Piece 11 of 14
Online and in person
Why you need both, and what each is for.
Most first-timers pick one extreme and stay there. Some live entirely on a keyboard, posting into the void. Some knock on doors and refuse to touch a screen. Both are half a strategy. Online and in person do two different jobs, and you need both jobs done. Get the jobs straight and the tools sort themselves out.
What each is for
Online is for being found. It is how the already-convinced in your area discover that you exist. In person is for commitment. People commit to rooms and to faces. They do not commit to comment threads. The keyboard opens the door. The room is where someone actually decides to stay.
So there is one rule that keeps the two connected. Every online yes has exactly one goal, which is to become a real conversation or a real room. A follow is not a member. A reply is not a volunteer. The whole point of the online presence is to move someone off the platform and into a chair. If a contact never leaves the screen, the screen was the whole relationship, and that is not enough to build on.
Safety basics
- Project name, not your name: run one public account and one email under the effort's name, never your personal one.
- Private contact list, not public tagging: keep the list of who said yes somewhere private, and never out people by tagging them in the open.
- Do not rent your foundation: never let the whole group live only on a platform you do not control, because the day it locks you out, you have nothing.