K Street Cafe

Join us on December 18, 2008 for an Internet Advocacy Roundtable that will explore how organizations can best address the challenges associated with the rapid growth of social media that has increased the fragmentation of the channels of public discourse. While the focus of the discussion will be on the relationships and influence of the English language blogosphere, the interrelationships between other forms of social media and blogs will also be explored.

Our speakers include:
*Marty Kearns, Green Media Toolshed, Netcentric Campaigns
*John Kelly, Morningside Analytics
*Ken Deutsch, Morningside Analytics

The event will take place on Thursday, December 18, 2008, 3:00pm—5:00pm at the Center for American Progress Action Fund (1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor, Washington, DC 2000).Please RSVP here as seats are limited.

You can also follow the event via a live stream here. Also, check out the archives of past Internet Advocacy Roundtables and announcement of upcoming events here.

I didn’t know I was running for president until I saw this new video from AARP.  The truth is, AARP is launching a new election campaign that lets you put anyone’s name into their video as the candidate for president. Why? Because this election is all about YOU.

AARP’s new campaign is really about connecting with voters.  The very essence of this video campaign is to give the people a chance to insert themselves into the message, and then insert their friends.  Very personal touch, indeed.

While not the first to do something like this (Job Jab lets you put your face on an animated character), this light-hearted campaign really gets to the heart of electoral politics–YOU.

Want to send the ad to your friends with their name in it? Click here and have some fun.

Forgive me for this indulgence.

In the midst of depressing talk of economies on the brink and deep recessions, I thought it might be therapeutic to write about the use of Twitter as it relates to one of my favorite escapist pastimes – rooting for the Washington Redskins. By examining the use of Twitter by the Washington Post’s Redskins beat reporters, I also wanted to examine some useful principles on how advocacy organizations can effectively leverage social media.

There is no doubt that the job responsibilities of a beat reporter at the Post have expanded greatly over the last few years. A decade ago, Redskins beat reporters would file a story or two every day during the season. In the last few years those responsibilities have expanded to cover not just writing stories for the dailies, butalso  posting updates on the “Redskins Insider” blog multiple times a day and utilizing Twitter. READ MORE »

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.

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 »

Rather than respond in the comments to a question from JK on my last post, Millennials at the Gates, asking for evidence of the reshaping of American politics, I will respond here.

I understand JK’s hesitation about waiting for the evidence.  After all, I was a full-time academic for many years.  I remember back in 1992 when I was on the Political Science conference circuit talking up Rock the Vote’s voter registration drive.  I kept getting comments like, “We hope we are wrong, but young voter turnout programs never work,” from political scientists.  Well, they were wrong.  Rock the Vote register a million first time voters and for the first time since the 18 year olds got the vote, turnout in the 18-24 group went up.

I also like to remind people that many who waited until the evidence for television’s impact on politics found themselves on the losing end of a TV campaign by their opponent. If we wait for the evidence to arrive, we will always be behind the curve. READ MORE »

Cross-posted on e.politics

A tough question came up in a conversation with a visiting group of Danish communications professionals last week — how do you actually measure the effectiveness of social media outreach? At that moment, the questioner seemed to be looking for some grand sweeping mechanism, but I think the reality is much more complicated: how you measure social media depends on what you’re trying to make it do.

Trying to Grab Hold of a Cloud

Here’s the problem: as with so much communications work, the effects of social media outreach can be quite diffuse. Say your advocacy campaign has a video on your issue out on YouTube — how do you measure the influence it has on the public mind? Some thing with that network of activists you’ve laboriously built up through Facebook — how do you find out how much good they’re actually doing you?

READ MORE »

The coming of age of the Millennial Generation, the first civic generation since the GI Generation (dubbed the Greatest by Tom Brokaw), is converging with the arrival of the most civic-friendly communication technologies we have ever seen. And with this convergence, American politics is being reshaped. That was the message delivered yesterday by Morley Winograd and Michael Hais at the Internet Advocacy Roundtable. The authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics provided some serious grist for the mill to the audience gathered at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Building on a rich body of research about political realignment in America, Hais and Winograd explained that a key driving force in realigning the political landscape is the arrival of new communications technology, and the coming of age of a new generation that embraces the technology and demands its incorporation into the political process. The rise of radio in the 1930’s and television in the 1960’s both reshaped politics in this country. And today, the rise of online social media is doing it once again. READ MORE »

Earlier this week, I received an email from my sister-in-law asking me to take action in support of the Protect Our Children Act – a bill currently being considered by the U.S. Senate.

Originally, she learned about the legislation on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah tends to be very selective with issues she endorses, but when she does support an issue or cause, she can generate a sizable grassroots response.

My sister-in-law not only sent the email to me, but also passed it along to about three dozen other friends and family members.

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.