Janice Caswell opened with a recollection of her experiences in street-level, door-knocking campaigning during the 2008 election. Through systematic humanization of Obama and an emphasis on middle-class issues, her teams were able to counter the innate racism of North Philadelphia voters and produce a victory.

Elizabeth Winter saw Al Gore’s razor-thin margin of victory in New Mexico, compared it to the voting patterns of Native Americans, and decided the reservations were fertile ground to get out the Democratic vote. She used social-service events and cultural activities in these isolated communities to register voters.

Winter had an interesting point to make: in communities divided by clan or other local differences, outsiders are actually the best people to mobilize voters. It is not always bad to be an outsider.

Adam Ruff handles the logistics of getting the van-fulls of volunteers to the neighborhoods to knock on doors. The biggest barrier for volunteers is getting over the fear of knocking on a stranger’s door; the cure is to let a new volunteer walk in their own neighborhood or walk with an experienced volunteer. He also emphasized the importance of debriefing the volunteer at the end of the day to develop a relationship with them.

Paul Delahanty is a longtime organizer who says “you are the best argument for your candidate.” There are no “magic words” to convince people; you have to think of the person on the other side of the threshold as the most important person in the world. Instead of focusing on a script, it’s vital to pay attention to the voter and address their most pressing personal concerns. We have to make them feel empowered.

Jeffrey Feldman picked up the thread of the volunteer’s state of mind, stressing the importance of active listening. Then he asked for questions from the audience, and got three straight questions about bottom-up information: why do campaigns mismanage volunteers who know the ground better than the managers do?

Adam Ruff said that much of the repeat coverage of neighborhoods is deliberate; he wants more managers to “open the curtain” on decision making so that volunteers understand why they are the third or fourth volunteer in the neighborhood in the past week.