“Almost every constituency Momentum targeted, we won,” Jeremy Parkin, an organiser with the group, told The New Statesman after the election. Labour lost five seats to the Conservatives, but won 28 from them, as well as six from the SNP and two from the Lib Dems.
This time around, Momentum’s ambitions have grown: they want to paint the electoral map red and put Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10. To do so, their strategy has become smarter and their digital tools sharper. “Politics is inherently digital, and tech is inherently political,” says 25-year-old Jan Baykara, a software engineer for Momentum’s technology team. He’s one of the people who built the group’s new organising tool, MyCampaignMap (MCM). To date, the tool’s been accessed 1.4 millions times (compared to about 100,000 times for MNM in 2017) and used to set up more than 21,000 canvassing events. It’s the centrepiece of the group’s updated mobilisation strategy. [...]
Momentum has explicitly sought out volunteers with technical skills. While Baykara is only one of two permanent staff members in the tech team, up to 50 volunteers have signed up to its Slack channel. Momentum’s flat hierarchical structure means that everyone’s input is welcome. The team has been giving volunteers access to the repo where the code is, encouraging them to constantly propose tweak and changes to the tools themselves. Suggestions can range from whole features to little fixes and performance improvements.
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