[Discussioni][Fwd: Re: [Patents] campaign plans on mailing lists]

[Stefano Maffulli]

Seth Johnson scrive un importante quasi-HOWTO  per motivare volontari e
gestire campagne d'opinione.  Da conservare.

ciao
stef


-----Forwarded Message-----

From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson a RealMeasures.dyndns.org>
To: Hartmut Pilch <phm a a2e.de>
Cc: patents a aful.org
Subject: Re: [Patents] campaign plans on mailing lists
Date: 24 Jul 2003 07:01:07 -0400


Hartmut:

Did you do outreach on the signatures in your sig lines?

Did you do something each time I've seen those numbers increase
substantially?

What did you do?


Organizing is easy enough, once the right framework is set up.

The chief thing is to show motion.

The way a campaign grows is by showing people who are looking for something,
something in motion.

You're not trying to convince people, just find out how many respond per how
many you approach.  That's called a parity rate.

Say, two sets of two or three people set up a table in a high traffic
location, with a few posters and a pitch.  You count your approaches and
your responses.

Your first pitch is not to sign the petition, but to take up a role in the
movement.  Something like, "we're facing a 4 week deadline, and we need
people to help us set up tables just like this in new locations and expand
the operation as rapidly as possible.  Will you help us with that?"  Then do
the petition signup as a second pitch, plus have the petition highly visible
on the table.  Having a petition is usually not the best thing, because you
and the people you approach get the idea that this is like anything else, a
deal where you need their signature on a petition and not volunteers.  But
under the circumstances (you need 150,000 signatures in order to meet some
sort of legal procedural threshold, right?), you can make that a big part of
the presentation, framing it as a highly urgent circumstance.

The fact that you are doing this (actually being there doing street level
outreach and pitching for volunteers to build an army), will inspire the
discouraged individual who understands the issue and has been looking for he
right thing s/he can do to make it stop.  You're not looking to stop and try
to convince everyone, only to approach as many as possible with a very brief
stopper line, then get names and phone numbers and what roles they want to
take up.  Then you tally how many were approached, how many stopped on the
stopper line, then the rest is documented by the signup roster.

You're not getting into discussions with the people who stop, just going
through a pitch, using direct questions to delineate buyers from non-buyers,
and then moving on to the next person based on their not stopping or their
saying no to the pitch questions.

What you're looking for is not as many people as possible (except for
signing that petition), but rather the "cream on the top" -- the small
percentage of people who are looking for someone doing something on this
issue, and who seeing you in motion, therefore want to decide to take up an
active role.  Everybody else can sign the petition, donate, whatever -- but
what you want most of all is volunteers, so you can have them participate,
get trained with the stuff I'm putting into this overview here, and then
they can captain their own tactics in new locations.

You show something in motion, to attract the people who are looking. 
Organizers call to emulation.  You don't convince by spin, but by action. 
It's not something that happens spontaneously, it takes the right kind of
deliberate activity.  Not everybody who complains about the problem is
looking to volunteer, just a few rare gems.  But once you get one of those
people, they are gold.

A pitch has five key parts: 1) a stopper line, 2) a description of the
problem you're organizing about (not "we need signatures," but "we need to
stop software patents" in this case, 3) a yes or no question asking do you
agree we need to stop this?, 4) a description of what you're doing about it,
what you're recruiting volunteers to participate in, 5) a yes or no question
asking whether they'll help out.  Anybody who has heard that whole pitch is
then a very high quality contact, because they've listened to the pitch,
agreed to the problem (not debated it -- you move on saying you need to keep
moving, here's our website, rather than try to engage in convincing) and
heard that the thing that's needed is active volunteers.  Whether they
volunteer or not, you can then aim them at the table to sign up or donate.

You then can report results.  We at New Yorkers for Fair Use have found that
15% - 18% of approaches have been responsive to our pitch for volunteers. 
the number that actually show up is also a small percentage of those -- but
you can't get to the point of getting that small percentage in, unless you
do the outreach and do the outreach right.  We follow up with phone tactics
on a weekly basis, calling all the names who wanted to help, and pitching
them with a very similar pitch, for a specific tactic the next weekend. 
Remember that these names all represent high quality contacts, so you can 

It's important to report results.  that's the demonstration of what's being
done, and what predictable rate of response anybody who might be considering
helping with doing more of the same with you, can expect to get.  It becomes
something where you can compare results and see what you're doing right or
not, based on a realistic picture of the results you can actually expect. 
Knowing the parity rate is very helpful because it lets you figure out how
many more similar actions, how many more tables running, etc., you would
need to get the objective.  It's tremendously helpful to be able to quantify
this.  Plus once again the reporting shows that you have something in
motion, for the people who are looking for a way to do something on the
issue.

I think I would try as hard as possible to get as many sets of tables
running in as many locations as possible first time out  -- there really
should be two tables, to show the expansion of the effort, first time out. 
If you have 5 or 6 definite committed volunteers willing to take up the
fight with this (which I would think you could come up with, by calling
people you know through the FFII activities and telling them the plan), then
you can do that.  But even one table set up and run and then reporting
results is a giant qualitative leap forward in the organizing effort.  That
will inspire motion, all by itself.

Seth Johnson

Hartmut Pilch wrote:
> 
> > Not 1 million but a tousand would make enough noise. We have to convince
> > the people out there.
> 
> Since patents at aful org is read by hundreds of people of very diverse
> backgrounds and interests, it is difficult to establish this "we".

-- 

DRM is Theft!  We are the Stakeholders!

New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org

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