Apr
28
2010
0

LabourStart in Numbers [9]

The last month saw another big net gain for our mailing lists.  We are a month or so away from having 70,000 subscribers to the lists.  Here are the totals with the changes since the end of March in brackets:

  • Mailing lists – subscribers: 67,542 [+2,163]
  • LabourStart’s English language mailing list – 55,971 [+1,735]
  • UnionBook – members: 4,495 [+60]
  • Facebook – members of LabourStart group: 2,931 [+68]
  • Twitter – followers: 2,123 [+44]
  • Correspondents: 762 [+6]
  • Union group on Flickr: 541 [+8]
  • LinkedIn – members of LabourStart group: 166 [+8]

Some highlights from the mailing lists — the other large groups are:

  • Norwegian 2,611 [+22]
  • French 1,825 [+53]
  • Spanish 1,031 [+11]
  • German 745 [+7]
  • Italian 456 [+4]
  • Russian 308 [+15]
  • Polish 293 [+4]
  • Swedish 222 [+1]
  • Portuguese 222 [+6]
  • Dutch 195 [+9]
  • Danish 154 [+5]
Apr
27
2010
0

New campaign launched in support of Filipino garment workers

We’ve been asked by the Labor Party of the Philippines to help one of its affiliate unions with a campaign, and have just launched this today.

Please sign up to support the campaign and spread the word.

Written by ericlee in: Campaigns |
Apr
27
2010
0

How many correspondents are active?

We have a new tool that shows us not only who’s been active today, but adds which correspondents have posted news in any language this month.

It reveals that 89 of our 761 correspondents were active this month, and of those, 20 post on average at least one story every day.

Of those 20 correspondents, at least 8 are expected to attend our conference in July.

I intend to follow up to try identify who are the inactive correspondents and to write to all of them to see if we can help (some will have lost their passwords, or forgotten how to post stories).  I will also encourage the most active correspondents to consider attending the conference.

Written by ericlee in: 2010 Conference,News database |
Apr
26
2010
0

LabourStart campaigns – in Chinese!

Thanks to the help of our comrade Lennon Ying-Dah Wong, General Secretary of the First Commercial Bank Industrial Union (FCBIU) in Taiwan, we are just about to launch the first-ever LabourStart campaigns in Chinese – both simplified and traditional.

You should be able to see them at some point very soon here.

Written by ericlee in: Campaigns,Internationalization |
Apr
22
2010
0

Another Twitter petition catching fire!

Thanks to John Wood at the British TUC for setting this up for us yesterday — four Twitter petition campaigns in support of Taiwanese workers:

Meanwhile, the web-based campaign itself is catching fire, with over 2,000 messages sent in four languages — and the prospects of a Chinese language version coming soon!

Written by ericlee in: Campaigns,Twitter |
Apr
21
2010
0
Apr
20
2010
0

Talks on UnionBook, online campaigning – now online

I’ve posted my draft notes for the two talks I would have given at SIGTUR in Brazil this week.  (I gave one by videoconference just now.)  Here they are:

Written by ericlee in: Campaigns,UnionBook |
Apr
19
2010
0

In brief: SIGTUR, LaborComm, UnionBook and volcanic ash

Some brief news items from the last few days …

Participation in SIGTUR event in Brazil: Volcanic ash has prevented me from flying, but we’ll be using Skype videoconferencing instead.  My presentation will be on LabourStart and online campaigning.

UnionBook: Glenn Thompson of the Australian union AMWU will be making a presentation on this to the SIGTUR conference and promoting its use.  We need to get automated registration working again — I hope to have that sorted out today.

Campaigns: We have two new campaigns on the way, from the Philippines and Taiwan.  Details soon.

LaborComm Turkey: It appears that the conference, including my presentation, will be broadcast live online.

Written by ericlee in: Campaigns,UnionBook |
Apr
15
2010
0

More progress on improving UnionBook

Today I managed to get one of the key features of UnionBook to work again — The Wire.  I got a lot of help from the Elgg community on this one so I can’t complain.  I’m also picking up new skills at using Elgg, which will be good for the future of this site.

The Wire is a very cool feature of UnionBook because, as I re-learned today, I can post a short message there which automatically appears there, then as a tweet on my personal twitter account, and then as my status on Facebook.

The next thing that needs to be fixed is the user registration.  I’ve setup and installed a plugin that forces new users to tell us their union and which allows us to moderate all new applications — but it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment.  I’ve written to the author of this plugin for help and I hope to have this sorted before I leave for Brazil tomorrow.

Written by ericlee in: UnionBook |
Apr
14
2010
0

UnionBook – bugs, improvements, next steps

The Wire, an interesting feature on UnionBook that allows us to also post to Twitter, has stopped working.  This has something to do with the upgrade to version 1.7 of Elgg, the social networking software which underpins our site.  I’ve tried many different approaches to solving this, and posted appeals for help and support to the Elgg community without much luck so far.  I have now asked an Elgg programmer who we’ve worked with before to help us sort this out (for pay).

We also need to sort out registration for new users, now being done manually to prevent spam attacks.  I’ve asked the same programmer to help us out with that.  It would be good to have this sorted before next Monday, as we expect to register new users at the SIGTUR congress in Brazil.

We were also asked by one of our users to restore a Google translate button to UnionBook — but the Google website has gone a little weird about this, and I actually couldn’t find the code.  Instead, I’ve  put a link to the Yahoo translator which can translate our pages to Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.  I know this is no substitute for a proper translation, but it should give some readers of those languages the gist of what UnionBook is all about.

Written by ericlee in: UnionBook |

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