NoProrogue.caA case study in social politics.

Who Am I?

• @ccarmichael

• iam@colincarmichael.ca

Day Job:

• Associate Secretary, Communications at The Presbyterian Church in Canada

Timeline Refresher

• Dec 30th – Prime Minister asks the Governor-General to prorogue parliament.

• Dec 30th – Christopher White creates Facebook Group called “The Long Parliament”

• Dec 31st – changes name to “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament”

• Jan 5th – group has 20,000+ members.

• Jan 7th – NoProrogue.ca launches

The Nuts & Bolts

• WordPress, FTW!

• Key Plugins:

– Custom Registration

– Collaboration Emails

– Role Scoper

• Email Subscription (Feedburner)

– 236 email subscribers

Role Scoper

Very granular page-level access control.

So What Happened?

• In the first 5 days:– 40+ blog posts, 85+ comments, 35+ city

pages, 95+ contributors, 30,000+ pageviews

• Now:– 128 blog posts

– 70 city pages

– 239 registered users

– 464 comments

– 58,400 visits & 134,000 pageviews

Un-Organization

• no national rules– Ottawa & Montreal had leaders of opposition

speaking

– Toronto barred politicians from speaking

– some smaller rallies were organized by political parties, Council of Canadians, or labour unions

• Google Groups were primary means of collaboration– Google Wave was attempted but quickly abandoned

(learning curve)

The Media

• be helpful (about page, referrals)• If what you want to talk about is different than

what the media wants to talk about, the media wins

• don't fight a battle you can't win (the Haiti earthquake)

• varying degrees of media-savvy organizers– mix of politicos and students

• many local organizers had mid-term exams on the day before the rallies and were unavailable for media comment

About Page

Questions?

colincarmichael.ca/pcto2010