My first post was designed to be very emotive, and I regretted it immediately, so I changed it. I apologise if it threw you out. The change was not meant to undermine the value of anything you wrote. Again, I am sorry.

By the way I am glad that you called me out on that one.

Fox viewers value powerfully emotive language. If they didn't then Fox wouldn't use it. Fox is smarter than that.

TO support both Kolona and MattLust, here in Oz, the 'liberal media' are just as emotive as the conservative, they push all the 'Politically Correct' buttons they can in order to get the 'liberals'' blood up.

I have little time for either liberal or conservative emotive language.

Why I referred to Fox news specifically is because Survivor's idea would probably appeal to the same sort of target market as Fox appeals to and because of this 'instinct'says 'be emotive.'

However, in the first instance Survivor's letters to government departments etc are most likely to be read by some grey, emotion-disdaining, middle-management type who is probably a very different target market and who will find the emotion good reason to dismiss the letter.

The campaign must initially ride a fine line. That is also why I think Survivor needs a 'poster boy', someone with credibility/popularity/profile enough to make the letters so much harder to ignore.

Kolona, I know that we agree in the essentials, just thought it was funny that you should assume I was a rabid liberal. Things are genuinely different here.

(PS I have changed this post too, so I hope it doesn't wreck any subsequent posts.)

Just to clarify something here, I'm not pulling out lists of "grey, emotion-disdaining, middle-management" types in government departments. I don't know how they do things in Australia, but around here we like to convince the electorate (or their representatives) that something is a good idea. That's why I'm primarily writing things to various citizen's/advocacy groups.

Eventually I'll have to produce something for public consumption, but I'd like to get a handle on how the various advocacy groups respond first, see if this has room on anyone's agenda.

So you will have a two-phased strategy.

First: A well-aimed 'motivating' letter campaign designed to appeal to and gain support from the sort of people who constitute the community organisations you've mentioned and who would be stakeholders in the sort of enterprise you propose. This will take 'market' research. Or, more specifically, investing research time and resources into as formal and thorough research as you see as appropriate to the ambitions of the campaign.

In my opinion, the primary goal of the initial phase would to elicit referrals for 'profile-agents' to act on your behalf.

There are two ways of obtaining 'profile-agents'. The first (chronologically) would be to include some sort of 'response mechanism' into your letter. A website, a blog, a telephone number or something of that kind with a 'for more information contact ...' It is impersonal and gives them a sense of anonymity but allows you to gather some kind of contact details of people who are more promising contacts.

A 'members area and forum' where people have to leave at least some details (email address, how did you hear about this site, what groups are you affiliated with etc) to join would be good. Vow to assure them privacy and allow them to speak freely. Monitor it for undesirable kooks and fill the 'SWMBO' role yourself.

Second: Create a dialogue with some more active or opinonated respondees and promote a 'buddy' campaign to draw in more likeminded people. One way to do this would be to do a liberty hall style 'Master/ Journey Man' etc level thing. You could do this by getting them to say which 'member' invited them to join up and increase that members status as a reward or reward them for their participation.

The second kind of 'profile agent' -- leading to the second phase of your campaign -- are those with broader community profile. Small business owners and employers are good ones. (The only problem with them would be the niggling idea they may have that at some point they may lose employees to active duty. This is easy enough to counter but would take a carefully worded and thought through communication strategy.)

These 'secondary profile-agents' will be valuable when you start wanting to elicit support from local political figures (the second phase of your letter campaign). They will act as intermediaries between your phases - in touch with both target groups. Again, the level of 'profile' you want will depend on the ambition of the campaign AND what phase of the strategy you are at. It is possible too that they can feed you information about what public/political figures are sympathetic to the idea and likely to support/promote it.

Think of 'secondary profile agents' as strategically valuable high ground.

In all this, the worst thing you could do would be to start a campaign without substantial and motivating follow-up literature / resources. For instance a potential supporter begins to 'drill-down' into you web-resource and find a dozen pages 'under construction'. It is essential to realise that EVERY contact they have with you and your campaign WILL produce an effect. Their opinion of the value of the campaign will be a result of the sum total of experiences they have with it. Ensure that every thing the campaign touches reflects the values you wish to promote. In that way you extend your influence and the 'aura' of your ideas, in the minds of your target audience, to include everything they think is good without you having to know or ask for their opinions about it first. You appropriate their sense of good and right to promote your aims.

Just random thoughts but ones I thought worth mentioning.

Edit: PS: The third phase of your two-phase strategy is the whole SETI thing you suggest. Flesh eating aliens are powerful motivators and probably have a high level of credibilty.

The thing is, I believe that this idea has its own legs. And I don't want to sell people something based on my percieved credibility, manufactured by various phony documents and drills under a business model. I'd like people to simply recognize that this is a good idea.

I got the message about phony credentials.
I don't advocate it now. I suggested it back before I realised that this was a genuine project and not just some sort of literary mischief.

quote:

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It's been used sucessfully thousands of times in recorded history.

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So what percentage success vs failure does that equate to?
Without that data (or a study of why failures occurred) the statement means almost nothing.

BTW: Good Ideas are a dime a dozen.

Edit: Exit dexter.

How do you define it?

As you say:

quote:

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If you mean actually winning, then the success rate is no better than anything else that you do mainly because you're worried about actually losing.

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But is it worse?

1: If your proposal offers no improvement to the chance of winning compared to the the current model then why implement it?

2: If your proposal possibly decreases the chance of winning compared to the the current model then why do it?

[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited February 08, 2006).]

By the way, you misquoted me. Just thought I'd mention that.

All campaigns have to give them a reason to listen.

I say that because of the 'militia can back out half way through a campaign' aspect. Certainly the commander they have 'chosen' to serve under would not want that to occur so, to facilitate it, the militia would have to have a separate way to 'trump' the commander when the commander says, 'no, you can't go.'

Then of course the commander can say, 'well, we won't pay for you to get home.'

If both the militia and the regular forces are subject to a single, centralised co-ordinating body then the 'militia' really only have an illusion of choice. They will be 'locked-in' like everyone else.

As to markets for the letters. What about letters to editors of small unaffilliated newspapers?

You could get a really wide spread on the idea with little effort on your part and, with a follow-up letter to chosen organisations, the idea will not seem so new or ludicrous when they receive it. It would be a second exposure.

quote:

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Just to clarify something here, I'm not pulling out lists of "grey, emotion-disdaining, middle-management" types in government departments. I don't know how they do things in Australia, but around here we like to convince the electorate (or their representatives) that something is a good idea. That's why I'm primarily writing things to various citizen's/advocacy groups.

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Interesting. My understanding is that if you want legislation to be passed in the US, you'd do a far better job of getting lobbyists involved (which usually means finding some way in which your idea would be profitable for some major, usually corporate, interest). It may well be that there are electoral representatives who are particularly vulnerable to public outcry lobbying, but those surely tend to be more about locally relevant issues. In your instance, you appear to be propounding a scheme that has only a very indirect impact on most social groups in the US (particularly because, as you correctly note, there are no controlled experiments in history, and no-one can go "if we don't do thiis than x will happen/if we do this then y will happen" and be absolutely sure of their ground).

My exposure to militias is pretty much zero, and the whole concept is fairly hard for an outsider to grasp in the modern world, where the rule of law is generally regarded as paramount and where militias tend to be very much equated with vigilantes.

In what way is what you're suggesting significantly different from mercenary groups, who are still common in war zones (particularly in Africa) around the world?

If you want more specifics, you'll have to go to my blog, I'm not here to expound my idea, only to get feedback on how to run a letter writing campaign.

The point about lobbyists is both apt and naive. Lobbyists do their job because they get paid. It really doesn't matter what the idea is (okay, it matters, but not in the way you seem to think), as long as someone is willing to back it financially. There are quite a few long running "public interest" lobbies, these run using a combination of private and corporate donations, as well as public monies in some cases (which is kind of a short circuit, if you think about it). These are the ones that would eventually be responding (or forming in response) to a popular push. Anyway, I'm not looking for information on how to get a lobbyist's attention, I already know the only way that actually works, and it doesn't serve my purposes here.

Closing the circle, if I'm going to be hiring mercenaries to get this legalized, why not just cut out the middleman and make it legal?