 I'm here because I like to learn about new technologies, new toys, fun new things. I like to learn about them, I like to talk about them, I like to play with them. But I'm not just here because I like to play with them. I also realize that I want to do more. I want to change the world in some way, I guess. And I get the feeling that quite a lot of us want to do that, but it can be frustrating, it can be hard, it can be kind of overwhelming. So, for the last couple of years, our next speaker, Eric Albas, has been working with the Free Software Foundation Europe to try and influence policies, to try and get the world out. And they have tried a lot of different ways to do that, and he will now give us an overview of different ways to get involved, to get your message out there, and what's the best use case for different situations. Please welcome our next speaker, Eric Albas. Thank you very much for introducing me. Thank you very much for joining my talk. Thanks also to Shah for organizing this, and in particular for all the angels who make this possible. As announced, I'd like to present four different campaigns today that you can use in the forefront of elections to get your topic into the head of politicians, into the press, and into head of society. As said, I work for the Free Software Foundation Europe, so the examples I give here from the campaigns are about free software, but I will show you the general methods and the tools that we use, so you can adapt them to your topic. If you care about data protection, or human rights, or animal rights, you can use basically the same campaigns, adapt them to your needs, and make lobby for your topic. However, because all these examples are about free software, I want to briefly say what is free software, and what is CFSV doing, then I will show you the four campaigns in detail, and the tools that we use, and afterwards I will compare these campaigns and tell you about the advantages and disadvantages of the campaigns, and also analyze them and help you to choose the right one for you to use. So what is free software? Free software is all the software that gives users the four freedoms, buy license gives users the four freedoms to use the software for any purpose, to study the software that basically means you can see the source code, to share the software that means you can share the software of the neighbor, or you can upload it to the internet, and to improve the software that means you can change the source code and publish an improved version. This is free software. Here are some prominent examples from Thunderbird to Linux to LibreOffice, and the FSFV, the Free Software Foundation Europe, we are a non-profit association that has the mission to bring users in control of technology by furthering free software, and therefore we help individuals and organizations to understand what is free software and why is free software important for our society. We give legal help with licenses for developers who like to free their source code or who like to implement free software in their development. We do consulting and public relations basically campaigns so we try to reach out into the society to let them know about free software, and we think that key point for development of our society is to bring free software into public education and into public administration. So whenever there is public money involved, there's public funding involved. For example, to develop free software, this software should also be public, this software should be under a free software license. Now I show you the campaigns that we use. So the first one is called Ask Your Candidates, but the name is a little bit misleading because actually it's more about asking political parties, it works much better with political parties. This is maybe the simplest campaign I will show you, but still can be one of the most powerful campaigns. So what you do first is you send a letter to the parties that are involved in the elections, and then you ask them about your topic. So in our case it would be, if you are going to win the election, are you planning to further free software? And if you do so, do you have any concrete plans? How you would like to achieve that? Do you support the use of free software in schools? And similar questions. So you send these questions to the parties and you give them a deadline for you to answer. And you tell them that the answers they will give, you are going to publish. So once you have the answers back, you do publish the answers that they've given you. This is an example from the Berlin State elections. Unfortunately it's in German, I'm sorry. Oh, you cannot see my pointer here. But you can see there's on top the question and below there's the different parties giving their answers. So here's the first step that you did. You asked the political parties about your topic and they somehow had to respond to it. They somehow had to think about it. They are aware, I mean they had to think about the topic and they are aware there are some people or organizations who are in favor of your topic. However, I mean, maybe you have eight questions and then you have eight participating parties. This is getting a huge text, this is getting kind of a text desert and it's not very appealing for people to read through if they are not very into it. So as the next step, you should analyze it, comment it and in the best make a press release. Make a summary, make a press release, tell the people which parties are in favor of your topic, which parties not or any particular things that you find in their answers and write it up as if you would be a journalist, publish the press release of course and to get more outreach, you should also get in contact with the press and therefore it's so important that you write it in a press style that you write it as you would be a journalist because journalists are really lazy and it will not help if you will send them a link and say hey look here, I made some questions to the political parties and here are the answers. Please look it up and write something. They will most probably not do it. So give them already a text that they can hopefully copy and paste and then it's much much more likely they will really publish it. I have just some examples here that we for example use. In our case Free Software, of course you have the tag magazines here on top that you can use, there is this join up which is a portal from the European Commission with news about Free Software. NetSpolitik.org is a platform for digital rights, a German platform, journalist platform. And I also did put here the sun. I mean it's not very likely maybe that you will appear in the sun and maybe also don't like to appear in the sun. I just put it here to help you think out of the box. Do not just only contact the two, three magazines you are reading daily. Think out of the box, okay who can I send it to? I mean once you have it written up it's not much more work to send it to five or ten journalists more. And also very important here there should be the local newspaper here. In particular if you have local elections and you ask the parties who participate in local elections and you have a nice write up and interesting story to tell the local newspaper is most probably the one who will also publish it and you will also reach the local people who are also interested in this local election. So don't forget your local newspaper. So the first step was we got our topic into the political parties they had to respond to our answers. And the second step we made some outreach here. We made it into the press so people read about it. People read about our topic. And as a third one that depends a little bit on how the election finally is going but in case there are some parties winning the elections that have been in favor of your topic then this is the best time to come back on them and tell them, send them a letter again tell them congratulations for winning the party we wish you a good legislation period and just to remind you you have been telling that you like to favor free software we are always here for you to help with it or offer your expertise give them a good feeling and so they should further care about your topic in particular I mean if they have given very concrete answers I mean it depends a bit of course you will not always get very concrete answers because politicians they learn how to say a lot without saying anything but in particular if they have given concrete answers you can the whole legislation period when there's happening something where there's legislation on the table get back on them remind them on what they have told you before the elections and give them some help in deciding so this is the first campaign this was as I said pretty simple you don't need any software for it or something here's the second let them promise the idea is that you write up a charter and then you ask your candidates to sign it so this is very candidate based this campaign it works not so good with political parties because political parties they basically they cannot sign a charter they have a party program and they stick to their party program they will not sign a charter no one maybe has can be in charge of signing something like this so this is candidate based and write up a charter with your topic I will promise when I get elected I will promise that I will further free software that I will take care of net neutrality and so on make some points and then go to the candidates and let them sign it the sexiness a little bit is here for the candidates that they don't have to write something they don't have to answer you in a free text or so they don't have to think so much they can read through your charter and they can say yes or no basically however a politician I mean they don't like to promise so much so the deal that you make you tell them we make a campaign and we will show everyone who signs this charter so you set up a web page people can see who signs the charter and this is the deal because believe it or not there will be politicians who are in favor of your topic and these politicians they can show their voters see I care I care about free software I signed the charter from the free software foundation Europe if you're going to elect me I will be in favor of free software for example here's an example made for I cannot show it we made for the European elections in 2014 we aligned with some other NGOs we called it we promise and then we came up the charter about digital rights and asked basically all the candidates for the European Union elections to sign it then we made this web page so voters can see who did sign the charter you can see in the Netherlands there have been 29 candidates who did sign it and in total there have been more than 400 candidates who signed the charter so again you have the politicians they have to think about do I sign it or not then you also have the outreach factor you have a campaign, you have a web page so also people get aware they get aware of your activity but they also get aware of your topic and that you care about it finally this is again very good for lobbying after the elections because once the election is done you have a database of candidates who did sign a charter that says they are in favor of your topic so after the elections when there is a legislation on the table these are the people definitely you should come back on them and say look we have some concerns about this legislation like this and that or we are very much in favor of this legislation can you please support it you have some kind of you can put some kind of pressure on these candidates in favor of your topic we made this campaign with some partners together and this is very very helpful and very important when you do such a campaign try to get some partners some partners that are in the same topical field as you are because having partners helps so much it helps of course with the efforts that you have to do like setting up the web page and so on you can share the work but you can also share the fame I mean in this case there are multiple NGOs in here each NGO has some fame each NGO has their own press lists have their own community people so the outreach factor is much much higher if you are with partners also it's much much more likely that candidates will sign it because if they see oh there's multiple NGOs asking me to sign it you have more more awareness of it when the candidates see it while if you are alone so this is true for all the campaigns I'm explaining here the third campaign is Freedom Vote Freedom Vote was co-authored by the by the FSB team Switzerland and here the idea is this campaign reaches out to the voters what they did is I mean Switzerland is a very direct I mean it has this direct democracy elements and it's very very candidate based so what they did is they sent all the candidates a questionnaire to mark they were having some scares and they could mark okay I am in favor of net neutrality I am in favor supporting open educational resources or supporting free software and similar questions and then they filled out the database to show all the candidates and how they position themselves along your questions then what you could do is I wrote your online politician matching because voters they could go on that page and they could answer these questions themselves and then they can compare themselves with the candidates and here you have some metadata about the candidates and here you can see how the candidate positioned herself and how you positioned yourself and then you can see okay we are we are together here on the same side regarding open education but regarding net neutrality and she has another opinion that I have and so this is a help for the voters to decide whom to vote on it's maybe not so good for afterwards lobbying because the I mean scaling yourself and positioning yourself in favor or not so much in favor of is not as concrete as answering a question but on the other hand it helps you hopefully with some virality I mean it's something you know people can use they can go to your page it's kind of interesting they can make an account and see how they position themselves with the candidates and maybe they can share some screenshots on social media it has a graphical interface so this is appealing to the voters more than for lobbying but this is of course also very good if you can get to the voters and you can get your message to the people this is also what we all look for to get our message out the FSV team Netherlands they adopted the software and made a version that is not for the candidates but for the parties but it's basically the same so the parties had to position themselves on these topics and the voters could go there position themselves and see which party matches best my own political opinion here's the software meta information so main author is Swiss Open it's a new GPL license you can see here the code and the API and there's a Swiss so far there's a Swiss version and a Dutch version so be the next to use it finally this is the newest campaign that we have it's called digital OMAD which is based on there's in Germany there's an agency for political education and this agency since several years already they in the forefront of every election they come up with a Valomad basically means vote OMAD where they ask the political parties questions and these political parties they can say yes maybe or no and then they have this web page where voters can go and voters can answer the same questions very very simple yes maybe no go through the questions and get a result so we picked up the whole concept for getting more attention for our campaign because it's very very popular in Germany actually and so we called it digital OMAD we picked up the same concept we have these questions you have a very simple interface yes maybe no and this is so easy I think even my grandmother can do it and once you have done then you get a result and you see which parties are in favor of your political opinion so this is again very voter orientated it helps voters in deciding which parties they should vote on if they care about the topic and it's at the same time so simple that the usage is very higher I think the usage from the official version is very very high and we ran it for the first time so I hope the federal elections are end of September I hope also that we get a lot of usage here with this after the results you can also by the way you can then because the parties have also the possibility to not only say yes maybe no they can also answer why they have chosen yes or no or something so voters who have more interest than just clicking a little bit they can afterwards read through their results and see what in particular are the parties saying here to the questions again the software meta information here it's the main author it's a digital science and stories it's an MIT license you see the code and as it's so new there are not yet any forks I invite you to be the first one to fork it and so these are the four different campaigns and I want to show you some I want to give you some guidance on which campaigns fits best your needs or your purposes here's a no of you with the best feature anti-feature and the target group as a candidate that was the campaign where you simply file in questions and publish the answers of the political parties the best feature is that you hopefully get concrete statements because if you get concrete statements this is something that you can work with this is something the whole legislation period you can work with you can get back on them say them look this is what you said now keep your word or you could make some bad press say it maybe a little bit more nicely but this is actually the pressure that you can that you can give to them the anti-feature here was that this text desert is not very appealing and users they spend 10 seconds on your page they will not read through the whole text so you have to do some more work you have to write it up you have to summarize it and make it in a way more appealing to the users and this is also but that goes along with the target group the main target group at first hand here is the press and doing PR about it and later if the party if there is a promising party succeeding in the election then you can also use it for lobbying then there was this let's promise the best feature is that it helps you spread your topic I mean you send each candidate you send a charter each candidate has to think about it shall I sign it or not read through your charter sees maybe how what are the most important things right now in your topic and has to think about it the anti-feature here is that it depends a lot on the participation because in the end you just have a few amount of candidates who participate in your charter then you cannot do so good press with this so be careful also with the charter don't demand too much else it's very unlikely they sign it make something politically compromise between demanding and still giving the option for them to sign it here is the party the target group are the parties or the politicians that you work with them because they have to sign the charter freedom mode was the campaign from the Swiss team who where the candidates put themselves in a matrix about your topic here is the best feature the individual approach because users they can go there users can make their own matrix they can compare themselves with the candidates it's a little bit like gaming and that helps you hopefully with virality while the anti-feature here it's very complex for the press to write it up I mean if you have imagine you have 500 candidates like in swiss then what charter journalist write about it except that it exists and how it works but it's not you cannot summarize it so that's why the target group is the voters you like here mainly to get voters on your page read about the topic and think about the topic and finally the digital mode here is the best feature it's so simple to use it you just I mean and also the user I mean the user gets the question and the user has to think for him or herself am I in favor of this or not so you make the user thing but the rest is just simply simply clicking yes no maybe and this works I mean everyone can understand it I think the anti-feature here is a little bit I wrote you a statement versus facts because we have the experience we made a test run in North Westphalia and we made a little bit the experience that parties it's not what they normally do and then they tell you something and you are not sure if this is this is now a statement or is it just something written up so it's that's why it's also maybe not working so good for lobbying afterwards and that is why the target group here again the main target group is the voters get your message into society to the voters this is basically the same overview in a in a graphical way so when you when you like to get the topic into the press into the election I mean election times are a really really good time to do it that's why we do it for election time because election times the weeks before the elections all the press talks about the election talks about the political parties people neighbors talk with each other about political topics so take the time use the time before the elections and then if you'd like to use it then think before okay what what is what do I like to achieve do I like to get more press or make something participatory and in the best case going viral and on the other axis you have the do I want to go to the public and reach out to the voter or do I reach out do I like to reach out to politicians and make lobbying afterwards with my campaign so you can see here in a graphical way the different campaigns also you should consider what what democratic system you are living in because basically mainly I mean we have in Europe we have we have very different political systems running in the different countries but on one big categories if you have more a proportional representation system or a majority voting system because a proportional representing system leads more to a party-based elections while the majority voting system leads to candidate-based elections and based on that you should use also these campaigns that I showed you because as your candidates for example it will not work with candidates if you have 500 candidates you can send them all multiple questions with free text no one can read through it not even you yourself and analyze it and summarize it so this is for the party-based elections as well as the digital format because the same again the voters they cannot for every candidate click through yes no maybe and compare them afterwards and but the freedom vote and let's promise the campaigns that are in particular for the candidates because let's promise as I said parties will not sign a charter for you and and freedom vote is the the software where the users can compare themselves with the candidates also consider if you are in a federal state then be aware sorry then be aware that that in a federal state then be aware that there are different power levels so on a states level or on the national level don't mix them up don't ask the wrong questions to the wrong level so don't ask the federal parties about topics that are decided on the states level and vice versa here I made an overview about the woman hours necessary for the different campaigns this is just an estimation it's basically to show you from my experience how much time is needed for the different campaigns so freedom vote and let's promise are the most time consuming campaigns you have the software you adapt the software and then you write a charter or a matrix and then you send it to every candidate then afterwards you fill your database with all the data so these are the most time consuming campaigns digital amount is somehow the same but as it's for the party based elections it's just less amount of work but also you have to the software here you have to make your questions and fill your database but the database of course is much much smaller and asking candidates as initially said is the simplest one you do not need any software you just send them your questions and then you publish the answers and analyze them and make press with it so here's another version of a schedule this is also some estimation of how much time you should consider sometimes for example with asking candidates you should begin early to send in the questions but then you have a time spend where you do nothing because you wait you give them 4 weeks to answer and then you wait 4 weeks but I think 3 months in general is the point 3 months before election with every campaign basically the first point you should start to have enough time to do the campaign and depending on if you use the software and freedom mode and so on then you should first do the preparation before you start with your campaign also you can see here that ask your candidates and let's promise depending on the outcome of the elections these are the campaigns that you can hopefully use for further lobbying during the legislation period and what you can also see let's promise is a particular case here you have no deadline you have been with all the other campaigns you have some at some point of time you have a deadline when you like to start when you like to have your results and then you like to do your PR with the results that you got this is the campaign where the candidates sign the charter I mean why not let them sign the charter even one day before the election it's good for you because the more people you have you should have some amount for making your PR but afterwards they can still sign it every every signee helps you later after the elections so here are my final tips if you like to if you like to campaign for your topic in the forefront of elections choose your method wisely and depending on your democratic system depending on if you like to reach out to your voters or to the press just what I told you choose your method wisely think about before what do I like to achieve and depending on that choose your campaign be in time this is also very very important it's really frustrating if you do a lot of work and then you don't make it in time so think if you think about making campaigns start thinking about it half a year before the elections make yourself a schedule get some partners which is the next point get some partners to share your work and then make a realistic schedule to achieve your campaign remember that partners is not just for sharing your work partners is also is also important to benefit from each other's fame and to get more outreach to press and also to the candidates and depending on the results of the elections and the campaign that you use use your information after the election for further lobbying get back to the parties or the candidates when there's something at stake tell them this is before the elections what you have told now keep your word and do good for pre-software in our case and of course the most important tip in all aspects don't panic so thank you very much thank you very much so we have a couple of minutes for questions I guess if you have any questions please line up on the microphones in the middle and then we will just call on you and since you seem to be shy I'll start off so just assuming I want to influence something how's your experience been with getting actual answers from the press and from the candidates I guess the free software foundation is recognized as known as an entity do you think like a small group of two or three people have a chance of getting this feedback all these answers I think it works it should be somehow some kind of an organization but I don't think it has to be a really really famous one or something but I think it works much better if you for example with your local linux user group or another local association this could work perfectly especially also for local elections it works I think it works perfectly also with this there's not much fame needed but maybe it works better if you somehow some organizations and you are not a single person that I can imagine that but yeah don't be shy take your local association and ask your but just make them some pressure I mean yes we have one question do you know anything about the process behind how it's been decided what kind of statements are included in the Valomad yeah the Valomad they run they have volunteers actually you can apply as a volunteer and and then they have I think like 50 people or so and they gather one weekend and then they together work on the questions that will end up however it's too toward so I think they make 100 questions and 40 out of these questions or 30 out of these questions will finally end up because we also try to undermine it actually we had a supporter in there but it's pretty hard because it's too toward and mentored and in the end they the agency of political education decides but they try to get some input from volunteers alright cheers so I guess if there are no more questions now people can also come to you at the Free Software Foundation yeah we have a village here I think it's Olsen Field but I also think it has no name it's actually between the two legs on the map between the two legs on the right side you will see it it's very exposed I will be there all the day you can come and talk to me also I want to announce there's the lightning talks in the RE10 and there will be today a choir singing the Free Software song so if you like to hear this please pass by and please pass by anytime at the village of the Free Software Foundation Europe cool then thank you very much again it was a very interesting talk thank you