in trends
Trend watching – how technology is affecting political communications
Going away for a week has been a good time to catch up on reading and podcasts – plus the inevitable train adventures with my 4 1/2-year-old son! One of the best podcast I listened to was this retrospective interview with Government vs the Robots host Jonathan Tanner. Over the last 40+ episodes, Jonathan has …
A toolkit for playing defensive advocacy
A new Prime Minister, a possible General Election and Brexit continues to rumble on. In our current, politically uncertain times do we need to start to reconsider what campaign success looks like? That’s why I really enjoyed the latest paper from the team at the Centre for Evaluation Innovation which looks at how to define …
in coalitions, learning
What does it mean to be movement generous?
“Think of any campaign success you’ve seen or been involved in. I would wager good money – that it wasn’t achieved by one actor alone: it was collective action that brought about change” I couldn’t agree more than with Nick Martlew in this excellent Mobilisation Lab post on what makes for effective collaboration in campaigning. …
in learning
What can campaigners learn from start-ups?
I’ve finally got around to reading ‘The Lean Startup’ by Eric Reis. It’s one of those books that has come across my radar from time to time, and I ended up buying it after an impromptu book buying visit to my nearby book shop. I can’t say I found it the easiest book to read …
in trends
5 trends shaping campaigning in the UK that you might have missed….
Brexit is dominating everything at the moment – and it can be easy not to look beyond the latest twist in what’s happening in Westminster, or the recent EU Elections to see how the campaigning landscaping is changing around us. But here are 5 stories that you might have missed that point to other important …
in tactics
When companies start to campaign
Starting out as a campaigner it often easy to take the position that all companies are your opponents – and on some issues, they remain the major perpetrators of human rights abuse and environmental destruction. But that assumption can prevent campaigners from exploring how companies are getting more involved in campaigning – and potentially missing …
Life long learning for campaigners
I went back to university a few weeks ago – it was really fun to be able to go back to UEA in Norwich where I studied and share as part of their annual ‘Working in Development’ forum. It was a bit of journey down memory lane, and as much as I enjoyed sharing some …
Is #RevokeArticle50 the biggest petition in UK history?
As the Revoke Article 50 petition hits 5 million signatures, I’ve been looking around for evidence of bigger petitions. So is it the biggest in UK campaigning history? Short answer – Yes. Longer + caveated answer – I’ve not yet found any evidence of a petition that has had a bigger overall total, but it’s …
What campaigners could learn from American Football
I’m fairly sure the overlap between fans of NFL and those interested in campaigning is fairly small – in fact, I can think of only one or two readers of this blog who might fall into both categories. But get beyond the padding and helmets, the endless breaks for TV adverts, and that you can be …
How should you prepare for a ‘snap’ General Election?
Your guess is as good as mine as to if a General Election will be called in the coming weeks or months – if you want to follow the betting markets you can get 7/1 that it’ll happen this May, but with the possibility that it could happen what should campaigners being doing to get …
mrtombaker
Head of Mobilisation at Save the Children, was Head of Campaigns at Bond, co-founder Campaign Bootcamp, blog about campaigning because I'm passionate about seeing more campaigns win, election geek (and former Labour Party activist), interested in monitoring and evaluation, blog is all my own views. Prone to bad spelling!