COMMUNICATIONS-MEDIA OC REPORT – MARCH 22, 2010 Dates: MARCH 8 -22, 2010
SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS/INFO SESSIONS
• March 18: Adele invited to take part in New Detroit’s one day summit: Taking Charge of Our Story. Adele discusses community participation in media, citizen journalists and the USSF. (http://ourdetroitstory.com/about/)
• March 20: Adele is invited to the Dia De La Mujer Conference at Michigan State University. She participates in a media panel. She discusses the future of journalism, alternative media strategies with a focus on social justice and the USSF.
UPCOMING:
• April 13: Adele invited to Wayne State University Panel: Race, Class and the Sex Culture. She will be discussing media, how stories are spun and the USSF.
• April 21: Adele discusses online organizing and the USSF at Macomb Community College’s Cultural event.
• April 23: Adele will organize an interactive discussion/workshop with L.I.F.T. Women’s Resource Center. She will discuss the importance of women recovering from domestic violence and substance abuse in raising their voices and an open space for them at the USSF.
MEDIA/PRESS
• March 22: Oya Amakisi and Rocio Valerio on WCBN-FM, UM college radio
• March 21: The Left is Coming!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/21/842715/-The-Left-is-Coming!-The-Left-is-Coming (Daily Kos)
• March 19: Compas' visit to Detroit (Buck Dinner and PMA): http://prop-press.vox.com/library/post/then-onto-the-buck-dinner-4.html (Propositions Prees blog)
• March 14: Detroit is Getting Ready for USSF 2010: Are you?: http://michigancitizen.com/print_this_story.asp?smenu=74&sdetail=8394 (Michigan Citizen)
• March/April Issue: Building “Solution City”: The Potential for Green Innovation in Detroit: http://www.healinggardenjournal.com/articles/1003/burns.htm (Healing Garden Journal)
More Press and People's Stories can be found here: http://wiki.ussf2010.org/wiki/Press_and_People_Stories
UPCOMING
• Reg McGhee piece in the Michigan Citizen: Labor and the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit: A perspective
• Lorna Mpho Mabunda’s piece You the Healers will be published in May/June issue of the Healing Garden Journal
• April/May/June: Awareness Blog will run pieces about the USSF.
• May: Stelle Slootmaker (Writers’ Network) will write a story announcing Grand Rapids May Day event, including a reference to USSF involvement. It will be posted on www.griid.org
• London Progressive Journal will be running a piece on the USSF every other week.
• AJ Viola and Sylvia Orduno writing a feature on Elena Herrada and Rocio Valerio representing the Latina leadership of the USSF process (with quotes from me and Sylvia Orduno). It will be published in a Latin@ publication.
MEETINGS/CALLS/UPDATES
Updates
• Second administrator assigned to the Writers Network: Lara Veon • Adele, Reg and Lottie researching Detroit Printers for USSF program • Lottie working with new PR staff member on press releases and media pitches • National team working on Press/Digital kit, dynamic press releases and People’s Media Center appeals letter
Meetings/Calls
• March 17: People’s Media Center Committee had its third call, working on appeals for funds and equipment, partnerships and principles. • March 18: Full Group Communications-Media call • March 25: OC Comm reps meet to prep for OC weekend meetings
Upcoming:
• April 6 -12: Adele travels to L.A. and Bay Area to meet with Media Outlets: NPR, Pacifica, Center for Media Justice, Aztlan en Vivo (public, bi-lingual station called KBBF) and more.
• May: Adele travels to Puerto Rico to connect with media and grassroots orgs.
Media connected with in past two weeks:
• Al Jazeera – second call scheduled for Friday, March 26 • Free Speech TV - plans to cover the Forum extensively. • WNYC – second meeting scheduled (in Detroit) for Thursday, March 25 • TIME Magazine blog – connected with Karen Dybis • Michigan Public Radio at WUOM-FM in Ann Arbor • Media Mouse: progressive news blog • NPR
WIKI/TRAINING
Project Status:
1. Comm WG is committed to utilizing wiki.ussf2010.org to organize data and be a source of especially internal data regarding the USSF planning process.
2. March 10 – wiki.ussf2010.org transitioned to a new front page layout, incorporating easier navigation, calendar agenda by month and calendar by day.
3. Wiki is maintained, new sections are being added with the incorporation of new working groups, new organizers are being trained & acclimated to wiki usage.
4. Press-People Stories section is now being maintained daily as daily articles/video/press releases come in.
Next Steps: • Continual wiki trainings with key organizers • Continuing to manage, update and moderate wiki information and navigation • Pinpoint Team Leaders who will be updating wiki for their team and intentionally bringing on folks who have been out of the fold (ie. Youth, queer liberation committee, disability justice)
EMAIL MARKETING
Project Status:
1. Email Scheduling: a. “Fundraising Appeal” sent on December 16 to 7,100 email recipients. 1,100 tracked opens. b. “Registration Live” e-blast was sent on Jan 28, 2010 to 7,422 recipients, 1492 tracked opens. 1378 clicks took people to our website. c. “ Cultural & Workshop Submissions/ Fundraising Appeal e-blast newsletter sent on Feb 25 to 8037 recipients. 1,420 tracked opens. 599 clicks took people to our website. d. Program Deadline Extension e-blast sent on 3/18 to 8923 recipients. 1285 tracked opens and 309 click-throughs took people to our website. 7739 emails actually went through and there were 1192 bounces
2. Email System Management a. Email system transition to Comm WG is still in process, moving slow. B Lowe & Sha handled the March 18 e-blast. Charles Lenchner will be taking on this responsibility with the Comm WG, though he just started a new job and needed a week to get grounded. We need to support Charles with ticket requests and a CiviCRM account, access to data.
3. Data Management & Listserv Building a. Our listserv is vital piece of USSF communications and the numbers there are absolutely low and must grow. The quality of previous data is not wonderful with many bounces and emails not going through. Current to incoming data will be key. b. Comm WG will be reporting on listserv numbers, click-throughs and give estimates on how many people are receiving our information. c. We have connected with Outreach WG to share mappings of organizations/regions/contacts so we can make a concerted effort to get folks on our listserv and utilize that listserv in region/sector/constituency specific ways for targeted outreach & response. This process is slow- we need to put out an appeal to organizers for their data & push into their email networks. d. Part of current proposed website navigation includes having a button or flash popup encouraging people to join the USSF listserv. e. Per Outreach WG, a section of ‘sector/issue’ was added to the CiviCRM list of data fields that we can connect.
Next two weeks: • Transition fully to Comm WG handling email blasts. • Finalize proposal for email blast protocol moving forward and send out to OC, NPC, Wgs. • Charles will coordinate with other main WGs to compile and send out the next series of e-blasts, this period focusing on registration push to strive for our registration deadline and also make push for cultural event/workshop submissions • Continue to map organizations/outreach for major organizational/alliance/network listservs where we should have a continued e-newsletter presence. • Edit USSF website to ensure maximum ease of joining the listserv. • Connect with ICT to make sure email data from incoming registrations is getting on our listserv and that we have a specific list delineated for registrants. • Delineate CiviCRM list by region & other demographics- find if this is possible.
SOCIAL WEB
Project Status:
1. Facebook, twitter, soundcloud, and flickr pages are up to speed now and can begin a rhythm of being updated & engaging with those online communities. 2. We’ve been in a foundation-building phase still with other platforms in establishing presence and allowing our networks (followers, friends, etc) to grow there. It’s been dependent in finding qualified team members to take on those tasks- we have some folks coming into place. 3. Overall plan is generally to create & managed a self-determined official USSF presence in a wide array of social web & online platforms, communities, and to do this intentionally to reach diverse audiences, communities and local/national/global regions. 4. Current online tooks in place, their numbers, and purpose. a. bit.ly account for link shortening & click-tracking. We can measure how many folks click links in our platforms. b. Facebook i. Fan Page (http://bit.ly/bVm2Cr) started Jan 10. Jan 30: 2,775 fans, Feb 10: 5,235, Feb 25: 6,338 fans, March 8: 6,808 fans. March 21: 7,372 fans. Fan page offers status reports & regional breakdowns. Our fans are: 37% male, 54% female, mostly in the 25-34 age range, then mostly in the 35-44 range. By region, our fans are mostly from NYC, Chicago, Seattle, then San Francisco and by country majority USA, then Canada, then Mexico, UK, France, then Brazil. English is predominant language of this audience. Goal of this group is to grow to 30,000 members. We can send bulk updates to this list, though not perfectly effective. It will be our main Facebook source of creating buzz. Facebook fan page can effectively send targeted message by region. For the NYC event for example, we were able to send a reminder message to just 630 facebook fans who were in that region. ii. Facebook "Group": March 8 has 2,313 members. March 21 has 2,430. We can send very effective direct messages to this group until it reaches 5,000 members. It’s effective in creating USSF ‘event’s because we can directly ‘invite’ everyone in this group to those events. We set up an event for a particular phone info session and there were 40 participants on the call, highest of the calls that week. iii. Facebook Person Profile Feb 21: 1,527 friends, Feb 24: 1,815, March 8: 2,364 friends. March 21: 3,328 friends. This profile is effective for outreaching to new folks & intentionally finding folks & groups that are related & organizing towards the forum. We can join many groups, have a presence, answer questions related to USSF facebook postings by the community, and connect with ‘facebook organizers’, of which there are many popping up. There is a friend limit of 5,000 and we plan to make that in the next few weeks. We are making lists of USSF facebook team organizers who have agreed to help get the buzz out in a coordinated way when things are posted on USSF website. iv. Facebook self-organized groups have popped up for many cities/projects and we are in touch with their organizers: 1. Chicago: http://bit.ly/amuYbZ 2. Boston: http://bit.ly/bCSLdW 3. New York: http://bit.ly/fbnyc 4. Philly: http://bit.ly/b3lFfH 5. Lansing-Area: http://bit.ly/9k7s9O 6. Washtenaw County: http://bit.ly/aBekdx 7. South Sound: http://bit.ly/c889V7 8. Kentucky: http://bit.ly/9HTB10 9. Indiana: http://bit.ly/a3ZlQe 10. San Antonio: http://bit.ly/bP3slj 11. Youth Road to Detroit Group: http://bit.ly/bLdaiH
c. Twitter [1] i. Twitter is meant to reach a very large audience and spread news (2-4 tweets daily) about the USSF as well as create conversations about issues & movement building. February 24: 780 followers. March 8: 919. March 21: 960 followers. It’s finally starting to come up steadily as our information because more useful and we hope to grow it as much as possible. Christina Bronsing will head up this process and is reaching out to team members. Mark, Dave, Veronica, occasionally OC team are tweeting there. ii. We have chosen a hashtag of #USSF to encourage twitters to use in reference to us. This may diversify iii. USSF organizers, ie. Adrienne, Adele, Karlos continue tweeting about USSF from their personal accounts, which have considerable followings.
d. Identi.ca i. Mark Dilley is building the foundation & testing possibilities in Identi.ca, an open source Twitter-like alternative. The audience here is mostly the tech activist community.
e. MySpace Page [2] i. Designed but just about to start foundation phase. Fausto Lopez from Leftist Lounge is heading up this effort and its purpose being to reach the myspace, youth, progressive community.
f. Also in the mix include: i. A tumblr news feed account – for creating buzz in blogosphere & google news searches ii. De.lic.ous account – for aggregating links out there about the USSF and helping to get our buzzup, also helpful for COMM WG in sharing links & connections. iii. Goodreads – someone brought this up as a part of the booksharing/Detroit project iv. Znet – someone brought this up and offered to hold down the USSF online community there. v. Cafémom – ditto znet vi. Frontline SMS – a mass text messaging service. Marco Amador is offering to help us think about the role of mass text messaging for the USSF possibly and movement building in general. vii. Blackplanet – Keith Gordon of youth technology corps has offered to hold down a USSF presence there. viii. Blogosphere questions – we’re planning an online publication aspect for the USSF writer’s network, to create a strong USSF presence in the blogosphere with social web/networking capabilities. Possibly in open source wordpress/Drupal, but not necessarily dominating on the main USSF site.
[Social Media] Next Steps: • For platforms that have a network base in place and whose foundation has been built (facebook, twitter, etc), we continue using them to send out messages coordinated with our overall messaging & info sharing strategies and find a daily rhythm of online movement. • Continue to build foundations for platforms we’re just beginning to use. • List social web platforms in a ‘connect’ or ‘social web’ section on main USSF site so folks can be sure to find us in the online communities they are a part of.
MULTIMEDIA
Project Status:
• David and Adele are searching/planning for a general USSF promo video. • Steph & Martina released an official PMA trailer video (http://www.youtube.com/ussocialforum) • Neily Jennings from NASCO has offered leading the charge on official Audio/Radio PSAs and is still finishing main PSA • We plan to coordinate official promos and build foundations for online media sharing platoforms this month, and start utilizing them along with our overall messaging plans and Arts/Cultural/Multimedia projects in April. • We’re planning a multimedia section of the website, though need to hash out how this will be possible with our website structure. 2007 media for example, is at http://media.ussf2007.org. • Change:The Music independent multimedia project closed submissions and will be releasing their project next month as a USSF fundraiser- we are planning to release news about the project.
[Video]
1. ICT is developing a sort of in-house, open source Video-sharing Alternative, but is just starting out and hopes to have it complete by the USSF.
2. We have setup a youtube channel at [3] and begun to favorite videos related to the forum, create playlists based on various types of videos (2007, current interviews, 2010 happenings) and have reached out to folks who are already creating videos & posting them to youtube. We are documenting these videos on the wiki as well. We can post our official Videos here and have it be a place where we find and connect with mediamakers who use youtube to share info & art about the forum. Students from Columbia College have offered to manage this site & intentionally outreach to the USSF community on youtube and makers of related videos.
[Photo] • Photo’s from the Detroit PMA were put on the website. • A flickr page has been set up at http://www.flickr.com/ussocialforum with albums for ‘meetings, info sessions, organizing’, ‘grassroots fundraisers’, ‘art making sessions’ and ‘flyers, banners & logos’. These albums have been duplicated in our other social web platforms that handle photos, and some photos have been uploaded for streaming on the USSF mainpage. Pideon Pagonis is leading up this effort. • We’re sharing graphics & photos also on the USSF wiki, but the flickr page will serve as a way of engaging in the photography community and inviting folks to use the platform to share photos with and about the USSF. We have created a pool for example “USSF Community Creative Commons Pool” where folks will share photos that the general USSF community & organizers are free to use in our outreach & art.
[Audio] • We setup a SoundCloud account with help from independent radio folks at RadioArte. [4] • We recorded a full phone info session and created audio pieces based on each question about the USSF. It’s uploaded to the USSF website at: http://ussf2010.org/about
[Multimedia] Next Steps:
• Build foundation of network in each of the platforms • Connect with ICT about media capabilities of USSF website • Close in on planning & creation of official USSF video & audio promo • Connect with media creators/organizers around special multimedia projects we can do once all our social media platforms & networks are in place. (photo contests, mixtape audio contests, video sharing pools, etc).
WEBSITE INFO
Project Status:
1. Scott and David are holding down Comm WG updates to the main USSF website and supporting ICT requests for the website. 2. We’re planning some navigational changes and proposals will be forthcoming 3. Navigation was just changed (header & middle section shrunk), per an older request for more ‘real estate’. 4. Roberto in Access has just released the translation pipeline, and we should be planning how to streamline the process of website page translations working closely with translators. 5. We’ve been in political discussion with ICT and OC members about the presence of proprietary software buttons on our website. Vote to happen at NPC on final proposals. 6. We’ve been in discussion with working groups, especially Resource Mobilization and Outreach, about the role of the website and how information flow will be most helpful for our outreach, info sharing & resource mobilizing efforts. It’s pretty decided that our website needs some work to make sure folks are finding it easy to navigate and find what they need, in addition to flushing out protocol for how information gets updated on it. 7. We’ve begun a http://ussf2010.org/outreachmaterials Outreach Materials page on the USSF site and plan to make it like the Promote site on the Allied Media Conference site (http://alliedmediaconference.org/participate/promote)
[Website Info] Next Steps: • Finalize website navigation changes • Proofread site for proper linkages and information • Continue to handle ICT Tickets and encourage working groups to use the system. • Review proposal about proprietary links & move forward with changes.
PROPAGANDA/ ONLINE DESIGN
Project Status:
1. Nadia from Design Action is working on various print & online Ads & buttons. 2. We have updated ‘graphics’ pool on the USSF wiki to pool our current working graphics for USSF materials. 3. Vasudha Desikan from Left Turn has stepped up to work directly with COMM wg, registration & Resource mobilization around design support & merchandizing questions. 4. Plans for a few really attractive poster designs are coming together in collaboration with artists.
Next Steps: • Closing in on design & creation of needed Digital Packets • Close in on Ad designs and have them easily found/downloadable on website.