Ron Paul Hawaii wrote:
> 1.the tools I have proposed include the "Library", a survey tool, and an online meeting tool. The library would be the natural place downloadable materials, tutorials, reference materials, etc. Much of this can be built on Tangents work with OCH
Well, let me throw my 2 cents into the equation...
First we need to figure out what we want to do, what resources and people (skills) will be needed to do that and establish a critical path for what order things need to happen in. Some of these things are happening in this thread.
The movement, this project and OCH needs volunteers. Two principles here:
A – A single “opt in” volunteer form that lets people volunteer for whatever they are interested in working on is much more productive than doing a recruiting program for every particular project. Integrating an opt in into a main site – say on the start page, for projects that pop up would be ideal for the projects that pop up as we get going.
B – The appearance of activity and product to show for it, encourages people to step up and volunteer. A vision doesn't cut it. We need “meat” on the table.
On a survey tool – OCH uses survey monkey. Advantages: exports to spreadsheets, unlimited surveys and responses (premium version). Disadvantages: costs money, not that robust. We would welcome an alternative that did the same for free. In general, I view such tools as a way to collect information and volunteers for projects. For the most part, I really don't care what “the choir” thinks about an issue (It's not representative of the populace), but people like to participate in polls and have their opinion expressed – so it's a good tool to encourage repeat visits. It also helps build community.
On focus – everything the CFL won't touch and we can as well as everywhere they are duplicating our efforts and doing it very poorly. The natural “sweet spot” for us is the 2010 Congressional elections. This would suggest an alliance with the Replace Congress project. Some reservations I have with that project is that they base it on 3 principles, as opposed to RP's 4. And they have not gotten back about the candidates they claim are on board. It's worth looking at what happened before and what we need to do again in this area:
There were Two sites that listed candidates. This is obviously what “Replace Congress” wishes to do – list candidates. We need to do this again. Unfortunately, candidates were removed as they dropped out or were defeated. OCH also has a list of candidates, but only lists 49 of them. I believe we had around 80 initially. We need to contact all these people and see if they would be willing to run again. Further, we need to contact our base and see who might step up! A number of people have publicly stated a willingness to run on various forums – we need to data mine and FIND THEM! In support of this, we need to reach out on a national level and gather volunteers – both to work on campaigns in their local area but also to act as a pool of workers for things like mailings and phone banking in a more broad perspective.
http://operationcatherder.com/index.php/Our_Candidates
Two projects were established to provide a “Campaign in a Box” for candidates. These merged and eventually transformed into the skills bank. We need to continue this, and not just for the candidates. By “this” I mean both the original concept of software tools/website/tutorials as well as technical volunteers willing to help any project/campaign (The Skills Bank).
Then we had the Candidates Meetup. It's really hard to judge how successful that was. Roughly half the campaigns active at the time, joined. The idea was to share enthusiasm and strategies. The newer candidates chatted a lot, one former candidate helped the new folks. The ones that had done this before, tended to be very quiet or used back channels as we provided everyones contact info online. This was a closed, invite only and very quiet group.. We need to FIX this! (lack of communication) What we did provide is complete access to the skills bank and one person was mentoring people on Voter Vault. We were also trying to get people experienced in running phone bank and robo-calling projects organized and hooked up with campaigns, though this didn't work out well. Partially due to scattering to the wind and trying to track down folks, and also due to people protecting “turf” - something we need to get over, as the technology will be needed on a very local basis. Related was trying to gather voter registration databases – another project that needs to go further, as not all our candidates will be Republicans and thus qualify for Voter Vault access. We also made efforts to hook candidates up with bands for fund raisers.
A secondary problem with all campaigns was the lack of “boots on the ground”. Tons of people wanted to support Paul, but wouldn't support a local Congressional candidate. As there will be no presidential candidate in 2010, we should be able to get devoted people for this cause without distraction.
This brings us back to another Cat Herder project – that of tracking, re-contacting and networking all the grassroots groups out there. With the presidential campaign winding down and C4L coming into existence groups went away, merged, changed names, etc. It's become a huge mess and we don't know exactly who is still out there and how active. There are, however, over 1,000 Meetups still around. While we have a rough idea and a lot of contact information, an effort needs to be made again to get an accurate accounting and contact people again. Specifically, to find supporters and potential candidates:
The low fruit:
Contact those candidates that ran before.
Members of active forums, usergroups and Meetups.
A bit harder:
Those people that expressed that they wanted to run in 2010. This is a data mining project.
Much Harder:
C4L members – must be messaged individually.
Former members of defunct Meetups – again, must be messaged individually as they will be listed as “looking for a Ron Paul Meetup”, but the best bet is to try contacting the former Meetup organizers and asking who was most active and if they have contact info. Even just a list of names will tell who would be most useful to contact. We don't need everyone back – just the 10% that will actually get out there and do stuff.
Lastly, those individuals that donated to Ron Paul. These folks will have to be tracked down via phone books and reverse directories, and as a last resort, by mailing them. Data mining could reduce manual labor in most of these areas.
OK – that should cover re-activating the movement and getting supporters for candidates as well as candidates. We still need to deal with getting staffs and the “little problem” of a lot of these folks not having a clue about how to run for office, but we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here...
Really, the first thing we should be doing is looking at every House and Senate seat. Some are friends of liberty and don't need to be replaced. Who's left? - that's where our focus should be.
While we should have a chance for every House seat, Senate seats are up every 6 years, so we only have a chance of winning a third of them. 16 Democratic seats are up next time so if 3 states backed each candidate trying to unseat a Dem Senator, that might give us a better chance. Here's a list of when Senate terms are up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_Senators#Members
So anyway, other than re-mapping (State by State status) and working to re-activating the grassroots, some subsections of OCH that are relevant and could be plugged in to the portal include:
The Grassroots Roadmap – listing of RP / Liberty sites maintained by Snapple Lama. This listing might be good to look at to see what other content might be drawn in and useful.
The Skills Bank – ideally in collaboration with RPF, and possibly other sites. We really need to get a grassroots technical group back together.
The Bands 4 Ron Paul project. - ALL these bands need to be contacted, a directory and DB put together and organized to do fund raiser concerts, Ronstalks and ideally resurrect the CD project to record and send music to college, alternative, etc. radio stations. This will take a lot of either manpower or time due to Myspaces anti-spam policies.
The Grassroots Field Manual is pretty dormant, but could make good content. It needs work though.
Grassroots Classifieds is also dormant, but will become relative again.
Congress Critter contact info needs updating, but again useful reference material for content.
The Liberty Library only has 3 items in it, but it's a good start for that kind of a section.
Running for public office – again, not a lot in this section – but a start.
Our Candidates could be revamped to be a road map for recruiting and supporting 2010 candidates.
Past Events might be a starter for a Grassroots History section.
One section of the above is Cat Wrangler, that with it's associated tool (program) would be good to help automate the mass contact projects again.
Anyway, those are my thoughts for now,
-t
Excitement can be infectious 
