Alex’s blog about strategy, campaigning, growth, politics and climate (among other things).

  • Using Facebook as an organising tool

    Facebook, like Twitter, is one of those social networking tools that unions are struggling to figure out. It is the most used social networking tool on earth, and an increasing number of Baby Boomers are starting to use it, expanding out of the younger 16-30 year old demographic. I have experimented with using Facebook as… Read more

  • Seven ways for unions to use Twitter

    Twitter is definitely one of the new cool things on the Internet – the epitome of “Web 2.0”. Unions have traditionally been slow in their uptake of new technology. A quick survey of many union websites show that they are seriously out of date (technology wise, if not their content). Many union leaders and officials… Read more

  • Fifteen Years of Cooling

    Surely I’ve already put a link to this famous graph, which answers the proposition put by climate change denialists that there has been a decade (or fifteen years of cooling). Australia’s most famous climate denialist is Senator Steve Fielding, an accidental senator who’s been briefed by several denialist-scientists that anthropogenic climate change is a fraud.… Read more

  • Letters in The Age

    I’m always pleasantly surprised when one of my letters gets in The Age, as it did the other day without me knowing. Clearly I don’t support league tables for schools. Read more

  • A decade of cooling?

    Steven Fielding of Family First fame was on Insiders this week stating that he had been presented with evidence in Washington that the globe had been cooling over the last few years. This is one of the common tropes that the Andrew Bolts and other climate change denialists use to argue that there is no… Read more

  • Online social activism and Twitter

    A large part of my job is online communications: blogs, social networking, and new fads like Twitter. A big challenge is how to use these tools in a meaningful way to support the campaigning and organising activities of the union. How can we engage our members and supporters using the social networking tools they are… Read more