The power of hello on Twitter

No, not a Lionel Richie reference - although it is an opportunity for a gratuitous photo of the reigning High King of Glastonbury 2015.

Photo by Georges Biard [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Friends aside, I would say I'd had more actual conversation on Twitter in the past week or so than I've had in the past five years.

How? I've been saying hello to some of the people who've followed me by sending them a private message. Not all of them, but those I had something to say to.

Of course, it helps that I have a job for a charity which involves reaching out to volunteers about campaigning. That means I have had something to say and a general offer of help to tender. But the key thing here - as with any networking - is having a friendly interaction based on a common interest, not playing a zero sum game where every conversation has to get me somewhere.   

Unlike e-mails, Twitter messages are also framed as a conversation. Literally, in the way the screen is designed. So there's both more stimulus to respond and less pressure (because less formality) in doing so at the same time, perhaps compared to an e-mail. Certainly the freedom to go over 140 characters helps with responding compared to public Twitter conversation.

Worth saying too that the message content has not been a generic 'Hi - Thanks for the follow - Sign up here' affair either. People can smell that kind of phoniness, that pseudo-bot behaviour in what you write. 

So while my messages have often contained all of those things, it's been personalised to what I know of that person or that organisation and their interests. I've tried sharing some information I thought they would find interesting. I've offered help - and sometimes I've been able to help them, even if it's something as straightforward as retweeting the launch of their latest project.

So - why don't you try it? Who's started following you that you would like to build a relationship with?

Some caveats

Perhaps I shouldn't have to say this, but belt and braces:

• If you think a message from you could potentially be seen as an unwelcome intrusion, either in content, because it's a message from you, or even just because it's a message period, then don't send it.
• It's for that reason I'm restricting my messaging to new follows, organisations and accounts who RT me. And even then I'll be discriminatory.
• With the best will in the world, I have to say social media is still a place where abuse and creepy behaviour happens, disproportionately directed at women. People (especially women) are therefore rightfully cautious about strangers on the internet. So, I say again, if you think the act of messaging might possibly be misconstrued, don't message.

Campaigning 101 - and the first skill you should learn is...

Thinking ahead to an introduction to campaigning session I'm scheduled to run next week - my first for the MND Association - I asked my Facebook friends where people should start. 

What is the first skill you should introduce to people wrapping their heads around what activism is for the first time?

A clear spot to run to: where now for me in the environmental movement?

One of the advantages of now being employed outside the environmental movement is that I have more freedom to ask myself questions about it. Questions such as: 

• what kind of role would I like to play in the movement? 
• what do I think the movement should be doing?

I've held onto these questions since the summer during a few months of informal sabbatical from tree-hugging, give or take a little online activism and some local activity. Inevitably, the two are connected - I want to do something which makes a difference while also being meaningful to me.

And, in trying to answer that second bigger question, I'm minded to approach it in an entirely subjective mood. There are enough people trying (and one supposes mostly succeeding) to be objective, with political analysis 'n' socioeconomic data to spare. Adding my voice to that would be fairly redundant. 

What I think I could do with more of, conversely, is a personal perspective. A point of view, a way of speaking outside of 'policy voice' and the sociolect of the NGO's - valuable though they are. 

Outside even the wider discourse of campaigning. Certainly beyond the outrage clockwork of social media.

Finding myself a clear spot to run to where I can see it all and my place it in more clearly. 

How? Well, if I've learned anything about myself from writing this blog it's that personal space for me is criticism. 

Not raining on the parade  - but talking about what I do and don't dig, maaaaan; what I take from what I learn and what I experience. Looking at the ideas of others and asking: does that also work for me? 

And in Isaiah Berlin terms, I'm a fox not a hedgehog: I'm going to mine as many unlikely sources as as I can to find what I can use. I'll use science-fiction as much as science fact; art as much as activism; poetry and philosophy as much as politics.

So - expect a series of reflections, reviews, quotes, riffs, fragments and aphorisms in the coming weeks and months on this blog - all providing partial answers to my questions. 

I admit, this is labyrinthine thinking - all curves and turns and blind alleys rather than straight-line solutions. But it's what I need right now. I'll come back to the straight-line approach when I'm good and ready. For now, I'll hope you follow me.

(and apologies to the good Captain for appropriating his lyric for this one)

The world must be romanticized

"The world must be romanticized. Thus one rediscovers the original meaning."

Novalis (1798), with thanks to Peter Gay's The Naked Heart, his highly recommended cultural history of nineteenth-century interior life.

Savage Gardens

Presented without comment, except to say you can find this street halfway between Fenchurch Street and Tower Hill stations.

Humanity: essentially after-dinner speech-makers

Having recently re-read and very much enjoyed Walter M Miller Jr's post-apocalyptic classic A Canticle For Leibowitz, a review may well be forthcoming - a thoughtful book of this kind practically demands a thoughtful response.

But for now I'll leave with you with this authorial aside on humanity.

"It was a species which often considered itself to be, basically, a race of divinely inspired toolmakers; any intelligent entity from Arcturus would have instantly perceived them to be, basically, a race of impassioned after-dinner speech makers."

Very Douglas Adams before Adams, yes?

My activist journey in one piece of paper

As part of getting to know new colleagues at the MND Association, I took part in an exercise where I had to try to get my campaigning autobiography down to one piece of flip-chart paper.