Ask HN: What could grassroots politics learn from startups? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What could grassroots politics learn from startups?

10 pointskuro-kuris5 comments

Hi HN,

How would you start a startup which isn't about making money but building a better society through politics?

I have been more and more involved in politics and I was wondering what could grassroots political organisations learn from startups. I am trying to help build a pro European Hungarian political movement, Momentum (momentum.hu).

I believe technology has an important role to play in politics through opportunities for transparent, democratic decisions, and better workflows. I am curious how would you help a political organisation which is in its early stages?

One of our projects I am proud of is tackling local causes which matter to local people. cselekveskorei.hu is our website where we run this platform.

I would love to hear about your experiences in helping setting up political orgs with tech and what you would do to help improve processes. If you would be interested in giving me some more advice regarding this please email me through my profile.

While I have little political experience, I do have experience developing grassroots volunteer organizations and I can say that it's all about people and communication. Technology is more of a means to an end but what's helped is dialogue with people to share our vision. We've tried introducing new technology before but people just hated it. Why? Because it becomes impersonal and the message gets lost. After all, the medium is the message as Marshall McLuhan would say.

I'd be happy to learn more about what you're working on and see if there's more specific advice I can give.

This is not explicitly tech-oriented, but I am reading a very interesting book at the moment that seems highly relevant to what you describe:

"How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century", Hahrie Han

The book is a write-up of a sociological study in which the author accompanied various local groups of two large activist organizations in the USA. Her aim was to find out what differentiated high-achieving groups from low achievers, measured by the number of people they were able to mobilize and keep engaged.

Though she is not concerned with technology per se, she does talk quite a bit about its potential in activism, as well as the pitfalls of an overreliance on it.

I haven't finished reading the whole book yet, but it is certainly thought-provoking and if you are trying to get people involved in a civic group of any kind, I strongly recommend it.

I think discovery is a big problem with small Parties but I'm not an expert.

For example, I only learned there was such a thing as the pirate party last year! I wish I had known so much sooner.

On the other hand, I lack the personal insecurity to just browse around looking for ways to label myself, I'd rather find groups by causes.

"party for people who pirate music" would suit me just fine.

"party for people who start indices at 1 where they belong"

"party for people who think significant white space is gross"

"party for people against semicolons"

"party for people who actually use their turn signal"

Maybe a service that psychoanalyzes you and shows you which groups' members are most similar to you?

Worse is better - too much nuisance and nobody's gonna care.

Rapid iteration - throw ideas out there, see what sticks. Also, you can perpetually broadcast different, even slightly conflicting takes on the same general idea. Very powerful when combined with targeted advertising.

On the campaign side, I think people running should have primed the SEO pipeline with a blog well before deciding to run. Get their ideas out there, maybe even do a podcast.

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