RootsCamp DC is this weekend. And while there is a waiting list in effect for anyone who is not currently working on an electoral campaign, there are two great parties to attend this weekend where you can have some fun with Roots Camp attendees and others who work in the digital political strategy field.
RootsCamp PRE-Party
Friday, April 11, 2008, 7:00 pm - Midnight
Location: The Space, 903 N Street, NW, DC (9th and N)
Sponsored by: Calder Strategies, Care2 and Women Who Tech
Cost: Free drink for the first 100 people to show up
Facebook Link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=16510540782
RootsCamp AFTER Party
Saturday, April 12, 2008, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Location: MCCXXIII, 1223 Connecticut Avenue, NW, DC
Sponsored by: New Organizing Institute and NGP
Cost: $12 suggested donation to New Organizing Institute at the door
Facebook Link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=27975200537
A social network can be about a common identity, a shared idea, a subject of interest, or a desired goal. Perhaps, even, any combination of these, as well. Define your audience and figure out which one(s) work for your network.
I tried to show my Internet Advocacy Communication class the new McCain Girls video this evening. We have been following their adventures as we study YouTube’s impact on the election, and POOF!, it was gone.
Seems the MCPS-PRS Alliance Ltd. exercised its rights and had YouTube take down the unlicensed use of its intellectual property.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm… intellectual… mmmmmmmmmmmm
But fear not, it is still Raining McCain over here, despite the angry response by lead McCain girl to the tens of thousands of text and video comments to their version of the Weather Girl’s hit Its Raining Men.
Will they exercise their IP rights, too? Time will tell.
And how does this play in the electorate? Another blip, bump, or blunder?
I think we can draw a couple lessons. First, posting a popular political video, especially an entertaining one like this one, will elicit a lot of viewer responses. And second, some people still don’t expect political stuff they post to YouTube to generate reactions, comments, video responses, arguments, debate, diatribes, dissent, bruhahas, ballyhoos… lots of talk, elephant and donkey talk, elephant and donkey talk…
Weighing in at not quite 2 tons of fun, the McCain Girls are tearing up the YouTube charts and shattering a whole lot of eardrums. Are they hip? Do they make John McCain hip? The jury is still out on that.
And while the McCain Girls have racked up more than a half million views in just one week, they are still a good bit shy of the total number times people have watched John McCain sing that old Beach Boy’s ditty. Combining the various clips and mash-ups of the ol’ hipster singing “Bomb Iran,” McCain has been viewed at least 5 million times. More than 1.1 million of those views were of his unedited clip. For my money, though, I prefer Mike Gravel’s remake of John Lennon’s "Give Peace a Chance" to McCain’s surf band homage:
We all know Obama is hip (not an endorsement, just a fashion statement). His “Yes We Can” video by will.i.am is super slick and has been viewed at least 9 million times. Even Obama’s Yes We Can speeches have been viewed millions of times, not to mention his speech on race, which has more than 4 million views already. But while McCain is singing an old “rock” song, only Obama is being called a rock star in this race (well, now that Mile Huckabee has dropped out of the race… I just loved the picture of him walking across the wet tarmac carrying his bass, his wife alongside. It was sooooo Beatle-esque).
Now nothing creates rock star status like having scantily clad women sing their secret desires for a candidate. And we all remember the big splash Obama Girl made early in the campaign. And while its creators, BarelyPolitical have not made much of a splash lately, they have rained their glamour down on several candidates, and even President Bush. Contrast Obama’s rock star image with this video in support of Hillary Clinton from Hillary4uandme:
For those of you old enough to remember, does this video feel like an Up with People concert? Hmmmm… apparently Up with People still exists. All I can say about them is that they are anything but Rock’n'Roll.
But does a Presidential candidate need to be a rocker? Some would say rock’n'roll is beneath the dignity of the presidency. Then again, the election of Bill Clinton, with his saxophone and love of Fleetwood Mac, ushered in the resurgent classic rock radio phenomenon (perhaps setting back the new music market by eight years in the process). Baby boomers are starting to retire. That means even the oldest of them were in their late-teens/ early-twenties at the birth of of the hippy shake thang. Even John McCain is young enough to have a taste for rock.
This suggests that a candidate with a hipster edge does not live beneath the stature of the presidency. No, that edge has long been a part of the mainstream… think about it… Rock’n'Roll has a Hall of Fame. If that doesn’t signal its shift from subversive to mainstream, I don’t know what would.
And with the huge surge in young voter turnout, as much as quadruple past rates in some states, it appears that being a rock star has an electoral payoff, at least so far. So bring on the edge and wipe away the vanilla (boy it pains me to say that… I love vanilla ice cream and soda). If this election has told us anything, it is that candidates that reach out to new voters using YouTube and other new media channels, are changing the shape of the electorate.
Changing the shape of the electorate… I have long argued that the median voter model developed during the early days of rock’n'roll by Anthony Downs (An Economic Theory of Democracy, 1957) does not require that candidates move to the center to win elections. It is true that the candidate closest to the median voter is most likely to win, as Downs argues. But reaching out to new voters in the long tail of the electorate will increase turnout and pull the median towards the candidate, eliminating the need to pander to the center. The location of the median voter with a 55% turnout is not the same as the location of the median if a candidate can pull another 10% of eligible voters from the left (or right) out to the polls.
Given the landscape of the remaining candidates, the most likely source of new voters is from the left. Aside from the fact that Karl Rove and company fished extensively among right voters in 2004 to boost their high turnout rates even higher, none of these candidates is singing the right’s siren song. And one is singing a song that has strong appeal to young, left voters.
So bring on the edge. Energize new voters. Make them feel that this election is about them and they will turn out and vote. Long live rock!
For those of you attending (or thinking of attending) the upcoming Politics Online Conference, consider attending two panels I have assembled: Social Networking/Media Strategy of the Presidential Campaigns and Open Source Advocacy. While it may be too soon to say that this aspect of online campaigns is the “be all, end all” of online strategy, there have been some great innovations in this space this campaign cycle.
Social Networking/Media Strategy of the Presidential Campaigns
The panel includes Justine Lam, eCampaign Director for Ron Paul; Amy Rubin, former Deputy Director of New Media for John Edwards; Katie Harbath, Deputy eCampaign Director for Rudy Giuliani; and Michael Turk, former eCampaign Director for Bush-Cheney ‘04 and my fellow blogger at techPresident.com.
The panel will explore two contrasting views of using the social web for campaigns: it has not been useful (for some) and it has been essential (for others). I suppose where you sit is where you stand.
In any event, come join us at 3:30p on March 4 and join the debate.
Open Source Advocacy
On March 5 at 3:00p, I am chairing a second panel on Open Source Advocacy. This panel will explore how open source software, software that is free to use, though not necessarily free to implement, can help advocacy organizations. The panel includes Michelle Murain, who blogs on Non-profit technology at the ZenofNPTech.org; Ryan Ozimek, President of PICnet and a core Joomla developer; Michael Haggerty, President of Trellon and a core Drupal developer; and Jo Lee founder of CitizenSpeak, an open source advocacy campaign tool that integrates with CiviCRM.
Both panels should be very interesting and I encourage all to attend.
Lots of great conferences coming up. Sadly, I can only make a couple of them. I will be at the Politics Online Conference on March 4-5. I hope to see lots of you there. The weekend before Politics Online, I will be attending the e-Democracy Camp in DC (see below for details). It will be a bar camp/unconference style event focused entirely on e-Democracy. That is my idea of a fun weekend.
Also coming up and worth attending is the We Media conference in Miami February 26-28 (note the lovely picture of me in the lower right corner of the conference info page). Also, NTEN will hold its National Technology Conference in New Orleans March 19-21. I will miss these two, sadly, but have attended them in the past and highly recommend them.
In between these conferences in the mega-event known as South by Southwest. In addition to films and music, there is a great interactive media component. I have yet to make one of these, but hear it is a blast.
Also on the horizon, the PDF conference will be this June 23-24 in NYC at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall. I went to last year’s conference and it was great. This year should be even better. Early bird registration ends tomorrow, February 5th.
Well, that is the quick roundup. Please read below for more info on the eDemocracy Camp on March 1-2 in DC.
Best,
Alan
eDemocracyCamp
March 1-2, 2008 in Washington DC
eDemocracyCamp is the first barcamp (an informal, participant-driven conference and workshop) with a sole focus on all things e-democracy. eDemocracyCamp will connect citizens, researchers, developers, practitioners and anyone else interested in this exciting field. Topics may include (but aren’t limited to): e-democracy, e-participation, e-government, e-voting, online civic engagement, online political campaigning, online dialogue and deliberation.
The general goal is to learn and share how the web can help us better govern ourselves, support democratic structures, make online civic participation more accessible, convenient, fun, efficient etc. Specifically, we’d like to explore these questions: What is out there today (in terms of tools, processes, projects, products, initiatives etc.)? What works, doesn’t work, needs work? What are opportunities for collaboration as we move forward?
With only a few weeks left until the event, a lot of work still remains, and we need your support to pull it off. Here’s how you can help (please do):
Get the word out
Connect us with someone active in the field (e.g. a person or organization in the political, government, non-profit, or web/tech sector who has a thing or two to say and share around e-democracy).
Volunteer (core team needs 2-3 more people).
Recruit a sponsor (for venue, cash, or in-kind donations).
Sign up and participate.
For more info and to RSVP (and yet more ways you can volunteer), please go to any of these fine sites:
As many of you know, the Internet Advocacy Roundtable has found a new home at the Center for American Progress Action Fund (coincidentally, it showed up here shortly after I started working here…hmmmm… not really a coincidence, I suppose).
But for those of you curious about upcoming Roundtables or interested in materials from past Roundtables, there is plenty of info here.
On October 29, 2007, the Internet Advocacy Roundtable (now a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund) featured a special session on Free Tech Tools for Non-Profits. Following the event, I posted a Google Doc (one of the free tools discussed at the event) with a slew of resources discussed at the event (and others). You can access this document here.
Enjoy and feel free to email me with more suggested resources to add.
