Organise, Activate, Influence – conference report
Posted by Maman Poulet on 08 Oct 2008 at 11:30 pm | Tagged as: Blogging, Irish Politics, MSM, Social Media
Myself and over 80 others attended Saturday’s conference on Social Activism Online in Ireland. Hosted by the EU Commission Representation in Ireland staff, the conference was also organised by Cian O’Flaherty from Irishelection.com. It was well worth a Saturday! Some lovely photos from the day are available here courtesy of Red Mum.
It was a follow up to the Blogging the Election Conference in 2006 and a great follow up it was too. The standard of inputs was excellent. The attendance was very varied – it was great to see some people there from the widest reaches of social activism/blogging and none – those who understood that social activism did not solely mean party political or NGO campaigning and that blogging about business/disability/consumer issues etc. was social activism. There were the usual what’s wrong with Irish blogging (and a bit of what’s ok with it too and more of the latter is needed!) and the annual bloggers versus mainstream journalists barney failed to ignite more than a small fire despite Richard Delevan’s best efforts 
Following a conference on twitter whilst there was good fun and added to my enjoyment – there being no other active backchannel (that I knew of) we were all finding each other on the blue bird and following.
A mention must be made of Damian O’Broin’s excellent presentation on the A to Z of Online Ideas which you can see the slides from here. Such a simple idea for dispersing so much interesting material!
The main reason I was there was to hear Zack Exley speak – and he didn’t disappoint. He explored aspects of US politics at grassroots/netroot levels in the last 4-6 years with a fair bit of online activism thrown in and thoughts being poked at the audience to consider the transferability over this side of the pond. I think it’s safe to say that most people didn’t think they would be running out the door to find the Irish Barack Obama or Howard Dean to support and fund online. But there was a lot that those of food for thought in ideas around political and community organising.
Incidentally today Zack published an article on The Huffington Post about his recent visit to Ohio which he spoke about during his talk.
I believe that videos of the day will be online soon so those who missed it will be able to catch up.
News from the day – RTE are going to have some sort of new fangled gadget for playing their output and maybe a chance to embed stuff on other websites (I think!) But other bloggers are much better at explaining those things!
The conference was streamed live and I had a question sent in from someone watching who wanted to know where Michael Lynn was!
Many thanks to the EU Commission office for their hospitality and the programme and I’d love to see more of this happening with bloggers from other countries exchaning views on the ‘craft’ but also on the impact of blogs in the EU, it’s member states and institutions. There will probably be a lot of thought on things European in the next 12 months not only because of Lisbon but also due to the European Parliament elections. There is a bit of anticipation growing for blogging on those matters (yes some of us need our electoral fix to be maintained!)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=73a8796c-f1c0-4cb4-9b23-e7f5d400c716)
I don’t know that there was a ‘What’s wrong with Irish Blogging’ session rather that there was a recognition from some that (a) models of engagement can’t just be dropped in from other places that have very different political systems and (b) blogging in general has weaknesses as well as strengths.
Regarding (a) practices that have been successful elsewhere need to be adapted to fit local needs and in some cases there may exist a local practice that does fundamentally the same thing. You yourself noted that we already had the door to door canvass tradition here so it was nothing new to us. And with multi-seat, multi party elections it is high problematic for candidates to share information. That’s just the reality. My point about the political centre of the Irish blogosphere being in a different place from that of the general population stands. I don’t believe that it cries out to be changed by diktat but failure to recognise it as being true is simply self defeating. How many Labour party members and supporters were on the final panel?
As for (b) blogs are like going to someone’s home to discuss things, they retain the ability to shape the discussion, bulletin boards are more like going to a public place to have that discussion. All parties are then on even footing. Both systems have their upsides as well as downsides. I find it odd that some people (not yourself) get so defensive about any comments about blogging that don’t paint it as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Blogs aren’t the answer to everything.
It was a good day. I enjoyed it, but I can’t help feeling that it is still a self selecting group which is that bit more focused on talking to itself than one that is genuinely reaching out to everyone.