A recent comment from RobertJ on this blog made me smile, and then made me think. He wrote of Funding the Future:

Topsy has growed a lot!

It has. Funding the Future began as a blog. It still is that. But it has also become something more: a platform with different kinds of output, designed for different audiences and different ways of learning. And RobertJ's point was simple: that changes what we can do with it.

He suggested that we should perhaps have a thread here in which readers discuss how they use the material produced here, whom they send it to, what format they choose, how they judge what will work, and what they have learned from experience. Robert called it evangelism training in church terms, campaigning in political terms, marketing in commercial terms. But the label does not really matter. The task does.

He was also absolutely right to highlight something else, which is that we all have different circles of influence. Some readers will never speak to anyone in the City. Others might. Some will mix daily with people who lean towards Reform. Others will spend time in academic, union, church, or voluntary-sector environments. The point is that none of these networks is trivial. Most politics spreads not through speeches, and most certainly not through political parties, but through repeated conversations between ordinary people who trust each other.

Robert gave good examples of how this works. He noted that a phone call to a customer support worker at a large pension provider turned into a discussion about risk and politics, and the person he spoke to was interested enough to write down my name and Funding the Future. He also mentioned writing to his MP about the politics of care and sending a PDF. He is even redesigning his email signature to include a link to the site, and, importantly, he wants to choose the right link.

That, in itself, makes the case. There is a great deal of material here now, and if it is to be useful, it needs to be easy to deploy. It also needs to be used in the right format.

Some people will read a blog post. Many will not.

Some will watch YouTube who will never read anything longer than a paragraph.

Some will take a PDF seriously who would ignore a link.

Some need short arguments they can forward in seconds.

Some need a calmer explanation, because they are defensive or distrustful of anything that sounds political.

So I think Robert is right: Funding the Future is now not only something to read. It is something to use. And learning how to use it better is something we should do collectively.

So I want to ask readers directly, how are you using the material here, or how might you do so? I am looking for answers to questions such as:

• Who are you sending material from here to?
• What have you found that works, and what does not?
• What links, formats, or resources would make it easier for you to share this work effectively?

That's because if we want ideas to spread, we have to help them travel. And that is now part of our job.

I am not doing a poll: that is too restrictive. Please share ideas instead.

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