Yay! One month ago, I uploaded a video to YouTube, around 4 hours before we had to suddenly wake up to take my then pregnant wife to hospital. In the intervening month, John 2.2 has grown by 2 lbs 5oz, but the film has grown by 15,000 views. Not bad for a few minutes messing around in the office at lunchtime (the film I mean, not the baby…)
“Just another cog in the machine” has been on community telly in Australia, and used offline by union organisers in New Zealand, Canada, the USA and Pakistan. Of course, there’s something rather obvious this illustrates – Join LabourStart! The film featured on Labourstart’s email alerts and as a result leapt up from around 800 views to around 3,800 views overnight. No doubt the connections made through the list also resulted in many of the subsequent send-ons that took it even higher.
I’ve seen this happen first hand before, and whilst both my instances have been at the more trivial end of the spectrum, when this kind of whooosh happens at a key moment in an important labour dispute, the effect can be really powerful.
Also to big up that the newly upgraded UnionBook has a video channel, where you can share your YouTube favourites. It’s a great resource to swap what we’ve noticed and make the most of people’s video efforts. So to give a concrete example, check out this excellent new union video from UNISON Midlands. A little bit of Obama goes a long way, and there’s some great animation there too. It’s part of the TUC video contest, and if you fancy winning some video kit, you can have a go at that too!
Never even knew about Labour Start. Thanks for the tip off. In due course I may file to become one of their correspondents.
PS. Added you to the blogroll!
Cheers Dave (And sorry for the huge reply gap – house moving, babies, loads of work, sunshine, moonlight, boogie etc…)
Yes, check them out when you’ve a mo. Their online campaigns are very effective, but also they’ve spent 11 years now politely pushing, coaxing and cajoling the union movement internationally to make more use of the internet, and the little gains we’ve made online have definitely been influenced for the better by that pressure.