In praise of Victoria Street webinar training

By Tom Warnett

Last night I took part in my first ever Labour ‘Train to Win’ webinar.

I don’t think I’m alone in approaching these initiatives from the Central Office with some scepticism. My unfair view was something along the lines of “these HQ types don’t know what real campaigning is like” (picture a triumphantly grim face remembering hours in the miserable rain delivering leaflets) or that it was “just another expensive top-down project”.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was just really impressed by the quality of the tutorial.

The webinar was run in a web conference tool accessed through membersnet. It featured a live stream of the presentation, with the presenters talking over the top of it and guiding you through. There was a function which allowed interaction with the presenters at the regular breaks for questions.

The one I did was about making a selection in Contact Creator. We were guided through the process shaping a voter pool by Mosaic, Voter ID, change to Voter ID, date of Voter ID, response to a petition, etc.

The two staffers who gave the tutorial clearly knew their stuff. They approached it from the point of view of why the data was useful, not just how to extract it and you got the sense that they too had spent those bleak Saturday afternoons in the rain. The presentation was well managed and genuinely interactive – questions added to the session and were answered fully and with good humour.

The main presenter went through his slides and examples in a logical, thoughtful way. He did the easy bits quickly, and made the less obvious points very clearly. He spoke accurately and in simple terms, but was not patronising.

More than anything, it was just very practical. If this is the standard across the board, then I would encourage all CLP Officers and organisers to check some of the webinars out.

That said, I wouldn’t want my one experience to be read as tacit endorsement of all that Victoria Street does. I’m sure there are areas for improvement, and I hope Refounding Labour comes up with some answers.

In this case though, you have to give credit where it’s due.