John Edwards Cameo at PDF

One of the highlights of PDF was when Elizabeth Edwards spoke to the crowd via Skype - she was supposed to attend in person but her flight was cancelled. And at the end of her Q&A, John Edwards came home and answered a two-part question for the PDF attendees about the Internet and how it has affected campaigning in general and the '08 election specifically. He gave a great answer, shown on this ABC News video.

Campaign Internet Directors Turned Up the Heat in Person

Here's a post just published at The Huffington Post "Off The Bus" that I wrote (mostly - they do have editorial prerogative!) about what transpired on Monday, including a video. It's from a panel called "What Worked, What Didn't" for the campaigns online during the primaries. The panel included six tech strategists for six campaigns: Obama, McCain, Clinton, Paul, Romney & Edwards and was moderated by Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry of the Personal Democracy Forum.

Having been in their shoes, it was difficult to write about the panel without interjecting my own experiences on the topics, but Tracy Russo did a fabulous job defending the points she made online in the offline forum which is now traveling around the web so I knew that was what readers would want to hear the most about. The rest of the article is an attempt to cover some more of the important issues touched on during the panel discussion that I (and Mayhill Fowler made this point as well) wish would have been a bit longer.

Here's Mayhill's post about her experience at the conference and her remarks about what it was like as a presenter and why she was there as well as what it means to her and all she's learning about journalism.

What Do the Techie Politicos Do At PDF?

So while participating in the Personal Democracy Forum conference (that it sounds like will be rebranded to the "Participatory Democracy Forum", it was hard not to also notice in passing what everyone else was doing at the event since I was often plugged in at the back of the room... so I thought it would be fun to write about it.

During the conference sessions, people were...
- watching/participating, mild but not much Q&A
- on laptops (80-90% had) - usually in the middle of the sessions (closed up/saving energy @ the end)
- on pdas/checking (majority - blackberries)
- occasionally stepping out to take calls (but frankly not as often as I'd expected)

Those on phones/pdas were...
- returning voicemail
- checking email
- stopping phones from ringing

Those on laptop were...
- blogging
- checking email
- viewing yelp for restaurants nearby (just saw that once)
- reading news online
- occasionally messing with social networking sites (mostly facebook & twitter)
- watching the occasional youtube video, esp between panels so could have volume

In between and outside conference sessions, people were...
- networking, meeting each other
- chatting about issues/ideas and panels
- making jokes about Twitter (there was a lot of that)

So it was in a sense just like any other conference except more wired and definitely on the power user side of things. I will note that most people had multiple windows open on their laptops and were juggling a lot of different tasks.

Twitter Debate Online Leading Up to PDF Conference

Beginning a little bit ago, two reps from each campaign are debating issues related to technology on Twitter. Given 1-2 questions/day through the end of Tuesday's PDF '08 conference, the campaign reps will be responding to each other and commenting on issues, 140 characters at a time.

Easiest to follow at summize.com, check out the hashtag #pdfdebate. The participants, @ anamariecox, MikeNelson, and LizMair, are a Time magazine blogger, outside advisor for Obama, and RNC Online Communications Director, respectively.

So far Mike Nelson is dominating the conversation with a lot of great information. We'll see how the rest of the weekend transpires...

See also: the piece I wrote about the Twitter debate for The Huffington Post "Off the Bus".

What the Latest Pew Numbers Mean

According to Pew Internet and American Life Project, an initiative launched to "explore the impact of the Internet" on civic and political participation, the number of Americans of voting age who watched political videos online during the primaries (by May 11) nearly tripled from 2004 (35% in '08 vs. 13% in '04). And more people are using social networking sites for participating in campaigns (10%) than are contributing money to them (6%). Translating that to real numbers, in 2004, roughly 21 Million people were obtaining news and campaign information online (the most prominent online activity related to campaigns). According to Pew, that number has probably doubled for 2008.

As I mentioned Monday, Pew released their latest survey results Sunday, having interviewed 2,251 Americans of voting age. 1,553 of those surveyed are online in some form - email, web, text messaging, etc.. That's nearly three out of every four American adults, up from two out of every four in 2000. The results produced some interesting stats, but the big number gaining attention is that almost half of Americans (46%) have used online technologies (via the Internet or cell phone) to participate in political activity during the 2008 campaign to date.

Ben Adler from Politico.com asks the question of the hour: "Can McCain compete with Obama online?" It's no secret. As ABC News noted, "the survey finds Sen. Barack Obama is winning the online political war in 2008." This data just confirms what we already know. Democrats are winning online. That doesn't necessarily translate to votes, but times are a-changin.

We still have a long way to go in terms of convincing the American public of the Internet's legitimacy in the process, however. Approximately 60% of Americans believe that "the Internet is full of misinformation and propaganda that too many voters believe is accurate." With new media and citizen journalism abounding next door to unsubstantiated rumor sites, it's no wonder the public is skeptical. But it's just a matter of time...

Meanwhile, if we extrapolate the numbers Pew just released, the majority of Americans of voting age will be turning to the Internet and online technologies in their process of determining who to cast their ballots for in 2012 - if not by 2010. It's even possible we could achieve a majority before this November, and we know what that means.

New Data Reported on Internet Use in Political Campaigns

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released their latest report yesterday. It's chock full of stat nuggets in terms of percentages of adult Americans who are online, politicking online, watching videos online, and using social networking online all for the purposes of finding and choosing candidates to vote for in the election.

Most of the numbers aren't surprising. That 46% of Americans of voting age are doing something online related to politics is, however, a big deal in terms of providing data supporting that candidates in future elections need to take advantage of online technologies more and more in order to increase their chances of winning. It's also important in terms of people working on tech related to politics: it means we're here to stay.

Convincing candidates and potential candidates to use online technologies for their campaigns when money is tight is always a challenge and is sometimes a gamble. In more rural areas where the majority of voters are not necessarily online, tried and true field and direct mail methods still work best. But these numbers show a shift in terms of who's online and they show that nearly 75% of Americans have access to campaign communications via the Internet or cell phones. Even for those campaigns, not having an Internet presence at all could be dangerous.

So for everyone out there working on campaigns, here's the story: incorporate online methodology within your campaign, and for Democrats seeking a younger voter base in particular, integrating technology-based strategies within the entire framework of the campaign organization, as Obama has, will make your field organization stronger. Build the best web site you can, get people working on smart email communications, put up a blog, and find ways to make the campaign have two-way traffic, receiving information back from potential voters, not just sending out the usual sound bytes to them. Create a dialogue with potential constituents. Learn about their needs. Utilize social networks. Make the campaign engaging and interesting.

There are a lot of lessons within the data, but I encourage anyone interested to look at the reports yourselves and take what you will from them. The campaigns of the future will only build on what we have now, so learning about what worked in '08 will only improve chances your candidate will win in '10 or '12.

A Two-Way Street

This blog is not just about sharing news in terms of what's going on in campaigning technology. It's also about educating people and organizations about why it's important. Social networking tools, for example, work because they connect people in a way that makes the world seem smaller which is incredibly important in politics and activism. We all want to know how this affects us.

So when you take a political campaign, you have voters wanting to hear from candidates, but the candidates really do want to hear from the voters. It's supposed to be a two-way street. When you're talking about a massive state or a national campaign, that's more difficult to achieve. Candidates of recent years found that the best way it worked was to reach out to people in events and via radio or television. But that was largely one-way communication. They only get a few questions here and there from individuals or media commentators, vetted through committees often wanting to target the questioning, so people get a limited view of the candidates.

Throughout the primary season, you hear presidential candidates talk about how much they like going to Iowa and particularly New Hampshire, because given the way the process works, they are forced into more two-way settings where they really get to talk back-and-forth with voters, get a sense of their concerns, and hone their policy proposals as a result. And the voters can talk in small communities with each other.

This is where the Internet and online technologies come into play. Now with bloggers having the opportunity to ask their questions of candidates and receive answers back, as MOMocrats did, for example, we can continue the discussion on a local (in virtual space) level. And with tools like online polling, candidate blogs, social networking tools like MySpace and Twitter, we can interact more with the campaigns.

In Obama's case, it seems to be working. People really feel he's out there listening to them. The other day, I met a woman who said she twittered with Barack Obama and she really believed it was the senator himself doing the twittering. And even when pressed that it was probably a staffer, she didn't care - she was just excited that they cared to keep her in the loop. You can't buy enough TV advertising to get that kind of effect.

So these are examples of why using these tools can help your campaigns. It brings voters closer to where we really should be in participating in the political process. So next time you feel guilty for wandering around facebook, remember this: it works.

Countdown to Personal Democracy Forum '08

In eleven days, I'll be traversing Central Park on my way to Lincoln Center for the Personal Democracy Forum 2008 conference June 23-24 in New York City. PDF, as it's called, is the major annual conference for everyone involved in the technology behind politics and advocacy (databases, action centers, blogs) and the tools that teach us about government (like mashups and online polls). PDF is run by the same people
who publish the techPresident site and they always have fabulous speakers.

Conference info can be found here, and they just posted the agendas for day 1 and day 2.

This will be my first time to attend. I've known about it for a few years, but there was always a major reason I couldn't go - and I'm still upset about that! So I'm really looking forward to seeing a lot of people in person who I've worked or conversed with remotely but never met.

Welcome

Welcome to the FutureCampaigns blog. This online publication focuses on the intersection between technology, politics, advocacy and government.

Most of the posts published on this blog before today were cross-posted from sairy.com, my personal site that covers a wide range of topics including technology and culture, and a few posts come from the Silicon Valley Moms Blog from the last election. It became clear to me that it was time to focus a bit more for the benefit of this site, clients, colleagues, friends in the space, etc. And I thought it made sense to include some legacy posts here to reference as time passes and we look back at what was the future of campaigning in the past.

If you have feedback about the site and/or blog, please send it to sarah(at)futurecampaigns(dot)com.

PC Magazine on Top Tech Issues for Next President

For a comprehensive look at the major technology issues on the plate for the next presidential administration, PC Magazine has a great article out that covers 5 biggies and what the positions are on those issues of the candidates (McCain, Obama and Clinton since it was compiled before Obama had enough delegates and since she could potentially be a VP nominee). This stems from discussion that happened at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in May.

I first attended CFP in 1994 in Chicago. Every year, they have an incredible group organizing the conference. This year, they honed in on what we would like to see in a next presidential administration in terms of information and communications (ICT) technology policy recommendations. This wasn't the first time, of course. CPSR and other organizations have done this in the past - analyzing policies of current and potential future administrations. I'm glad it's elicited some results in terms of recommendations and positive media attention.

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