Eric Squair’s blog

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 »

Greenpeace Canada is in the process of hiring for two positions: a social media specialist and a webmaster. Both positions are located in Toronto.

Both jobs require a mix of communication and technical skills, with a healthy dose of passion. I worked for Greenpeace for many years, and I can say it’s a great place to work. Smart, dedicated and lively people – there’s rarely a dull moment. They need two people who fit that description to move their campaigns forward. Could one of these people be you? Continue Reading »

Rootscamp happened last weekend, and it was a really great experience. I visited New York before the conference, and drove down to Washington with a few friends. The event was full of energy, as the mainly Democratic crowd was pretty happy with how the election turned out.

A few of the sessions I attended were “Long lasting local groups”, “MoveOn’s top 5 lessons from the 2008 election”, “Using merchandise in your campaign”, “ The Obama campaign and social networks”, and “Irony we can believe in” (what’s the role of humor if our guy is in the White House?).
Continue Reading »

A friend sent along this campaign, run by some Stanford students. It is a simple site built around an amateur video. The video has shaky camera work, wooden acting and is a shade too long. I love it for a number of reasons.

It is far more effective than a wall of text explaining how you should upgrade your computer instead of getting a new one. Imagine for a moment how compelling this campaign would be without the disarming video? And the video tells a story and goes for a homemade, dorky vibe – it doesn’t even try to be ‘professional’.

I suspect this is the key to doing YouTube well on a budget: be homemade, look homemade and have fun with it. Celebrate your dorkiness. And to be honest, I think it’s harder than it looks! Continue Reading »

Last week I had the honour of presenting at the skill building retreat for Global Citizens for Change, a public engagement initiative of volunteer cooperation agencies in Canada.

Once again I went with the ‘walk before you run’ theme. My presentation was in four parts: the basics of online campaign communications, the basics of campaign websites, list engagement for campaigns and ‘everything else’ : how to evaluate other online opportunities (which admittedly was pretty short: how does it compare to email?).

The key learnings were:

1. Campaigning online is primarily a communications challenge, not a technological challenge.
2. The internet is made by and for people.
3. ‘Best list wins’: create, engage and grow your list before you…
4. Choose wisely from the low hanging fruit.

Download the presentation here [PDF, 3.5 MB] Continue Reading »

Just back from the E-Campaigning forum here in the UK, and it has been a very intense and enjoyable two days.

One of the highlights for me was the opening address by Ben Brandzel, from MoveOn/John Kerry/Avaaz and other works. He started the conference with an entertaining look at growing your list of supporters. SO many interesting things to report from this session (and the online video is coming, we are promised) but one concept Ben presented really stuck out for me: the information/enthusiasm ratio. Continue Reading »