johninnit

Cory Doctorow has a new young-adult novel out, and it’s something that union organisers and communicators very much need to read.

For The Win meshes together the lives of people working in and around MMORPGS, the massively multiplayer online role-playing games which grow in size and value every year. Set about ten minutes into the future, it shows how these virtual worlds have developed virtual economies, with people who work in them, legally and illegally. (more…)

I’m not too proud of having been a lousy student. I don’t think I ever got an assignment in on time, and really found it a struggle to get much information out of libraries or lectures and into my head. Of course, since leaving uni for the world of work, I’ve found a big sop for my wounded pride in managmenty self awareness tests. It’s all because I’m an activist learner you see (not my fault whatsoever, honest!), and find it awkward to learn something unless I’m actually in the process of trying it at the same time.

So when I was asked to do an essay on union activists and social media for US academic journal WorkingUSA, I was a bit panicked. Luckily I managed to work it out by developing a presentation on many of the themes I wanted to cover, so I could test it out with different audiences first. The final essay “Connecting Activists” is now published in the current issue of WorkingUSA – go buy/loan a copy now! (more…)

And, inspired by the IBEW social media organising vid, I thought I’d try out Prezi.com’s shiny new beta embed feature to show a presentation on the same lines that I did for UNI Global Union a few months ago.

BTW, I think Prezi has some good potential for union organisers too – a fair sight more compelling than the death-by-Powerpoint you get at many union meetings, and easy for people to use outside the context of the meeting.

Nice little video roundup of some IBEW locals in the States, who are using MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in their campaigns.

Hat tip AFLCIOnow

This courtesy of Brian Shaler’s very cute crappy graphs graph-maker.

So… I reckon a number of unions and some membership organisations are having problems in taking up as much of the 2.0 whizziness as they could because we’ve been a bit too used to our organisational structures too long. (more…)

Okay, okay, I promised you this was the last word on the Blackadder affair. But since then, other last words worth reading are here (Tales from the Net) and here (MyDD). (more…)

Last word on the Blackadder Affair must go to Allison Fine of ‘A. Fine Blog‘, with a great in-depth look at what happened in this and similar cases, and how they highlight an important difference between those Web2.0 sites which are genuine communities and those which are commercial community platforms:

Who’s the Customer on Facebook?  Facebook is no Wikipedia, and not just because their functions are so different, but because their ethnology, the very essence of their being, is so different.  Facebook is a commercial site, meaning it serves advertisers and users in equal measure.  Its users are its customers only to the extent that their eyeballs on ads serve as their commerce.  Wikipedia is a community of users that largely monitors itself for the benefit of all.

Unfortunately, Facebook seems to have taken the opposite tack … Wall Street isn’t interested in customer service per se, only in profits and, more importantly, future profits.  While users on Facebook may have a community, or belong to many mini-communities, they don’t have a clear relationship with the company.

We in TIGMOO love our folk art. Enamel badges and glorious banners are a kind of comfort to unionists – showing us our place alongside the millions who’ve taken that route before.

As unions merge or modernise though, the painted banners of old, with the quasi-heraldic panels showing members’ trades, union heroes and famous incidents are giving way to large, bold logo prints and slogans (though to be fair I guess it’s also as some of them are now precious antiques that we need to preserve a bit better than hoicking them around Clerkenwell in the rain). (more…)

I got a round robin email recently from Derek Blackadder, LabourStart’s man in Canada, drawing my attention to a new virtual international union network called New Unionism.

It looks quite interesting. They have a manifesto for the future of trade unionism, which seeks to unite the two schools of western unionism, Organising and Partnership. They contend that far from being opposites, if you want either of them done properly, they need to be done in conjunction with the other – two sides of the same coin.

We on the left are very fond of splitterism, and it’s easy for two groups who agree on 99% of something to be more concerned about the 1% where they differ in approach. Hence each technique’s camp tends to start to use the other word as shorthand to define that group rather than the technique itself, and we lose sight a bit maybe of the considerable benefits that both the techniques offer.

I like Derek so reckon anything he’s involved with must be pretty kosher. He and the others (including a good number from UK unions) who have signed up to this are being commendably open in signing up to a position which might see them shot at from both sides.

It seems to be a bit of a Euston Manifesto for unions (just without the pub). A statement which isn’t really that contentious to all but the most hardened splitters, focusing on the things we can agree on, and trying to reinvigorate the basic principles the movement, to make us more appropriate to the times.

The site’s a bit tricky to find your way around at first, and a lot of it is hidden for members only, but there is still quite a lot to take in there, including a very interesting summary of the UK’s attempts at New Unionism in the late 90’s – which has gathered some pretty illuminating comments (the kind of thing which suggests others are taking them seriously).

Less information on what they’ll actually be able to do though. This is maybe unfair, as they’ve only just started building a network, but as people are signing in a personal capacity, rather than on behalf of their unions, they’re not necessarily committing any organisations to put resources behind it. No bad thing maybe as they plan to work out a lot of what they will do democratically as they go along, using the strengths of the web to collaborate.

The idea is a nice one though – and I can agree with the principles behind their approach. Will have to think a bit more about it – Anyone else thinking of signing?