Organizing for America | An American in Rome: Top 10 Tips for Americans Abroad to Multiply Our Obama '08

Top 10 Tips for Americans Abroad to Multiply Our Obama '08

By Bob in Rome - Apr 2nd, 2008 at 3:47 pm EDT

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Ciao!

I'm Bob, co-administrator, with Nina Gardner, for the Americans in Italy for Obama group. Karin Robinson and I recently talked about strategies to boost communications and community among Obama supporters in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region by making better use of the social networking tools at My.BarackObama.com. Both Nina and Karin wanted me to share with you the solutions and workarounds I've discovered from doing grassroots organizing of Americans in Italy on this site.

So here's 10 things you, as Obama supporters in EMEA, can do to make these tools work for you:

If you are reading this blog entry, it means you have already taken the most important first step and setup an account on the site. At the right side of your screen, there's a box that contains links to all the major tools. Click on "My Dashboard" and then the small arrow next to "Edit profile" to see your current settings. Make sure you fill in all the fields, then upload a photo (please don't skip adding the photo), and tick the box at the bottom of the page. That's it! You've got a profile.

OK, now it's time to make friends and start influencing people. You can practice by adding me (I always welcome new friends :). Just click where it says "Add Bob in Rome to your friends network" and send me a note. Now repeat this step for other people you know (or would like to know) who are on the system, or even better, e-mail invitations to Obama supporters who haven't yet created their own My.BarackObama.com profiles. I'll say more at the end of this note about why getting more people involved here is so important for us and for our campaign.

The next step is to find communities for your country or city. Again, go back to the Dashboard box at the right side of the screen. Look to the middle of the list, and click on "Groups". Under "Find a Group", enter a keyword, for example, "Italy". Scroll down the page to see groups in Italy, and click on one of them. There you'll see a button that reads "Join Group". Move your mouse cursor to that button, then click... now you're in the clique.

Maybe you don't see a group for your country, what then? If the group you're looking for isn't there, consider creating one yourself. If it is there, but looks to be inactive, scroll through the member directory at the top and locate members with a star (*) at the end of their names. These people have administrator rights on that group. Write to them and offer your help!

Like, what kind of help? OK, here's three important things to consider. First, are you seeing multiple groups that appear aimed at an identical community? In that case, email admins from each of these groups and encourage them to merge the groups (out of many, one).

Second, look at the category entry(ies) at the top left. Do you see "Americans Abroad" there? If you don't, ask the admin to add this subcategory of the "People" category. If you are the group admin, go to "Edit group" on the "Admin actions" menu, scroll to the options at the bottom of the page, expand the People category (click on the "+" sign), tick the box next to "Americans Abroad", and click "Save group" at the bottom of the page.

Here's the third group thing. It's the trickiest, but also one of the most exciting, I think. By now you may have noticed that this site really wants you to have a U.S. zip code before it lets you do much of anything. After your email address, your zip code is one of the most precious things BarackObama.com wants from you. Why? Because these two things, email address and zip code, are key to the campaign's efforts to build its mailing list, get out the vote, and raise funds to pay for things like this cool site, TV ads, and other essentials! Here in EMEA, we need zip codes too for precisely the same reason. And thanks to the U.S. Military Postal Service Agency (FPO/APO), we can borrow some codes to help organize ourselves. Go to this site, search by country and city, and find a zip code that suits you. For example, if you search for "Spain" you'll see that the U.S. Embassy in Madrid is listed as 09642. What can you do with this information? Lots! for starters, return to "Edit group" and enter it in the box for "zip code". Now on to Tip #8 and why this is so neat...

Back to the toolbox, and an entry near the top labled "Events". To create an event you've got to have (guess what?) a zip code! Each event's zip code positions that activity at a specific geographic point. This helps Obama supporters to browse what's happening near their homes, and it helps statewide organizers to know where to find you when they need your attention. Here's the best news. FPO/APO zip codes in EMEA countries all begin with "09xxx". When you search for events or groups that have been listed with an APO/FPO zip code in your country of residence, all other EMEA entries will be listed as 0.0 miles from your location. Yea! Welcome to "EMEA County" of the 51st state.

Another bonus. There are people who already list their My.BarackObama.com groups and events using these FPO/APO zip codes, because they are members of the U.S. military. These service members have contributed more to the Barack Obama campaign than to any other Democratic candidate. We need to build community together, and listing our activities together will do just that. Example: try searching on the U.S. Embassy - Madrid zip code in Tip 7. Search for groups, search for events, do it again a week from now, and again next month--watch us grow as one.

In Tip #2 I promised to explain why these tools are a lot more than just toys. If you are not yet fully convinced, then consider Texas. Remember Texas? Big disappointment, right? Wrong. We won Texas. And My.BarackObama.com had a lot to do with it. Read this excellent article from Rolling Stone to understand how the "Texas Two Step" learned its moves here.

I hope you've found this interesting, and I hope you'll enter your comments and suggestions following this note. Do it now, OK? Just click on the "Write a Comment on this Post" or "Reply" links just below. Let me know if these ideas have been useful to you.

Obama '08!
--Bob

EMEA County, AA (Americans Abroad)
United States of America

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