The eCampaigning Forum (www.ecampaigningforum.com) happened in Oxford, UK in late January 2006. It’s a gathering of mostly European-based campaigners and activists who use new media - primarily Internet - to mobilize the public and/or their memberships. The attendee list looks like a real who;s who of european (and global) NGOs: Greenpeace, Amnesty, Oxfam, MSF, Friends of the Earth, and a variety of other social change movements and organizations - including the Make Poverty History/One Campaign who made such a global impact last year in conjunction with Bob Geldof’s Live 8 Concerts.
The eCampaigning Forum was first organized in 2002 by Duane Raymond, a Canadian then working for Oxfam International in Oxford. I attended the second Forum in Nov 2004, and I think I was the only North American-based attendee. This year the forum was larger (about 50 people), and included a handful of North Americans, plus a couple of “southern” delegates from India and Mexico, but it was still largely European/UK-centred.
Over two days we engaged in a series of mini-presentations and breakout discussions, examining the state of eCampaigning and discussing related issues, such as coalition campaigning, text/mobile messaging. Lots of great ideas exchanged, and nicely documented on the ecampaigningforum.com website (http://www.ecampaigningforum.com/event/AgendaWiki). Too much stuff, really, to talk about in detail – go have a look for yourself.
The eCampaigningForum is quite different from my other yearly “must-attend” technology & social change event: Web of Change (WoC : http://www.webofchange.com). The attendees here were largely drawn from staff actively working within nonprofits and activists groups, rather than WoC, which is largely attended by technology providers, consultants and social change entrepreneurs. So the eCampaigningForum was much more shop-talk oriented than the big picture stuff that typically comes up at Web of Change (such as mapping the history of the internet and social change, starting with the first networked computers ..). It’s great to have both of these events on my yearly schedule - really stimulates thinking on different levels …
