Along with about 1300 other Democratic volunteers from all but three of the territories in which they have a presence, I attended my first training session, conducted by two personable and competent young ladies. They spoke about organization building, how to be welcoming, how to solicit volunteers effectively, how to convey a message though creating good content for that message must come in one of the later sessions. These are really basic principles of organizational structure that apply to successful places and places like my synagogue where they probably understand them better than they implement them. I'm not yet convinced that the Democrats implement them optimally either, but every encounter I have had there has been cordial and then some. When you address an audience of that size, people there based more on good intentions than on personal intellect, you have to reduce the message primarily to bullet points, which they did well.
Some of what they recommend runs contrary to how I personally receive messages. Don't take no for an answer or get the recipient to commit upends my default to let me think about it and decide later. They recommend not having a later option, which I'm sure will deflect people like me who need just that. I wonder how much science or experimentation really justifies the things they recommend. More likely these are implemented, the election occurs, and the mavens tease out the results of what went well and how to tweak what did not.
It's a fairly intensive mini-course, two nights a week for three weeks. Kind of fun to follow along.
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