A Platform For Meaningful Conversations

Organizing For America

Barack Obama’s campaign organization, Organizing for America, in one of its first VoiceVoice social conferencing events in 2009, invited volunteers nationwide to discuss the initiative on health care. Participants from different regions met in groups of four to discuss which messages were working, and which weren’t. They then reconvened the group and asked the volunteers to “raise their hand” (by pressing 1) if they learned something, and would like to share it with the larger group. National field director Jeremy Bird told us: “In the past, we had one-way conference calls, because our technology limited our ability to have interactive conversations and make people feel like they were part of something where they could be heard. We used social conferencing to keep that kind of empowering and engaging campaign ethos at the local level.”

World Bank

A group of program managers and field consultants for the World Bank convened an event on VoiceVoice, to set priorities for an upcoming retreat regarding a development project in the Nile River Basin. In breakout groups, they discussed essential questions like “What is the highest possibility for the retreat?” “What does success look like after the retreat?” and “What are the most important questions that you would like answered at the retreat?” The experience was well received, and Gustavo Saltiel, Program Manager from the World Bank, noted "this was much better organized than other conference calls... the Breakout Groups were an effective way for us to really talk with each other."

National Science Foundation

In a 5 hour “Cyber Cafe,” 70+ academics participated in a virtual “meet-and-greet” to learn more about areas the NSF is interested in funding. The topic was collaborative research in cybersecurity between the fields of computer science and the social sciences. Even though the NSF wasn’t ready to publicly announce the allocation of this $10M in grant funding, this event encouraged more proposals for potential collaborative research in advance of the funding announcement. Breakout Groups were set up so researchers were matched with the right funding branch, such as Cyber Economics, Cyber Ethics, Finance and Criminology, Sociology, Privacy and Cyber Psychology. As the event organizer told us, “I was so impressed with everyone from your team, and with the technology that allows us to have this kind of in-depth engagement with people from all over the country so efficiently and effectively.”

MoveOn.org

MoveOn is a community of more than 8 million Americans from all walks of life who use innovative technology to lead, participate in, and win campaigns for progressive change. MoveOn convenes several events every week to support their members in creating effective campaigns for change by using petitions and other socially disruptive “days of action.” Some sample events are: “Getting your petition noticed by your target,” “Growing Your Petition and Making it a Success,” and “MoveOn Petitions Follow-Up Conversation.” Many of these discussions led to subsequent success from petitions that went viral and provide a learning forum in Breakout Groups where members who are starting a local campaign can build upon the experience gained from petitioners who were successful at the national level.

Eric Kuhn

“We are starting to see the tremendous impact social conferencing is having on how volunteers feel connected with each other and OFA. People want to be a part of the conversation and comment threads or 140 characters don't go all the way.”View Original Article

Howard Jacobson

“How awesome would it be to be able to get on the phone and give an audio presentation to 50, 100, or even several thousand people at the same time? They could even ask questions during the call, although you'd be able to mute them out when appropriate.”View Original Article

Justin Elliott

“A system... which allows for both voting by phone and smaller breakout calls in the middle of a larger call. The process... has some other useful features, like the ability to forward to an organizer the email addresses of participants interested...”View Original Article