The Internet President

Since Howard Dean's unprecedented fundraising success online in 2003, a lot of speculation has gone into how the technology of the Internet might transform politics and when we might have our first "Internet President." Over the course of the 2008 election, we witnessed a phenomenon that could never have occurred in the past as a little known senator harnessed the tools of technology to reach out to the masses, engaging us and giving us shared ownership of his national campaign. The Obama campaign was the likes of which we've never seen before, and because of their decisive mastery of the Internet, he not only won the presidency, but he won by a substantial margin.

In this election it was very clear that the Internet was a major force in helping Barack Obama win. Without it, he likely would not have secured the nomination or the presidency. His inspiring message of change resonated perfectly with the openness of the Internet and instead of just talking to one person in a small town who then used word of mouth to transport his message on the ground, he presented his message online as well, letting word ripple out across the country, building a huge wave.

Obama was able to do this via social networking tools and the most interactive political website built to date, along with online outreach through e-mail and and the blogosphere. Most importantly, the campaign was able to bridge the gap between online and ground level activism, fundraising through small donations and leveraging that money for expensive TV ad buys required to reach across the country to win big. It may never be possible to win a campaign entirely online, but Obama utilized a combination of traditional grassroots organizing and netroots tactics for success.

To understand why this was possible, it helps to understand the numbers - according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project report released early in the summer, we have nearly reached a point where the majority of American adults are using the Internet to learn about candidates and participate in elections. Merging that with Democratic voter demographics including a majority of youth and urban voters, we had an ideal online environment for a Democratic campaign to take the lead.

The McCain campaign in comparison, took more advantage of advanced Internet tools later in their campaign, admitting they were not targeting voters as actively that way because e-mail was still more successful in reaching their base online. In the Democratic primary race, the Clinton campaign held tightly onto traditional organizing methods rather than allowing for increased online techniques, which contributed to the campaign's demise. They did some impressive things through the Internet and new media, but without an infrastructure that embraced it in the way Obama's did, they were unable to sustain the same level of fundraising success or volunteer mobilization.

In an earlier article, I addressed what all of this means to the future of modern democracy in terms of open government by Obama, noting that our level of participation should expand drastically. Expect whitehouse.gov to look more like mybarackobama.com than the static website we've seen in the past, including a public comment area where the new president will invite feedback online for five days on any non-emergency legislation before he signs it into law. It signals the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Congratulations, Internet President Obama.

Originally posted at The Huffington Post, Off the Bus, November 5, 2008.

Online Debate Coverage Tools

See my latest article at The Huffington Post "Off the Bus" about some of the fun and practical online tools for debate coverage by bloggers and viewers.

The DNCC & Netroots: They're Beginning to Get It

The Democratic National Convention was full of phenomenal events geared toward delegates, staffers, activists, volunteers, supporters, traditional media and bloggers. Seeing everyone in one place together, moving from venue to venue, and sitting in on a wide range of panels that referenced the role of technology and new media in campaigns, it became apparent that people are getting on board. Perhaps it's slower progress than we would like, but it is probably the most realistic pace we can expect.

Bloggers still came across as a novelty to TV media. As Mary Rickles of Netroots Nation put it, the mainstream media is still "in awe" of the blogosphere. and some convention goers and The Big Tent gained a lot of attention. One person pointed-out to Raven Brooks that as Dan Rather was upstairs on the DIGG stage speaking about how traditional media isn't covering as much real news, Katie Couric was downstairs doing a story about the Google smoothies (which were, by the way, quite excellent and a great idea after all of the running around we were doing). It seemed that getting into The Big Tent had become almost as big a deal as snagging coveted Hall passes at the convention center. The Big Tent was a great respite for technology, nonprofit and new media crowd and we loved it.

Inside the Pepsi Center and the Invesco Center, bloggers had special access and were provided the same resources as other reporters. Everyone was on laptops with cameras - it was difficult to tell who was writing for what. Still, it's understandable why some bloggers were upset they couldn't get in - national blogs had an easier time with the credential process, but statewide blogs had a smaller chance of being accepted. In terms of total media representation, bloggers still represent a larger piece of the pie than they received. Regarding the DNCC approving more bloggers in the future, Brooks said, "they have a long way to go, but that's why things like The Big Tent exist."

Outside the official DNCC events, both The Big Tent and the New Democrats Network put on some great panels. Not everyone in the audience was part of the usual netroots and tech politics crowd, which was good - it means more people are there to learn. However, some of the questions showed that they still have a learning curve to travel.

Youth-oriented organizations, Rock the Vote and Mtv Street Team, clearly get it - they have been employing a blend of technology, music and media to reach out to voters aged 18 to 35 in GOTV (Get Out The Vote) efforts. Rock the Vote is partnering with a mobile program to engage younger voters more actively in politics via cell phones. WomenCount.org launched this week, using the adage that they are "the Moveon.Org for women" in order to drive home that they are pushing platform issues as well as candidates strongly based on online tactics.

More candidates seem to understand the power of the Internet as well. Scott Kleeb's campaign for Senate looks to be doing a good job translating online to field efforts, as more national candidates are doing each election. Talking with people at various events or in line to events, the average person understood blogging technology and how blogs work; however, most people still aren't on board with social networking software like Facebook or Twitter - at least not to a level that might provide a competitive advantage and most people don't yet even grasp how powerful email can be as a campaign tool.

Given generational issues, the digital divide and traditional technology learning curves, it could easily take another ten to twenty years before the maverick strategies employed by the Obama campaign online become standard fare in local and statewide elections, but on the national level, the movement that caught fire with Dean for America now has some serious traction. The next four years will show us how much.

Seeking Votes for Proposed SXSW Panels

I have proposed the following panel for the South by Southwest Interactive conference in March...

Title:
Whitehouse.gov 2.0: Upgrading to Open Source Government

Summary:
The 2004 and 2008 campaigns' use of collaborative tools, blogs and social networking have shown citizen activism and online communities can wield powerful influence. In 2009, our challenge becomes how to harness these tools in order to reopen the policy-making process. Panel presentation followed by brainstorming session.

If you like the idea, please VOTE for it by Friday!

I really hope we can take the brainstorming session and turn it into a report to submit to the next presidential administration.

Please see also TechMama's recommendations for panels, including Joanne's on building political influence online and Beth's on moms using tech, where hopefully I'll have a chance to participate as well.

Latest Online Campaigning Tactic - Attack Websites

Here's the latest in my column for The Huffington Post - "Smear 2.0: Attack Ad Culture Goes Online." It goes into detail about the latest campaign sites launched on specific issues targeting the media and the public. The sites are mostly being used as a campaigning tool by Democrats, but Republicans have launched a few as well.

e-Cards Still Make an Impact

This JibJab Card, shown on the LA Times site, is a humorous take on this year's presidential election proving that animated e-cards can still have a place. Since they are essentially usable as videos, they easily translate to the '08 campaign technology. Humor also has always played a part in political campaigns.

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.

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.

Ellen Malcolm, Women Bloggers & Partnering with Women Candidates

Today, I had the privilege of being invited to meet with Ellen Malcolm, Founder & President of EMILY's List. EMILY's List, for those who don't know, is the largest PAC in the U.S. and also a phenomenal training organization for pro-choice Democratic women who want to run for office and work in campaigns. (I have also had the privilege of being through their Political Opportunity Program training in 2005 through Emerge and it is incredible. Highly recommended.) 'EMILY' stands for "Early Money Is Like Yeast" because early money in campaigns shows candidate viability and makes the difference between who stays in the race to win.

Thanks to Ramona Oliver, EMILY's List Communications Director, a small group of us met over lunch in San Francisco and discussed how to utilize the Internet, particularly blogs, to get the message of women candidates out. Others in the group included Elisa Camahort of BlogHer, Gina Cooper of Netroots Nation, Elisa Batista of MotherTalkers, and Page Rockwell of the Salon.com "Broadsheet". (A couple of others were invited, but being busy women, were already double-booked.) We spoke about our own experiences with online politics, the blogosphere, and how to get more women mobilized online.

Sitting across from Ellen Malcolm, who according to Wikipedia, was "named one of America's most influential women by Vanity Fair (1998), one of the '100 Most Important Women in America' by Ladies' Home Journal (1999), one of the 'Women of the Year' by Glamour (1992), and 'Most Valuable Player' by the American Association of Political Consultants," gave me a real feeling of empowerment - knowing this woman created an organization that has launched over 11 senators, 55 congresswomen and 7 governors to their seats, not including all of the statewide women she helped attain public office. One woman, harnessing the power of other women, can really do all of that. I've heard these statistics before, and I've seen her speak at major events before, but somehow sitting at lunch together made me feel like what she does is more real. Hearing her speak on a personal level about her dream of seeing Hillary Clinton sworn in as our first woman president was really inspiring to me.

First, we talked about Hillary's hair (just kidding - that never even crossed our minds). Seriously though, the topics ran the gamut from utilizing blog advertising to helping women bloggers learn more about working with the 'mainstream' media (see yesterday's post relating to the New York Times article about women in politics online). The one point I wanted to get across to EMILY's List was the importance of candidate and high-level buy-in about online tools for campaigning; in order to use them effectively, the campaign manager, communications director and state directors (if it's national) need to totally grok why and how the net can help them win. Or at least they need enough confidence in the explanations given to them by people who do grok it who they feel they can trust. I got the sense that they already knew this, but it never hurts to have another person who's worked in the field support that notion. I've found it's absolutely essential in conducting a competitive campaign online.

It was a great lunch, and I enjoyed learning more about the other amazing women at the table as well. I hope I have the opportunity to work with all of them in one way or another in the future. I won't spill the beans on everything else discussed, but let's just say that I'm looking forward to mobilizing women for women to win in '08 and beyond.

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

New York Times & Women in Online Politics

Yesterday, New York Times reporter, Katharine (Kit) Seeyle, published an inquiry on their blog, "The Caucus", asking readers to respond to "why more men seemed to be involved in politics online than women... if you agreed with that and... why or why not." The discussion is still going strong in the comments there, and today Seeyle published her artilce, "Women, Politics and the Internet", on the New York Times site. (Note: I was quoted - minus my last name and without much context, but it's in there.)

Morra Aarons of BlogHer and Women and Work, was interviewed by Seeyle and followed up quickly with a post asking for more women to participate in the discussion yesterday afternoon before the deadline of the article today. Following her lead and looking at the post on the New York Times blog, I noticed a lot of women frustrated about the apparent lack of attention paid to women in politics online, and many people addressing the topic of blogs and how the discussion often turns derogatory.

One of the commenters, "woman on the inside," (comment #34 and accidentally republished in #41) wrote about how the men tend to pat each other on the backs and help each other out more and tend to be louder and more brash. She says that there are many women working in online politics, but they're not getting on "Meet the Press." This goes into another issue that Shesource.org, a partner to The White House Project and VoteRunLead.org is trying to address - getting more media attention to women whiich, I think is at the heart of this matter. I'd like to hear what Women in Media and News thinks about this topic.

I noticed this phenomenon in the Mother Jones article series on online politics a few months back and wrote about it here. Morra and Esther Dyson were two out of like 4 women interviewed vs. approx. 20 men for that series. The editor wrote back that she reached out to Arianna Huffington and looked for more. In her defense, it's not like there's a list out there of who all is involved in this field.

"woman on the inside" (I think I know who you are, but I won't out you) also uses the example of Karina Newton from Speaker Pelosi's office, and she mentions Zephyr Teachout (from the Dean campaign) and Amanda Michel among others. I'll name a few more names of women who are involved in the presidential campaigns this time around - Tracy Russo and Amy Rubin are working for John Edwards and Crystal Patterson blogs for Hillary Clinton. Mindy Finn (just to prove we're not all Democrats) is Mitt Romney's Director of eStrategy (and formerly of the RNC).

More names: Laura Quinn, Liza Sabater, Jane Hamsher, Taylor Marsh, Chellie Pingree, Susan Crawford, Becky Donatelli, Mary Katherine Ham, Heather Mansfield, Dahlia Lithwick, Chris Nolan, Maryscott O'Connor, Jeralyn Mertitt, Allison Hayward, Mary Hodder, Kathy Mitchell, Lorelei Kelly, Heather Holdridge, Jeanne Jackson, Michelle Malkin, Kate Kaye, Allison Fine, Amanda Marcotte, Barbara O'Brien. These women play major roles in political blogs and policy nonprofits. And of course we can't forget the BlogHer founders Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort and Jory Des Jardins or even Elizabeth Edwards who blogs frequently and likes to meet with bloggers. What about some of the companies that work on the back-end? There are a few that are women-owned and run like ROI Solutions, run by Gina Vanderloop or Orchid Suites' Tanya Renne. So while this is not even a remotely comprehensive and I don't have everyone's current affiliations, my point here is to show that there are not only many capable women working in online politics, but there are many capable women leaders working in online politics.

In my post about an event I attended a couple of weeks ago, two of the speakers were women (out of 6, that's progress) - Michelle Kraus and Perla Ni. And what about the mommybloggers? Elisa Batista of MotherTalkers, Stefania Pomponi-Butler (who wears many hats like me but also blogs about politics), and Grace Davis all blog actively about political issues. Ann Crady founded Maya's Mom as a social network or parents, but it's not like parents just talk about parenting. And of course Joan Blades can't be missed - she founded MoveOn and MomsRising. I'm not even going into the long long list of women involved in technology policy list including a majority who run the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (Bet you didn't realize that! Much credit for this should go to Shari Steele.) Also women play major roles in ACM, EPIC, Creative Commons and CPSR, all leading technology policy advocacy groups I've worked with. Well-known names in that space include Annalee Newitz (see my blogroll).

Anyway, back to the New York Times. Emily McKhann of BlogHer was also interviewed and quoted in the article, and Erin Kotecki Vest of BlogHer and Queen of Spain got in on the comments, just after mine. (Mine is #48; Erin's is #49.) (Emily and Cooper Munroe are spearheading BlogHers Act.) I then tipped-off the Silicon Valley Moms about the discussion and Beth Blecherman and Glennia Campbell submitted comments #59 and #63 respectively. Rather than reprinting my long quote here, I'll just note that my main points were not about how men and women communicate differently (because I really don't know much about that - I am both a problem-solver and a consensus-builder, unlike what I said about the generalizations I've read) but I do want to point out the variety of ways women are involved in politics, not just via blogs. I think that's a huge point that may not have had enough emphasis in the article. Many women are involved and just because we're not out there spilling our guts in the blogosphere, that doesn't mean we aren't playing a dynamic, important role.

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

Cybersalon Summary From Last Week - Politics 101, Web 2.0, and Democracy vs. Demagoguery

First mentioned at Cybersalon, a "round table" (round room) discussion that took place in Berkeley last weekend, was that Joan Blades of MoveOn and MomsRising couldn't attend due to the Senate's censure of MoveOn for the Petraeus-Betray Us ad. The group (40 or so people, mostly local) discussed whether MoveOn's decision to run costly print advertising like this was worth it. Most said yes, since they made $500,000 in one day as a result. One person noted that Hillary Clinton, on the talk show circuit, said the reason the Republicans were coming out against the ad was to change the subject. Some said there were better ways to make their money and gave suggestions. Not that this crowd was biased at all. (Please note sarcasm.)

The discussion moved to whether or not the Internet is really making a difference in politics, and many talked about how it depends on its use. I agreed with the quote Sylvia Paull, Cybersalon organizer, said about Esther Dyson noting that technology itself is neutral and how it can be used for either. (I'm paraphrasing.) My example: blogs. You can use them as dictatorial mechanisms with strict content and message control, no comments or massive comment censorship, or you can leave them totally open. One woman said she thought that due to all of the frustration about the 2000 and 2004 elections, it was nice to have a place to vent online. I also pointed-out that voter data seems to have spiked in direct relation to greater use of the Internet in campaigns.

Then the discussion moved toward military censorship of soldiers. One person seemed irate that this would happen; another said that's always happened. Either way, they made it sound as if soldiers' email and outside communications access is so limited, they can barely say more to their families than they are alive vs. actually giving their real opinions about the war.

Then the talk came to how people can make a difference on a local level. The site, Kitchen Democracy was mentioned along with the San Leandro Citizens Network. Someone from Progressive Punch introduced himself. Also MapLight was there. Everyone concurred that a great way to GOTV is through neighborhood weekly "Margarita Fridays" where you get your neighbors on the block to come over, drink margaritas and talk about local issues. Sounds good to me.

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

Last Week's San Mateo County Democratic Tech & Politics Event Recap

Normally, I'd do a better job of writing about these events from last week, but it was a pretty crazy week. Anyway, my apologies for lateness to those who couldn't attend the event and wanted to read the synopses here. The Technology, Politics & Innovation Panel set up by San Mateo County Democratic Party leaders Andrew Byrnes and Daniel Yost, was well organized. It was nice to see more local people who work in this area.

Tuesday's event in Menlo Park featured six panelists: Peter Leyden, Michelle Kraus, Perla Ni, David Chiu, Josh Becker and Dave Pine. Peter gave a nice presentation about how he and the New Politics Institute are working in Congress to get more people up to speed on technology. He spoke about how ad revenue is gradually shifting over and how campaigns are benefitting from placing Google ads, for example.

Michelle formerly ran Digital Campaigns, she has participated in The Huffington Post and she has an organization called Technology and Politics in Menlo Park. She gave an interesting example of producing a low cost video ad opposing Prop. 90 in the last CA statewide election and how they were able to reach over 300,000 page views a day and capture 2 points during the election from that campaign.

Perla Ni spoke about how Voterwatch makes Congressional videos searchable and how difficult it is to make change on the Hill in terms of opening up these videos to the public, how long it takes to get access to the video transcripts and how cumbersome it is to find real information about what is discussed. She spoke about reaching out to blogs to draw attention to this issue. David Chiu co-founded Grassroots.org along with Perla, who recently founded Voterwatch.org. David addressed how often this field changes in terms of technology being used in campaigns. He talked about how important data and message are in campaigns.

Josh Becker formerly worked as a press secretary in Washington. His focus is on how we get people to use tech tools locally in campaigns, and he spoke about getting the "smart, entrepreneurial people" in Silicon Valley together to make substantive change. Then Dave Pine spoke as "Mr. Local." A former General Counsel for Handspring, he's now running for local office. He spoke about how technology is changing things for local elections in terms of managing contacts and voter data, YouTube videos, eVites, and Cafe Press. He mentioned the Burliingame Voice as an example of a local blog that gets some good discussion.

After their presentations, we had a lengthy Q&A discussion and then we discussed more local political engagement issues. There was some talk about whether positive or negative campaigning will make more of an impact in this election. I concur with what David Chiu said which is essentially that both will happen, but I'll take it further and say I think the media will still focus on the negative things like the YouTube videos making fun of candidates, but that the positive things like the social networking will even it out. (I'll admit it - I thought the sites like MySpace and Facebook were just representative of meaningless stats at first, but I'm beginning to believe that they may actually affect how some people learn about candidates and how they vote.)

There was some exciting talk about how young people ("Gen X") are voting more now and the correlation between that data and use of the Internet in politics. Then we discussed getting a San Mateo County blog going. I typed furiously and got most of the meeting into notes, so if anyone wants the full transcript, I'd be happy to send it out by email.

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

Two Great Bay Area Politics & Technology Events This Week

Event #1 - Tomorrow (Tuesday) in Menlo Park -

Panel and meeting, no charge, where some interesting local innovators will be discussing the use of technology in politics and how we can utilize it to help elect Democrats in California in 2008. Based on the panelists and host committee, it should be a really good discussion.

Details:
When: Tuesday, September 18th from 7 to 9 p.m.
Where: Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, 1100 Marsh Road, Menlo Park in the Olympic Room. (*Note new room.)
This is a free event, however you are encouraged to RSVP to contact[at]sanmateodemocrats[dot]org. Food will be provided.

Panelists:
Josh Becker, Founder of New Cycle Capital
David Chiu, Founder of Grassroots Enterprises
Joseph Green, Founder of Project Agape
Michelle Kraus, CEO of Digital Campaigns
Peter Leyden, Director of the New Politics Institute
David Pine, Former General Counsel for Handspring
Perla Ni, Founder of Greatnonprofits.org

Event #2 - Sunday in Berkeley -

September 23. "Politics 101 Meets Web 2.0: Democracy or Demagoguery?" 4 to 6 p.m., Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St., $15 at door for food, drink, and open mike discussion for digital and analog political activists. Political candidates of all stripes now have web sites, participate in social networks, and can respond to folks via YouTube. So are we closer to democracy?

See also: more information on the Hillside Club site.

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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.

Mother Jones on Digital Democracy

Thanks to Farber's IP list, I learned of this collection of articles and interviews on "Digital Democracy" in Mother Jones magazine, online. It takes into account where we were in the last election, what kind of progress we've made, and where we're really going now - arguing that MySpace isn't necessarily all it's cracked-up to be in terms of motivating communities to act in a political sense but also introducing other areas that are making waves online. (And I have to say I love some of the article titles like "10,000 Deaniacs: Where are they now?")

I haven't had time to read it all yet, but the one comment I have so far is they only mention two women from what I've seen - Esther Dyson and Morra Aarons. Both worthy of noting, to be sure, but there are more of us in this space - consultants, bloggers, techies, entrepreneurs, lawyers - with expertise, like Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn and MomsRising.org, Jennifer Granick & Lauren Gelman at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and Madeline Stanionis of Watershed just to name a few here in the Bay Area. See also: Shesource.org for other resources. I'd like to see more women interviewed in general on this topic.

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

Fall Presidential Debates To Be Exclusively Online

A lot of news services covered this today - in the fall, two debates (one Republican-only and one Democrat-only) will take place online. Yahoo, Huffington Post, Slate and PBS's Charlie Rose are putting together the debates. Many of the articles are yawning at the prospect, thinking the debates will be boring, but this article looks at the angle of how this opens up the process to be more democratic in obtaining questions from all over the country (and I'm assuming the world, although one of the articles mentioned "voters" being able to ask questions so I'm guessing they will be screened so expats would be the only Americans able to question from abroad). Dean will be introducing the Democratic debate. It will be interesting to see how the traffic stats come out.

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

A Review of 2006 Online Campaigns

I'm almost done with the political blogging for the week, but I had to examine how candidates online this year. Here are some examples of tight races where I took a look at their online campaigns and projected winners based on their online campaigns (web, blog, & email when relevant). In most cases, the candidate with the better site won but not all.

CA Governor:
Better online campaign - neither (both were bad)
Winner - Arnold Schwarzenegger, http://www.schwarzenegger.com/
(opposing candidate - Phil Angelides, http://www.angelides.com/)

CA Lieutenant Governor:
Better online campaign - John Garamendi, http://www.garamendi.org/
Winner - John Garamendi, http://www.garamendi.org/
(opposing candidate - Tom McClintock, http://www.tommcclintock.net/)

CA Secretary of State:
Better online campaign - Bruce McPherson, http://www.mcpherson2006.com/
Winner - Debra Bowen, http://www.debrabowen.com/

MI Governor:
Better online campaign - TIE (both were good) between Dick DeVos, http://www.devosforgovernor.com/ & Jennifer Granholm, http://www.granholmforgov.com/
Winner - Jennifer Granholm, http://www.granholmforgov.com/

MO Senator:
Better online campaign - Claire McCaskill, http://www.claireonline.com/
Winner - Claire McCaskill, http://www.claireonline.com/
(opposing candidate - Jim Talent, http://www.talentforsenate.com/)

CT Senator:
Better online campaign - Ned Lamont, http://www.nedlamont.com/
Winner - Joe Lieberman, http://www.joe2006.com/

RI Senator:
Better online campaign - Sheldon Whitehouse, http://www.whitehouseforsenate.com/ (by a hair)
Winner - Sheldon Whitehouse, http://www.whitehouseforsenate.com/
(opposing candidate - Lincoln Chafee, http://www.chafeeforsenate.com/)

Overall comments --
One thing I noticed was that in general, more Democrats' sites had blogs. Of course, most of them hadn't been updated in a few days, but at least they had them. I was amazed at how the Michigan governor's race had two sites that looked incredibly similar - but I was impressed that Granholm's site included a Farsi (I'm assuming) translation for the huge Middle Eastern population in the Detroit area, along with Spanish. And I was a bit shocked that a couple of the Republican candidates' sites were so sparse they could've been local city council web sites.

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

Blogging 101 for Politicians: Tiptoeing Through the Minefield

Politicians don't do blogs.  Or at least that was what they said in the old days, before the 2004 election cycle.  The reasoning was that blogging was just another way to catch foot-in-mouth disease and find oneself subject to more ridicule.  Still, in 2005, when I participated in a political training program, one of the core messages was "don't write much - especially online".

It took me a while to decide to start blogging for that reason, but eventually I decided that it is more important to me to have free speech and use it to write than to run for office and win.  So if I ever decide to run and I lose because of something dumb I wrote ten years before that gets exploited in the wrong way (like this post, perhaps), that's just too bad.  I think it's sad that candidates feel compelled to hide their opinions for fear of offending voters.  They do it because they don't want their words misused or their ideas misconstrued, but that can also cost them elections.

But let's take a step back and reiterate what Elizabeth Edwards said: "the Internet is the last real democratic institution."  Her point is that the Internet can be like the New Hampshire living room or the local town hall meeting.  It's a place where true constituent communication is achieved one-on-one.  This is why politicians started turning around and saying, "hey, wait a minute - I want a piece of this."  (Okay, so I don't know any who actually used those words, but you get the idea.)

Here's today's history lesson.  Everybody remembers that Howard Dean came along and raised a zillion dollars online for his campaign, but what many don't remember is that just as he was becoming the flavor of the month for the Democrats, Gary Hart snuck in under their radar and launched what Wired News and 'political analysts' called the "first true weblog to be put up by a politician," meaning that he wrote his own posts and the comments were left open.  By doing that, he broke new ground.

Senator Hart was considering an official run but had a small, mostly online grassroots "testing the waters" campaign going and I ended-up running the Internet part of the organization.  That's a story in itself, but the truth is that selling the idea of a blog to him wasn't actually that difficult.  He's the kind of person who thrives on communicating with the people and does it through a variety of vehicles even now, including blogging for the Huffington Post.  He's highly intelligent, he understands the "technology revolution" and tends to take more risks than most other politicians due to his experience.  Two other people who were helping me with the campaign thought that a blog would be a good idea, so I gathered all our arguments in favor and pitched it to the would-be candidate.

Running a presidential candidate's blog was a lot of fun.  I heard through the grapevine that it was one of the most popular blogs in the world for a while, so that gives you an idea of how many people were visiting.  There are numerous political sites now that I'm sure get more hits a day than we were back then, but the norm of political sites is still that they are written by political writers, not the candidates.

One of the things that makes blogging difficult for politicians is that it is just another thing for them to do in a day packed with events .  In our case, our candidate found ways to write up posts rapidly while riding in the car or on his computer at night.  We only asked for one every week or two, so we could maintain interest on the site but not overwhelm him.  Being a prolific writer, it was easy.

Other campaigns caught-on and began launching their own blogs, but theirs had other people posting on them beyond just the candidate.  We stayed behind the scenes.  That was the way the people at the top of the organization wanted it.  Had it become a full-blown campaign with an official announcement and the whole works, we would've expanded the blog to more contributors - we already had draft posts in the works at the time.  As the 2004 campaign continued, the candidates kept posting, but less often as election day approached.  Now it's something seen more in smaller campaigns than at the national level.  Look at any Congressional candidate's web site for the 2006 election and you'll see there's not much being written by the candidates themselves.

The thing about tiptoeing around blogging as a politician is that it can be like a mine field: if you step in the wrong place, your whole leg might get blown off.  This isn't really any different than saying something inane to Letterman, but it travels faster.  Most politician-candidates feel that this is not worth the risk, so they leave all of the blogging, commenting, heckling and trashing to those who are pretty much full-time political bloggers.  There are other issues to consider when blogging as a politician, of course, but that's for another day.

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Originally posted at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.