Thanks Chad, Pittsburgh Organizing 2.0 was great, big challenges ahead

[kenneth miller]

Hello,
I'm glad that people I know well and folks I had not met before were
able to attend Organizing 2.0 in Pittsburgh. Again - thanks for
coming Chad. In addition to the information you put together, and the
trainers you helped to recruit, you have a nice way of talking to
people.
I had the Voter Access Database training put on by PA State Voices at
Planned Parenthood. Very good. It has a lot of CRM characteristics.
So my first objective will be to load in B-PEP's membership d-base
into the VAN and try to match our members to VAN IDs.
B-PEP used to have a SALSA account and we no longer do. I've delayed
B-PEPs decision to open a constant contact account until I can figure
out what the eblast capability of the VAN is.
I am going to reach out to some of the Pittsburgh Organizing 2.0
people who are already using the VAN successfully, and try to set up
some opportunities to volunteer with them, doing data entry and
otherwise working with the VAN. Maybe I can be helpful to them and
get my learning curve off the ground.
B-PEP has a lot of needs... most urgently to send eblasts. I'm going
to try to insulate myself from this immediate need and focus on
matching the B-PEP membership list with VAN records first. I think it
will be important to develop a template for reporting to the B-PEP
Coordinating Council what progress is being made/what we have learned
about the demographics and voting history of our membership through
use of the VAN. The point should have a larger group of people making
data driven decisions about our voter registration and gotv efforts.
I'll share with this list how this all goes and I'll be really happy
with any feedback.
Kenneth
412-867-9213

[Celeste Taylor]

Good afternoon PGH online organizing group!

Thanks a lot Charles for bringing this group together and for the participation of many skilled and committed folks in Pittsburgh.

Many people have shared with me these past few months how much they miss receiving the B-PEP eblast that went out on a regular basis to over 2,000 people.  As much as I know the tremendous value of it, I could not continue having REMP utilize its very limited resources to Salsa and the time it took for me to oversee the process.

So, the issues that Kenneth brings up related to B-PEP are important ones that might help others that face similar circumstances when an organization that has diminished resources and capacity(which included staff time, volunteers and money) to maintain utilization of technology such as Salsa. 

This has been extremely frustrating for me because I think there is sometimes the presumption that grassroots groups don't want to utilize technology when in fact it is a combination of several things.

A group like this can demonstrate the effectiveness of sharing information, pulling resources and making a commitment to help groups like B-PEP and in turn B-PEP will be able to help with other things of value to other groups.

Solidarity,

Celeste Taylor
Director, REMP, Regional Equity Monitoring Project
program of B-PEP, Black Political Empowerment Project
in partnership with Hill House Association
Office: Addison Behavioral Care
905 West St., 4th Floor ~ Pittsburgh, PA 15221
Cell: 412-670-0937                             
Email: taylor....@gmail.com
Website: http://pennsylvaniaequity.org

[Anamari]

Good evening all,

I wanted to thank Charles for creating this opportunity for us to get
together. And to everybody who participated.

For me such opportunities are most important as I am still trying to
build a local network and as you may notice I am sometimes quite
challenged by technology.
Besides my volunteer work for ACTC, I had another opportunity to
discuss Organizing 2.0 recently – as a member of the vestry for my
church I am becoming more involved in finding effective solutions for
re-organizing the surviving Episcopalians form the Pittsburgh
Diocese.

Looking for regular updates and future group meetings

Ana Bayne
anam...@live.com
Allegheny County Transit Council
http://actransitcouncil.blogspot.com

PS. The proof that I am technologically challenged- when I tried to
access the group page I opened a second account with my gmail.com
address and now I have no idea how to merge the two…