Interesting Peggy Nash Campaign Event

I like to watch how social media is being used for various election campaigns.   I have rarely seen any really effective uses of the medium, though I have seen many interesting attempts.    The latest is from NDP leadership candidate Peggy Nash.

Next Saturday there will be a Pan-Canadian Feminist Potluck for Peggy Nash.   The idea is that there will be numerous potluck events happening across the country at rougly the same time.

At the moment there are events scheduled in nine locations:  Victoria, Vancouver, Regina, Toronto, Oakville, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and St John's.   The start times range from 10 am to 1 pm - times Pacific Standard Time.   Five of the nine will be starting at 1 pm.

The ones in Atlantic Canada and in BC are the ones starting earlier, why this is I have no idea.

Text from the event site:

In a tried and true tradition of the Canadian women’s movement, we are hosting a women’s potluck to open a dialogue between feminists about how the women’s movement can strengthen its response to aggressive right-wing attacks on women’s rights and how to get more women involved in electoral politics.
This exchange with Peggy Nash is an exciting opportunity for more women from coast-to-coast-to-coast to discuss issues that matter most to grassroots women and the potential of electoral politics to address them

Stats from Facebook Events as of January 2nd at 11 am:

1. Toronto - 50 going, 33 maybe, 684 invited
2. Halifax - 36 going, 24 maybe, 243 invited
3. Vancouver - 32 going, 9 maybe, 141 invited
4. Victoria - 24 going, 24 maybe, 124 invited
5. Ottawa - 20 going, 8 maybe, 91 invited
6. Montreal - 11 going, 4 maybe, 39 invited
7. Regina - 4 going, 13 invited
8. Oakville - no details visible
9. St John's - no details, also no event location yet

This is not a big turn out, only 177 saying they are going and 102 maybes.   The NDP is a party with over 100,000 members and only 1335 people have been invited.

The idea is an interesting one, but the execution is not making much of an impact. For this to seem serious, there would need to be many, many more events and those events would have to have much larger turn outs.    I would see a benchmark of 50-80 events with over 2000 people attending being the bottomline of serious success.