Eric Squair’s blog

I had the pleasure of presenting at the My Charity Connects conference here in Toronto. Put on by Canada Helps, it brings together about 300 people who work in the not-for-profit sector to learn about communicating and collaborating effectively online. It’s held at MaRS, and this is my second time presenting.

Because I promised they would be here, my presenter slides with notes are here in PDF (1.6Mb).

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One of the unexpected joys of running the weeknight workshop series “Blogging for People Who Should” is getting to sample some fun cheeses. On my way to work on workshop days, I walk through Kensington Market and pick up some snacks for the session: fresh organic veggies, dips, olives, cookies, crackers and best of all, cheese.

If you don’t offer some kind of food at workshops that start right after the workday ends, people have to scramble to grab something quick (and invariably crappy) or go hungry. And it’s fun to try a few new cheeses each week.

I am a fan of Global Cheese, on Kensington Avenue, a big friendly place where the staff behind the counter constantly offer you sample slices to taste. Aside from being a good business tactic, it’s always a lot of fun to shop there. Continue Reading »

This weekend more than 30 people came together over two days to learn more about, work with and improve some free open source tools for running online campaigns in Canada.

There aren’t a lot of website tools for organizations in Canada looking to create effective online petitions, build their email lists or put supporters in touch with their Members of Parliament.  Make Poverty History Canada has helped develop open source software to do exactly these tasks, and wants to share it with other organizations for free.

So Make Poverty History sponsored a workshop for activists to learn more about the tools on Saturday at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto.  A Hackathon was organized for the Sunday, where open source software developers gathered to work with the code to improve it, learning and sharing with each other in the process.

Here’s a few key learnings from the weekend Continue Reading »

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There are a lot of interesting campaigns with online components happening here in Toronto at the municipal level, including this recent amazing victory for a more beautiful city. Campaigns like this could be even more effective if they had simple and effective ways for citizens to get in touch with their elected representatives (or their candidates during the upcoming election).

As it stands now, online campaigns either spend a lot of money to purchase advocacy software, or ask participants to use government websites to find and contact their elected representatives, with no way to record how many messages have been sent, or stay in touch with participants. There is a better way.

The Make Poverty History campaign, who I work with on several projects, has software that makes it easy for people to send a message or sign a petition to their Member of Parliament based on their postal code.  The software also allows people to opt to join an email list to keep up to date on a campaign – a useful way to build a list of supporters. You can see an example of an online action here.

The best part of this story? Make Poverty History wants to share this software with other activist groups across Canada. So they are sponsoring an event in Toronto on February 27th & 28th so you can learn more about it and contribute to it’s development.

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For the past two weeks I have been running a workshop I am developing called “Blogging for People Who Should”.

The long-winded title begs the question “So who SHOULD blog?” This course is designed for anyone with an important story to tell: activists trying to change the world, filmmakers and authors with stirring stories to share, independent consultants whose work makes positive contributions to social change, anyone doing inspiring works that they want the world to know about. Continue Reading »

I recently got an email from an organization I love: they do great, strategic and effective environmental work with minimal resources. They are having their strategic planning sessions here in Toronto this week, and wondered if I could come by and talk to them about improving their online work.

One goal in their online communications strategy, a bit tongue in cheek, is to “Join the 21st Century”. They are not doing too badly with their communications – in old and new media – and they are a super-smart bunch, so I was a bit intimidated, truth be told. I had limited time to pull this together, and this is a no-bullshit crew. I can’t show them some campaigns that worked, repeat a few pat phrases about social media and be done with it – these folks have been doing effective communications work for years – they know their stuff. Continue Reading »

I recently spent a week in upstate New York with an amazing teacher named Robert Gass and 24 other people, and it was a profound experience.

The Art of Leadership has informed the structure and vibe of my favourite yearly event, Web of Change since it began, and I felt I needed to take this course that so many people were recommending.

“Leadership” is a loaded word. It can either bring up images of that boss or coworker from a few years ago who inspired people to do great things and was often a joy to be around. Continue Reading »

I recently went to the fantastic ‘Web of Change‘ conference in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia. I have been to this yearly event several times, and have always returned refreshed and inspired.  This year I added a bike trip with my partner to the mix, biking the 500km round trip from Vancouver to Cortes Island (via Tofino)

The (un)conference was inspiring as always, but I had one main issue I wanted to explore. I have been mulling over the idea of what a MoveOn-style grassroots movement would look like in Canada, and how it might get started. It’s an ambitious idea, and some people feel it has already been realized by Avaaz.org.
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I have had the pleasure to work with the great crew at a Canadian environmental NGO over the last few weeks, assisting them with their broadcast email. The part of this work I enjoyed the most was creating a workshop for the campaign staff on email best practices.  Download the checklists for the sessions here (PDF). Continue Reading »

I have often felt there are so many great online campaigning jobs in the United States and the UK, but not so many opportunities to do online work for progressive organizations here in Canada.

That was last week.

Three recent job openings I have heard of had restored my faith in the health of online organizing in Canada. Continue Reading »