[Odb-help] ODB weekly update email: 11/10/2003

[Rich Cowan]

Dear ODB Users and Prospective Users:

    Everything is moving along well and we are getting a lot of great
feedback on ODB -- on the almost final version of the new
release (0.9.4) -- and on some initial versions of the 1.0 release
that we made available to consultants!

   I have a lot to report, so I will spread it out in about 3 emails
this week.  Each will contain news, and answers to questions
that ODB users have asked in the past 3 weeks.


1.  ODB in Local Electoral campaigns

    Without much effort on our part to make this happen, a number of local
candidates used ODB to run for city council in last week's 
election.  Naturally,
a database is only one part of a campaign, and is not as important as a
longstanding reputation in the community or hard work contacting voters on
a one-on-one basis.  The outcome last week was that the incumbent using
ODB was reelected (in the New York City city council race), and two
challengers failed to make the cut in their races (a district race in 
Somerville,
MA and an at-large race in Waltham, MA).  Is there anyone else who would
like to report their story?

   If you are thinking about using ODB in a future campaign, I can offer two
pieces of advice:
a) the software is designed for collecting a list of supporters over a
     long period of time.  It makes a lot of sense to use the software in
     a low-key fashion for 6-9 months, collecting lists of people who have
     access to various communities in your city or town.  And it makes
     sense to use the ODB software as a database that can be carried over
     from campaign to campaign, because ODB provides shortcuts for
     database maintenance that are not built into something like Access or
     Excel.
b) the ODB software really shines in a campaign when it is networked.  I am
     talking about a local area network.  Often a grassroots candidate's 
campaign
     manager is overworked, and must struggle to disseminate information
     to others within the campaign.  If you set up your campaign office 
during the
     busy part of the campaign a way that allows "lieutenants" to 
simultaneously
     use the database it removes a possible bottleneck.

   In 2004 we are planning to provide a lot more instructional material
to people who want to use ODB in a campaign, and we are also interested
in speaking with consultants who would like to add ODB to their repertoire.
There certainly is a need:  much of the software out there now costs
over $10,000 for a relatively small campaign.  Last week I spoke to
one major vendor, who said they would charge "between $7,000 and $12,000"
for software to manage an electoral campaign at the state rep. level.  They
would charge $200 per hour for database conversion, with a MINIMUM
charge of $1500 to convert a simple excel spreadsheet to your system.  I
know some state representatives who only spend $15,000 on their entire
campaign, so these prices are obviously out of touch with reality.  Unless,
of course, you are dealing only with the candidates who have a personal
fortune, or who receive tens of thousands of dollars from large corporations,
real estate interests, directly or via the state party.

     I also found out that they "do not provide any software" to facilitate
registration by non-registered voters.  I asked if they knew any vendor that
did, and they did not.  This is what happens when elections are an "industry"
and the options available are dictated by what is most profitable, under
a campaign finance system that is corrupted by big money.  Grassroots
electoral efforts are shut out of the process.

    As you can see below, we are doing what we can to level the playing
field.  Of course, we always welcome ideas on how we can do more!

-rich cowan
  Organizers' Collaborative



2.  Some answers to recent ODB questions


a) D'hana Perry asked how to select all the people at a single address.
Right now, this is a bit cumbersome still, so we will probably add a more
direct method in the future.  But for now, to find everyone
on Mass Ave in Boston, MA.  You would do this:

i) Click on Select Records
ii) Type Boston and MA as the city and state
iii) Click on View Custom Query
iv) Click on Add SQL to further restrict your search
v) type the following into the box below the Add Sql checkbox:

     stname like "Mass*"

vi) Click on the Search button.



b) Carrie Storrow of an animal humane association in Montana asked how
to generate a custom record selection.  She wanted people who last gave
money after 1/1/2003, OR people whose membership is expiring after 12/1/2003.

For this, you would follow steps i), iii), and iv) above, and then type
the following into the "Restrict SQL" box:

lastgave > #1/1/2003#  OR  memexpire > #12/1/2003#

Note that this can also be done by just typing

 >1/1/03

Into the LastGave: box, and the customizing the query and typing

memexpire > #12/1/2003#

into the box underneath the checkbox "Add SQL to broaden your search."



c) Jon Falk asked how to search on a custom field

Date: Sun, 09 Nov 2003 11:00:52
To: odb-help@lists.democracygroups.org
From: Jon Falk -- jonf <at> @ptfolkschool.org
Subject: Searching on custom field

What is the best way to search on a user-defined field in ODB?  Let's say
you've created a field named "chapter," and you want to produce a list of all
individuals where chapter="eastern."  The Chapter field does not show up as
a selection button in the Selection Tool, and my attempts to define a custom
query have been unsuccessful, probably due to my lack on knowledge of SQL
syntax.


ANSWER:  It SHOULD be possible to do this by following steps i), iii), and iv)
above, and then type the following into the "Restrict SQL" box:

chapter like "east*"

Note that the Jet database engine underlying ODB, or any SQL database,
is not case sensitive when it comes to matching text, so you could use

chapter like "East*"

and this would yield the same results.  I included the wild card character
because I am assuming that the data is not perfect: some people might
have entered "East Region"; other might have entered "Eastern Maine",
etc. and this way you save typing and you take care of all possibilities.


But in version 0.9.3b and earlier, this feature was not working properly!
Thanks to John for pointing this out. This is corrected in the version of ODB
that is now available on our web site!  (that's right, you will be soon hearing
of the "official" release of 0.9.4!)

-rich cowan