IF the Yes movement is to maintain and build its momentum in advance of indyref2, then the lessons of the 2014 campaign have to be learned and a decentralised community-based campaign must be create.
That was clearly stated in yesterday’s National by Jason Baird of the National Yes Registry (NYR) who today is issuing an appeal via the Yes DIY page for people to get training on how to use what may well be the most important tool for the grassroots campaigners for indyref 2 – the IndyApp platform.
READ MORE: IndyApp platform ready for Yes groups ahead of indyref2
NYR has organised a residential training weekend in Perth on September 21-22, with places for more than 160 group editors and interested group members to attend from every corner of Scotland.
Bookings are going well, but NYR say please act quickly and ensure your group is represented.
Baird explained: “The Perth weekend is the beginning of a training process designed to cascade down to all group memberships currently registered on the IndyApp.
“Our plan is to synchronise training with the Scottish Government’s indyref legislation, currently passing through Holyrood and scheduled for completion by Christmas.”
In brief, the IndyApp platform allows Yes groups to publish their own information and respond to enquiries from their own local community.
Users will be able to welcome, assess and deploy their own local volunteers, and list their own events on the platform’s new national search function. Each group also decides on their own campaigns, to win in their own areas.
The idea is that groups will communicate directly with each other to build their own support structures, share their campaign ideas, experiences and resources.
Baird said: “There is no middleman to get in the way and there are no algorithms influencing things in the background.
“Decentralisation at this level needs collective will to organise and national training for all groups on exactly how the platform works.”
All training is being heavily subsidised to ensure participation is open to all. National training costs will be paid from the crowdfunder NYR is running at nationalyesregistry.scot/crowdfund.
Baird added: “We currently have 20% of our target raised and the deadline to pay the £9-12,000 venue costs for the Perth training event is September 1.
“If you like what we are doing and you want to see the groups come together to form a national grassroots Yes organisation, then please support us by giving what you can to help pay for the training event.”
Here are excerpts from NHYR’s own straining strategy: “1. Hold a national training weekend in Perth to practically train all group editors and interested group members on the new IndyApp platform and its functions. At the event, use those functions to create support structures among the newly trained, and begin building the necessary grassroots structures needed for decentralised national campaigning.
“2. Cascade same training and network building down to every group membership across the country, with training collectively organised locally and regionally. Once groups are properly networked and able to respond to enquiries from the public, we can all focus on expanding IndyApp membership to as many Yes supporters as we possibly can.
“3. From that solid base, we can then actively publicise IndyApp and encourage registration of the wider Yes supporting public. The more Yessers register on the IndyApp, the bigger the grassroots Yes campaigning pool becomes. Not another petition of names, but instead an ever-increasing pool of individually contactable Yes supporters.”
All reads like a lot of sense to us.
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