Posted by: Alan Rosenblatt
In 2006, with less money and less name recognition than his opponent for Senate, incumbent Orrin Hatch, Pete Ashdown took an innovative approach to his campaign website. Harking back to a tradition of elected representatives being delegates of their constitutents will (rather than trustees), Ashdown included a wiki on his website where voters could edit and develop his campaign platform. This collaborative process, made easy by the web, foreshadowed a growing practice of letting large groups of citizens to collaborate on developing political messages and policy platforms.
But why should we let the crowd do this? According to James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, large groups of people are simply smarter than small groups and individuals, on average. For example, Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, in The Spiral of Silence, shows that long before asking people in surveys “who they will vote for” can effectively predict an upcoming election, asking them “who they think will win” will get the prediction right.
On Thursday, October 16, 2008, from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm at 1225 I (Eye) Street, NW, 3rd Floor, the Internet Advocacy Roundtable focuses on crowdsourcing message and policy platforms with a panel of speakers who have managed crowdsourcing programs and developed new software to make these programs more effective.
Speakers include Brian Young, who has been working with the TruthFightsBack.com project, which relies on citizens to help identify smears in the current presidential campaign; Michael Yaki, who crowdsourced language and ideas for the 2008 Democratics Party platform; and David Stern, co-founder of MixedInk, a startup that has created an online collaborative writing tool that allows large groups to weave their ideas together democratically to express a collective viewpoint.
The exciting thing about crowdsourcing’s impact on politics and governance is that it creates new opportunities to further democratize the process. As alluded to above, these tools allow elected officials to more effectively represent the will of their constituents, or as Edmund Burke wrote in the 1770’s, they can be delegates. This is in sharp contrast to elected officials who see themselves as trustees of their constituents. Trustees do what they think is best for their constituents, even if that is in opposition to their will. Delegates work to reflect their constituents’ will; a far more democratic approach.
“The Hill” reports today that the bailout vote in the House this week was a “Crushing Failure for Lobbyists.” Hill offices are reporting a huge surge in constituent communications. Even earlier this week, I posted a blog that showed an increase in constituent communications as a result of free media coverage of the story. However, a quick analysis of the voting patterns for this week’s House votes suggests it was not grassroots pressure, lobbyists’ arm twisting, or even fear losing election that drove members. It was good-old-fashioned “conscience.” These folks just did what they thought was right.
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Earlier today, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Adfero Group and the Politico sponsored the last event in the Innovative Advocacy series: Intelligence, Media Monitoring, and Tracking the Buzz.
Panelists included three K Street Café contributors: Peter Waldheim from the Blog Council, Chris Kinnan from FreedomWorks and Brad Fitch from Knowlegis. Others on the two panel discussions, moderated by Mathew Zablud of Adfero Group and Brad Peck from the U.S. Chamber, were Chris Ramsey from Radian6, James Tipton from Google, and Evan Tracey from TNS Media Strategies.
Here were the key points from the two panels: READ MORE »
It all started with a conversation.
A few months ago I was chatting with some colleagues about the lack of a comprehensive resource online for public affairs professionals to keep up to speed on with the latest trends, tactics and strategies in our industry. There are certainly plenty of resources for political pros on how technology is shaping campaigns and elections, but relatively few on how the Internet and social media is changing the way public policy is formed and shaped.
We called on some of the best and the brightest – practitioners and observers in the public affairs realm — who are known for staying on top of the major transformations taking place in our industry to engage in an ongoing dialogue about how the nature of advocacy is changing. It is essential that all of the stakeholder groups in the issue advocacy world are involved - so we invited representatives from associations, think tanks, corporate goverment affairs offices, interest groups, the media, and from some of the key industry organizations in Washington DC including the Congressional Management Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.
The result is K Street Cafe - a collaborative blog made up of expert contributors who can provide context and analysis of the changing nature of advocacy, and the difference these changes make in the formation of public policy.
So you might ask - why the name K Street Cafe? Doesn’t K Street conjure up some of the negative images we have about how public policy is formed? Yes. But we intend this blog to be conversation about how K Street is changing - away from images of fat cats, smoke filled rooms and back room deals toward a K Street that is open, transparent and with a much broader participation from the public.
Of course, cafes have long been centers of spirited dialogue. We trust this blog will host vigorous conversations on a variety of subjects. And we hope you will join us in the conversation.
