People sometimes ask me “John, why should trades unions get involved with Twitter?” No, honest, they really do, my life is *that* exciting at times…
My standard response is that it all depends. The microblogging service Twitter is potentially attractive to unions as it’s something of a liberal and Labour ghetto, and it gets a lot of column inches for being flavour of the moment and making people look modern. However, Twitter is almost a platform in search of a utility, and different people/unions might get very different things out of it, or of course nothing at all, depending on how they naturally want to communicate. (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.
We’ve seen a whole bunch more union related blogs over the last year, at all levels of the movement (check out the lists at TIGMOO.co.uk for many of them). But one thing I’ve noticed has impressed me in particular, and that’s the first attempts at cleverly using other people’s blogs to talk to members. I’m not talking about the Gen Sec posts that pop up on Comment Is Free every now and then, or the more mainstream political blogs, but something much closer to unions’ membership – the online trade press. (more…)
Another day, another aggregator. I’m getting quite into union aggregator sites of late, and think there could be something in this cheap and cheerful technology that could really be powerful for unions.
The latest experiment is Union Newswire. It collates and republishes links to union press releases from 19 UK organisations. The idea is to make a one-stop shop for journalists, bloggers or students following developments in unions. Rather than remember to check 19 sites, it gives you a choice of ways to stay up to date with the news you need from each of them, depending on how you want to work – web, email, RSS or Twitter. (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.
Looking over this year’s TIGMOO.co.uk league table of UK union bloggers, it’s clear that the last year has seen a lot of new activity. Now over a third of the top 25 union blogs are new entries for 2009.
Union and political blogs in the USA continue to point the way, with insider commentary from LaborNerd, effective online campaigning from SEIU blog, or comprehensive and timely labour movement coverage from AFL-CIOnow. But things are growing over here too. (more…)
Just arrived in Liverpool, ready for this year’s TUC Congress (www.tuc.org.uk/congress2009), which is worryingly my eighth one (I hope there’s some kind of medal). I’m pretty chuffed with some work I’ve been doing on a separate site Congress Voices, which aims to collate social media coverage of Congress, linking people here at the event with the millions of UK trade unionists that this parliament of unions represents.
You can find it at www.congressvoices.org , but if you are blogging, Tweeting or Flickring about Congress, it will hopefully find you! I’ve already noticed a few Tweets coming in on the hashtag #TUC09, and any flickr photos shared with user tuc.org.uk will also come to our attention. The site also provides a commentable agenda, where users can have their say on the motions under debate, which is another first. (more…)
Yay! One month ago, I uploaded a video to YouTube, around 4 hours before we had to suddenly wake up to take my then pregnant wife to hospital. In the intervening month, John 2.2 has grown by 2 lbs 5oz, but the film has grown by 15,000 views. Not bad for a few minutes messing around in the office at lunchtime (the film I mean, not the baby…) (more…)
So we’re all familiar with the idea of the digital divide. In context of unions, around 70% of UK union members have access at home or work – most (but not all by any stretch) on broadband. This number is growing slightly all the time, but there’s a big chunk of the population that don’t have access to the intertubes, and hence to all the empowering and enfranchising goodness that flows from them.
Couple this with a drop off for those on the lowest incomes, and another for those over 60, and you see the danger of abandoning the offline path. Some of those least enfranchised in society are missing out disproportionally in the opportunities that easy access brings with it. (more…)
