Nothing is revival proof (unfortunately) - acid house in H&M

Staffordshire Sunny Schools - flyer and social media

Publicity tools for the local community energy project I wrote about earlier this week - help them spread the word as they're looking for investment.

Flyer - see below
Facebook
Twitter
Next roadshow - 23rd Jan 7.30pm Gatehouse Theatre, Mountbatten Suite, Eastgate Street, Stafford ST16 2LT 

Playing your digital joker

If you're above a certain age and outside a certain demographic, chances are that your first recourse in a campaign or a project won't be to digital tools. Old instincts die hard, so why not hack your meeting with the digital joker.

Not this kind of joker...

Picture by Steve Collis 

But this joker

Getting outside your computer comfort zone

Maybe you see the Wonderland world of the web, of social media, and now apps (wot NGO hipsters is now calling digital) as a bolt on, an afterthought to the main campaign. Perhaps you suspect they could be really helpful – transformative even – but talking about them is waaaaaay out of your comfort zone.

Personally, I think the lower age limit is about 35-40. That's my generation – the people were finishing their education when the internet broke out of the science labs and came into the home. Like those older than us, our formative experiences are fundamentally pre-digital.

And consider this: in my experience the majority of people creating and coordinating campaigns at the grassroots are 35+. Heck, the majority of people in those groups are probably 35+

So, ask yourself where Twitter, Facebook, online petitions, Youtube and much more sit in your toolbox? Do you remember that they are there? Do you feel comfortable using them? Do you grasp their potential? Do you think that your fellows will bring it up as more than an afterthought?

Thoughts are like mountain streams – they follow the path of least resistance. If something's worked for you in the past, chances you'll be favourably disposed to again. And again. Even with the intention to do otherwise.

To disrupt your brainstorming of a campaign or a communications plan – to let the stream run in a new channel – you need to consciously disrupt the process in a positive way.

So why not Jokerise it?

Simply agree* with your fellow planners/activists/psych-hackers/whatevs that you'll place an ordinary playing card joker face down in the centre of the table, or pinned to a board or a flip-chart. And whenever you feel the conversation needs more or more creative thinking about online tools, turn it face up in the centre of the table.

Bringing up the digital elephant in the room might also lead to some difficult conversation about lack of knowledge, about the need to find out more or for training. It might involve turning to the younger people in your group (or the ones you're only one degree of separation from) for ideas and help – and that's no bad thing either.

If nothing else, it'll ensure you don't overlook something you might ordinarily be minded to miss.

*Agreement is important - using the joker ought to be like prepared piano, not loading the dice.

Available for training and talks

I thought it was good to put my availability for running training and offering talks in my spare time on an official footing.

The proposition: experienced NGO organiser, facilitator and trainer wants to help your community or campaign group find and share the skills and knowledge it needs to be marvellous. Sometimes with a side-order of geeky references.

What's in it for him? The rosy glow of helping you out? A kind of Hippocratic conviction? Frankly he's keen to keep in practice. Preferably travel expenses. :-)

What he trains in? All aspects of organising, community campaigning and team-building including but not limited to facilitation, public speaking, running a group, talking to the public, campaign planning, media skills, events, stunts and more...

How he trains? 

• Short, sharp thought-provoking workshops and skill-shares.
• Doesn't pretend to have all the answers. 
• Wants to empower in a teach-someone-to-fish approach. 
• Likelihood of geeky SF and music references: high.

Can he train online / remotely? Depends on what you want, but he's willing to give it a go. He knows what a Google Hangout is and can Skype, which is a start.

Does he do talks? Yep! Up-tempo and excitable ones. :-)

Where I can see some examples of your approach? Have a look at the open source activism page on this blog

Enquiries for training and talks? Post a comment below or contact me by e-mail.

PS - if someone in a Friends of the Earth local group is reading this, just a quick reminder to take requests through the official channels, e.g by e-mailing localgroups@foe.co.uk. This is me being extra-curricular!

Beating the cistern: Ron Burgundy in Virgin Trains toilets shocker

There's plenty to get angry about with trains - fare increases, overcrowding, London Midland's inability to find the right number of drivers to run their trains - but the straw that has broken this camel's back is Ron flipping Burgundy in Virgin Trains' toilets.

Yep. Go into a loo on some Euston services and you'll be welcomed by a recording of your favourite newsreader, jazz flautist and Renaissance man advising you not to flush velociraptors down the pan.

Random, much?

This smacks of desperation in plugging Anchorman 2. Never have I seen a film veer so wildly between very funny and complete tumbleweed, and this stunt falls very clearly on the tumbleweed side of the line.

Fundamentally though, it could be the funniest joke in the world and I'd still object to people trying to sell me things when I'm seeing a man about a dog. Posters I can ignore - but noise pollution of private space in the name of advertising is something else entirely. It's No Logo repeating itself as farce.

So, take me to the barricades of Armitage Shanks and Royal Doulton and defend our right to spend a penny without being sold something! 

Or at least write a letter of complaint to Virgin Trains.

Feels Like I'm Fixin' To Die, Captain: John Scalzi's Redshirts reviewed

Literary awards confer expectations, not just of quality but of content. If you think an award is for the best apple in the barrel, you're going to be surprised when the judges pick an orange. Even if it's a good orange.

I think this goes someway to explaining the mixed reception Redshirts has had as last year's Hugo winner. It's a slim, gently comic work with a big heart in a genre which has traditionally tended to prize density of thought, volume of book and overt seriousness of purpose. 

Outwardly, Redshirts is a Star Trek parody, which may also have triggered a certain snob response among fandom. It asks a question many (not  least Galaxy Quest) have asked before - just how it is that one ship manages to rack up such a high body count of its own crew and innocent bystanders without ever killing the superior officers responsible in the first place? While Scalzi wryly pokes fun at the plot holes and hand-waving science of cheap SF TV, that's not why his book exists in any necessary sense.

Redshirts is really both novel and meta genre commentary in the tradition of, say Northanger Abbey. The more profound question it poses, in its amiable, undidactic way, is why much bad science-fiction (and its kissing cousin, bad fantasy) considers the mass death of unnamed characters to be an essential part of the drama. 

Redshirts' target is the use of death as a cheap authorial trick to heighten the spectacle or raise the stakes, and the implicit devaluation of life that results. It's hard to say more about what happens next without invoking spoilers, so let's just say that things get more than a little meta - not to mention increasingly moving - and leave it there.

Almost gone before you know it,  Redshirts is a humane piece of work which grows in the reflection. It might not be a typical award winner, but science-fiction could do a lot worse.

The better mousetrap and the moral high-ground - ethical and evidential arguments in campaigning

Here's a poser for you - is  it better (read: more effective) to oppose a policy as being unethical or as being incompetent?

Oh hai, moral high ground

Ethical arguments depend on your audience accepting the terms of your position.

Underpinning opposition to the bedroom tax, the privatization of the Royal Mail or badger culling, say, are shared assumptions about human dignity, public services and animal rights which are commonplace among progressives. It's not that the evidence isn't there to back up these positions - quite the contrary in fact - but that the arguments expressed are generally value-driven, in the manner of self-evident truths. 

It can be tremendously powerful to tell your truths and find them affirmed.

But if your audience rejects those assumptions - advancing others - what does that do the force of your arguments? Will you be heard outside your social media echo chamber?

Is outrage enough?

A better mousetrap?

Or will you instead, more calculating, keep your values in the background hone in on the fact that a policy just plain isn't working? It doesn't matter if your target disagrees with you on the big questions -- the role of the market in the public sector and the futures of farming and housing provision - as long as you can agree on an 'objective', factual analysis of a specific situation. 

Unlikely bedfellows can line up behind a shared evidence-based position - just look at the breadth of the coalition which supported a 2030 decarbonisation target in the 2013 Energy Bill.

But arguing from competence alone does not make the heart-beat faster. It risks being privilege (technical knowledge) speaking to privilege in its own idiolect. It also assumes your audience are members of the reality-based community. 

And it does not disrupt the political narrative, illuminate and seek to resolve deeper problems, in the same way that values-based arguments do. Alone, the rhetoric of competence and incompetence risks bringing us to Deng Xiaoping's 'It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.' See the continued existence of the House of Lords as a case in point.

Dude, it's situational

Of course it is. And I'm presenting ideal types here: in practice our arguments combine evidence and ethics to varying degrees. I also haven't talked about how the language we choose might depend on the opportunities open to us and the power we wield.

But I think it's valuable in itself to recognise how we express ourselves as campaigners, the extent to which we tend towards one pole or the other, and the perks and pitfalls of both.

And speaking personally, I'd love to read more from the activist community that is a high quality synthesis of both. Recommendations in the comments section please. :-)