Liberal.ca, here is what you need!

UPDATE: Just came across a very good comparison between Obama and Mcain’s websites. Check it out.

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After some interesting feedback from my last post on the liberal party’s online efforts, I met with a volunteer. He explained that each MP, under law, has no more than 80 000 $ for his campaign. As such, funds are closely monitored and any request for work by an outside firm is very difficult.

That being said, great websites can be done for little cash. Take a look at the Green Party and their Westmount Ville-Marie Candidate – both are very solid sites they certainly do not have the same funds as the Liberal party. This reflects that it is not the resources of the party, but rather their mentality. The Liberals are old dogs who need to learn new tricks, fast.

Simply put, the liberal party should offer all their MPs a:

The liberal party itself needs to digitize its existing database of members and voters, create an online community, and promote donations online. The leaders of the party should be making short videos specifically for the online world. Barack Obama does a great job at talking to internet users and getting in their wallet.

These solutions should be open-source (i.e. WordPress for blogging and Joomla for CMS), which ensures that when the MP wants to modify the site, it can be done in house by a volunteer. These open source solutions have millions of contributors with free extensions for user tracking, videos, community building… With these tools and a bit of cash, we could build something better than the existing liberal sites in 2, maybe 3 days.

This could be a powerful tool and help bring about some grassroots support – which Dion got a lot of at the last convention.

I would love to help with this effort, so, Dion, if you are interested – send me an email.

Published on August 26, 2008