You see it with almost every digital campaign – an action directed to government in which you are asked to “email your MP”.

These are usually campaigns initiated by political lobby groups, where many people are asked to write to one or more pollies about an issue. The letters may range from those actually composed by the writer, through to form letters and signed postcards.

Form letters and postcards use pre-generated content that in many instances you can edit, but generally you don’t.

The reason for this is it’s much quicker and easier to enter your details, click send and then be done. You can feel like you’ve taken part and made a stand, but for less time and effort – it’s the lazy-man’s activism.

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Australians take enormous pride in the exploits of their sporting heroes – but the needs of grass roots community sporting organisations are often overlooked.  For Hurlstone Park Wanderers Football Club (HPW), in Sydney’s Inner West, its urgent need for improved facilities was a low priority for the local council.  Wet weather, overuse and poor drainage combined to see 40 per cent of HPW home matches cancelled during the 2011 season.

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A great article about emphasis in web design by Jason Beaird from one of my favourite design blogs (www.designfestival.com).

Emphasis in Design

Closely related to the idea of unity is the concept of emphasis or dominance. Rather than focusing on the various elements of a design fitting together, emphasis is about making a particular feature draw the viewer’s attention. When you design a web page layout, often you’ll identify an item in the content, or the layout itself, that you want to stand out. Perhaps it’s a button for users to press, or an error message for them to read. One method of achieving such emphasis is by making that element into a focal point. A focal point is any element on a page that draws the viewer’s eye, rather than just being part of the page as a whole or blending in with its surroundings. As with unity, there are a few tried-​​and-​​true methods of achieving a focal point.

Placement

Although the constraints of practical web design do not often allow for it, the direct center of a composition is the point at which users look first, and is typically the strongest location for producing emphasis. The further from the center an element is, the less likely it will be noticed first. On the Web, the top-​​left corner of the page also tends to demand a lot of attention for those of us who read from left to right (remember that many languages, like Hebrew and Arabic, are read from right to left) and scan a page from top to bottom. Read more »

What do you see in your mind when you’re asked to picture work in the disability and community care sector?

Did your vision include: meaningful and personally rewarding work, flexible hours, on-the-job training, and long-term job security?

No?

You’re not alone. When EMC undertook research for our client, carecareers, we discovered that only 24 per cent of those polled had considered a career in the disability and community care sector.

This was in spite of 63 per cent of those people simultaneously believing that work in this sector would be ‘quite or very rewarding’.

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    Ark Tribe - construction worker

I’m going to Adelaide next week and I’m excited.

Obviously I take some satisfaction in being the first person to ever write that sentence, but I’ll take more if things go our way on November 24.

(Sorry, Adelaide. I understand how it feels to be the lazy gag writer’s best friend. I’m from Canberra.)

The South Australian capital will be the focus of the nation’s attention on Wednesday, because it is where we will finally find out whether the Australian Building and Construction Commission can put an ordinary worker in jail for sticking up for safety.

In 2008, the excellently named Ark Tribe, a construction worker, raised serious safety concerns with his employer on a site in Adelaide.

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The initial Better State site (betterstate.org.au) was built in October 2009 on a drupal platform.

We found that the site was too complex for people to take action, find content and created high barriers for revisitation and engagement.

We had a community of people who were linked to one or two services and were interested in how the umbrella campaign was running, but also wanted specific news and events from their delegates, union leaders and activists. They wanted to know about the service area they were involved with, not necessarily updates from all arms of the campaign.

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You would have to completely disregard the polls, history and any semblance of common sense to predict a Labor victory in the March 2011 NSW election.

Although there’s no such thing as a sure bet in Australian politics, a NSW Coalition government in 2011 is about as close as you’re likely to get. (The bookies have Labor at $6.25 to win next year. You won’t find those sort of odds in any 2011 NRL fixture.)

This climate of certainty makes a traditional approach to election time campaigning impossible.

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US Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich was first up, and with him his security detail – two clean-cut, serious, suited dudes scanning the room during Bleich’s presentation on the Obama presidential campaign’s pioneering use of social media.

The dudes didn’t have much to worry about with this crowd, the only real and present dangers being excessively snarky tweets or a tussle over an ipad charger.

The Media 140 ‘Oz Politics’ conference at Old Parliament House last week brought together Twitter commentators, activists, journalists, academics and politicians, collectively known as the #politicotragicmediawankersphere.

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First published on The Punch 20/7/2010

With the major parties flexing their muscles on border protection, the Australian public has sent Canberra a message that it is the protection of Australian jobs that is the real security issue for them.

In what looms as the sleeper issue for the 2010 election campaign, a quarter of all voters placed “Australian jobs and the protection of local industries” as key election issue, behind only economic management and health.

As the latest Essential Report shows that economic protectionism towers over headline-grabbing issues like climate change, asylum seekers, housing affordability, industrial laws and population growth as a priority election issue.

Q. Which are the three most important issues in deciding how you would vote at a Federal election?

Essential Report

What is striking about the high rating for protecting Australian industries is that it comes at a time of relatively low unemployment and a period where there has been little or no media attention on Australian jobs being sent offshore.

Instead the issue is emerging from the grass roots, the thousands of Australians in manufacturing industries – and a growing number of workers in white-collar industries like the banking sector – who see their jobs under threat from lower wage economies.

And while our leaders can crow about “turning back the boats”, 25 years of economic deregulation makes it very hard to turn back the corporate people smugglers.

It is an issue where the Liberal Party, with its knee jerk support for big business, pledges to cut government spending and reductions to the size of the public sector is struggling to gain any traction.  While it leads on issues like managing the economy and asylum seekers, when it comes to Australian jobs, people trust the ALP to the tune of 42 per cent to 28 per cent. Read more »

First Published on Crikey Thursday 24th June

Essential Reports polls taken over the last 2 years show how Kevin Rudd’s approval ratings have declined since he almost unprecedented figures he achieved following his election through to early last year. Up to March last year approval hovered around the high 60% level into the low 70%.  Is net approval (i.e. approve minus disapprove) was around the mid 40% level.

Throughout 2009 and early 2010 his approval went into steady decline but still remained in positive territory. At the end of March he recorded 53% approval and 36% disapproval. However, the most dramatic shift occurred in April and May when his approval first entered negative territory with 41% approve and 47% disapprove. The decline appeared to be accelerating.

Some of the reasons for this sudden decline can be found in how the personal perceptions of Kevin Rudd changed from 2009 to May this year.  His attribute ratings showed significant falls in the percentage of people who considered him to be a capable leader (72% to 55%), good in a crisis (60%-44%) and trustworthy (51%-41%). Meanwhile his ratings for “out of touch with ordinary people” increased from 41% to 55%. It indicates a significant loss of confidence in his performance as Prime Minister.

Last week’s Essential Report showed only weak support for Kevin Rudd to lead the Labor Party to the next election – 40% thought the Labor Party would have better chance of winning the election if they changed leader and 37% thought Kevin Rudd was the best person to lead the labor Party. Even among Labor voters only 66% supported Kevin Rudd as leader and 23% though they should change. Read more »