Hello all - Alex Steed here.

I'll be covering the Personal Democracy Forum, which is occurring on Monday and Tuesday, in New York (at Jazz at Lincoln Center!) for the next two days. From the conference website:

The Personal Democracy Forum is the world's largest and best known conference on the intersection of technology and politics. For the sixth year, more than 1,000 top opinion makers, political practitioners, technologists and journalists will come together to network, exchange ideas, and explore how technology and the Internet are changing politics, democracy, and society.

I'll be hunting down and reporting on as much nptech-related content as I can track down while here. I look forward to your feedback, and meeting you if you're here.

Tuesday, June 30

3:45p: 

Sitting in on "New Business Models: How to Survive and Thrive Financially in Online Politics"

Dave Karpf (Postdoctoral Research Associate at Brown University's Taubman Center for Public Policy):

• Craig's List comes along and changes ad revenues.
  
• Changes in the cost of information lead to new ways we produce that information (see: Clay Shirky)
  
• The paradigm for fund-rasing in the advocacy sector since the 70s had heavily focused on direct mail. As people pay bills online, people pay less attention to mail solicitation. While there's little data about this, it's "the most well-known secret" in the NPO sector that direct mail has been in steady decline - from the little bit of data seen, it's the 65 and older set who are seeing these pleas (as they're not paying bills online as much).
  
• MoveOn Model 1) Zero-cost scaling means larger lists, which is better (scaling becomes easier and more efficient) 2) No need to cultivate smaller lists of single-issue donors 3) (multi-issue generalists) are sending out emails about issues of the day) 4) Most donations are for targeted, restricted use.
  
• The implications for NPO advocacy are as follows: 1) There has been [an organizational] generation shift where new Internet-mediated organizations are outpacing long-standing groups. 2) Existing groups like the newspaper industry disrupted. 3) Political action - like journalism - remains popular, but need to think about how we fund large-scale operations. 4) Existing groups need to cut overhead costs and find new funds. 5) This is a great time for new organizations regarding start-up opportunities.
  

3:40p:

Conference attendance tip - I've seen a couple of really smart people with multiple-port power-strips/adaptors. Power outlets are few and far between at these things, so you'll always have an opportunity to charge up / make friends by coming prepared. 

2:01p:

Sitting in on "Online Video: Lessons from the Obama 'Idea Factory' and the 2008 Campaign"

• Soboroff: Candidates wouldn't have offered their opinion has I not gotten in touch with Joe Biden, who I ran into in a coffee shop. I called candidates and said, "Hey - Sen. Biden did this - do you want to be left in the dust?" We got Bill Richardson's video the next day.
• From a WhyTuesday? video, Ron Paul: "We should change voting day to April 15th." Haha. 
• Jacob Soboroff (WhyTuesday?): We vote on Tuesday because it was the most convenient day for farmers to vote on Tuesday about 160 years ago. Now Tuesday-based voting day is probably part of the broken voting system, so we got out there, asked people and elected officials why we even vote on Tuesday as a means of letting people know that Voting Day's - er - day should be reconsidered. 
• Cooper: Blogs (81%) and search engines (11%) account for most of how videos are referred. Max out your tags. Network your video out there and get it on some blogs. 
• Cooper & Burch: If you've got a message, say it up front. After the first 10 seconds of a video, you lose 10% of your viewers. 
• Burch: Online video has very short shelf-life. 
• David Burch (TubeMogul): 93.6% of total election views came from user-submitted videos (i.e. mashups, pirated news clips). 
• Harper: Putting "video" in the subject increased the email open-rate 3-10%. It would be great to see some analytics from other organizations on this. 
• Cooper: The video is embedded, but hosted on YouTube so it adds to the counts as a view (unless it is set up as auto-view).
• Harper: [The Obama Campaign] would send out an email that had a link to the video, it would be embedded into the blog so if it was forwarded it would bring them back to the site, and then there would be a call-to-action afterward. 
• Max Harper (My.BarackObama.com filmmaker): Video can help drive an entire nation into a movement, as we saw during the campaign. 
• Grove: The "Call to Action" overlay drives people back to a site for action while they watch NPO videos - It shows up similarly to the way adds function on YouTube. More on one NPO's experience with it has been documented here. 
• Grove: Peak time for upload on YouTube is between 10a-2p (wherever the population is you're trying to hit) - because it's when people are actively using the Internet. 
• Grove: YouTube's reach spans demographics beyond cute kids and funny videos.
  
• Steve Grove (YouTube): This will be a practical session. 
• The session started with the video "How to Use YouTube for Politics." 

12:35p: 

I bought Douglas Rushkoff's new book Life Inc. last night and read the introduction and first few chapters. It is amazing, thus far. Just the introduction shines a lot of light on my hostilities towards bad networking etiquitte (See: the update from 4:23p yesterday). More on this soon. 

11:50a: 

Cultural Anthropologist Michael Wesch: "The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube Culture and the Politics of Authenticity":

• He discusses Neil Postman's assessment of 1984. He sees that Huxley's future, not Orwell's idea came into reality. We are entertaining ourselves to death. Conversations are controlled by a few, designed for masses, always entertaining, collective conversations build our culture of irrelevance, incoherence, impotence.
  
• He is discussing the changing face of "authenticity" in the context of media ecology. 
• The suggestion is that since we know ourselves through conversations with each other, new media provides new ways of relating with each other, thus new media provides a new way of knowing outselves and notions of authentic selves.
• There are over 20,000 YouTube videos addressed to the YouTube community a day.
• When people make their first videos, there is an awkward shyness because there is this feeling they're "talking to themselves," as the conversation is not with the community, but with the mechanisms that facilitate the discussion. 
• Marshall McLuhan was talking about re-cognition 40 years ago. He suggested that we are living in the world of instant replay. Events are recorded and then replayed. It offers a means of re-cognition. The first time an event happens, it's cognition, and the second time it's re-cognition, which is a deeper play of awareness than first first.
• "Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred." - Lev Grossman
• "We're all learning, about each other and about ourselves - and I think that's what YouTube should be all about." - YouTube user in a video montage.
  
• The "Free Hugs" guy, who five years ago was looking for a way IRL to re-connect with people, was "one of the first heros" of YouTube. 
• How can we use these mini-online connectivity movements to fight narcissistic disengagement in a still somewhat frivolous culture?
• Move from 60's and 90s definitions of "Whatever" from ambivalence to positive and connected engagement: "I care. Lets do whatever it takes ... by whatever means necessary."
  
• Standing ovation.
  

11:10a:

Alec Ross, who I last saw delivering a talk at the 2008 Northeastern University Global Engagement Summit. He is now working as Senior Advisor on Innovation to Sec. Clinton at the State Department:

•  When the President speaks, let's get the message out via social networks, mobile phones, etc. 
• Within new paradigms, you can find like-minded people online with whom you can organize, and thn drive action against bad actors.
  
• If Paul Revere were a modern day citizen, he wouldn't have rode down the street, he would have Tweeted. And we wouldn't have known his name [...] Everybody with a cell phone has a printing press and a global distribution network.
  
• Sometimes it can be messy. They can cause distruptions. Some might say they're good, and others might say they're bad. They're hard to anticipate. 
• It is extraordinary for me is to see Sec. Clinton pushing on us so hard. We need to do different and new things. We shouldn't see foreign policy as closed to the American people. It's very, very early, but I am humbled by the support Sec. Clinton has shown for the experimentation. 
• Audience question: To the extent that there are flashmobs throughout the world, do you see that there are or will be any that need to be tapped down? Answer: One of the things about networks and freedom of expression is that we aren't always willing to agree. One of the other dynamics of the Internet - and ability to create flashmobs - sometimes our enemies can do the same. It's not appropriate for me to make that judgement here, but lots of people come up with lots of different ideas to put behind their action. 
• [I'll clean this post up / add more in a bit] 

9:59a:

Time to grab some coffee with Morley Winograd. 

9:53a: 

I had a short but interesting conversation with Gerald Major, Director of Customer Support at Meetup this morning (this is - for the positive - why I was late to the last session). We were discussing the monumental task that can be looking for new blogging software, and I was recalling having written a series of blog posts for The Point last year about Meetup organizers, which I found to be an extremely valuable experience.

A lot of these conferences are fantastic exchanges of ideas, energies and business cards, but a lot of the content is rehashed over and over.

• It's important to organize online, but to also to get offline!
  
• Construction of social capital is key!
  
• This message (and your lanyard) was brought to you by Facebook!
  

But there is somewhat-often a lack in a substantial conveyance of the experience of the community organizer. Often due to structural and time constraints, it is extremely difficult to convey how difficult, meaningful, challenging and gratifying these experiences are. For this reason, I look to Meetup organizers to share their experiences over time, as they are extremely valuable resources for sharing their unique and knowledgable sets of experiences. I look forward to doing more of that on this blog, and seeing Meetup do the same.

9:35a: 

I just walked in the conference a bit late, and into a session called "Innovation in Government, Obama-Style." As I walked in, Vivek Kundra, Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States (and described on Jack and Jill Politics as super-smart and "kind of a hottie"), was receiving some big applause. He is discussing the launch of the Obama Administration's Federal IT Dashboard.

He has emphasized the fact that the project is in Beta, and intended to keep government open, transparent, and participatory. 

"How do we make data actionable?" he asks. This is the motivating question for opening up this information. Since I missed a little more than half of the session, check out Jack and Jill Politics' article about the project here.

Also - Mike Gravel is here and he is asking questions. Amazing.

Monday, June 29

5:15p:

In response to "Andrew Rasiej's morning lament about the lack of black and brown faces in the [Personal Democracy Forum] crowd," culturekitchen's Liza Sabater asks: "What have you (the general YOU of infuencers, movers and shakers whose job seems to be to go exclusively from one tech and media conference to the other) done lately to support black and brown owned blog publishing and web-centric companies?"

5:05p:

There's an hour and fifteen minutes between now and the cocktail party. You know that that means, right? Time to go out and find some pizza. 

4:32p: 

Some interesting PdF Tweets from the past hour:

• @ericmortensen: Back in the office after 1/2 day at #pdf09. Got some great info on Iranian blogging networks and some words of wisdom from @ruskoff.
  
• @ruthannharnisch: While immersed in the Twitterverse at #PDF09, it's easy to forget there's a world outside this insular, privileged Facebooky crowd.
• @zbrisson: Unimpressed with any of the organizing breakouts. Washed over conventional wisdom. Enough about lists and tweet brands. #pdf09
• @dominiquepiotet: Is Democracy and Tech a US only topic? Almost no non US speaker[s] at #pdf09. Very strange.
• @digidave: "A crisis is danger + opportunity." - overheard at #pdf09
• @lesliebradshaw: Based on CALPIRG mobile data, Becky Bond points out: One of the cheapest things u can do is text + remind ppl to act (e.g., vote) #pdf09
• @nishachittal: Cost of communication has not necessarily been made easier by internet as everyone always says — still a lack of access for many #pdf09
• @beebea: Wish I was at #pdf09 rather than here at my desk as usual. Sigh.
  

4:23p:

I feel compelled to share just a quick observational-suggestion about the basic procedure of person-to-person networking [in real life]. The order of operations during a "networking" self-introduction should proceed as follows:

1. Introduce self
2. Shake hands
   
3. Talk for a bit about other person, then self
4. Exchange business cards (if/when appropriate)

1. Hand person business card
2. Incessantly talk about self
3. Walk away, satisfied that you have gathered a valuable, new contact

The exchange of business cards is not itself a handshake. 

Shockingly this bit of advice doesn't stem from one observation - or several observations - made at PdF. It is based on the shocking sum amount of similar observations that I have made while attending dozens of conferences in the past couple of years.

This funder and/or potential site user/evangelist and/or general supporter that you've imposed your over-eager identity upon has become uninterested in you after you have made it clear that you are interested only in propagating your own mission. As an early-adopter/peer-evangelist, I can attest to the fact that your card gets discarded (get it? dis-CARD-ed? rimshot) in the event this faux-pas is made, and there's a strong chance that I will have associated the negative experience with your brand, thus causing for you more harm than good. Friends of mine in funding positions have echoed the same sentiment.

So again...

1. Introduce self
2. Shake hands
   
3. Talk for a bit about other person, then self
4. Exchange business cards (if/when appropriate)

4:12p: 

A quick bit of Personal Democracy Forum news: For today and tomorrow only, PdF is making a special offer to conference attendees and anyone else interested in attending next year's conference in New York City, scheduled for June 21-22. If you purchase a ticket now, you can bring a friend for free. That's right, a two-for-one deal. Tickets are $495, or $395 if you are a government or nonprofit employee. If you know you are coming, register now for PdF 2010. If you don't know the name of the person you're bringing, you can assign your second ticket later.

2:07p:

Sitting in on the breakout session "Building the Social Economy: Craigbucks, Newmarks and Making Whuffie." The panel will feature Doughlas Rushkoff (a favorite public intellectual of mine - I just bought his book Life Inc.) and Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor and NetSquared friend. The panel is moderated by the ever-excellent Nancy Scola:

• Rushkoff: Human relationships has been spun as messy, and there might be some expectation of reciprocity. People go to lactation consultants. Why go to a lactation consultant when there is an old woman in your apartment building who has had 9 kids and you can ask her how - she'll happily tell you. But we don't do it because we then think we'll owe her something, when in fact this is actually the much more fun way to go about things.
  
• Rushkoff: Branding happened to replace human connection. Corporations took over for the personal relationship. One used to buy oats from Joe, but now they are bought from a corporation with a Quaker on the box. Now one has a relationship with the Quaker, not Joe. The advantage we have over a corpration in the market place is that we are actual people. The opportunity is to re-humanize commerse. Make your business and your life somehow the same. The money does not make it dirty.
• Hunt: I am not frustrated with 'bots; I'm frustated with people who act like 'bots. Some people act like corporations rather than the other way around. 
• From Hunt's book: "To succeed in this Web 2.0 world, you have to turn conventional wisdom on its head and become a social capitalist. A social capitalist is as ravenous as corporate titans like John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates for success, but the coin of the realm is different. People are on social networks to connect and build relationships. Relationships and connections over time lead to trust, which is the key to capital formation. The capital I'm talking about, though, is not of the monetary variety. It is social capital, aka whuffie, and a social capitalist is one who builds and nutures a community, thereby increasing whuffie."
• Rushkoff: "For a company to actually do something - to actually create something - that's rare today." Companies want to be transparent or whatever, but they have nothing to build a culture around. If there are people in the company who make and like the thing, then it's easier to build a community around that. 
• Hunt: Being conscious of our wuffie means we're trying to constantly positively contribute to the world. Also, it's important for one to find their higher purpose. 
• Hunt: Listening is essential to wuffie-building.
• Hunt: Googling someone is a way that our community assesses someone else's wuffie.
• Rushkoff: The Internet has helped to make it possible to reclaim local economies from the banks and corporations we have previously outsourced them to. 
• Rushkoff: The kind of money we use is just one kind of money. Looking at just "money" is like only looking at the world through one operating system. This "one money" served the ruling classes well, and empire expansion well, but happened at the expense of preserving local currencies. Now, via organizing wuffie, we're looking into reinvestigating new currencies. 
• Rushkoff: The Internet - initially a hacker community - was at its origin a gift-economy, and this has long been confusing to business. "In those days, we were working in a gift, a social economy." Then, I said that social currency was "next." The Internet was a contact, not a content space. 
• From the PdF website: "Whuffie," a term invented by sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow, is social capital, or in Tara's terms, reputation. She writes, "You lose or gain [whuffie] based on positive or negative actions, your contributions to the community, and what people think of you....In every online community I've been part of, whuffie is a core component of connection; in many cases it is more valuable than money."

12:50p: 

Hey! Look! It's [N2y4 Featured Project] Handheld Human Rights representative Mark Belinsky:

12:30p:

Heading to lunch with friend and Change.org founder Ben Rattray. I'll keep you updated on any juicy tid-bits that come out of that. 

11:39a: 

danah boyd is worried about social networking utopia rhetoric, specifically about it being an "equalizer." She is presently showing the correlation between social networking site preferences and perceptions of race/age usage. 

She suggests that the move from MySpace to Facebook is an instance of "white flight."

"MySpace has become the ghetto of the digital landscape," she says, quoting a teenage Facebook user. "This should scare the hell out of us," she says. 

She cleverly equates the move to Facebook to crossing the street in order to avoid the riffraff. 

Despite the fact that high schools are integrated, we can see how segregation between high school students plays out online.

The question is this: How do we be conscious of these divides when we're looking at what's being said on these sites and are tempted to think that this is how "the people" are thinking.  

"There is no universal 'public' online," she explains. 

"If you're on Facebook or MySpace, you're only seeing a portion of the world." 

11:25a:

Hey! Look! It's [N2y4 Featured Project] SeeClickFix representative Ben Berkowitz:

11:07a

Haha:

• Me to Ben Rattray of Change.org: The Internet is really slow here, huh?
• Ben Rattray, deadpan: Do you think a lot of these people will be using the Internet?
  

10:15a

Mayor Bloomberg talked about "Big Apps," a challenge to citizens to make new applications that utilize city data, and it looks a bit like Washington, DC's Apps for Democracy (in a rad way). A website will house the city data and citizens will be encouraged to innovate using it. For stage one, he says huge volume of data will be released.

He suggested that with information about restaurant cleanliness might be used to create an app that offers comparative health-grading data.

He hopes this challenge will, in this example, "incentive cleanliness, and "empower new yorkers to improve their quality of life" on the whole.

Cash prizes will be used to incentivize this innovation, and the mayor will take the grand prize winners out to lunch, after assessing the restaurant's cleanliness via a new phone app, of course.

11:04a

During a session with Nate Silver from Five Thirty Eight, an interesting Tweet came from @toddeherman: "Are we going to ignore Saul Alinsky's influence over how the President USED social networking and PR?"

10:04a

"Good information is the key to good management." - Mayor Michael Bloomberg

9:55a

"It's some of the smallest nonprofits and campaigns that have the best stories to tell, they just need to figure out how to tell them." - Joe Rospars

"Successful businesses like successful campaigns realize they have to tell a story." - Mark McKinnon

9:47a

"I don't have a problem with the government watching me, as long as I can watch them right back." - Rasiej on the advent of citizen policing [of election-watching in particular] by way of cell phone video capturing. I talked with Allison Fine about this [Twitter Vote Report specifically] here on the blog a few weeks back.

9:45a

"We have to have an ongoing discussion about privacy, because it is being defined by a whole new generation. We have to redefine what the perameters of privacy really are in a connected age [...] I see it as a collaborative effort." - Rasiej in response to an audience question about privacy concerns.

9:34a

"The term public should be redefined as searchable and readable online" - Rasiej on his, Micah Sifry's and the Sunlight Foundation's view on the definition of "public" documentation.

9:20a

"Organized minorities tend to be more organized than organized majroities." - Andrew Rasiej on the on and offline power of organized political minorities.

9:10a

Watch the PdF "Twitterslurp" here.