BlogHer Second Life Politics Panel - Audio/Video Online

The panel I was on in online at the BlogHer Second Life conference on Saturday was recorded on TV in Second Life so it is now available for viewing on the SLCN.TV web site. I called-in from the Chicago Navy Pier conference center so that's my real voice in the recording. My avatar is the extremely pale, red-headed cybergoth. Watching the avatars doesn't show much except the avatars sitting on stage, but listening to the audio you can hear me and my co-panelist, padlurowncanoe dibou (Kathy Walker), to my right, discussing the topics. Queen Tureaud (Erin Vest), organizer of BlogHer in Second Life, also moderated. There is a slight lag in the conference call-in system so expect more pauses between speakers and occasionally there's some audio feedback but otherwise the recording is very clear. (Note: If you use a Mac, don't run the Quicktime video in Safari - try Firefox instead.)

The panel discussion begins with some information about candidates in Second Life and how that's working, what people do at the candidate headquarters in Second Life, and how the official campaigns have responded so far. Then we discuss political blogs and candidate blogging, along with topics related to social networks and other online tactics for campaigns. We responded to questions IM'd to our avatars by other Second Life residents, and carried on discussion about where we think online campaigns will go in the future.

Some background on candidates and campaigns in Second Life: Second Life is this virtual world with "8 million residents" around the world. They say about 100,000 people log on each week. Four of the current leading presidential candidates have campaign headquarters there - Clinton, Edwards, Giuliani, and Obama - but it seems that only Edwards and Clinton are doing much. The person who started the Clinton headquarters is my co-panelist, although her headquarters in Second Life has not been officially connected to the people in real life. When I visited the virtual Clinton HQ, for example, the most developed of the group, it was very different from a real life campaign headquarters - it has a piano lounge, a lecturn for speeches, an area for swimming, and a nice comfy couch area for conversations. My co-panelist made the interesting point that if someone in Second Life wants to visit a campaign HQ, they want their activities to be different and more recreational than in real life. So I think they have done a good job of creating that environment there as a way to gain interest for the candidates.

I think the conclusions we reached in the panel were that Second Life is still a very experimental place in terms of politics - most of the campaigns are not in-tune with what's happening there and haven't spent much time or resources on it - but that it's likely if Second Life continues to grow as it has, that they will take notice and put more efforts in later in this campaign and definitely down the road in future years. That echos other thoughts from our panel and other BlogHer political panels about how use of the Internet in campaigns is growing in genearal (blogs, social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube videos, etc.).

I enjoyed participating in the panel in Second Life. There was a slight learning curve involved in getting my bearings in the Second Life world and visiting the candidate headquarters there before the panel presentation, but the panel itself was just like being on a conference call while controlling a game character and instant messaging simultaneously. I stayed online for a few minutes after the panel to meet a couple of the questioners in the Second Life audience as I would have in an in-person conference, and then returned to the real life politics panel at BlogHer.

You can see all of the Second Life BlogHer panels here.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

Candidates Missed a Great Blogosphere Media Spike Opportunity

I'm sitting here at BlogHer watching Elizabeth Edwards interviewed by Lisa Stone, BlogHer founder and journalist. We're all very excited she's here. A blogger from the Edwards campaign is also here, as is a representative from the Clinton campaign.

Obama's headquarters is down the street. No one from his campaign is here. I just commented Zephyr Teachout's post at TechPresident about this. We're excited they will all be present at the Yearly KOS conference here in Chicago at the end of the week responding to that invitation from the progressive Democratic blogger communities.

So what do we need to do to get the nominees to come next year to BlogHer? As I noted in my comment referenced above, we have huge communities of swing voters represented here from all over the political spectrum.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

Tonight's Debate and Where to Read the Live Blog Reports

Tonight's Democratic presidential debate on CNN was well run, and Anderson Cooper did a good job keeping the questions moving along. I'm sad they gave very little time to the issue of the environment, but I enjoyed some of the videos and curve balls. The candidates I thought did a good job responding with interesting answers as well. I had a lot of fun participating in the live blogging tonight, thanks to Morra Aarons for putting out the call to everyone in the BlogHer community. I think we had a pretty good discussion. Check it out for more about the debate content.

I was also hopping around the leading Democratic blogs while we were commenting here, and the Edwards thread was interesting, but I have to say a few of the commenters were off-base, like one that slammed Richardson on his response about the VVPATs (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails) - he actually answered that very well. (I've studied e-voting issues for several years. It's tricky getting it right, but VVPATs are the only way to go.) But the Edwards blog had the most lively discussion by far. They have a very interactive online organization.

The Obama live blog included several threads supposedly by topic, but not a lot of responses. It would've been better just keeping them all in one place. I commented on the Clinton blog and it came up pretty quickly considering the comment moderation (which I must add is absoltely essential on a Presidential blog). Unfortunately, I don't think many bloggers or people involved in the Clinton campaign knew they were liveblogging there so there weren't very many people participating. (Of course, maybe they were all in SF partying!) Check out the HillaryClinton.com blog for a post about their 30 second video contest finalist ads.

Jerome Armstrong at myDD.com had a really good post and the comments there were interesting. With over a thousand comments in the collective Daily KOS threads, of course there were some echoing what we were saying on BlogHer, but it was a lot easier to follow all of the discussion on the BlogHer site with fewer participants. All in all, it was a great way to watch the debate.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

techPresident on Compete.com Data - Site Visits Mirror Recent Polls

I thought this post by Micah Sifry of techPresident was prescient - according to compete.com, site visit stats so far this year mirror polling data both nationally and in key states like Iowa and California. As of June, Clinton has a strong lead. Republican data isn't as strong as Democratic data in general - it's widely known they aren't campaigning as heavily online - but their rankings still line up fairly well.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

E-Mail Security Flap in Nevada Governor's Office

This is classic... according to Declan McCullagh of the Politech mailing list & CNET News, someone in the Nevada governor's office I'll only assume accidentally posted the password to the official Governor's email list and Outlook account password on the gubernatorial web site via a MS Word document that instructed aides on how to send out weekly email updates.

The current Governor, Jim Gibbons, a Republican, must not have much in terms of tech-savvy staff since (this is my favorite part) the password on the account was 'kennyc', the name of the former Republican governor, Kenny C. Guinn. (Note: the old password was weak, let alone the fact that it's how old?)

The full story details the instructional document and a few additional related facts. As Declan notes, it's possible that there's a firewall or some sort of security above and beyond the password "protection" in their system, so had someone attempted to use that password from the outside to hack in, it may not have worked... we can only assume they've changed it by now having heard about this post. Still, this is one of the most embarrassing political computer security stories I've ever heard.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

Join Me For BlogHer Second Life

BlogHer '07 in Second Life's schedule is posted. You don't have to be in Chicago for BlogHer to attend online! (Although I will be live in Chicago at BlogHer while presenting in Second Life.)

I just offered a couple of weeks ago to speak at BlogHer. They were already full for the politics track, but they invited me to be a "speaker" online in their Second Life community simulation instead. Not knowing what to expect, but assuming I could figure it out as I go along, I said "sure" - why not?

I think if I wasn't someone who had prior experience with computer games, it might make me uneasy at first, but Second Life is a really cool program and the instructions are very simple. I've only made it through the beginning of Orientation Island (no time!) and I'm already having fun. The only problem with Second Life is it takes a lot of time to participate and it sucks up a lot of processor power, so if you have a laptop like me, multitasking is challenging while running the Second Life app. When I set it up for its test run, it was too slow to get much accomplished thus my as of yet incomplete Orientation.

So I expect to spend some time this weekend finding my way through Second Life to BlogHer. My avatar, Sairy Bailey, will be speaking at 1:30 CDT next Saturday, July 28th about politics online, campaigns in Second Life and how blogs and social networks come into play with campaigns, particularly on the national level. Join me... it's free, and if you're not a woman, no one ever has to know! Anyone can be a "Her" in Second Life.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Change.org

I just checked out change.org, thanks to a tip from e.politics. So far, I'm fairly impressed - they are a social networking site for people interested in nonprofit issues and recently they added a section for political candidates because they want to help level the playing field there. The site's fresh and clean, and the nonprofit listing pages remind me a little of Orkut's groups.

It groups nonprofits by the changes they aim to affect, labeling them most often with action verbs like "stop global warming", "save darfur", "separate church and state", and "protect wildlife". You can search by category, like 'animals' and in there, search by specific change like "stop puppy mills" and there you'll find recommended nonprofits that are related. You can also search by nonprofit or by politician like many other social networking sites. What's really cool is you can provide recommendations for politicians on certain issues, and you can write reviews about nonprofits.

Each organization has an 'About' section, reviews, supporters, photos, videos, news, volunteering/action and fundraising areas. Discussions take place within the nonprofit pages - some are calls to action; others contain event information. They partner with JustGive - a 501c3 that passes along the contributions to the nonprofits as allocated. So far they've raised over $36,000. It will be interesting to see how they take off with their political area and how the site is primarily utilized in the long term. I plan to play around with it a little more and see if it sticks for me. I had a few problems using it and I have yet to determine whether it was my browser or their code causing the problems, but in general I like the site and the concept.

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Originally posted at sairy.com, the personal blog of FutureCampaigns founder, Sarah Granger.