K Street Cafe

Who’s Who on DC’s Tech Scene (Tech President)
Washingtonian named its “Tech Titans 2011″ and the Gov 2.o and Politicos category included GSA’s Sheila Campbell, Engage DC’s Mindy Finn and Patrick Ruffini, and TSA’s Blogger Bob.

Politicians Seek ‘New’ New Media for 2012 Run (Internet Evolution)
Strategists on both sides have become much more sophisticated in all aspects of managing political messages in the digital age.

CARE, in Return to Roots, Will Offer Virtual Packages (New York Times)
The Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, now known as CARE, will be officially offering care packages online via their website.

US Funding Youth to Drive Social Change (Daily Nation)
The U.S. is funding youth groups in Kenya, the Middle East and North Africa to use new media in driving social and political change.

The Fireside Chat Returns to the White House
(The New York Times)
The White House press secretary is answering questions  from the public via Web cam in front of a crackling West Wing fireplace.

Selling the Census (Tech President)
The Census Bureau, this year, has turned to new media again and again to deliver its message to Americans.

First published on Partnership for a More Perfect Union.

You know something has had an impact on you when you’re still thinking about it weeks after the fact. And what happened recently on YouTube got me thinking.

Members of Congress and their staffs have gotten used to a world where a constituent writes a postal letter or e-mail or calls the office and the office responds in written form to the citizen’s concerns. One of the challenges that social media creates for congressional offices is that they can no longer just wait for constituent communication to come to them. They now need to monitor external sources to capture it all.

As Congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodgers said in our “Inside the Hill” web series, “the world has changed.”

What punctuated this for me was the flurry of activity around a Senate vote regarding the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy. Regardless of what side of this sensitive social issue you come down on, something happened that should be instructive to Members of Congress, advocacy organizations, and citizens alike.

The Service members Legal Defense Network (SLDN) is an organization dedicated to ending DADT. They recently enlisted Lady Gaga, of…well…Lady Gaga fame, to create and post a YouTube video asking her considerable fan base to call their Senators to request an end to the ban on openly gay service members. This video is interesting from a number of perspectives, not the least of which is that, when she calls her Senators live in the video, she never actually gets through to either one because the volume of calls to the Senate’s phone system resulted in a busy signal from one and an at-capacity mailbox from the other. What happens next is even more interesting.

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Adfero Group’s Chris Battle recently wrote an article titled, “Why Washington doesn’t get new media ,” which was published in The Hill.  Check out an excerpt from the piece below, or read the full article here.

When I first started working in Washington, in the ’90s, websites were still a novelty — a bad novelty. The average congressional website was little more than an electronic pamphlet featuring the face of a member of Congress smiling out like a trial attorney airbrushed onto an interstate billboard.
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Last week, The Cato Institute placed a full page ad in many major newspapers with a statement that showed there is not full agreement among economists about Obama’s stimulus plan.

But long before the ink was ever set to paper, thousands of people across the country had already seen the ad, and were commenting on it and sharing it with friends online.

By making the ad available to bloggers before it ran in the papers, Cato was able to generate a media buzz long before our main product even existed. Most of all, we gave bloggers the opportunity to scoop old media giants like The New York Times. (more…)

Facebook for suits (The Economist)
In recent weeks, business-focused social networking Web sites have seen an increase in activity due primarily from the uneasiness regarding the financial markets.

YouTube Accord Eludes House (Roll Call)
The Senate’s recent approval of third party Web sites, such as YouTube, has left the House wanting a similar resolution.

Will Social Media Change the Political Process? Has It Already? (Social Media Explorer)
With over a third of Americans having watched a political video on the Internet, could the predictions that this years election will be the “Social Media Election” be true?