A few days back I received my third inviation in about a year to officially join the Manhattan Young Democrats, currently my favorite progressive organization in town. I declined. (Rupert Murdoch: "You don't join clubs, you stay an outsider.")
- Women are in charge. I grew up in a part of the world where gender is today what race might have been in the US South 50 years ago. So I have a dog's sense of smell on sexism, I think. Race matters, gender matters.
- It has a good balance of structure (to get things done, to keep the ball moving) and informality (to party).
- It is officially affiliated with the Democratic Party. I have gone to a few of its meetings at the party office. Spitzer, of course, knows Kristina, just like the Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer does. I like that connection. Protesting is good, but I'd rather be in power and steering things. Protesting can feel like preparing to prepare to prepare. The real challenge of political action always has to be to get into power and get things done. The mechanics of power fascinate me. You wouldn't let just about anyone to operate on you, would you? Holding office requires a skill set.
- Kristina Hoke is "one smart cookie," like someone told me at the MYD Spring Gala last year. (MYD Spring Gala)
- It does not really take much of your time.
I moved to NYC the summer of 2005 to work on my technology company idea, but I got sucked in to work full time for the democracy movement in Nepal, perhaps the only Nepali outside of Nepal to do so, which is fine, because that is the most important work I ever did in my life to date. And in the course of that work I turned down many invitations to join organizations. (Hamro Nepal: 50 Members) I worked through the ecosystem concept. My blog allowed me to penetrate organizations. When the leader of the second largest party in Nepal emails you saying thank you for thinking about Nepal all the time, and says he finds your blog "inspiring," is that not like being a member of his central committee perhaps?
But what if I were to take a bite at MYD? I think the first invite might have been something to do with MYD then not having a website: Indians and software. So let me start there.
I think in this day and age it is key to weave your organizatin seamlessly into the web. When you do that well, it allows you to really emphasize High Touch, as in face time.
What to do?
You start with a homepage that you don't pay for. That not pay for part is key. A website you don't have to pay for is more democratizing. That means anyone can do it.
So you go to Blogger. And you get a domain name like http://myd.blogspot.com is already taken. What about http://mydem.blogspot.com that is available? But you already have a domain name at http://www.manhattanyoungdems.org so what to do? You do the forwarding thing. So people still go to http://www.manhattanyoungdems.org but then they get forwarded to http://mydem.blogspot.com.
The first thing to do would be to tinker with the Template to get rid of the sideburns and the date and time stamps to page entries, so the whole thing looks more like a website and less like a blog. You go to the Settings and choose to display only one post at a time. Then you create a post and change the year to something like 2010, so that that page always stays at the top, and is your homepage. Take a look at this, a Nepali organization that has close to 70 members: http://undf.blogspot.com.
You could still choose to have a "sideburn" to display links to all pages at the site, or you could have all the links at the very top, or at the bottom. I suggest having about five such links at the very top, for easy navigation. The first link would be Home, so people can click back to the main page no matter where they might be at the site.
And then you start creating pages and linking to them from the main page.
Anyone can do this much. You don't have to be a techie. You could be President or Secretary.
This also means you can upload an unlimited number of photos at your own site. Blogger is my favorite photo hosting service. You click on an image and it becomes fullscreen. It is quite an experience.
Become your own media. A political organization is constantly trying to get the word out, is trying to introduce the organization to prospective members. There is nothing like videoblogging all your events. Forget C-Span. I recommend Google Video because YouTube has the 10 minute, 100 MB limit. And once your videos are there, it is so easy to embed them at your own site, or at any site. It is a simple copy and paste a few lines of readymade code.
Then you weave all your members into social networking. In this day and age, there is no excuse for anyone to not have a homepage. It is so easy to do. MySpace of course is the hottest name in social networking, but Orkut is also pretty good. Make it mandatory that everyone get a MySpace account and add all the officers as friends.
There should be a page at the site that links to the MySpace page of all the members, perhaps in an alphabetical order. In this day and age, people should not have to exchange business cards. You meet someone at some event, and as long as you remember their name and face, you should be able to get in touch, or add as a friend, as the social networking sites let you do.
A MySpace account and a link to it would do more to add to the vibrancy of the organization than the small membership fee.
I call it density. How many people in the organization do you know? How well do you know them?
So far, so good. This is the High Tech part. But that is only one third of the game. High Touch is two thirds. And this is what an organization like MYD has already been doing, and doing well. This is about face time, and soft skills, and doing events, and getting people to show up, and making sure people have a nice time, and they are productive as necessary (phone banking anyone?). This is about political acumen, and strategy and all those things you can not buy with MasterCard.
It is just that I think High Tech totally enhances High Touch. The focus continues to be on High Touch. And while you are at it, join my Obama 2008 communities at Orkut. Or join one of several at MySpace: BARACK OBAMA 2008, Barack Obama for President, Barack Obama for President.
Eliot Spitzer, Governor
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