PC 2012-07-15 minutes

(draft)

The regular meeting of the Political Council was called to order at 7:43 PM Eastern on Sunday, July 15, 2012. The Leader was in the chair. The minutes of the previous meeting were approved. Shawn Vulliez, Jake Daynes, and Johann Weissgerber were present.

Johann Weissgerber took minutes.

Johann moved that we accept Shawn Vulliez's plan for platform expansion below:

1. First wave of promotion: Public input. We create a simple remix your government page in line with the one proposed by Ric Lim. The page would contain a header, a video explaining the basic concept behind RYG and how to participate, as well as a small write-up. Underneath that there would be links to our RYG Vanillaforum, twitter search  results for the hashtag #CdnRmx, a link to a RYG subreddit, and a link to a RYG Facebook group. There should also be an e-mail form at the bottom of the page where you can submit ideas, which will be directed to a new e-mail account. [The justification for having these multiple venues of submissions is that we want to make sure that people are able to participate in whatever way they are comfortable with, and not shut out any potential submissions. It is also a good thing to utilize social media to help build perceptions that we are a party of the internet] During the crowd-sourcing phase (which should last several months) we should continually promote the initiative via social media, in person through flier handouts, and through attempts at media appearances.

2. Second wave of promotion: Other Parties. While continuing to draw submissions, but before we assemble our own platform, we get together a trusted group of 5-10 Pirate Party members to build a report of recommendations for the other parties’ in Canada based on our submissions thus far. The primary document being a non-partisan group of recommendations in line with the PPCA central themes that would be sent to all parties (Open Internet, Copyright Reform, Electoral Reform.) The second part would be a little more fun, which would be party-specific suggestions. I see it as likely that we will receive many great suggestions that are inappropriate for the Pirate Party specifically. Thoughtful ideas on environmental issues could be forwarded to the Greens, ideas on financial accountability to the Cons, socialist ideas to the NDP, and a mish-mash of those ideas to the Liberals. If this was done well, we could get some attention for this, provoke discussion on participation in government, and hopefully, influence members of those parties who hear our suggestions and see the value in them. Most importantly: If we can make some waves on social media with our suggestions to other parties, more people will be interested to hear our final platform.

3. Final wave of promotion: Our platform, which has been created by a group of 25, vetted and revetted internally by membership, and is deemed complete. Before we go live, we should take some of our most interesting ideas and make short videos about them explaining the value of them and where they originated. Sharable images that explain these ideas should also be made, and released slowly over time leading up until the election.

The motion was adopted without debate.

The meeting adjourned at 8:06 PM Eastern.