My friend Andrew and I spent a recent afternoon reviewing the games he invented a decade ago. My favorite was Spectangle. You win by placing colored pieces on a geometrical board, and carving out piece of territory. I was drawn to the game’s heavy reliance on strategy, and its similarity to my favorite game, Go — a game that has both expanded and deepened my mind.

Most successful games rely on a combination of strategy, luck and secrecy. Children’s board games rely mostly on luck, with the role of dice or spin of a colorwheel determining moves. Think Candyland — no skill involved at all, and nothing hidden from any player. Simple card games (War, Go Fish, Uno) also involve luck, but add the dimension of secrecy — that is, players hold their cards so that they are secret from the other players. A few games (Stratego, Mastermind) rely on strategy and secrecy, but no luck — play revolves around trying to unveil the secret pattern or hidden pieces, but those hidden pieces are set by a player’s strategy, not by chance.

The most universally appealing games blend strategy, luck and secrecy in a fine balance. Think Settlers of Catan or Risk, which involve complex strategy and planning, but also feature hidden hands of cards and dice roles. I’m a huge fan of well balanced games like Settlers, which was the first of a series of “German style” games published largely by a company called Mayfair. Though I will admit, I was stymied by Mayfair’s Russian Rails, whose board full of similar-sounding cities ending in “-ostok” totally confused me.

At the far end of the strategy spectrum, there are the games with no luck at all, and nothing hidden from either player. These are pure strategy games, or in combinatorial game theory language, “zero sum, perfect-information, partisan, deterministic strategy games.” Checkers is a basic example of such a game. Play is entirely determined by strategy and choice; and the only thing hidden is the other player’s thoughts. If constructed elegantly, such games have simple rules and parameters. Certainly this is the case with checkers. However, checkers is considered a child’s game because it suffers from parameters that are too restrictive — the lines of play are quite limited, and only one of four or five moves are ever possible. (Think here also of Connect Four or Othello.)

In more “adult” games, elegant rules are combined with fewer parameters or more lines of play. This leads to complex scenarios with many possible choices. In the West, the king of elegant but extremely complex games is, of course, chess. After learning only nine possible kinds of moves (one each for six pieces, and the special moves of castling, en passant and pawn promotion), players can play out millions of possible games, all dependent entirely on their own choices. In such a scenario, players with better strategies will almost always win.

In the East, however, the champion of elegant strategy games is the ancient Chinese game of Go. If pitted against each other, I would argue that Go is the superior game. Developed more than 2,000 years before chess, it is both far simpler, and deeply more complex. It has four rules, total. There is only one possible kind of move — placing a colored stone on a 19×19 grid, one stone per grid intersection, once per turn. That’s it. Within these incredibly simple rules, Go allows for not millions, but billions of game permutations. Maybe even trillions, I don’t actually know that the number is calculable. The best chess computer programs can now consistently defeat the best human chess players; the best Go programs can only beat intermediate Go players, and human masters easily defeat the computers. Chess represents a medieval battle; Go represents the whole war.

I first started playing Go during the California Recall Circus of 2003. I was pulling 100 hour weeks campaigning for Arianna Huffington for Governor (quite a crazy game in itself). Between blasting out emails and launching viral videos, I learned Go alongside my co-workers in the San Francisco office, courtesy of smartMeme genius Patrick Reinsborough. In terms of pure fun, it was the best campaign I’ve ever been on (sidenote lesson: long-shot campaigns have a LOT more leeway to innovate with fun experiments). But largely because of Go, it was also the best learning experience I’ve ever had on a campaign.

Go’s lessons have helped define my strategic approach to politics, organizing, and in some ways, my whole life. After a week of mastering basic play, the lesson of Go suddenly popped out at me: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Or, more accurately, know when to dive into the small stuff and when to focus on the big picture.

In Go, it’s all too easy to get drawn into a small hand-to-hand combat battles. They happen constantly, and simultaneously, all over the board. But good players know when to abandon a close combat battle to take initiative on another part of the board. In Japanse terms, this concept is captured in the two opposing words “sente” (sen-tay) and “gote” (go-tay). Sente roughly translates to “initiative,” the ability to set the agenda and control the game flow. When you are playing sente, you force your opponent into gote, or defense. But when you are in a position of gote, you can often sacrifice a small battle to regain sente in another part of the board. And often, what seems like a sacrifice turns out to be a long term gain.

In my political organizing work, I always try to keep the sente / gote concept in mind. When hundreds of moves are possible but only one or two will produce the right outcome, the “players” with the best strategies will “win.” To be clear, I actually don’t subscribe to the popular metaphor of politics as a game. Campaigns have winners and losers, yes, but government isn’t sport. However, metaphors from games are often quite useful in navigating the irreducible complexity of real democracy, where real decisions affect real people. And Go’s metaphors are the best.

Which is why I’m excited about Andrew’s Spectangle. Like Go, the rules are fairly simple, but there’s no luck involved, nor hidden cards. The game play allows for millions of possible moves, in a way that would necessitate thoughtful strategies. Was it as fun as Go? Or as useful a metaphor? Unfortunately, I didn’t find out, because Andrew and I didn’t have time to play. We chose instead to have our scheduled discussion about political organizing and 4G technology. That seemed more “big picture” and “important” than playing a board game.

But was it? Given how much I’ve learned from Go, perhaps a game of Spectangle would have been the sente choice!

Specifically, I’m talking about the new 4G Internet service that’s just around the corner – aka mobile broadband. 4G allows you to open your laptop / iPad / etc anywhere in network range and have a high speed web connection. Like the 3G service you currently get on your smartphone, but about 5x faster. In many cities, its already here (you’ve probably seen a bazillion 4G ads already).

My question is, will the leap to 4G help social change organizers? How? What creative ideas could it enable? Like, what cool things could door-to-door canvassers do with mobile broadband? Or, how could 4G be used at a march or rally? Will it change the way we lobby Congress? Or revolutionize voter registration?

Some ideas that have been floated include:
• giving canvassers access to rich data and streaming media on iPads / laptops
• registering voters or recruiting volunteers at events
• setting up portable predictive dialer phone banks
• mobile live video streaming from direct actions, hearings, or board meetings

I’m sure there are a bunch of forward-thinking folks out there with other smart ideas. Here’s the thing — if your idea is great, it could get funded and developed. Will you take two minutes to brainstorm about it? You can either email me directly — tate-at-tatehausman.com, or fill out this two minute survey.

I ask on behalf of Mobile Citizen, a nonprofit project that provides 4G service to schools and nonprofits for just $10 a month. Mobile Citizen may subsidize as many as 20,000 4G accounts in 2011. They already have a good sense of how 4G can help schools and social service agencies. Now they are hoping to fund and develop breakthrough ideas or tools that would help social change organizers take advantage of 4G.

This is a unique opportunity for organizers to weigh in on what new tools they want in their work. Mobile broadband has the potential to create big breakthroughs. But will it?

Brainstorm with me in the Mobile Citizen survey.

Political operatives have long suspected that traditional phone polls skew in favor of Republicans, because landline users are more likely to fit GOP’s core demographics (older, more settled, more rural). Now the folks at Pew have done a retrospective analysis of 2010 midterm polls, comparing polls done with landlines only to those that included cell phones.

The results: landline-only polls skewed 5.1% in favor of GOP candidates. That is to say,

Across three Pew Research polls conducted in fall 2010 — conducted among 5,216 likely voters, including 1,712 interviewed on cell phones — the GOP held a lead that was on average 5.1 percentage points larger in the landline sample than in the combined landline and cell phone sample.

For progressive candidates who lost on Nov. 2, this is no comfort. But going forward, it provides a cautionary tale for pundits who hang on every poll result and build election narratives based on that data. Would the story of 2010 have been any different if the Republican’s perceived momentum wasn’t so inflated?

Read the full report here.

Once election returns fully come in and are certified, we’ll know if the WFP got more votes than the Independence Party. If so, they’ll get Row D. This is a tactical advantage — the higher the position on the ballot, the more votes one usually gets — but more importantly, a symbolic victory. It means that the WFP’s power continues to increase in New York. (Incidentally, the WFP’s power also took a huge leap this election in Connecticut, as illustrated by this New Haven Register article.)

I’ve included snippets of an email from WFP Executive Director Dan Cantor below, explaining the victory. The message is clear — the Working Families Party is one of the brightest lights of the otherwise dreary 2010 elections.

Get this: Nearly 140,000 New Yorkers voted on the Working Families Party line last Tuesday, according to initial election returns – which means we’re on track to become one of the top four parties in New York State, with our highest percentage of the vote ever.

If we wind up on line ‘D’ of the ballot, we can be even more decisive in future elections, ensuring that politicians focus on the common-sense issues that matter to middle- and working-class New Yorkers.

This is an enormous victory, and it happened because of you. I don’t ask this often, but can you help us keep the momentum going by giving just $5 per month (the cost of two cups of coffee) to sustain our work? Click here to contribute.

Both bad and good news from this election shows why Working Families Party votes matter.

The bad: Republicans may win control of the NY State Senate because some Democrats refused the WFP’s endorsement in hopes of seeming more “conservative.” It’s now clear that Working Families votes could have made the difference in their elections.

One Democratic senator trails his Republican opponent by just 400 votes. If he had accepted the WFP’s support instead of running to the right, he would have received another 1,500 to 1,700 votes – putting him over the top. If Democrats do lose the State Senate, it will be much harder to make progress on issues like a hydrofracking moratorium or MTA reform.

But here’s the good news: In New York’s closest statewide race this year, Democrat/Working Families candidate Tom DiNapoli won re-election for State Comptroller because he stood up for common-sense progressive values. DiNapoli beat his opponent by 2% – roughly 100,000 votes. The 140,000 New Yorkers who voted on the Working Families Party line were crucial to this victory.

These two stories prove what WFP voters have always known: Even when the Tea Party and Fox News dominate the headlines, the best way for progressive leaders to win is by standing proud for fairness, equality, and the values of working families.

Thanks,
Dan Cantor
WFP Executive Director

Hello friends and family in NY –

Tomorrow is election day, and I’m excited. Prospects may look dim nationally, but here in New York, we have an opportunity to win a huge progressive victory. We have the Working Families Party.

Tomorrow, I’m going to vote for my all favorite candidates, including Eric Schneiderman for Attorney General, on the Working Families Party line. I hope you will join me. If you don’t know where to vote, find out here: http://gis.nyc.gov/vote/ps/index.htm

Voting on the WFP line (row E on the ballot) counts just as much as voting on the Democratic line. But it has the extra benefit of sending a powerful message to Albany — that I stand with working people, not party bosses. That I support the WFP’s fight for a cleaner environment, for raising wages, for clean energy jobs, for education funding, and all the other good progressive policies they champion. I know the folks at the WFP pretty well, and they say that to pass critical legislation next year, they need every vote they can get tomorrow.

If you don’t believe me, ask Matt Damon. Yep, the actor Matt Damon. He recorded this (pretty frickin’ funny) video for the WFP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24m1PZ9iZoY

Basically, no matter what happens nationally, here in New York you can’t afford to stay home and not vote. Don’t get last-minute-lazy, don’t pretend your vote doesn’t matter, and don’t give up your democratic rights. Trust me, I have two kids under two, I know how easy it is to get distracted and overwhelmed. But millions of Americans fought — and some died — for the right to vote. Don’t take it for granted.

Plus, if you don’t vote, everyone will know. By law, anyone can get a copy of the NYS voter file and look you up. (They can’t tell how you voted, just if you voted.) It would be embarrassing for your friends to know you shirked your civic duty, right? :)

SO GO VOTE!!

Love,
Tate

I’m looking for volunteers to collaborate with me on a totally unique way to strengthen progressive politics — studying whether GOTV emails to friends make a difference in turnout. I think they might. And I want actual hard data to prove it.

The idea comes from the controversy sparked by my last blog post, “Let Them Send Emails,” in which I and two other progressive New Yorkers touted our very unscientific, but impressive results from sending out GOTV emails to our friends. Social scientists who read the piece dismissed my methodology, and rightly so. Now I’m actually designing a (fairly) scientific study to create measurable, accurate results.

If you want to join me, here’s all you need to do:

1. Write an email to your friends, urging them to vote. The shorter and sweeter, the better. I don’t care what it says, as long as the point is, “Get yourself to the polls on Nov 2.”
2. Make a list of everyone in NY to whom you could send.
3. Send me your list, no later than noon on Thursday, Oct 28.
4. I will then randomize the list, and send you back HALF of the list.
5. On Nov 1, you send your email out to that half of the list.

That’s it. Should take you an hour, tops.

Going through this process will create a “treatment” group and a “control” group of your friends. After the election, I will pull the voter file from the NY Board of Elections, and look at which of your friends voted and which didn’t. If the “treatment” group voted in higher numbers than the “control” group, then the emails worked.

It goes without saying that your friends’ personal data will NEVER be public, anywhere, and that your friends will only be contacted by you. Zero privacy issues.

There’s a lot of buzz these days about using new technology to turn out votes. As someone who cares deeply about democracy and elections, I want to learn everything I can about how to get more voters to the polls. So why wait for someone else to do the study, when we can do it ourselves?

Email me — tate-at-tatehausman-dot-com — if you want to collaborate with me.

The original post is below. Note that I changed the headline, to make sure no one misconstrues it.

As election day 2010 draws near, political campaigners are gearing up their GOTV plans. In the coming weeks, volunteers will be asked to phone bank, knock doors, pass out literature, plant lawn signs, and perhaps even stand on street corners waving banners at passing cars.

I’ve got a new idea — let them send emails.

Sound boring? Or ineffective? In my experience, it’s not. In a recent totally un-scientific analysis, a couple of friends and I found that sending out GOTV emails to our personal lists was by far the most efficient and effective use of our time.

The election in question was the Sept 14 New York primary. On Sept 13, I sent out an email to 225 New Yorkers, reminding them of the election and asking them to vote for Eric Schneiderman for NY’s Attorney General. My appeal was short and sweet — four brief paragraphs, starting with, “Just a friendly reminder that tomorrow, Tuesday, is Election Day in New York, and you should go vote!” I followed that with an exhortation to vote Schneiderman.

I didn’t expect much — perhaps one or two courteous replies, and a few more “don’t spam me!” complaints. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by the response. Six people — Laurie, Bob, Patty, Danika, Julia and Matt — individually emailed me to say that they had voted for Schneiderman because of my email. Patty also told me she forwarded it to her entire New York list. Not a single person complained.

Inspired by this “turnout,” I contacted two friends who also sent out similar personal endorsement emails on Sept 13, and I asked for their “response rates.” Their results confirmed mine:

• Andrew sent his email to about 400 New Yorkers, “a mix of friends and cultural / business / political acquaintances.” He got five responses saying that they had voted on his recommendation; and one person who acknowledged forwarding the email to her New York list.

• Elana sent her personal endorsement email to 75 New Yorkers, and posted it to her Facebook page. She got 16 responses saying that they had voted on her recommendation. Her email was also forwarded to a high-profile magazine editor, who blogged and tweeted it.

Between the three of us, our emails reached 700 New Yorkers and generated 27 votes (or at least, people who reported voting because of it). If the numbers are accurate — a big if — hat’s a 3.8% conversion rate — a tremendous success for any GOTV activity.

In terms of votes per hour, it was an efficient use of time.

• My email took about 90 minutes; 15 minutes to write the email, 45 minutes to collect addresses from my address book, and 30 more to send (in batches, so spam filters wouldn’t nail it). I earned six votes.
Rate: 4 votes / hour.

• Andrew spent two hours on his email. He earned five votes.
Rate: 2.5 votes / hour.

• Elana spent four hours on her email, most of it researching down-ballot candidates. She earned 16 votes.
Rate: 4 votes / hour.

Averaged out, our rate was 3.6 votes / hour.

As someone who has run countless phone bank and canvass efforts, these numbers strike me as surprisingly efficient. When compared to the tactic of sending volunteers door to door, or phone banking, or lit dropping, the personal endorsement email seems like a totally viable tactic.

Not that all of those other tactics aren’t legitimate GOTV activities. They certainly are, and they should be used as part of a holistic GOTV strategy. My point isn’t to abandon traditional GOTV tactics. My point is to add a new tool to the toolbox.

In short, campaign managers should ask every volunteer willing to phone bank or knock doors also to send a personal email endorsement to their lists. And the campaigns should provide volunteers with support to make it work. Specifically, they should:

• Explain to volunteers the power and value of their personal email list

• Set aside time in the campaign office to do it, especially during periods when phone banking and canvassing aren’t effective (late night, middle of the day)

• Give volunteers template emails (plain text, plain English, low-pressure tone) so they don’t get stuck on the writing — but ask them to use their own words if they can

• Set up a “technical support” structure for folks who need help using their email clients to send out personal blasts; have your more computer-savvy volunteers be tech support for the less savvy

• Ask volunteers to report “response rates”

Of course, I fully admit that my un-scientific analysis could be inaccurate. Self-reporting vote counts are never reliable. My friends may have reported to me that I swung their vote, even if they would have voted for Schneiderman anyway. Other friends might have voted on my suggestion but not thanked me (I never asked for a report from anyone). And the impact of Patty forwarding my email to her list can’t be measured. My best guess is that these corrupting factors even each other out, and thus I did generate six(ish) votes for Schneiderman. [Note: after this was published, another friend emailed me this: "PS: By the way I just read your post and you can add me to your response rate. I am embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t really been following the primaries. Your email prompted me to make it to the polls 3 mins before closing (literally) ... and voting for SChneiderman who I voted of because of you."]

Also, I realize that this tactic won’t be appropriate under all circumstances. A high profile Presidential campaign probably doesn’t room for last minute persuasion. Very local races probably won’t attract volunteers with enough personal contacts in district to make an email effective. So, under what circumstances will this tactic work?

1) You need the right races. This tactic is probably best in a statewide, low profile campaign. Most volunteers do not have social networks confined to one State Senate or Assembly district, or even one U.S. Congressional district. So ballot initiatives, gubernatorial races, mayoral, AGs, comptrollers, US Senate primaries, and “at large” citywide races are good opportunities for this tactic.

2) You need the right volunteers. Not every person will have the same ability to reach out to a like-minded social network and activate them. Elana, Andrew and myself are all professional political or social change activists who are involved in our communities. We have more email addresses of like-minded voters than the average Joe — and more willingness to contact them. But, so will most campaign volunteers. They, too, tend to surround themselves with like-minded political friends and acquaintances, and they usually have enough commitment to contact those folks with a low-pressure email.

3) You need the right support. Navigating email programs may be difficult for less tech-savvy volunteers. If you don’t have someone who can walk a volunteer through using their BCC function, your efforts will be frustrated. But if you’re using volunteers for GOTV work at all, then you probably do — because someone is training them to phone bank, knock doors, etc.

4) You need the right sender. Meaning, volunteers must send these emails, not the campaign. Research has conclusively shown that campaigns sending GOTV emails, either to their list or to bought / rented / swapped lists, does not make one iota of turnout difference. The only thing worth trying is personal emails, authored by real live volunteers, sent out authentically to their social networks.

Variations on this tactic have been used for centuries, of course. A friend-to-friend endorsement is often seen as the most valuable coin in politics. Whether it is or not is debatable — at least one piece of research suggests it is not. Nevertheless, many campaigns and organizations have systematized this kind of contact into formal programs. Here in New York, the Working Families Party has long delivered “Friends & Neighbor” mailings to their volunteers’ lists, and they are about to launch an equivalent email tool. The League of Young Voters pioneered the concept of user-generated “ballot guides” (still very much active at theballot.org), which are intended to spread to friends and allies. And the geeks at the Democratic Party are building a ballot guide tool that looks more like a social media platform.

My suggestion is much simpler than all of that. There’s no new technology to adopt, no privacy issues to navigate, no websites to visit. Just plain old email, to plain old friends and acquaintances.

So, campaign managers, next time your volunteers are standing around waiting for the canvass to start, or hanging around after the phone banks have closed, plop them down in front of a computer and let them send emails!

You may have gotten solicitations from [email vendors] that essentially say, “Buy our emails, it will help you get more votes for your candidate.” It won’t… Email is a medium where people only want to hear from those with whom they have a relationship and have given permission. The Analyst Institute says ”At least eight studies have show that GOTV emails are not an effective way to increase turnout.”

Campaigners, take heed — in your final (sometimes desperate) push for increased turnout, don’t waste precious time and money on this discredited tactic.

It’s a funny drug, politics. For much of the last decade, I wallowed in the political hangover of the Bush years. The progressive resurgence in 2006, followed closely by the Obama campaign in 2008, lifted me back to incredible highs. Since then, the post-Obama malaise left me (and so many others) dispirited again. You could have mistaken me for an on-again-off-again junkie — up, down, up, down.

Yesterday night, I got another huge high. In the New York primaries, I had a personal clean sweep — victory in every single race of importance to me. This is probably because I share my political views with the Working Families Party. And these days, what the WFP wants, the WFP gets. Last night, the party showed how their solid electoral organizing and progressive aspirations translate into concrete wins. Their power grows with each election cycle.

Here’s the rundown:

• Eric Schneiderman beat the odds to become the Democratic nominee for NY Attorney General. Eric is a lifelong progressive with the clout to clean up Albany. This was a hard fought race, in which the establishment “smart money” lined up behind his lame opponent, Kathleen Rice. They didn’t count on a wave of progressive primary voters riled up by the WFP.

• Reform candidate Gustavo Rivera unseated the most corrupt man in the NY State Senate, Pedro Espada, 62% to 33%. This was the Working Families Party’s top race. I threw them a house party to fund this battle, and I’m so proud that the few thousand I raised got put to such good use. Once again, the WFP proved its unique power to primary out bad Democrats. This victory is the most important blow for Albany reform since the WFP elected Daniel Squadron to the State Senate last cycle. The march towards competent, progressive NY State government continues!

• Progressive upper-East-Side Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney crushed Wall Street plant Reshma Saujani, 81% to 19%. What a blowout. Saujani was a media sensation because she ran on an unapologetic platform of defending the super-rich in her tony district. Apparently even the super-rich don’t feel the need to defend the super-rich. The “anti-populist backlash” is a phantom.

• In my neighborhood, Assemblywoman Joan Millman retained her well-deserved seat, fending off an ugly challenge from attack dog Doug Biviano. This was expected, but still satisfying.

• Also not shocking but very satisfying, State Senate crook Hiram “Slash My Girlfriend In the Face” Monserrate went down to his challenger, Francisco Moya. Like Espada, Monserrate was a regressive machine politician who has wrecked havoc in Albany. Good riddance.

• On the other side of the political spectrum, results were equally good for progressives. In New York’s Republican primary for Governor, Tea Party candidate Carl Paladino, a billionaire businessman from Buffalo, beat the mainstream GOP candidate Rick Lazio. This belies the huge rift in Republican politics this year — moderate Republicans and Tea Party activists at war — and bodes poorly for their success in November. To be fair, the Democratic candidate, Andrew Cuomo, is heavily favored to win the Governor’s race, whether he faced Paladino or Laizo. But the spin today matters, and the spin is that the GOP’s infighting will sink its chances in New York.

• In the same vein, Delaware’s Republican primary for US Senate has Democrats cheering. Ultra-conservative (and totally underwhelming) candidate Christine O’Donnell beat mainstreamer Mike Castle. Castle is the respected former governor who was a favorite to win the general election. O’Donnell beat him based on Sarah Palin’s endorsement — she’s apparently a fellow “mama grizzly” — and energy from Tea Party activists. Fortunately, she’s got little chance in November. The GOP establishment won’t put any money into this race, the moderate-to-liberal voters of Delaware will reject her, and the Democrats will be much more assured of keeping control of the US Senate.

Karl Rove has a bad political hangover this morning. Albany’s “business as usual” lobbyists feel like crap. Their political drugs were bunk last night. And that makes me very, very politically high.

In 2008, a couple pro-Obama organizers founded TravelforChange.org, a simple website that connected Obama volunteers with airline miles donors. The idea was to get as many volunteers to swing states as possible. The PAC that I ran, Vote Today Ohio, got three or four volunteers to Ohio on Travel for Change miles.

Most of these small operations fizzled out after Obama won. Hell, even some of the biggest operations fizzled! But Travel for Change has been reborn, with a crisp new focus — defeating Maine’s anti-marriage Prop 1. Travel for Change sent out an email yesterday inviting volunteers and miles donors to get back in the game; I’ve posted the email here.

For folks who participate in the cyclical world of political organizing, the “off season” can be a boring, low-energy time. Not that important elections aren’t happening in the off season; indeed, my friend Mark Winston Griffith is barnstorming Brooklyn to win a hotly contested City Council race here in New York. But for those who only get excited by national issues, there’s very little outlet for their energy.

If it sticks around, Travel for Change may help to change that, by allowing nationally focused activists to plug into state-wide or local issue campaigns. I certainly hope it succeeds. Kudos to Alisa Whitfield, Jay Cash and all the Travel for Change donors and volunteers for keeping the momentum going!