Alternate Universe: Blue State Digital and the Superhero Elections
Barack Obama isn't Blue State Digital's only superhero candidate.
The New Organizing Institute is one of BSD's favorite organizations. They help train progressive organizations and campaign staffers how to better use new media technology and communications strategies to empower supporters to take action.
This week, Blue State Digital lent a hand at NOI's Bootcamp 2009. As the website explains:
BootCamp is the New Organizing Institute's signature training event, bringing over 50 talented progressives to DC for an intense week-long training on campaigning, new media, online organizing, data and technology.
As part of their training, all of the attendees were split up into groups, where they ran mock campaigns for superheroes in their bid for DC Mayor. Three of the eight mayoral candidates - Superman, The Green Lantern and The Atom - built full campaign websites with Blue State Digital's tools. They then used our advocacy platform to sign up new supporters, invite friends to join their cause, and mass mail their voters for Friday's election.
BSD Senior Client Manager Ian Koski and Client Services Manager Chris Stelmarski provided extensive help to The Atom and Green Lantern teams, respectively - building the websites and assisting with technology and communications questions throughout the week. And I stuck around a large portion of the week, training the attendees on email strategy planning, writing, and online fundraising.
When you consider that most campaign websites take weeks, not hours, to build by professional developers - and that most campaigns have months, not days, to communicate with supporters, the work the NOI trainees did was really impressive. We had so much fun helping out (in fact, some of us got a little carried away) that next year Blue State wants to run its own candidate. In fact, we already have a slogan: "Truth. Justice. And the Blue State Way."
Learn more about the NOI mayoral election here..
For more information about Blue State Digital's strategy & technology services, click here.