clients’) offline agendas -  I found myself returning to several themes over the course of the four day gathering:

1. Those of us working online need to up our game to make sure the work we’re doing connects with real world change. The people at Web of Change were nearly universally focusing on taking this next big step from tactics that work to strategies that work, but we’ve got a ways to go.  Better targeting – of both potential activists and decision-makers – and better measurement are important capabilities to tackle next.  At this point, the tactics and tools are mature enough to ensure we can build big lists, mobilize some percentage of those lists to sign online petitions, send emails to their representatives, and maybe even take action offline.  It’s time to ensure we’re building lists that include the people we’ll need to move policy or change behavior, and we need to get better at measuring the effect on levers of power of all of the mobilization.

2. An ongoing challenge is making sure we’re not just talking to each other, but rather expanding the community to include people who don’t live online day and night, who aren’t activists by profession or hobby, and who maybe aren’t even entirely convinced that we’re right.  Cara Pike gave an excellent presentation of data gathered and analyzed by Earth Justice, including the factoid that the average Earth Justice donor also gave to more than a dozen other environmental organizations.  The data also revealed that the environmental movement was delivering all of the wrong messages – and telling all of the wrong stories – if it hoped to move new people to become advocates for environmental protection.  While the thrust of her presentation was about message, I came away with another key point: the environmental movement is largely talking to itself, which is not a winning strategy in the short or long term.  I wondered how many other organizations and movements are investing heavily in communicating to the “in crowd” – existing donors, advocates, and other converts to the cause – through email, twitter, Facebook, and whatever the next big thing is at the expense of finding and cultivating new supporters who may not be ready to engage with them online.  We need to make sure we’re not falling in love with the tools and the technology while letting those people we need with us fall out of love with us.

3. There was an interesting division between people who were campaigners first and are embracing online tools to help them do that better, and people who were online activists first and are growing into campaigning writ large. How well we can bridge the gaps will have a lot to do with how successful the sector is at resolving the challenge of getting more strategic  (number 1, above).

4. A remaining big question for me: are online tactics useful for more than building big lists at the grassroots level, and facilitating coordination at the campaign leadership level? Can online be productive for grasstops, for example, or for persuasion?  What do we do (online) when mass mobilization isn’t the best way to make a difference?  I fear we risk always seeing a nail (a requirement for lots of grassroots action) because we have a hammer (great online tools to deliver that action).  Some challenges doubtless require a different set of tools to conquer, and this is another critical question to resolve if we hope to make the practice of online politics more strategic.

I hope I get to make my way back to Web of Change in coming years to continue the work on these and the myriad other important issues we’re tackling every day in advocacy, fundraising, and world changing.  Thanks, fellow Web of Changers, for the opportunity!