"Campaigns can easily fall into old habits of how they did things, instead of focusing on what they want to accomplish," wrote Julian Haigh, a Leadership Institute graduate, in the cover story of Campaigns & Elections magazine. "Social media can lead to better organization and connectivity with your volunteers and the Internet allows you to be more agile in you coordination of resources."

Julian, a Canadian citizen and campaign veteran, is the co-founder of D2D Campaign Solutions.  The company, based in Vancouver, describes itself as a "volunteer management solution that provides election campaign managers unprecedented power in mobilizing door-to-door campaign volunteers, identifying vote-swinging issues, and growing candidate support at the grassroots level."

Earlier this year, Julian attended LI's Campaign Management School and Advanced New Media Workshop. He said the school covered "the full gambit of skills required for a winning election. Beyond this, the network of professionals and experience to learn from, [the school] has invigorated me and given me the tools required to pump me up to be more active."

Julian added, "The program was such an eye-opener and [it] makes me so much more positive about the future."

You can still register for the Institute's next Campaign Management School, which begins this Monday, May 2. You can also review LI's 2011 calendar to see upcoming trainings of interest to you.