At Yearly Kos 2 August, 2007
Posted by Zack in 2008, Dave Boundy, DNC, field organizing, Yearly Kos.add a comment
I didn’t come last year. I should have. There is an amazing energy here. I hope some of the journalists covering this will notice how un-stereotypical (I mean the journalists’ stereotypes about the Netroots or “Internet people”). Oh wait, I’m a journalist now, so I’ll try to write about this.
Right now I’m in Dave Boundy’s session on the ’08 Ground Game. Dave is the new political director at the DNC. He is one of the main people who built the powerful Labor political program at the AFL, so watch out.
Here’s his plan (from his first slide):
1. ORGANIZE EVERYWHERE
2. COUNT EVERYTHING
3. QUESTION ASSUMPTIONS
The audience liked that quite a bit.
UPDATE: Session ending now. Basically, Dave’s fighting hard and smart to rebuild the Democratic Party, combining new technology, good data, and old school organizing sense. Whoever the next Ken Melhman is, he should be very worried.
NOI Training Update: Day 2 3 July, 2007
Posted by Zack in 2008, field organizing, New Organizing Institute, NOI.add a comment
As you can see at the New Organizing Institute blog, our trainees seem to have taken to the campaign simulation this year — each picked a Simpson’s character out of a hat (+Stewie) to run for president. Several sites are up already — click on the links in their posts. I especially recommend the endorsement video from Bill Clinton on voteforstewie.com. (Can you guess which Dean campaign staffer, who was serving as a trainer last night, did the voice?)
Today has been an amazing day actually. Weeks ago, Katie Allen of the DNC agreed to take responsibility for today–Field Day. She gathered a cast of trainers who have been incredible. Sure, they’ve presented cutting edge material — but they’ve also miraculously kept our 60 trainees alert and entertained all through a very long day of classes that followed a very long night of work on the simulation and email exercises last night. (Plus half of them are still jet lagged.)
Here’s who taught today:
- Chris Mann, of MSHC taught targeting;
- Courtney Dozier of Forward Together PAC taught volunteer management;
- Marty Stone of Stones Phones taught the art of forcing phone banking to actually work;
- Mike Sager of the VA Dems & Mark Sulivan of the Voter Action Network did what was actually the best software demo I’ve ever seen;
- Jamie Tincher of MN’s DFL is doing a great case study of the MN 2006 coordinated campaign;
And John Miyasato of Crossroads Consulting deserves special mention for starting his presentation on GOTV by passing out several bags of candy that he brought (he knows what these guys are going through), and for doing an incredibly engaging session. He told some great stories to illustrate how organizers parachuting from the sky often alienate the local politicos and volunteer — and told some of his own stories about how to avoid doing that and win over important local leaders.
I’m amazed at this day that Katie was able to put together — and we’ve still got the evening exercise to go. The trainee teams are going to make up real walk packets on The VAN (which they will actually go walk tomorrow, competing for the highest # of and best quality of IDs). All of the trainers are hanging around to help the teams with the field exercise tonight.
