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Canada's Champion Advocacy List Builder on How It's Done

Open Media's Steve Anderson built a digital citizen's movement. Here's a taste of his May 3 Tyee Master Class.

David Beers 25 Apr 2014TheTyee.ca

David Beers is editor of The Tyee.

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Open Media's Steve Anderson will co-teach, on May 3, "Crowdsourcing for Public Engagement: Proven Techniques to Mobilize Your Base ."

In the annals of Democratic Power Unleashed by the Web, Steve Anderson and his OpenMedia represent a major milestone. What started as Anderson's own passion for keeping the Internet free and open has become a highly effective citizens' empowerment movement against regulators and politicians who would dare erode digital democracy.

Among the national policy battles Anderson and OpenMedia have waged and won recently: stopping a government online snooping law; establishing consumer protection rules for cell phone users; and reversing a decision by the feds that would have let telecom giants gouge internet users by imposing a pay meter on bits and bytes.

Credit Anderson's email list dwarfing that of most advocacy groups, and his team's brilliance at all aspects of social media outreach. Yet OpenMedia remains a small, Vancouver-based shop. How did that happen, and what does Anderson know about overcoming the unholy alliance of money and politics we too easily assume kills populist movements like one he helps lead?

You can learn first hand by attending the Crowdsourcing for Public Engagement: Proven Techniques to Mobilize Your Base, the Tyee Master Class that Steve Anderson and his OpenMedia colleague Reilly Yeo are conducting on May 3 (more details here).

In the meantime, we cornered and chatted up the uber-busy Anderson to give a preview...

Where does OpenMedia's email and social media reach stand now? Did you think it could be that big when you started?

"Our community now stands well over 650,000 people. We communicate with most of them over email and through our active social media communities. We now have over 105,000 followers on Facebook, along with over 20,000 on Twitter, Google+ and elsewhere. Our goal at OpenMedia has always been to facilitate mass collaboration and crowdsourced solutions to the threats to free expression online. We always hoped that the avenues to participate in key decisions would take off but I didn't think we could grow our community to this size, especially in Canada. We're so grateful that such a large number of people would put their trust in us.

It's one thing to be able to blast out a zillion emails. It's another to have people open them and act. I know you'll be going into this in some depth for your Master Class on May 3, but can you give a sneak peek at what you've learned in this regard?

"Engaging our community is at the heart of everything we do here at OpenMedia. We aim to make it as straightforward as possible for people to have a real impact on digital policy. Sometimes that can be as simple as signing a petition. But the key to engaging people over time is seeing simple online actions as an entry point, or the beginning of a relationship. To grow and sustain these relationships it's important to provide community members with deeper more meaningful forms of engagement.

"To facilitate that deeper engagement we've created tools to help people contact their local MP, write a letter to the editor and even crowdsource policy recommendations.

"Connecting these deep engagement tools to key initiatives such as our Time for an Upgrade report on the wireless market has been essential. That crowdsourced report led directly to positive new customer protection rules coming into force last year.

What is the potential of crowdsourcing for public engagement when contrasted with the general assumption that money is the true measure of ability to sway the public?

"Our experience has been that when a community of people and organizations work together over time it can be much more powerful than the entrenched interests looking to hold our society back. We've seen that with our success at preventing a pay meter from being installed on our Internet connections -- over half-a-million Canadians stood up and forced decision-makers to listen to us instead of the giant telecom conglomerates. We've also succeeded in stopping a warrantless and invasive online spying scheme, and in winning new wireless customer protections in the face of fierce opposition from Big Telecom.

"When the citizen-driven alternative exists, it makes it impossible for industry lobbyists to claim their ideas are in the public interest. The Internet can be a hugely powerful tool in empowering citizens to shape policies that work for all of us, not just for lobbyists and large conglomerates. Through the Internet, we are just beginning to exercise our right to participate in new ways. The potential is huge -- citizens literally now have the tools to create a new, more participatory, and prosperous democracy. Our job is to effectively facilitate and model the scale and depth of participation and collaboration that those in power can't ignore. The key is to model the kind of process that people are looking for in the 21st century to delegitimize those who wish to wield power from the top-down."

Anything else you'd like to add?

"It's important to stretch, experiment and innovate. One of the best ways to inspire people to engage with your project or campaign is just to be willing to be vulnerable, try something new, and ask for help. Right now we're holding a week of action to coincide with crucial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks taking place in Asia. These talks are taking place in total secrecy with citizens excluded entirely. We know from leaked documents that the TPP would make the Internet much more expensive, censored, and policed -- that's why we're asking for the full text to be released immediately so we can have an open and democratic debate.

"We decided we bring together all the groups working on this issue under a common banner at: StopTheSecrecy.net. We also figured one way to really engage those who care about this, many who have been speaking out for years, was to find a creative way to amplify their online engagement with some sort of creative output. We came up with a way to project our message onto buildings in Washington DC during the talks, and making those projections grow as people took action online.

"It's a project that required us to stretch on a number of levels as an organization, but it's working out really well so far. It's generally paid off because people are excited by the opportunity to engage in a new and more tangible project, and there seems to be broad appreciation for our willingness to try something new. In short, if we hope to inspire people to step up and engage with our campaigns, we need to be willing to take some risks ourselves."

Don't miss this great opportunity to learn how digital savvy and citizen empowerment can trump big money and pricey lobbyists at the very highest levels of government (and therefore in your own backyard, too!). The class, which includes lunch and wine, is held in The Tyee's newsroom which, ahem, isn't very big. So book your ticket first chance.

For information about Crowdsourcing for Public Engagement: Proven Techniques to Mobilize Your Base, the Tyee Master Class that Steve Anderson and his OpenMedia colleague Reilly Yeo will teach on May 3, go here).

To find out about the other Tyee Master Classes being offered this spring, click here.  [Tyee]

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