http://www.blaserco.com/Dean/federation.html
The campaign's success has created the predictable scaling challenge, with blog comments and data flows forcing periodic upgrades to the campaign infrastructure. That may not be the campaign's greatest scaling problem.
Demands on the campaign's staff also begs for outsourcing its growth challenge. The opportunity is to inspire and equip the grassroots to deal with each other in ways that are as empowering as if the staff had been involved. But these supporters must be cultivated differently.
Larry Biddle describes grassroots involvement as a collage
of individual cultivation cycles. These individuals typically depart from
a cause after their initial excitement matures past engagement.
The purpose of federating the campaign is to encourage the grass roots to re-engage each other without relying on the campaign as an energizing force:
As suggested in the background, below, the federation can only grow through peer-to-peer cultivation. Groups of non-DeanLinked people will receive an email from "The DeanLink Wizard", containing a link that, when followed, sets up their DeanLink profile by simply creating a password. The non-Linked people most likely to accept will be contacted first.
The most active DeanLinkers will be asked to contact the new Linkers through their DeanLink profile page and to develop the relationship.
The grass roots will encourage individuals to continue to connect with each other so that a series of links are developed. The ideal model might reflect a "triplet" model, with each person connected to 2 others with greater and less experience and also explicitly with a buddy at their same relative level of engagement. As these chains of support expand, the grass roots organizes itself as a cross-linked polymer, idealized here as a grid but naturally more chaotic and even stronger from its diversity:
Here's the detailed flow:
Zephyr Teachout and Ryan Davis will visit several dozen cities by year end. Their priority is to pass the torch to the most active grass roots organizers. The success of the campaign leaves no other option.
Their explicit message: the most active supporters are now in charge of cultivating and energizing the Howard Dean base. Not only does the grass roots have the power to effect change, they are the only ones with the power to take the campaign to the next level.
The best way to illustrate the need for the mentoring approach is to quote an email to the DeanSpace volunteer team, just in from Zack Rosen:
"So I got about 80 people with resumes who say they are itching to get started on DeanSpace. Some say they are retired or out of work and can donate 40+ hours a week to the effort. This is great!
Here is the thing. If we just send them mails saying get to it - we lose almost all of them.
The only way to get these guys in the fold is to approach them all individually one on one and figure out where they should apply themselves, and help get them started."
Josh Koenig's response:
"Also, the other thing I said to zack was "give me three." I think I can take three people and teach them enough that they can each teach three others. The trick will be to find three people who are willing to learn to be mentors. But if we can really do this, then within two generations we'd have everyone covered."
Zack and Josh are showing us how to re-cultivate Iowa and NH people, in a way that the staff never could, while enriching the quality of grass roots bonding with them and among them. The goal with every potential voter is to 1) know more, 2) touch more and 3) receive more.
The first step is to inspire Iowa and NH voters and influencers to build and enhance their DeanLink profile to advertise their presence and to provide a way for other supporters to contact them. Ken and Clay Johnson feel that this is a straightforward and quick project.
Know More
We know a lot about the most active Deaniacs, but should know much more about the most highly committed but less active supporters. Kenn Herman has just established a pipeline into the raw Convio data and is about a week away from having a metric for knowing where a person lies on their personal Biddle Curve.
Touch More
A "mentor's" DeanLink message would seek to open a dialogue, offer to answer questions and encourage them to stay in touch, etc. If there's any interest at all, this is the best way to draw the person out. When they add to their profile, they're telling us that they want us to know more about them and are inviting us to touch them.
Receive More
It's axiomatic that friend-raising precedes fund-raising and, of course, vote-raising. But in this campaign, that transition can happen fast, which is the goal for Iowa & NH.
Dean Supporters are proud of the things they do, and many might be pleased to brag a little on their DeanLink Profile.
Several of us have been discussing peer-to-peer cultivation since early summer, when we called it "Adopt-a-Newbie." This need has informed the design of DeanLink, DeanSpace, Get Local and other tools. Fortunately, there are some unused capabilities we can tap to ease the pain and grow the movement:
DeanLink is the obvious place for supporters to create and enrich their personal profile. But there's an army of people building and populating DeanSpace site profiles that are now invisible to DeanLink. The more time and thought they invest in any Dean profile, the more they'll invest in the campaign. Zack Rosen's plan is to expose DeanSpace profiles so they're available to DeanLink. This work should be completed by volunteers by the holidays.
When making a contribution, our constituents complete a mandatory, minimal Convio registration form which unfortunately cannot be modified. However, by sending contributors an autoresponder to Convio's more complete form, data can be pipelined into Candle. Although auto responders were effective in the past, they are currently not used.
Kelly Nuxoll and Bobby Clark are rationalizing the email response strategy with a particular emphasis on more concise messaging and more complete registration.
