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Two days after RootsCamp and wanted to get some thoughts out of my head about the event.

This was my second “unconference” so I went knowing, and was ready for a loose organization and a need to go with the flow for the day.  That said, everything seemed to be well organized and the day got off to a great start. I twittered some through out the day, tagging tweets as #rootscamp pgh. Interestingly, a guy in New Jersey, who I had never DM’ed with before, replied to my tweet, saying “keep us informed…” The power of Twitter!

As people were coming in, I met Evelyn who was there to gain support for her work for disabled people.  There is currently an Office for People with Disabilities, created by the current governor.  But when a new governor is elected, that may disappear.  Evelyn wrote a bill to have the office created permanently.  I was so in awe of her!  She wrote a bill! So, my day was getting off to a great start. 

We did introductions and everyone said who they were, what group they were there for, and three words describing their interest.  This was very cool.  However, I was amazed.  I was the only person who named an interest or involvement in gay and lesbian issues.  I wondered a bit how well- accepted my input would be- I’ll write more about this later because this is an important point about the day for me.

I have two comments about things I wish had gone differently.  First is about Dan Onorato’s comments.  I was really glad for his comments and involvement, but the timing was not ideal.  I think it fit into the program when is was best for Dan, and happened to be right as we as a group were beginning to work at organizing the “wall of sessions.” I think this broke the pace of the morning and focus on sessions and how sessions can work best.  Please don’t take me wrong.  I was glad he was there, glad I heard everything I heard him say, and glad I had a brief chance to talk to him more directly. I just wish it had happened during lunch instead of when it did. But in true unconference style, go with the flow.

Data Management

How geeky of a session can there be at RootsCamp?  How about Data Management!  LOL. This was a really interesting session and an extremely lively discussion. My only wish, after the fact, was that this was a longer session where we could have segmented out topics better.  There was so much to say, and so many people had ideas and opinions, and I wonder if it could have been more productive, if we had been able to put more energy and thought  to a more narrow topic. That said, I felt it was a productive discussion overall, and the facilitator, Jay, did a great job. 

My own experience of data management was mostly surrounding MoveOn work during the Kerry race, as well as the local effort to keep Nader off the ballot.  Relational databases are wonderful things and lend themselves so well to the data needs, but that doesn’t make them simple or easy. My hope would be that Vote America or whomever it at the top of the food chain when it comes to these databases, spends the next year- the off year??- working on the data side of things.  How to improve the User Interface? How to offer more training for various levels of users? How to handle user authentication and data validation issues better.  So much more could be accomplished if more effort was put into this end of stuff.  and not more effort during the election season.  More effort now so that the use of data tools is smoother during the election season.

Lunch

At most conferences of any type, I often want to use the lunch time to pull back a bit from the purpose of the event, and focus on building relationships.  I love to teach and speak to groups, but I’m really a fairly introverted guy and often better at doing things myself than with others. but the key to success is relationships and network, so for me, lunch was about working on that part of things.

I sat down with my toasted turkey sandwich, next to Rick, an auto worker from Butler.  I had had a chance for a briefer exchange with him, while getting coffee and he seemed like an interesting guy. also near me was Natalia Rudiak who is running for city council, and Mark Reuterkus who, I later looked up and found that he did run for several offices and now does a podcast.  I appreciated the opportunity to ask a Natalia directly about her thoughts on the current county anti-discrimination ordinance issue and queer issues in general.  Natalia is having an open house to kick off her campaign this week.

Rick and I talked a fair amount.  I wanted o hear his take on labor issues, and how workers, the union and the industry can work together for change and so that everyone gets what they need. So often Labor is demonized in the MSM, or treated as a special interest group.  From the perspective of my interest in gay and lesbian issues, it is easy to assume that labor workers would be opposed, but I never found that to be the case with anyone I talked to.  Got me wondering about why, as we work for GLBT families and GLBT issues, don’t we ever think of partnering with Labor?

After lunch, I looked at the sessions wall and noticed that my session had been moved.  It was now, on the same time slot as another a session.  The other topic didn’t seem that related, except that it mentioned podcasting, but I had some pretty clear ideas about what I wanted to do, so was not keen on putting these two sessions together.  So, since my time slot/room was still open, I moved my paper back to its original location @ 2:30.

Predictive Dialing

The first session after lunch for me was about the USW’s predictive dialing phone bank.  I’m an artist and a blogger.  While I have participated in a phone back for fundraising for Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, it is not a tool I have really thought about ever. I’m an internet geek kinda guy! But earlier when Eric was describing what it was and what it could do, I got this idea about how it could be used in terms of the county anti-discrimination ordinance issue. So, I went to the session and was just amazed.  Eric was a good presented and the content excellent. 

Blogging, Microblogging, and Podcasting

One reason I didn’t want to merge my session with Mark’s was because of how the data management session had gone. I went to it, because of the name, but in the session, it was unclear if there was one facilitator- Jay or two facilitators.  I wondered if that was part of why we seemed to be covering so much teritory.  Blogging and microblogging can be really powerful tools, so I wanted to make sure to really have the timwe to give session participants enough that they could leave and put some of it to work immediately. It was Mark Reuterkus who was doing the other session and proposed that we do it together, but we kept them as two separate sessions. I was sorry to miss his session, but that is one of the things about this unconference format- you take in what you can, and don’t try to do it all.

There were 15 people who signed onto my list and the room was very full.  I blogged yesterday as a follow up- so notes about all that we covered.  We had a great mix of folks! Some with a lot of blogging experience and many with absolutely no blogging experience.  So, we had good discussion!  They had to kick us out of our room- we could have kept going for a while!

Strange Bedfellows

The last session I went to was about building coalitions and partnerships with people who, on the surface, may look like adversaries, but who underneath it all have the same overall goals that you have. The actual content discussed wasn’t applicable to me or my interested really, but I used the session to really listen and learn from some folks who are clearly excellent at organizing.  

The End of the Day

So, the second thing I wish had gone differently was that there was no closing, debriefing session at the end.  I think that eliminating it was a mistake and would have allowed the organizers a to harness some of the energy created during the day and direct it a bit as we move forward.  But in the true spirit of an unconference, go with the flow and make it what you need it to be.  I phoned Brad and said I would be done early and spent the time waiting for him, by talking further with Evelyn.  I’m going to blog about her Office for People with Disabilities later this week!