The Cyberunions Podcast: Episode Three

Building a website for your branch, local or campaign

Don’t Broadcast Engage

Cyberunions Talk Show Ogg

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Show notes

Intro

• Alternatives to Skype
• Google Talk – jabber, jingle and XMPP
• Audacity – recording tool

2:00 Websites and communications strategy

• Most union websites are inadequate – one way communication
• Unions behind in using social media tools
• Unions don’t have the resources to meet this need
• If you take control of information at a local level you can change this
• Create the role of Communications Officer
• Develop a communications strategy that speaks directly to the workplace
• This improves discourse, increases engagement and makes the union more democratic
• Growth of general unions mean information is often unfocused
• Unions use twitter to broadcast, not communicate

9:40 Building a simple website

• What should be on your website?
• WordPress – how we created Cyberunions on wordpress.com
• Register a domain – you can export this later
• WordPress installed on a server we rent – hosted by Telekommunisten

14:00 Younger members have a better grasp of technology

• They should be encouraged to organise autonomously at a local level
• As much power as possible should be devolved down to local level
• Young activists have great ideas

17:00 Appropriate technology – using SMS/text messaging

• One text lead to a walk out and a contract victory!
• Hivemind – decentralised intelligence is powerful
• Creating private groups in identica

21:00 Experimenting with Diaspora

• Aspects – choose who sees your status updates
• Find a community-supported Diaspora pod
• There is development on an identica plugin for Diaspora, but it doesn’t work yet

25:00 Developing a web strategy – an overview

• Get permission (or forgiveness)
• Delegate responsibility – communications officer
• Create a WordPress site
• Register your domain
• Create practical pages with relevant information
• Email is still a useful technology
• Use social media and integrate it with your website
• It takes time to build an online presence
• It’s easy to create a mobile version of your site – many people use smartphones, use services that connect with them
• Don’t broadcast – engage