K Street Cafe

Join me at the 2009 Politics Online Conference, April 20-21 in Washington, DC! I am moderating two panels you should definitely attend:

Panel #1

Title of panel: Advocacy 3-D

Description of Panel: We will explore the dimensions of online advocacy strategy, working our way from 1-D strategies for disseminating your message, through 2-D strategies for mobilizing action and interaction, to 3-D strategies for navigating advocacy in the social web.

Day/Time of Panel: Monday, 4/20/2009 3:30pm

Panel #2

Title of panel: Academic Research on Internet Tools in the 2008 Election

Description of Panel: This panel features new scholarly research on the use of online tools in the 2008 election.

Day/Time of Panel: Tuesday, 4/21/2009 10:00am

The 2009 Politics Online Conference

April 20-21 (Monday-Tuesday)

The Ronald Reagan Building

1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20004

See you there.

Request for Ideas: Crowdsourcing the Evolution of Congressional Websites (The Hill)
Representative Mike Honda asks readers to help him come up with new legislation that would provide application developers easier access to legislative databases.

Making it Official: Government Agencies Sign Agreements with YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, and Blip (ReadWriteWeb)
While Rep. Honda looks for ways to open up government databases to the people, the GAO officially signed agreements with a handful of social networking sites for government use.

How To Get Re-Tweeted: Advice from Three PR Pros (PR Newser)
Three public relations and Twitter-using professionals offer up their advice on getting your tweet retweet-ed.

A Control Freak’s Guide to Social Media Influence (Mashable)
Organizations are often worried that engaging in social media means losing control, but Paul Worthington offers advice on learning how to let go.

Salesforce.com Integrates Twitter (ReadWriteWeb)
More business-support companies are catching on to the popularity of Twitter, and are finding ways to make their products more useful to organizations using the micro-blogging site.

26 Charities and Non-Profits That Tweet (Mashable)
Mashable profiles 26 great charities and non-profits who demonstrate Twitter best practices.

K Street All a-Twitter (The National Journal)
The micro-blogging Web site Twitter has finally made it to K Street, and it’s making some lobbyists a little nervous.

Ask the President Your Question at a Press Conference (Mashable)
A newly launched Web site takes aim at President Obama’s promise of open government by allowing citizens to submit questions for journalists to pose to the President during press conference.

By Richard M. Fawal

I supported Barack Obama during the campaign, and I wholeheartedly support his commitment as President to continue organizing Americans. Presidents often try to rally public support for their positions, but this is the first time any President has tried to actually organize public support into direct actions that will have measurable impact. That’s laudable.

The task is by no means an easy one. Governing is very different from campaigning, and building support for policy is not the same as building support for a politician. If the Administration is going to be successful in its organizing efforts, those charged with the task need to remember that effective organizing is first and foremost about community. (more…)

Last week, I posted about the Media Relations: Next Practices Forum, a conference sponsored by PR News that I was invited to attend as the Editor of the K Street Café Blog and Managing Director at Adfero Group. At the end of the day, I participated in a panel to provide a synopsis of the day’s events alongside of Robb Hecht who edits the Media 2.0 Blog and is the Digital Managing Director for imc strategy lab, and Richard Laermer, who edits the Bad Pitch Blog and serves as CEO of RLM Public Relations.

Though I am still reluctant of my newly discovered role as a “blogger,” I wanted to share my thoughts and reflections of the event – some of which we hit on during our panel discussion – with the readers of K Street Café. (more…)

Part Four of a six-part series, cross-posted on e.politics

Attracting the largest army of supporters ever seen in a modern American election is one thing, but even more impressive is that the Obama campaign managed to put them to work — as online recruiters, as cash machines, but also as organizers, block-walkers and pro-Obama voices in their own communities. A critical problem for anyone running for office: if all you ask volunteers to do when they show up at your campaign headquarters is to stuff envelopes, their ranks are likely to melt away like the morning dew as they find better uses for their time. The Obama solution: borrow their brains, and use technology to make it possible. In part, this was through the MyBarackObama.com toolset:

The MyBO Web site served as the hub for electoral activities, with spokes that reached to an array of platforms, all of which drove conversation back to the Web site in order to engage the people, empower the voices, raise the money and get the boots on the ground needed to win the election.

“The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit,” Edelman Digital Public Affairs, January 2009

(more…)

The US Chamber of Commerce is taking a stand against card check legislation that would abolish the secret-ballot system currently in place for employees who are voting on whether to start a labor union. Regardless of how you feel about card check, take note: The Chamber is using some very neat social media strategies to get the word out that will work for any cause.

On their campaign Web site, the Chamber makes it incredibly easy for activists to rally around the cause by offering a simple form that users can fill out, which will send a letter that addresses the issue directly to their legislator.

But wait, there’s more! (more…)

Many sectors in our economy are slowing down. But one thing that is not slowing down is the rate of change in marketing communications. If anything, the areas of public relations, advertising and grassroots advocacy are changing faster than ever.

The topic of rapid change in the public relations field will be front and center at Media Relations: Next Practices Forum, a conference sponsored by PR News that will be held at the National Press Club tomorrow. Despite widely publicized freezes on corporate travel and event budgets, the conference organizers are expecting the event  to have better than expected attendance numbers. Perhaps this is an indication that smart practitioners need to be willing to invest time and resources to keep up with the latest communications developments even in tough economic times.

I’ll be covering the event for K Street Café and will participate in a panel discussion with two other bloggers at the end of the day that focuses on lessons learned from the conference. I have to say it’s strange to be referred to as a blogger – I have never thought of myself as one. In fact, it was only six short months ago that we launched K Street Café by bringing together experts to discuss the changing nature of issue advocacy. As a result, I am now not only a practitioner but also a blogger.

I guess this shifting role gets to the heart of where all of this is headed. We are now more than just content consumers – we are also becoming content creators.   I hope we can discuss these trends more in depth tomorrow.