Block 1: Friday June 7 9:30 am
Unleashing your brand and understanding your audience
In this workshop, delegates will discuss how best to define and communicate your brand positioning while also delving into creating audience personas for your communications. Like any product, service or organization, unions have a brand. It’s up to you to either define it or have it defined by outside perspectives.
Your brand can be a powerful tool to help ensure consistent, powerful messaging and union behaviours while also protecting against unforeseen negative situations. With a clearly defined brand, understanding who you are communicating with becomes paramount. More than just basic demographics, we need to find insight into our audiences to develop messaging that will truly resonate with them.
TikTok and more
Trent Daley offers an in-depth analysis to navigate video-preference on social media algorithms such as Instagram, Youtube Shorts, and TikTok. The workshop will cover how to develop labour strategies condensed into 15s-60s videos for youth, how to turn engagement into action and how to track it. This workshop will explore petition or letter writing campaigns and linktree (or alternatives), how to create a successful (and engaging video), how to maintain an audience and keep up with posting, why I think social media is important- and why you should too!
Working with elected representatives
Figuring out the right touch when it comes to working with elected officials can be tricky. Edmonton City Councillor Michael Janz will talk about what he thinks works and how to be as effective as possible given the constraints of elected office.
Organizing workshop 1 – Communications challenges when you’re about to go on strike!
Farid Iksander will go over the challenges he faced as an organizer supporting two public sector bargaining units (City of Edmonton, and Edmonton Public Library) as they took the first strike votes in their union’s history since 2006. Farid will go over the Employer’s scare tactics to supress the strike vote and encourage strikebreaking or scabbing. This talk will illustrate the internal and external communication challenges the workers faced during their organizing drive.
Block 2: Friday June 7 1:30 pm
Building a successful YouTube channel
YouTube is the second most popular social media platform in the world, and is an incredible tool for reaching a larger audience, but the rapid development of the platform in isolation as well as within the broader context of online content can make it hard to figure out where to start. This workshop will show you where labour can capitalize on the platform’s strengths, how to avoid easy mistakes, and what it takes to get labour’s message out to a YouTube audience.
Visual Voices: Empowering Activism Through Storytelling!
Unleash the power of photography in activism at our Visual Voices workshop, and get ready for an exciting hands-on workshop that will teach you all about essential photography skills to use photography as a tool for social change. You will learn how to capture impactful images that tell compelling stories and how to use documentary photography to drive social change.
Ramping up Member Engagement with Hybrid Meetings: CASE STUDY – How an local increased their engagement by 600%
The local needed to update members on collective bargaining, stage officer elections and select delegates for its upcoming convention. This interactive session will outline:
- How the local setup the meeting to increase attendance dramatically
- The key components needed to permit attendance from three different channels
- The in-room setup to accommodate virtual attendees
- The software that facilitated the engagement
- How voting took place on a key bargaining issue
Workshop attendees will be able to experience what members experienced, and will outline the tools and techniques needed to execute hybrid meetings with voting with their unions.
Bridging the organizer/communicator divide
Explore strategies to foster seamless collaboration between organizers and communicators in our workshop, ‘Bridging the Organizer/Communicator Divide,’ where we delve into effective communication techniques for cohesive teamwork and impactful messaging.
Block 3: Friday June 7 3:30 pm
Work smarter, not harder: everyday organization hacks
In this workshop, Virginia will review some common project management platforms (Sunsama, Monday, etc) as well as provide some general organization hacks to help you be more efficient in your work and maybe in your everyday life too!
Communicating with Visual Impact
In a world of saturated media, it’s a challenge to stand out. This is no different when it comes to communicating your message to your members or the public. In this workshop, we’ll look at the dos and don’ts of visual layout, typography language, the power of images. In the second part, you’ll use the lessons talked about to create your own attention grabbing poster.
Beyond social media: how to leverage a variety of tools to improve your labour communications
This workshop will explore how labour communicators can use social media, but also a variety of other communication tools for member outreach and storytelling.
So, you want to organize new workers?
Unorganized workers are seriously talking about unionizing for the first time in decades, making it the perfect time for unions to ramp up organizing efforts! In this workshop, learn how to use basic communications skills and tools to recruit leads and start the organizing process. We’ll break down an organizing drive into its essential components and explore proven ways to grow the collective strength of your members to win. Communications staff, campaigners, and organizers alike will benefit from this crash course in the basics of building power.
Block 4: Saturday June 8 9:00 am
WordPress Essentials: A Beginner’s Workshop
In this workshop you’ll be introduced to the free, open-source web creation tool that powers 30% of the world’s websites. Broken into two parts we’ll show you the history, benefits and features of wordpress.com and its vast array of plug-ins. In the second part, you’ll use the themes, blocks, typography, images and styling discussed in part one to create your own one-page website.
Robots and workers unite!
A session on artificial intelligence tailored for unions. AI is coming to your union, whether you want it or not. Communications staff and volunteers tend to be some of the most tech-savvy people in the union structure, so there’s an opportunity to help guide how AI ends up being used. On a tour through the AI landscape, we’ll explore what’s possible and some of the limitations of this new technology, with specific examples of current tools. We’ll also examine the ethical implications and what you can do to prepare your union for the changes to come.
Using Canva to make great social media and web designs
Canva makes it easy for anyone to make posters, and designs for either web or print publications. This session will teach you the basics, and make sure you know how to improve your union’s design work with eye-catching images that pop!
Journalism 101 for organizers
This session will demystify the process of making journalism for union organizers so that they understand better the external pressures that exist when communicating a message.
Block 5: Saturday June 8 1:30 pm
Persuasion and the spectrum of allies
Has persuasion become a dying art? The discourse often mean we focus on winning rather than convincing. Join Danielle Paradis to discuss the importance of coalition building around your political passions.
Elementor: Upgrade your WordPress site
Unlock your website’s full potential with Elementor’s drag & drop Website Builder. It includes all the features you need, in just one plugin, to make an awesomely designed website.
Mobilizing membership/communications tools
What are the best tools that you can use to mobilize your membership? In this workshop, Alexander Delorme will talk about their favourite options, what they’ve seen work and which ones you should avoid
Block 6: June 8 3:30 pm
How unions can help support the families of MMIWG seeking justice
In March 2015, Eva’s sister Misty went missing. Since that time, Eva has spoken out about the police system that did little to help find Misty, and the systems that have prevented her from taking a more active role in the MMIWG inquiry. Eva will speak about Misty’s story, her experiences, and how labour can be allies and offer true support to the families of MMIWG.
New trends and old friends in paid media
Learn about innovative new tactics for building your paid media plan and the pros and cons of each medium. Session will include examples of recent campaigns with successful innovations in out-of-home, digital, social, and more. This interactive session will provide you with the information you need to choose the right tactic for your next paid media campaign.
Kenneyism: Jason Kenney’s Pursuit of Power
What can the rise and precipitous fall of Jason Kenney teach us about the nature of Canada’s conservative movement? Jeremy Appel, the author of Kenneyism: Jason Kenney’s Pursuit of Power, details the contradictions within modern conservatism that Kenney had to navigate to put his reactionary vision into practice, how they ultimately subsumed him, and how the labour movement might be able to exploit these fractures to challenge Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre.
Clinics: June 7 11:15-12:30 PM
New this year, delegates will be able to sign up for a 15 minute 1:1 appointment with communications experts. This time will allow you to trouble shoot a specific problem, get advise, or learn from their general expertise.
Our 2024 experts:
Jason Alward Area of expertise: WordPress, Graphic design
Tasia Brown Area of expertise: Social Media, government relations
Ethan Clarke Area of expertise: Organizing members, Digital campaign strategy, Campaign Strategy
Chelsea Connor Area of expertise: Canva, media relations, crisis comms
David Climenhaga Area of expertise: Writing, journalism, editing, media relations
Dave Cournoyer Area of Expertise: Writing, Online writing, blogs, newlsetters
Trent Daley Area of Expertise: TikTok, online videos
Allan Fisher Area of expertise: WordPress, website design
Emily Heikoop Area of expertise: Simply Voting
Anna Jover Area of expertise: Photography, videography, video storytelling
Adrienne King Area of expertise: Advertising tactics, strategic planning, spokesperson coaching
Carl Mavromichalis Area of expertise: Online meetings, hybrid meetings, online voting
John Schofield Area of expertise: Branding, media selection, audience insight, creativity, campaign strategy
Wyatt Tanton Area of expertise: YouTube, Twitch
Brad Walchuck Area of expertise: Election Runner