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Jan. 8th, 2004 09:04 pm(crossposted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
howard_dean)
Such a great Meetup last night.
Our December Meetup was really lackluster. It was plagued by tech problems and just sort of generally disorganized. People didn't stick around very long, and I couldn't blame them. We did a lot of core committee brainstorming by e-mail, and the changes we decided to make had dramatic effects.
The new elements: we had Dean speeches and interviews playing on the TV monitors for about half an hour beforehand, as people were coming in. We had fewer speakers, and all our speakers had a definite purpose in mind when they got up to speak. We had more good news announcements: poll results, recent endorsements, and a local 14-year-old kid who raised $1000 for Dean online. The cheering seemed to help people get energized.
The most important change was that we spent most of the Meetup in small group work. We get around 200 people at Baltimore city Meetups, and recently they had lost the sense of intimacy that helped people in early days get involved and stay involved. I remember coming home from the last one and asking![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
curiousangel, "What did we have people do tonight that they couldn't have done at home in front of their computers?" It's awful campaign strategy for there to be no answer to that.
So last night we broke down into precinct teams - really neighborhood clusters of precincts, actually. Each precinct team is responsible for calling likely primary voters to find out who they're supporting and give them a positive message about Dean. After that, we'll do campaign literature drops at people's houses.curiousangel and I are co-captains for our neighborhood. That means we're supposed to organize phone banks, get Dean supporters to work them, and report information about our neighborhood voters to the national campaign. (Our notebook says: "The information in these notebooks is very valuable and the property of Maryland for Dean. The other campaigns would love to get their hands on this, so DO NOT COPY OR DISTRIBUTE THIS INFORMATION TO ANYONE ELSE OR LEAVE IT UNGUARDED." (hysterical emphasis theirs.))
The other good innovation for this month's Meetup was that we had a newcomers' group. It's easy for us old-timers to forget that not everyone who shows up at a Meetup is a diehard Dean supporter ready to go out there and knock on doors. So when we split into precinct teams, new Meetup attendees had a choice of either joining their precinct team, or gathering with other newcomers and a few core committee members to discuss Dean's candidacy and positions. I found while I was working sign-in that new people were really glad to have the opportunity to have their questions answered and talk about their own opinions and experiences, instead of just being swept along in a flood of campaign work.
I came home feeling so excited. I just love this campaign.
howard_dean)Such a great Meetup last night.
Our December Meetup was really lackluster. It was plagued by tech problems and just sort of generally disorganized. People didn't stick around very long, and I couldn't blame them. We did a lot of core committee brainstorming by e-mail, and the changes we decided to make had dramatic effects.
The new elements: we had Dean speeches and interviews playing on the TV monitors for about half an hour beforehand, as people were coming in. We had fewer speakers, and all our speakers had a definite purpose in mind when they got up to speak. We had more good news announcements: poll results, recent endorsements, and a local 14-year-old kid who raised $1000 for Dean online. The cheering seemed to help people get energized.
The most important change was that we spent most of the Meetup in small group work. We get around 200 people at Baltimore city Meetups, and recently they had lost the sense of intimacy that helped people in early days get involved and stay involved. I remember coming home from the last one and asking
curiousangel, "What did we have people do tonight that they couldn't have done at home in front of their computers?" It's awful campaign strategy for there to be no answer to that.So last night we broke down into precinct teams - really neighborhood clusters of precincts, actually. Each precinct team is responsible for calling likely primary voters to find out who they're supporting and give them a positive message about Dean. After that, we'll do campaign literature drops at people's houses.
curiousangel and I are co-captains for our neighborhood. That means we're supposed to organize phone banks, get Dean supporters to work them, and report information about our neighborhood voters to the national campaign. (Our notebook says: "The information in these notebooks is very valuable and the property of Maryland for Dean. The other campaigns would love to get their hands on this, so DO NOT COPY OR DISTRIBUTE THIS INFORMATION TO ANYONE ELSE OR LEAVE IT UNGUARDED." (hysterical emphasis theirs.))The other good innovation for this month's Meetup was that we had a newcomers' group. It's easy for us old-timers to forget that not everyone who shows up at a Meetup is a diehard Dean supporter ready to go out there and knock on doors. So when we split into precinct teams, new Meetup attendees had a choice of either joining their precinct team, or gathering with other newcomers and a few core committee members to discuss Dean's candidacy and positions. I found while I was working sign-in that new people were really glad to have the opportunity to have their questions answered and talk about their own opinions and experiences, instead of just being swept along in a flood of campaign work.
I came home feeling so excited. I just love this campaign.
