Day 6 at NOI Bootcamp

02:54 PM Jul 09, 2009

It's day 6 at NOI's Bootcamp and I'm sitting here with my team (Spider-Man) formulating our plan to get the most people to vote Spider-Man for Mayor in NOI's online election tomorrow. It may or may not involve a online radio show and asking supporters to don Spider-man masks on their walk to work in the morning....

I'm sure the Salsa community must be wondering, "What in the world does a mock mayoral election involving superhero characters have to do with the progressive movement?"

LOTS.  This mock campaign was set up by the New Organizing Institute, as part of a week long seminar designed to train the next generation of online organizers in the progressive movement.  For the past week, 60 participants from all over the map have been learning a host of online organizing skills from professionals and leaders in the progressive movement.  I know I've gained great insight into the details that go into the work our members do on a daily basis.  Much respect!

In addition to a jam packed schedule of speakers, each team has been working around the clock on their mock campaigns, applying all the knowledge they've learned to get the most people on their email lists, click through to their site, and commit to voting for their candidate in the online election this Friday.

The week started out with building a website and has progressed to building email lists and communicating our campaign message with the help of awesome online tools like SALSA (Note: both Wonderwoman,and Cyborg are using Salsa).  I'll be interviewing their teams on their Salsa user experience tomorrow, so stay tuned for that post.

And it's paid off!  Each of these campaigns is getting an unprecedented amount of hits on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo, the list goes on.  To read some of the buzz, check out all of NOI's Blog.

What is really driving the energy level and the quality of work the bootcampers are producing is participation from the progressive community and beyond! Getting feedback from professionals in the field about the emails we're sending, the websites we've built, and the whole process has been incredibly valuable and much appreciated. 

I strongly encourage everyone to participate in the online election tomorrow. Check out all the candidates here, and vote tomorrow!

Till next time Salsa users!

Victoria Ruan

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