that was something that was really lacking in Canada.Originally, when we started out, we were going to focus on media democratization more broadly, but then, there was a really crucial decision at the CRTC around 2008 about whether or not the internet would remain a neutral platform, where all content and applications were treated equally, or whether it would become a platform where internet service providers were allowed to be gatekeepers and say that certain expensive types of content would reach you quickly, but the type of content that a not-for-profit like OpenMedia produces would potentially reach you quite slowly and have a much harder time using the internet as a platform to reach people. So, we thought that decision was extremely important. And it was a time where there was starting to be more and more Canadians who were aware of the
democratizing potential of the internet.
So, we did a campaign at that time, where thousands of people submitted comments to the CRTC through us through our website. As a result, we won some of the best what’s called net neutrality regulation in the world. We realized through that process that really just defending the openness of
the internet was going to be a pretty full-time job for an organization likes ours, and also that Canadians were very passionate about it, and there was a lot of public engagement work to be done.
Susan: Canadians really have become very passionate about it. How many members have you gotten to now? It’s extraordinary.
Reilly: We have just over half a million supporters on our email lists. And then we also have various kind of tiers of more highly engaged people. So we have about 1,700 monthly donors who we call “allies.” They’re really our core base of support. And then we have about 21,000 people who have taken action on what we consider to be the three different pillars of internet freedom. So, those are people who’ve taken action on free expression and copyright. They’ve also taken action to protect our privacy. And then they’ve taken action on the core openness and neutrality issues.
Susan: I think you’re right. You’ve absolutely captured the fact that you had identified issues that were of great importance to Canadians, and certainly not just Canadians – people around the world. But you’ve been able to really shape that into a national conversation from this little, small group of people, taking on big corporations. How have you done that?
Reilly: I would say that we have done that partly through our ability to tell engaging stories, so that has been a key piece for us. Our biggest campaign was called “Stop the Meter,” and that is still the largest online campaign in Canadian history. Over half a million people participated in that one campaign. And that was related to a decision by the CRTC that was, in some ways, pretty esoteric and pretty hard to understand because it was about putting a pay meter on wholesale internet access. So, we took something that, at the time, was called usage-based billing, and we found a great metaphor of the meter that could be very visual and made that into a very mainstream and accessible conversation through taking something that people already understand as not very likeable, like a parking meter, and applying that to this really brand-new technology that most people are still kind of wrapping their minds around, which is internet access.
Susan: You’ve stuck on a number of key points there, I think, and that is how people often forget the visuals. People trust what they don’t have to think about. So if you can give them a visual that really sits in their heart somewhere or it feels so familiar they don’t have to think about it. It’s immediate reaction, and they get it. And that’s one of the things you’ve done so well. I don’t even think you have a massive graphics team.
Reilly: No. We have a part-time graphic designer, and that’s been actually a very new addition for us, so we’re pretty excited about it.
Susan: A lot of it is really just cleverness. It’s a group of smart people sitting around, saying, “Hey. What would get me?” And that’s one of the great things, is that it’s not an intellectual exercise. You’re really
engaged people who care so deeply about it and thinking about how you can engage others.
Reilly: And I think another key piece for us has been that we’ve focused as much on listening to people’s stories as we have on telling stories ourselves.
Susan: Boy, that is maybe the most critical thing in storytelling. No organization exists for itself, and so many organizations forget that. And one of the things I think you do extremely well – I think the organization does extremely well, but I’ve always thought that you particularly, Reilly, held this heartbeat – was that supreme consciousness of remembering that it is always about the community and being so careful to engage them and consult them in every step of the way.
Reilly: Yeah. I think it’s interesting because the storytelling meme has been around for a while. I was actually just looking up when Thomas King gave his really famous Massey lectures in storytelling, and that was in 2003, so eleven years ago. And that storytelling meme has taken on so much power in our cultural context. But I think what we’ve done that’s been unique has been focusing a lot on story listening, as well.
One of the key examples of that is with our Cellphone Horror Stories campaign. We started this campaign around Halloween. And what we wanted to do was get the CRTC, the regulator of Internet and Telephone Services in Canada, to create some better rules for cell phone companies that we know are really taking advantage of Canadians. And so we asked our supporters to actually just tell us their stories about ways that they had been mistreated, and over 2,000 people did.
And then the really important thing we did is that we analyzed those stories in a crowdsourcing process and turned them into a set of recommendations for the CRTC. But those recommendations were really driven by Canadians. They weren’t created just by our small team in Vancouver. They were created by over 2,000 people who shared their stories with us.
Susan: Talk about some of the techniques you use to engage people in those conversations, because lots of organizations want to do that. I’ve found they’d love to get the stories from their constituents, but they really don’t know how.
Reilly: Right. We have a couple different channels that we use to get people to share their stories with us. We really love to build online tools, so we built a couple of different online tools that allow people to
share their perspectives with us. Sometimes it can be just as simple as an open comment box that allows people to input freeform text. And we have different versions of that tool that we’ve used even at different times.
An example would be when we asked people what they would like to say to negotiators who are negotiating the Transpacific Partnership, a free trade agreement. We took their customers just in an open comment field and then created a tool that could broadcast those comments onto the wall of the convention center where those negotiators were meeting. But the tool itself is actually fairly simple.
And then, another of the key places that we go to get input is Reddit. So, Reddit already has set right up for you a platform where you can interact with your supporters, and they can tell you stories and ask questions. And then, of course, Facebook is another key place. So, sometimes we use the platforms that already exist, and then sometimes we build our own simple tools.
Susan: I think people overlook Reddit. It’s just an extraordinary tool and a great place to really rally your… People really want to be part of the organizations they support. They don’t want to be arm’s length anymore. They want to be driving the decisions, and they really want to engage. And Reddit gives you a great tool to find out how you’re doing and figure out where your next ideas are coming from.
Reilly: It’s really true. And it’s great, because there’s self-selection on Reddit. People belong to communities that they want to be part of, so there’s a lot of passion and engagement.
Susan: It’s true. Also, I think people are a bit afraid of Reddit. I think it’s in many ways a self-policing community. I think the conversations stay pretty directed on Reddit.
Reilly: They definitely stay directed. You’ll sometimes get really hard questions, and people will let you know if they’re not happy with what you’re doing. But overall, the level of respect is pretty high.
Susan: It is. And the one thing that doesn’t work on Reddit either is PR spin. You can’t gloss over things. You actually have to address things head on.
Reilly: Yeah. You have to be prepared to put in the time.
Susan: We do a lot of surveys, and you and I have talked about surveys. You and I go back a few years now, actually. And we were actually at an event not that long ago where I became… I’ve been concerned about surveys for quite a while now, and actually just had an organization phone me under the auspices of a survey. And it was no more than, I thought, a poorly executed piece of PR propaganda, where they were asking such leading questions that they were clearly trying to lead me from a position against this relatively contentious new organization that wanted to move in to Toronto, and trying to lead me down this path by asking me things like, “Well, if you knew that it was going to create more jobs, would you support it then? If you knew that these particular animals were going to be better treated because of this, would you…” It was almost like, “Well, would you throw orphans out onto the street?” It was just so awful. And yet, that’s going to masquerade as news. I’m desperately looking for some organization to take this sort of thing on, because this then goes out as news: “79% of Torontonians want this.” That gets picked up as news, and I think that’s a terrible problem.
Reilly: Yeah, it’s interesting. I see a lot of “consultation” that’s obviously a very faux consultation. One thing that I think is a little bit tricky at OpenMedia is that sometimes when we use scenarios to ask people for their opinion, the scenarios that we’re describing sound so outlandish, but they’re actually true.
So, a key one that we’ve been asking people about is this six-year-old girl in Finland downloaded music illegally, and her Winnie the Pooh laptop was confiscated as a result. And when we ask people, what do you think should happen in that case, that sounds like we’re creating a scenario to mislead people, but actually these kinds of things are happening.
Susan: I don’t even want to get started on that one. That’s a whole other conversation. It is. And that’s the thing you’re so good at. You’re so good at picking out these very real examples. But you’re right. They do sound so outlandish. That’s one of the tricky parts of storytelling. You can have a very true and real story that people don’t believe, and as a result, it can push people away. Now, I think you’ve been really good about positioning that particular one. Anybody who does their digging knows that that’s true. But you have to take those examples and highlight them, because that’s what makes it real. Everybody knows and loves some six-year-old or was a six- year-old at one point.Reilly: Exactly. And also, we have a little bit of a need to actually cause people to take the red pill and recognize what’s actually happening around them, which can be hard when it’s a lot easier to be complacent and not recognize how extreme the threats to the open internet are right now. But part of our job is to say, “This is actually really happening.”
Susan: That’s something I think you’ve done so well. You’ve taken this issue from zero to sixty in no time at all, really, in the grand scheme of things.
Reilly: Thank you.
Susan: I think the thing, and you’ve hit this already, is the listening. You haven’t imposed. You’ve really been careful to listen to the community and let it guide you. And I think that’s one of the main… I think when organizations are not able to engage their public, I think they are . . . and you’ve talked about imposing. I think that’s the thing. So many people think they’re consulting their public, when in fact, they’re actually just imposing something on them.
Reilly: Well, I guess we felt that since the big thing that we were saying to decision makers was that they needed to be listening to people, we really had to do that ourselves as well.
Susan: That’s true. You had to actually walk the walk. You’ve even had some extraordinary things happen with the CTRC, haven’t you?
Reilly: We have. When we would initially go see the CRTC many years ago when we first started, we would actual get in trouble with them for bringing in citizen comments. We would always try to crowd source our submission. So, we’d go before the CRTC, and we’d read citizen comments about how they were being affecting by the policies that the CRTC was considering. And this was in huge contrast to the telecom, which would mostly come in with its army of lawyers with a lot of facts that were often based on questionable reasoning. And we would get told that we were outside the scope of the hearing by the CRTC, and we were not encouraged to bring these kinds of citizen voices. But after Stop the Meter happened, and half a million people participated in that, and the industry minister and even the prime minister actually took notice of what was going on at the CRTC, there was quite a dramatic change in leadership there. Now, the new CRTC chair, Jean-Pierre Blais, will actually read out citizen comments himself that the CRTC is seeking from people. So, that’s been a very big change.
Susan: That’s a huge shift. And I think your concept, even your concept of reimagining the CRTC, encouraging people to think about the CBC – if they would like it to engage them in a mission of ensuring that it sticks around.
Reilly: I have a friend who’s a really amazing activist. Many years ago, he was very critical of the term “crowdsourcing,” because he explained that it sounds like you’re just taking something from a crowd. So, there was a long time ago where I didn’t like to use the word “crowdsourcing.” Now, it has such wide currency that it’s just too easy to use. But he really preferred the term “community-crafted.”
Susan: That’s a beautiful term.
Reilly: And that’s the term that we use for a reimagined CBC, which is the process we did, where we asked people to submit ideas for reimagining the CBC in the digital age. And we had over 400 people submit ideas. We took their idea, and we created this community-crafted, simple drag-and-drop crowdsourcing tool. And then 10,000 people used that, and as a result, we’ve produced this vision for revitalizing the CBC that had thousands of people’s input.
Susan: And it was an extraordinary campaign. I thought you did just an amazing job of that. And again, the concept is, your publics are reimagining you, whether you want them to or not.
Reilly: Oh, definitely.
Susan: So, the concept of putting your hand out and saying, “You little public have no right to do that,” which I think big corporations really wanted to do at the beginning, and big telecom, I’m sure really wanted to do that. But they can’t anymore. Or at least, they can, but it’s not going to be successful, because the power now lies with the people that they serve. right now with the CRTC would be rules that would allow the big telecom companies to have a lot more control over the media system so, again, that they would be able to really prioritize their own television services, which contain their own news services over the open platform of YouTube videos from all around the world and other different sources of content. So, I think they’re definitely trying to do everything they can to get back to a broadcast model, where they can just tell people what to think. But that’s why we’re always trying to stay vigilant and make sure that people keep getting involved in campaigns to preserve the openness of
the internet.
Susan: Yeah, I don’t know how long they can keep trying to fight that battle. To me, it seems an inevitability that, as an emerging generation takes it place, it will simply demand… I mean, it is demanding right now, but I think as the next generation of leaders comes up, I just don’t know
see how they can possibly hang onto that. I think they’re dinosaurs.
Reilly: I hope so. One of the biggest things that we always talk about at OpenMedia is how much the internet has changed cultural expectations for participation. And hopefully that’s something we’ll see be amplified with time.
Susan: One of the important narratives that I think any grassroots organization uses is the David and Goliath story or analogy. Can you think of any others that have been important to the growth of OpenMedia?
Reilly: Yeah, I think definitely. I think there’s also this kind of strain of storytelling that focuses a lot on the hero archetype. And I think that that is an important one, but I think that sometimes that can be a little bit overused, especially be activists who tend to want to see themselves as heroes, but possibly that’s not quite where the general public is always at. Because we’ve found that one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we get when we ask our donors to tell us what they like about OpenMedia is they’ll say that we’re bringing them together with like-minded people. So, we use a lot of stories about a rising tide or a movement or a community that you’re part of – something that’s bigger than you. And we think that’s, in some ways, a more transformative story than the hero archetype, which also has its place. But you want to have a leaderful kind of movement.
Susan: I think that’s so key. One of the things we talk about here is that the consumer, and in this case, the individual at home who might get involved with OpenMedia, they actually consider themselves to be the hero of their own lives, so they really don’t need an organization or a brand or a company or a product coming along and saying, “Woo hoo. We’re your new hero now.” Because that’s just not how we think. We think of ourselves as the hero of our own lives. When we find something we believe in, like a cause, we actually are willing to, as you say, find something bigger than ourselves and suspend our own vision of ourselves as a hero, but we’re certainly not going to bestow that sense of heroism on a brand.
Reilly: And I think that people are much more lacking in a sense of community and strong social bonds than they are in a sense of that kind of potentially very egoic or narcissistic heroism.
Susan: Yeah. The individualism of heroes has gone by. So, what trends do you see in the future for public engagement?
Reilly: I’m hoping that as more and more organizations are beginning to invest in public engagement – so I’m seeing this everywhere: my city council, with the CRTC, with the provincial government – I’m hoping that as more organizations are starting to invest in that, that people become a lot more savvy about demanding that it be more than just a PR exercise. So, that’s my hope, because I do think the trend is for many, many more organizations to try to do public consolation, who have just seen the CRTC try to run a public consultation that looked very much like reimagined CBC, but that, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to have adhered very closely to what the community was actually saying to them.
Susan: Their objectives were very different.
Reilly: And that’s the thing with public engagement, is that if it’s true engagement, you actually have to go in without a sense of exactly what you want the outcome to be.
Susan: And that’s one of the problems. Big organizations and companies who are using the terms of public engagement and using the mechanisms, but they actually have a prescribed outcome that they’re looking for. And it is just a ram of PR thing down your throat, but use the language that will mirror the public, and they’ll think they’ve been listened to.
Reilly: Yeah. And what was so great with reimagined CBC, for example, is that I actually really didn’t know what we should say going in. I was not an expert in public media at all. So, I was very grateful that the process produced these recommendations that were very diverse and very strong and very robust and felt very meaningful to me and the others who are running the campaign. So, often, actually, it’s the best if you don’t have an answer at all. What you get back to the community can be really inspiring then.
Susan: Well, Reilly, thank you so much. Speaking of inspiring, I find you one of the most inspiring people I know.
Reilly: Right back at you, Susan. Definitely.
Susan: Thank you so much for being part of this, and I really had a great time chatting with you.
Reilly: Thank you, Susan. I’ll just say you have been such an amazing asset to OpenMedia. We really could not have done all of this without you, so I’m so grateful.
Susan: Thank you.