There’s something of a tactical voting campaign going on to ensure that Melanie Phillips doesn’t win a UK blog award. It’s hardly a life-or-death issue and I’m sure that Melanie’s people are doing the same thing, so good luck to them.
The same award scheme is in place in the US, and only one of the candidates (one more than in the UK!) is an ‘elected blogger’.
Heeeeeeere’s Mike – a US School Board blogger. He urges you to vote-early-vote-often (like everyone else in this contest).
There’s not long to go now though, so you’ll probably only manage one vote….
And why not?
A blog about representative democracy, social media and a conversational politics. How will peer-to-peer communications change local democracy? How is representation changing? 
You make several brilliant points here. But the fact that you link to my blog is OBVIOUSLY brilliant as well. Local Democracy is one smart destination, and I look forward to reading it regularly.
I take exception to your comment regarding “tactical voting campaign” – I have nothing against Melanie Phillips (never even heard of her until this) but I do have love for created in Birmingham. Are these voting things not all about drumming up interest for the best blogs, creating hype and have people who read these blogs feel good because they feel like they’re giving something back. Every voting system is about being tactical, if you didn’t call on other people for help, you’d lose.
The people voting for Created in Birmingham are not voting to ensure Melanie loses, they’re voting in the hope that Created in Birmingham wins.
“The people voting for Created in Birmingham are not voting to ensure Melanie loses, they’re voting in the hope that Created in Birmingham wins.”
Some voters are, certainly. But most aren’t. If you’d looked at the way votes have stacked up, followed lots of reminders on twitter to ‘vote to stop Mad Mel’ and seen the Facebook group, I doubt that you would have said this.
Also, if you look at the way the votes are distributed now and the way they were a few days ago, lots of people are clearly voting *against* one blog by for another. I know two of the contestants personally, and they have both urged people not to vote for them and to vote for CiB.
This is, of course, how political elections work though. I’m always amused when politicians claim they have a mandate for their policies once they’ve won an election. The ‘least worst’ is an important factor – and generally people have decided that they would rather have the winners making decisions instead of the alternatives.
Paul, I’m afraid that’s the beat your missing….
It’s called viral marketing, people who are voting for Created in Birmingham are the most web savvy people in the city, they really are. Using our own blog sites to promote it, our Twitter following. I mean all you have to do is go to twitter search and look for terms like #votecib (also the hashtag websites) and you’ll find thousands of ‘tweets’ and ‘re-tweets’, that’s how the votes were drummed up. I hope you research even just a little into what I’m saying and you’ll be overwhelmed by the following CiB has and as readers of CiB the following we each in turn have, thanks, Anthony
Hi Paul,
I think one of the key differences here is that many people in Birmingham are both very fond of Created in Birmingham and well connected on the social web. Early in the voting process anti Mel comments were being used in tweets etc to mobilise the vote, as you say some sites that have never heard of CiB were also supporting the blog. This is still happening.
However the facebook group has always been postive about why to vote:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1661257782&ref=nf#/group.php?gid=53977963831
This is a sincere and positive campaign – Birmingham is very proud of this blog and has a very well networked blogging community. We often mobilise to do a whole range of things, from organising social events or lobbying the council to laying on free social media surgeries for voluntary groups in the city.
I think Ewan Spence (from Scotland) summarises this campaign quite neatly:
http://www.ewanspence.com/blog/2009/01/12/ballot-box-stuffing-alive-and-well-on-uk-blog-awards/
I wouldn’t want anyone to run away with the idea that I don’t like CiB or that some of it’s campaign wasn’t positive. But I’d be astonished if it had the same voting curve if the votes weren’t disclosed. I suspect that it would be closer. And I’m certainly not privy to what kind of viral campaign Mel was running either (I’m not in her address book…)
Full disclosure now here: Two of my favourite blogs were on this list (Nosemonkey and Olly’s Onions). They both got a vote early – but once it became neck-and-neck I switched to CiB and mailed loads of my Facebook friends to do the same. And I’ve never really read CiB even though it has had at least a dozen votes from me….
I had lots of messages and tweets urging me in the same way. Not ‘isn’t CiB great’ but ‘stop Mad Mel’
And – to be honest – its all a bit of fun really, innit?
Paul, I’m man enough to apologise so may I apologise to you as I feel my comments may have been patronizing. Your second paragraph opened up to me who you are so to speak, I’ll be honest, I didn’t take the time to research this blog, I only read a pingback and thought I would stick up for CiB. Not only that but talking to you assuming you didn’t know what Twitter was etc and the hype that was created when you clearly do.
I think the majority of Tweets were not anti-Mel but anti-Daily Mail, even though she has since expressed in her blog that the blog has nothing to do with the Daily Mail. I for sure did once tweet something anti-daily mail and I even refer to it in one of my own personal blog posts (before her post may I add). What incensed me though were comments from people, mostly on her blog commenting as if it was a conspiracy and I was anxious to broadcast the fact that the majority of votes we’re in fact from the community of people on Twitter, which i thought most of the people who left CiB comments, wouldn’t have understood as I thought they would have referred to it at some point.
all the best.
Anthony…
No need for the penitent tone Anthony. Most of my stuff is on political blogs – we call each other all sorts there
AND, as it happens, though I didn’t know about CiB, I’m glad I do now. Blogs as creative hubs is an interesting development. I do some work that has a different kind of regional development idea in Northern Ireland, and I think that it – oddly – has a good deal to learn from CiB.
Come back again now, you hear?
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