During his conversation at our Campaign School last month, Toronto city councillor Paul Ainslie outlined his communication strategy with his Scarborough East constituents — along with how he tries to reach out to city as a whole. Becoming chair of the Government Management Committee supplied Ainslie with further motivation to use social media to stay in contact with a wider-range of #TOpoli-watchers. As a result, he arguably emerged as the most accessible ally of Mayor Rob Ford, at least when it comes to leveraging some of the tools at his fingertips.

By contrast, Willowdale councillor David Shiner — a 15-year fixture of the downtown Clamshell whose tenure predates amalgamation — is among those local politicians who have never sought an online presence beyond their their for re-election, if at all. Shiner’s own website is now only helpful in the sense that it indicates that you are better off calling or emailing than looking there for any indication of what he does, let alone what he stands for.

Campaign School was created as a cornerstone of our Hacking Reality series after Idil Burale, a charter member of the Academy of the Impossible, expressed a desire for a program that could enhance her ambitions to run for office in her riding of Etobicoke North.

With a next election not guaranteed to happen until the municipal vote in October 2014 , focusing on such a goal might have once seemed premature — yet social media has transformed the narrative. This new direct pipeline to any politician worth heeding means that campaigning can no longer be limited to the five weeks before voters cast their ballots. Now, it is a permanent state of mind for anyone who wants to hang on to their claims to serve the public.

So far, the most popular Sunday afternoon sessions of Campaign School have featured guests, including MPs Andrew Cash, Carolyn Bennett and Peggy Nash, city councillors Shelley Carroll and Adam Vaughan, plus a talk with Brian Mulroney's press secretary Bill Fox. The next visitor in this series on Sunday (May 6) will be Paul Ainslie, who has emerged as an intriguing personality in the current Rob Ford administration at Toronto City Hall, both as chair of the management committee and prolific presence on Twitter.

Live events were our primary form of interface in January and February as we established operations at the Academy of the Impossible at 231 Wallace Ave. in downtown Toronto, under the umbrella of Hacking Reality, which has covered a range of topics related to social media and tactical technology.

Campaign School has proven to be a draw on Sunday afternoons — with MPs Andrew Cash and Carolyn Bennett and city councillor Shelley Carroll joining new and returning students to discuss what was involved in their successful bids for public office. Bill Fox, who was at the forefront behind the scenes for Brian Mulroney throughout the 1980s, will drop by on March 11. Future sessions will alternate between special guests and participatory forums.

YouTube School is another Sunday afternoon fixture, in which we look into how the evolving online video platform serves both consumers and producers of media, through browsing on a screen rather than a retail store. The new channel-focused strategy, Super Bowl commercials and other forms of advertising, the evolution of viral videos and the role of music videos have been starting points for sessions, at which anyone can have a say in what is shown.