Saturday, December 13, 2014

Washington D.C. Day Two

I'm not going to lie, the highlight of today was the #RootsCanuck lunch at Saint's Paradise Cafeteria.

Today was the first day of RootsCamp and as Canadians do in a foreign country, we all found each other and went out for lunch. And Twitter helped us mobilize.

In some ways I'm still surprised by how many political organizers don't use Twitter. In fact, if I hadn't been a regular Twitter user I don't think the other two people I'm here with would have known about the RootsCanuck lunch.

There are about 15 different sessions going on every hour throughout the day over today and tomorrow. Each hour seems to have a minimum of three sessions covering digital media, online and social ads, sending email, using Facebook.

I poked my head into a few of them. Really competent presenters and audiences with tonnes of questions. So I tried to get to sessions I don't know as much about.

I went to one session which brought together canvassers out in the field and the data people back in the office. I went to another session on organizing and making change through food. And my favourite session so far this weekend was one on podcasting.

The thing with an unconference is that the attendees are encouraged to run a panel. Well one fellow was interested in learning more about the art of podcasting and understanding if it can be used to help being people together around a movement. But he was not a podcaster.

The room had a good handful of people in it, most of whom were in the same place as the organizer of the session. They were looking for more information.

At first glance I wasn't going to go to the session since podcasting, and political podcasting, is a topic I know well between my own show Limited Release and the show Gang of Four I often guest hosted on. But the session I had been in was not delivering me what I was looking for, so I used the unconference rule of two feet and walked to a new session.

And boy was I glad to pop into the podcasting session. For one thing I almost doubled the number of women in the room simply by joining. For another not a person in the room new how to upload an mp3 file and submit it to iTunes.

Once we got past the technical bits we had some great conversations about editing or not, interviews or conversation shows, storytelling, finding an audience. I finally felt like I was with my people.

Well that's not entirely true, it wasn't finally. I mentioned the high point of my day was having lunch with a large group of Canadians, and some adopted Canadians. 

In our walk to the restaurant the gentleman I was walking with was telling me about a great soul food restaurant he had heard about in the basement of a church.  We joked that we should ditch  the large group and head over there. Good thing we didn't since the first restaurant choice for the group was too small and we ended up heading to the church basement after all.

Man, we could not have ended up at a better place. It's the kind of eatery the locals go to and is not a big tourist draw.

I may have found my people in the podcasting session, but I found my home over a plate of fried whitefish, mac and cheese and candied yams.

No comments:

Post a Comment