I was in Australia last week as the guest of the New South Wales Teachers Federation, which was holding its annual conference. I saw a lot and learned a lot and over the next few days I want to write some of this up here.
[Pictured: A wombat. Despite my best efforts, no one offered to do me a wombat burger.]
The NSWTF -- or to be more precise, its webmaster Wayne Patterson -- covered its conference live on its website. Unions are increasingly doing this, rather than making members wait until after the conference is over (if ever) for comprehensive coverage. Their account of my speech was published while I was still standing in front of the delegates. A big thanks to John Dixon, the union's assistant general secretary, for having me over -- and for showing me how the union is increasingly integrating its membership database with its site.
On the first day of the conference, I was interviewed by Workers Radio Sydney -- an extraordinary use of mass media by the labour movement. There are regular union radio shows that I know about in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, and I was also interviewed by the last of these on Thursday, but the one in Sydney is available during prime time morning rush hour (from 6:00 to 9:00) on a powerful FM station. That they do this is very cool -- but that the interviews on the website are not updated is somewhat less cool. When they do get around to this, I'll publish the URL.
I also had a meeting with a number of high-tech, new economy types some of which were working on cutting edge websites with an interest in campaigning. All were owned by a single company, Photon. One of them was so secret that neither you nor I can actually get past the splash page.
I had a chance to spend an hour with communications, campaigning and organizing staff at LHMU -- a union with an excellent record on use of the Internet and which promises me that their website is being redesigned. The first thing I noticed in their offices is that the union produces printed magazines for their different sections, but has a one-size-fits-all website. This was a point I returned to again and again in the workshops I did in Oz.
I also took advantage of being in Sydney to meet up with the local staff of the IUF, the global union federation for food, farm and hotel workers. They produce a first rate website -- Asian Food Worker -- which is not only excellent, but ground-breaking in its use of local languages. The most recent of these -- updated by activists in Pakistan -- is their Urdu version, but they also have Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indonesian versions. I think their communications person, Jasper Goss, who I've known for years online but never met in person, is responsible for this achievement. As editor of LabourStart, I'm jealous.
I've known Peter Lewis since the days he founded Workers Online, the weekly online newsletter of the New South Wales Labour Council (now Unions NSW). Peter has since moved on and the company of which he is director, EMC, has done some fantastic work in recent years -- most notably the Your Rights at Work campaign which unions used to successfully topple the John Howard government. Their web page explaining the campaign neglects to mention the final result -- Labor's outstanding election win. Gordon Brown, are you listening?
I had a few meetings with the Australian Workers Union, one of the country's larger blue collar unions, which is revamping its own website and keen to try out new tools. Andrew Casey, a good friend and LabourStart senior correspondent in the region, is now running union communications. I spent part of a morning helping them setup their first Twitter page which they hope to use in an organizing campaign. As I type these words, I see that they've not yet launched, but let's hope they start soon.
Visiting Sydney is also an opportunity to meet up with Mark McGrath, whose company -- once known as Social Change Online, now called APT Solutions -- is responsible for so many of the Australian union websites (as well as major union sites in the UK and New Zealand too). Mark is keen on applying ideas learned in the field of social marketing to the trade union movement, and is a big advocate (as am I) of useability testing. This came up during the workshops in Sydney and Melbourne.
In Sydney a highlight was spending a day with some 40 trade union activists from a wide range of unions, doing a seminar on Internet activism. The event was organized by the Australian Council of Trade Unions Education Campaign Center where my good friend and former boss David Clement now works. The event was hosted at the CPSU, a union that has simply got to change its acronym. At the seminar, I learned of unions using some cutting edge technology, including at least one case of a union using Ning, which was unexpected. The seminar focussed on what we've learned in the first 10 years of online activism, and what new tools are becoming available for us now.
Late in the day, I met with Dave Noonan from CFMEU to talk about how a coalition of Australian unions in the building sector can use Internet campaigning to compell the new Labor government to bring an end to one of the Howard era's nastier legacies, the building industry watchdog known as ABCC. Dave described it to me as a 'star chamber'. Here's a taste of what the campaign will be about. I hope we can find a way for LabourStart to be involved in this.
My last two days in Oz were spent in Melbourne -- I'll write that up soon.