The PPA, lets talk numbers vs results.

[DeadMoneyDad]

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Seriously, D$D, I thought you were going to work on distilling your points. I can't even read your posts like this and I know I'm not alone.

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Well I was asked specifically what I would do differently so I explained it in some detail.

Here is the Cliff Notes version.

The PPA is good. But not good enough. We claim to be a grassroots organization but at best we have great lobbyists and a good PR machine.

Even the 800,000 number is weak and untested. The vast majority haven't donaited and many don't even remember they signed up.

We have a political equlivant of a "Perfect Storm" of issues, timing, and numbers to be MUCH better.

IMO we can and should plan on a less than 2 to 5 year strategy to achieve the goals we all want. It is doable, but waiting much longer is a looser. We have a short window to get ready to make a major impact in '08 and reap the rewards in the election off year and legislative session of '09. If we make the effort I think we should we could achieve much more than is currently on the table.

I have done this type of work in the past. It is not hard, in fact very simple and often mundaine. The art is keeping people motivated to keep doing the hard mindless work.

Effective grassroots efforts cost a little to get going but can be even profitible. Their real value however is the multiplication factor to your lobbing efforts.

I used specific examples of suggestions I have made that for whatever reason were not followed. They are mid to late in the post with single word headers; Bumper stickers, Poker Chips, Fundraising, Organization, KY, Motivation, Testing, and State Reps. There were a couple of other where I failed to follow this convention.

Some who managed to wade through the whole thing thought it worthwhile.

Best I can do,

D$D

[sobefuddled]

Actually I did PM him from this site asking him to let me know whether or not he received the e-mail. Since I copied Bryan on the e-mail Bryan responded saying he was forwarding the e-mail to Randy because "Randy is our MA representative." Bryan apparently didn't look at the header. I have not heard from Randy.
D$D made my point beautifully. I have a personal vested interest in getting this proposed MA legislation changed and the public educated about poker. My son is toying with the idea of moving back to MA. He is a pro player. Those of you who follow extremely high stakes on line limit know who he is.

[TheEngineer]

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Actually I did PM him from this site asking him to let me know whether or not he received the e-mail. Since I copied Bryan on the e-mail Bryan responded saying he was forwarding the e-mail to Randy because "Randy is our MA representative." Bryan apparently didn't look at the header. I have not heard from Randy.
D$D made my point beautifully. I have a personal vested interest in getting this proposed MA legislation changed and the public educated about poker. My son is toying with the idea of moving back to MA. He is a pro player. Those of you who follow extremely high stakes on line limit know who he is.

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Thanks for taking that extra step to ensure he received your email. Also, thanks for offering to help. I hope Randy will contact you soon.

[DeadMoneyDad]

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It could have either not been delivered or been deleted by his spam filter. Why not send it once more or PM him?

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TE, your desire to get the job done not matter what the obsticales is very admirable. But the PPA has long suffered the structural problem of bi-directional communications involving suggestions and offers of help. Given all the work even on Brayn's new plate this will not improve IMO.

Right now every campaign in the country, every other grassroots group is out planning and rounding up people potentially motivated for this cycle. As far as I know we barely have a plan. We have not shown "the money" that we are worth their commitment to a major effort.

Getting people to get off their butts and freely give their time is harder than getting money from them. It is also many times more valuable. Getting money is the easy part, trust me.

The amount of untapped talent in this forum alone is testiment to that.

Grassroots for a group is hard enough. Converting an on-line community to live action is even harder in political grassroots work.

I'll give you an example. A campaign I was involved in, only late in the process, had a great candidate in a good State. This was a State I had previous long term experience in the previous cycle. They announced and had a nice gathering for the offical opening of the campaign HQ's opening.

But they did not have a single concret volunteer activity for all the people that showed up ready to work. They had a very poor message for those with past volunteer experience; "leave us your name and contact info and we'll get back to you."

I came in for the last 5 weeks. The campaign was still stuck in first gear. I spent 3 weeks offering suggestions and doing what I was asked to do, drive around and stick yard signs in the ground.

10 days before the election they realized they were in major trouble. Thankfully the RNC had sent in about 12 "72-Hour Marshals" any of whom could have lead the effort, but since I had been their the longest and had the most recent past campaing experience in the State I was tapped to lead the effort. We accomplished through very hard work in a little less than 9 days what could have been done very easily in just the previous 5 weeks let alone the 3 months prior. We just eeked out a victory, and the Republicans just barely regained the Senate.

This experience is partly what has driven me nuts with the pace of change in the grassroots efforts of the PPA.

When I spoke to many of the people I had trained in the previous cycle and asked what happened, the full impact of the mistake of not "striking while the iron is hot", is a lesson I'll never forget. Many top tier volunteers went off and got involved in other campaigns. That State wide effort came very close to failing for the simple reason that the campaign didn't understand the "care and feeding" of its most valuable resource.

In campaings you can always get more money, you can even over come past mistakes, you can even elect fools, but you can never trun the clock back and get a single wasted minute back no matter what you do.




D$D

[TheEngineer]

That may be the largest (number of words in response)/(number of words in OP) in the history of this forum. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

In all seriousness, I've found Randy to be very responsive with me. His email address is a yahoo.com one, so it was entirely plausible that the email in question didn't make it to Randy, so I merely asked a question to help get the info to him. He clarified that he sent a PM to Randy as well, so the ball is now in Randy's court.

[DeadMoneyDad]

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That may be the largest (number of words in response)/(number of words in OP) in the history of this forum. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

In all seriousness, I've found Randy to be very responsive with me. His email address is a yahoo.com one, so it was entirely plausible that the email in question didn't make it to Randy, so I merely asked a question to help get the info to him. He clarified that he sent a PM to Randy as well, so the ball is now in Randy's court.

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Well I simply tried to make the point that even now with Brayn's addition to the team, we are still way behind the curve. The PPA is doing a very good job in selecting its people but they then immediately over task them.

The basic structural problems will continue to exist and we potentially suffer from addition problems by spreading "ourselves" too thin. Burn-out and continued missed opportunities are inevitable.


D$D

[TheEngineer]

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In campaings you can always get more money, you can even over come past mistakes, you can even elect fools, but you can never trun the clock back and get a single wasted minute back no matter what you do.

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You're right; we cannot waste a moment. PPA has many areas on which to potentially focus. You wanted them to commit to a huge grassroots effort. You have some good ideas; no one disputes that. Still, time is of the essense. They listened to you and your proposals and made a strategic decision to put the primary near-term focus on legislative efforts while doing some work at the grassroots level. If they try to mobilize a huge grassroots effort right this second, they'll have to take their eyes off the legislative effort to manage it, right at the time when they need the focus there.

This is our moment to act legislatively. We can get bumper stickers on cars in a few months. Right now, Rep. Conyers has cosponsored Wexler's bill and has a hearing next Wed. Other things are occurring as well. You make it sound like they aren't following your suggestions because they aren't smart enough to. I don't believe that's the case.

[sobefuddled]

It doesn't have to be one or the other. A grass roots effort is just that. Delegate some of the grunt work to volunteers like me. Never, never forget that every great movement in history began at the grass roots level. Where would we be today if Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin focussed their lobbying efforts on Parliament alone?
Alice

[DeadMoneyDad]

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You make it sound like they aren't following your suggestions because they aren't smart enough to. I don't believe that's the case.

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Please, I want no one to think I in any way doubt the intellegence, commitment, dedication, nor hard work that has been done to date by everyone even remotely involved.

I have spoken to quite a few of the decision makers in this process. I fully understand the issues involved. Near as I can tell it really comes down to an issue of budgets of both money and time.

Bumper-stickers on cars, isn't the goal, it is having the ability to get them on the right cars driven by people who have committed to getting them on a hundred more, who then will show up and write the letters, volunteer on the strategicly chosen campaigns to move the votes nessecary from the uncommitted to get an even better bill out of the hearing stages. By sheer political force if nessecary.

We also need to be ready to fight the State battles for any State that even thinks of opting out. We can even as a political force keep those decisions from ever come to the floor of those State Houses because we are THE PPA!

Top tier political professionals know the timetables, they are making their plans now. People like this are making commitments for '08 NOW. I'm not even close to being Karl Rove but I've gotten calls, so someone(s) must really be scraping the bottom of the barrel........

Strategically we either continue to play defense or attempt to go on the offense. Perhaps it really does come down to the belief from all those intellegent people that the on-line poker community will never come out from behind their screens.

I don't beleive that.


D$D

[TheEngineer]

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It doesn't have to be one or the other. A grass roots effort is just that. Delegate some of the grunt work to volunteers like me. Never, never forget that every great movement in history began at the grass roots level. Where would we be today if Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin focussed their lobbying efforts on Parliament alone?
Alice

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Absolutely. They are doing both. I've certainly let them know I want them to be active on the grassroots, and they've progressed strongly in that area, IMO. My point was that there's a point where doing one thing distracts from the other thing. John Pappas just got on a few months ago and Bryan just hired on a few weeks ago. They are currently moving from San Francisco to D.C. As their grassroots efforts and their member outreach prior to this were [censored], there is a huge ramp-up required. If they try to do too much at once, it will crash and burn...badly. D$D said himself that they're doing as much they can, to the point of seeming overwhelmed.

Let's let them complete the move to D.C., get John Pappas fully situated, and get the legislative goals done while we can (after all, we're done there if the GOP gets a chamber in '08). This is not the prior PPA administration -- these guys are proactive. Grassroots will ramp up at the appropriate time, which will be soon.

Also, to be clear, I don't mean "grassroots" to be the same as "member services". Bryan is on board and is fully engaged to address this.