

Recap on our Anti-SOPA Campaign: 15,000 Faxes Sent to Congress - guiseppecalzone
http://blog.hellofax.com/in-the-news/recap-on-our-anti-sopa-campaign-15000-faxes-sent-to-congress/

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state_machine
I sent one of those.

I was surprised when I got an email the next day from my congressman thanking
me for contacting them and promising a longer reply once they caught up on
their backlog.

Whether they OCR'ed it or had some intern doing data entry, either way, they
at least extracted my email address from the fax and emailed me, giving me the
feeling someone noticed it.

~~~
shasta
What did the email say? Something like: Thank you for faxing us. Your fax is
important to us. We are experiencing heavier than normal fax volume, and your
fax will be answered in the order it was received.

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lukejduncan
I'm curious who uses HelloFax. There is a similar service (can't remember the
name) that does the same thing for snail mail.

It seems like both have a strong advocacy product, either combined or
separately. I can't imagine actually using these services in my day-to-day
(but I may lack imagination), but I can definitely see where they could market
it to large non-profits and NGO's.

Anyone from HelloFax who can speak to who their user base and thoughts of
making advocacy part of the product?

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cjoh
And 15,000 faxes not read. Moreover 15,000 people thinking they did something
useful, without having done anything useful at all.

In my interviews with Congressional staff who actually work on correspondence
desks, they laugh at people sending faxes in and come right out and say that
sending faxes, vs any other method of communications, is ineffective.

I understand that HelloFax wants to market itself. But this campaign does more
harm than good.

~~~
pasbesoin
I'll start OT by mentioning that the prior HN conversation I cite is
apparently not yet indexed by Google -- WTF, Google, you used to be good and
prompt at indexing HN content. (I subsequently found it with the HN search
dialog, so good for that.)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480712>

Anyway, on the above-linked thread, there are some apparently informed
comments to the effect that faxes are, well, effective. For example:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481102>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3480952>

However, I see from your profile, cjoh, that you also appear to be well-
connected in this domain.

So, I'm not asking to be argumentative, but rather to refine my own and
perhaps others' strategies for communicating with their Congress-persons,
going forward. What works? What doesn't? And specifically why and how?

For my own part, and perhaps this is now somewhat dated, I understood -- well-
written, individual -- faxes to be viewed as more akin to a letter, while
arriving in a more timely fashion. That is, a constituent actually sitting
down to write out a formal description of their concerns and reasoning and
then taking the trouble to send it, typically (or historically?) more trouble
than a "Send" button requires.

I guess fax processing may well be all-electronic, at this point, but my hope
also lay a bit in perhaps generating a physical object within the office, as
opposed to being just/yet one more message on a screen.

And I certainly wish to communicate more than just a "tick" and perhaps a ZIP
code categorization in a phone call tally.

I'll typically write an individually addressed letter. I try not to be too
long, but I may run to two -- perhaps even three -- pages to outline not just
my concern by my reasoning. I try to write these in a top down, aka
"newspaper", style, so that the most relevant statements and information can
be gleaned in the first paragraphs, with further reasoning, detail, and
documentation to follow.

Is this all for naught? Should I instead stick it in an envelop and hope that
it gets through all the screening some claim is these days slowing down
physical mail, in time to reach the Congress-person's office before a vote and
before they are committed to a vote?

Any additional insight would be appreciated. And hopefully this is not too OT
for HN.

P.S. I hope my comments on the original, announcement thread from HelloFax did
not make the effort seem like a mere marketing ploy. I have no relationship
with HelloFax other than being a customer and thinking that the fax campaign
was a good idea.

~~~
cjoh
Sorry I am late getting back on this. Long day!

I think the best thing I can do to explain this is to actually watch the video
at <http://informationdiet.com/live>. It'll take you some time. I'm carving it
up now.

But there's a lot in there.

The overarching theme though is that good persuasion is a function with two
parameters: sacrifice, and effort. The more sacrifice and effort involved in
your persuasion to Congress, the more likely it is to be well received. Thus,
a visit to Washington, DC is much more effective than a phone call. A phone
call is much more effective than an email. An email is much more effective
than a form email. A form email is much more effective than a form fax. And so
on.

Here are some tips:

[http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-be-a-
better-...](http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-be-a-better-
activist)

and

[http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-talk-to-
cong...](http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-talk-to-congress)

~~~
pasbesoin
Thank you. I had an initial look the articles the other day, and I'll tackle
the video this weekend.

