Building networks and social capital

Over the course of the campaign, many “weak connections” (what social-network enthusiast would loosely refer to as people you know who aren’t close friends or family) have helped an organic network of dedicated and talented Web developers, online strategists and traditional campaigners coalesce into a well-organized and well-connected team. This is happening across North America and the world: from the early work done to mobilize for the historic Battle for Seattle, the Quebec City Summit or the more recent counter-conventions to the Republican National Convention and G8 gatherings.

An integral part of these mobilizations is the trust networks that are built over time, through face-to-face interactions. Groups like the Aspiration Technology Foundation in the U.S. is catalyzing these networks through events like the Advocacy Developers Convergence, Penguin Day and the SMSsummit or SMSactive. Similar, but much larger and focused on a range of communications issues, are events like the Designs on Democracy conference. And, for the past four years in British Columbia (that’s in Canada for all you Yanks!), a small group of people have gathered on Cortes Island — surrounded by old growth forest and ocean — to have an intimate discussion about the role of integrity, reflection, relationships and technology in campaigning, advocacy and social change.

It was though gatherings and networks like these that we were able to learn about the approaches and tools being used across the U.S. and Canada and to meet the people behind them. One organization at these gatherings was the recently launched ActionWorks.ca* — a social enterprise that was started to support the work of WildCanada.net, with the aim of offering their action centre technology to other NGOs as an earned-income initiative.

(*Sadly, ActionWorks has recently announced to its clients that it will not be able to continue and will be closing its doors. This leaves a relatively large hole in the landscape of advocacy tools for bilingual Canadian campaigns. If you know about French language tools in Quebec or France that are off the radar, please let us know!)