#FAIL Offline-to-Online-to-Offline: Lessons

Learned in Building a Custom Community Platform

CLIMATE NETWORKS

•Started as part of 1Sky’s ambitious Climate Precinct Captain program with the goal of putting a grassroots activist in every voting precinct (aka election districts) in the nation (300,000)

•Think MYBO on steroids

•Evolved into working four allied grassroots campaigns on a multi-group platform to share groups, users and events.

GOALS

•Provide local groups and organizers with the tools to recruit new people, post events, host discussions, and support their offline work and do their climate movement building.

•Create political pressure on legislators by mapping and documenting the climate movement.

•Give climate campaign partners a custom-branded platform for community organizing via their own websites.

WHERE IT WENT WRONG

•Internal – Not everyone was on the same page. Project leaders came and went, quickly changed from “let’s get started” to “what’s going on here?” •External – The project started with a focus on internal goals; external audiences and intended users were not consulted. Big question we didn’t ask, “What do organizers/audiences want and need to succeed?”

WHERE IT WENT WRONG

•Technology – Not ready for prime time. Partners also began changing feature requests towards launch—always a bad way to watch a project spin out of control.

•Development – Many of the features key to the original Climate Network vision weren’t there at launch. Played catch-up trying to integrate post-launch.

•Deployment – It was typical problem of, “Build it and they will come.” No marketing/promotion.

DO-OVER!

•Listen to your audience

•Be visionary, but be realistic

•Get internal buy-in

•Partner with good technologists

•Develop most essential features first

•Make it look good

•Test everything

•Budget for outreach and marketing

•Budget for future development

For the full white paper or questions:

Email: garthmoore@gmail.com

Twitter: @garthmoore

Online on Frogloop:http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/author/garthteam