Inside LabourStart

“@labourstart You guys do a good job. Largely unrecognized and under appreciated, but necessary. If there was a god, you’d be doing his work.”

I`ve bumped it down to one tweet every three hours or so. I received requests for more frequent posts (we were already at one per hour), but at least one follower indicated that at that rate we were clogging his account. On the assumption that other followers felt the same and that we might lose followers as a result, I am moving to the slower rate and reminding those who wanted more (or who complain about things slowing down) that all our news remains available on the website.

This is interesting.

Should we suggest a topic (e.g. Workers’ rights) and try to get it  selected?  Should those of us who have blogs register.  One of the organizers wrote: “The 2011 event had over 4,000 bloggers from 108 countries talking about food for World Food Day.”

I’m using HootSuite to try and ensure there’s a tweet per hour 24/7 through our Twitter feed. Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this or on its execution, or if you see or hear any comments about the change. Especially the frequency, which may be too much for some of our followers.

Thanks.

From today, you’ll see an occasional pop-up on our campaigns (the first time you go there), which warns that we use cookies and requests your consent.

This is a now a requirement for websites that serve users who live in Europe.

You can see the same sort of thing on most big official websites, such as the BBC’s.

We’ll soon be implementing this for the LabourStart news site as well.

It’s ugly and intrusive but not including it is a breach of the law here in the UK.

I admit that I’ve only skimmed this – http://www.zendesk.com/ – but I wonder if it wouldn’t be a way for us to share the workload, and track progress, on all the communciations we receive from our readers.  At the moment, these all come in as simple emails to me.  These include:

• New submissions – either URLs or attached documents such as press releases
• Requests to become correspondents
• Requests for campaigns
• Complaints and bug reports
• General questions
• Requests for new passwords
• And others I’m not thinking about at the moment

Do any of you want to have a look and note your thoughts in the comments here? Thanks.

I know that several of us regularly conduct workshops related to online campaigning. This week I’m doing a two-day session for staff of the Canadian Union of Public Employees in the province of Saskatchewan on social media (broadly defined). A portion, about three hours, covers legal issues that are specific to Canada, but I think the remainder could easily be adapted for use elsewhere.

If anyone would like the materials, such as they are, let me know and I would be happy to share.

And if anyone out there has their own materials…

I’ve been using Hootsuite’s delayed posting feature to try and keep the Canadian Twitter feeds active around the clock. Partly because the RSS feature in Hootsuite doesn’t work as well as I would like it to.

Just FYI, in case anyone else wants to do something similar, here are the texts I have been repeating. In English only as I am not confident enough of my own fluency, nor of Google’s.

ROUTINE:

Get (and leave if you want) your photos here! The global union movement’s photo album, a LabourStart project. ow.ly/9UIbb

Unionbook – the social networking platform for trade unionists. A LabourStart project. ow.ly/9UIsC

Union photographer? If you have a photo you would like to see as the LabourStart Photo of the Week, send to CanadaATLabourStart.org

Dress up your website or blog with LabourStart’s FREE newswires. By country or issue, or tell us what you need! ow.ly/9UK1b

Get Your Union Books at Labour’s Bookstore – a LabourStart-UCS project. ow.ly/9UKWQ

Union women daily news at LabourStart’s Working Women page: ow.ly/9UKAk

LabourStart’s mailing list about to hit 100k. Our costs 2 go up. Victim of our own success? If u or ur union can help: ow.ly/a3gyp

LabourStart will soon be available in 28 languages. Our Ukrainian edition is almost ready to roll.

Act NOW! All of LabourStart’s active solidarity campaigns are here: http://ow.ly/a8WvO

CAMPAIGNS:

URGENT ACTION NEEDED. Union leader held in Serbian solitary confinement. Send protest e-mail in 20 seconds here: ow.ly/a7p0m

Please retweet! URGENT ACTION NEEDED. Trade unionist in Iran facing execution at any moment. Send protest message here: ow.ly/9T1wU

Colombia: End harassment and killing of trade unionists. Join the global e-mail campaign here: ow.ly/a6mEs

Help end the months-long lockout at Acadian Coach Lines! Send a solidarity message here: ow.ly/9KCA7

I’ve been tracking my Twitter, FB and mail responses. Mostly anyway.

But even just for the few times I have remembered to tag the links I put out there it has been clear that e-mail is best response-wise, Twitter better than Facebook and FB rather dreadful.

… life goes on.  I’ve been invited to speak on a panel at a conference in Germany organized by the Hans Boeckler Stiftung (the foundation set up by the German unions).

The conference is on the subject of Trade Unions in the Democratic Process.  The programme (in German) is here.

On the panel with me will be representatives of the DGB (Germany’s national trade union center) and the ILO.

I’ve been asked to focus on “labour movements and internationalism with special regard to the Middle East”.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.