I’m about to email just about everyone for the second time this week about the Politics Online Conference. Instead of just talking about the details of the conference, I want to focus on the fun part — the panels.

This year, like last year, all the breakout panels will be created and voted on by our friends and attendees. All the details are below.

For those of us who are more logistics-minded, the 2009 Politics Online Conference will be hosted by IPDI, Campaigns and Elections’ Politics Magazine, and GWU’s Graduate School of Political Management. It will be held on April 8 & 9, 2009 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center (1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004).

And here’s all you need to know about creating a panel at this year’s conference. Mind the deadline (January 13, 2009) — it’ll come up quickly! Read the rest of this entry »

It’s official! This year, IPDI and the Grad School of Political Management are co-hosting the Politics Online Conference with Campaigns & Elections’ Politics Magazine.

April 8-9, 2008 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. ‘

More details will follow within hours.

With all the excitement of the election and the transition to a new Presidency, some details have been lost along the way. One of the most important, but overlooked questions is: What role will technology play in the Obama administration?

Just the other day, a New York Times report surfaced that Obama may have to give up his Blackberry and personal email address when he enters the Oval Office. At first glance, this seems like a Luddite move. On the contrary, it is a decision based on security. Many email services such as AOL, Hotmail, and Gmail are not secure enough for government correspondence and are more susceptible to being hacked. As was seen with Sarah Palin, it is quite embarrassing when a leader’s email is exposed to the public.

Barack Obama wants to have a laptop computer on his desk in the White House. This may not seem like a giant leap-since laptops have been around since the 1980s-but he will be the first President to do so. Besides his personal use of technology, it is worth looking at how technology will affect policy in the new administration.

One of the biggest successes of the Obama campaign for President was the amount of emails and cell phone numbers it collected. With this information, Obama can now connect directly with much of the American populace; he will not have to worry about the filter of the mainstream media. Combined with the power of online video, Barack could become his own news network. Look out CNN!

When crafting policy, Obama will look to technology to save money. He has already proposed overhauling federal agencies’ performance metrics with more efficient and accurate technologies. Bringing private sector solutions into government could be a huge cost savings to the taxpayer.

While in the United States Senate, Obama helped to pass the Google the Government bill, which aimed to lay out every government expenditure in a database that could be searched by people(similar to how Google works). It will be interesting to see how Obama integrates this and if he mandates that all agencies move to this platform.

During his campaign, Obama promised to preserve Net Neutrality as President. With the actions of Comcast and other cable providers, it will be worth watching whether the Internet stays truly open under an Obama Presidency.

One of the keys to getting out of the current economic downturn is investment in technological infrastructure to make business and government more efficient and effective. Pushing through initiatives that improve the quality of broadband in America, invest in the sciences, and incentivize businesses in the technology sector will bolster the American economy and will further Obama’s ambitious agenda.

No matter what Obama accomplishes in the next four years, he will use technology to get it done. He would be smart to follow through on his campaign promises because he will find that technology can make even the most Luddite of places-the Federal government-work that much better.

This post was guest-blogged by Dan Manatt from Politics.TV

TO: Obama Technology Team

FROM: Dan Manatt/PoliticsTV.com

DATE: November 12, 2008

RE: Web Video: A Key Tool of the Obama Presidency

Summary

Team Obama should create/implement the following Web Video programs:

(1) WhiteHouse.gov/TV; (2) Weekly Obama Webcast; (3) GovTube; (4) put GovTube video content on non-governmental sites; (5) in every executive branch agency, create New Media, Transparency, and Technology offices; (6) have cabinet members/agency heads give monthly Webcasts; (7) Webcast the inauguration; (8) make the State of the Union an interactive, multimedia event; (9) make President’s annual budget a digital, multimedia document; (10) enact all of this and more first by executive order, then through legislation, so future Administrations can’t just hard reboot your digital legacy.

Full Memo

Congratulations on the election and the transition.

You revolutionized the way campaigns are run. And now, you are about to revolutionize the way the presidency is run.

Thank you for the opportunity you gave me to produce some of President-elect Obama’s early campaign Web Videos. In that vein – like everyone else in Internet politics these days – I figure I might add my 2 cents of unsolicited advice on how the Obama Administration should use video and rich media tools.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post is guest blogged by Dr. Louis Perron, an alumnus of GW’s Graduate School of Political Management, and a political consultant in Switzerland. His company is Perron Campaigns. In this post, Perron describes the Obama win for a mostly non-American, international audience.

The longest, most expensive, and most professional election campaign ever is over. The result is historic: the first African American will move into the White House. To use economic terms, a start-up with an exotic name (Obama) has beaten two market leaders (Clinton, McCain). There is a lot that campaigners, politicians, parties, companies and interest groups around the world can learn from the Obama campaign.

Sure, there are at least three circumstances that have little to do with the campaign but helped Obama enormously. President Bush has done such a lousy job that more than two thirds of Americans now have a negative opinion about his work. Also, after following Bush blindly during the war in Iraq , the U.S. media, this time around, was on the side of the Democrats. Finally, if Wall Street did not collapse, it probably would have been much closer (let’s not forget that McCain was slightly ahead early September). Now, that’s all correct. But what I am focusing on in this update are the factors that the campaign could control and how it did that.

Some observers think that the impressive thing about the Obama campaign is how it used the internet and other new technology. 8,000 internet groups, 50,000 local events and 1.5 million internet volunteers are indeed impressive. But that’s only one part of the story. Politicians often think that a campaign means to produce things such as TV spots, leaflets, or websites. In reality, however, a campaign can and should be seen as a series of decisions regarding the message, the strategy, fundraising, and products. The Obama campaign has reached these decisions early on and based on extensive research including polling and focus group discussions.

In numerous updates, articles, and speeches, I have emphasized the importance of a coherent and credible message. Politicians often think of a message as a slogan, in most cases nothing more than an empty motherhood statement. However, a good message is more than a slogan yet less than a party program. In the case of Obama, this was the message:

Barack Obama will bring the change that America desperately needs. He will get the economy going again, not only for Wall Street but also for Main Street. In concrete, this means tax cuts for 95% of Americans and expanded health-care. Unlike the other politicians, Obama has opposed the war in Iraq since the beginning. It’s time for a new hope and to leave the divisiveness behind us. Yes, we can!

The message was then summarized in a catchy slogan: change we can believe in and change we need. There was probably no one left in the country who did not know what Obama stood for. These are not empty motherhood statements such as “your guy,” “your friend,” or “fighting for you.” It is exactly what the targeted groups wanted to hear, a perfect and well researched match between the political demand and the political offer. According to the exit polls, 71% of those who were dissatisfied with Bush voted for Obama. Sixty-three percent of the voters said that the economy was their top concern and they voted overwhelmingly for Obama. Obama’s position on the war in Iraq has helped in drawing clear differences between him and Hillary during the primary.

If you are planning a campaign right now, ask yourself the following questions: have you formulated such a coherent message and written it down in a campaign plan? Are you a credible messenger for that message? Is it matching the demand of your targeted group? Are there still people in the country/district who have not heard your message? If yes, what’s your plan to change that? Even better would be to use scientific public opinion research to get objective answers to these questions.

What’s impressive in the case of Obama is the coherence, with which he defined himself and the discipline, with which the message was communicated. Talking about discipline, the top candidate plays an extremely important role. Campaigns are very chaotic and there is always a potential for internal rivalries. The candidate chooses his team and only he/she can empower his people and demand discipline. In the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John McCain (and one might add Fernando Poe Jr.), there were bitter internal rivalries and disagreement. In the case of Obama, the top candidate, the campaign manager David Plouffe, the chief strategist David Axelrod and all the thousand paid staff pushed and worked in one direction. It’s better to have a risky strategy but to have everybody on board moving in the same direction as opposed to having three clans with each pursuing its own great strategy.

There is another interesting detail: both Plouffe and Axelrod have experience in political campaigns but have never before run a Presidential campaign. This is yet another similarity between the Obama campaign and Bill Clinton’s run in 1992 (and a clear difference with the losing campaigns of Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton): young, hungry people win Presidential campaigns.

In my personal experience, European and Asian politicians focus too much on products and funds, and not enough about message, strategy and discipline. Especially in a bottom up, grassroots campaign, discipline is crucial. A movement with so many local layers and volunteers is only working if everybody believes enthusiastically in the same cause and if there is message discipline on top. The people who blogged for Obama, or those who went on Facebook for Obama, did it for the same reason as the people who simply voted for him: they wanted change!

Another thing that campaigners can learn from the Obama campaign is how it carefully targeted specific groups of voters and put together its coalition of voters. From the very beginning, the Obama campaign wanted to expand its base by registering and turning out record numbers of young and black voters. And, it allocated the resources accordingly. The result: 96% of blacks voted for Obama; they made up 13% of the total electorate (+2% compared to 2004). 66% of the 18-29 year old voted for Obama. They formed 18% of the electorate (+1% compared to 2004).

From the very beginning, the campaign wanted to expand the electoral map of possible swing states so as to have multiple ways to reach the needed 270 electoral votes. Again, it allocated the resources accordingly and stayed loyal to the strategy even in difficult times. The result is a landslide win in the Electoral College.

Linked to the message is also the messenger. Barack Obama is a once-in-a-generation talent in terms of communication and campaign skills. I simply don’t know of anyone who has watched an Obama speech live and who was not deeply impressed. However, this did not fall from heaven. On the one hand, he strategically used his strength, namely giving speeches. Like other great speakers before him, he has in fact built his entire career around speeches. On the other hand, he invested a lot of time and resources into becoming a better candidate. The team did extensive focus group research to explore weaknesses and find out ways to neutralize them.

Listen to Louis Perron discuss his analysis of the election results online on the German-language programs Der Club and Die Rundschau.

Over the next few months, IPDI will be working much more closely with GWU’s Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM). Our site, for example, will merge with their site. Our Politics Online Conference will be co-hosted by IPDI and GSPM (and Campaigns and Elections’ Politics Magazine!). IPDI has also worked closely with the GSPM to develop three new online politics classes that will launch on a graduate level this January.

And our blog will truly become “our” blog, compiling IPDI’s posts with those of GSPM faculty, staff, and alumni — including a lot of video.

This explains why I’ve been so quickly lately. And hopefully it will also explain why, suddenly, we will become very active and very loud once again.

Expect to hear more about all of the above soon.

This post was guest blogged by Edward A. Grefe, a professor in GW’s Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM) and director of the GSPM’s graduate certificate in Community Advocacy.

Every political campaign lends itself to becoming warfare. The stakes are high. Coming in second offers zero consolation. Winning is all that matters. The temptation to play “spit ball” instead of “hard ball” is an easy call especially if one is losing.

Because we see political campaigns as battles, strategies reflect those of a military exercise, even Wall Street. The tactics employed make campaign managers the political equivalent of a combination battlefield commander, mortgage bundler and derivative salesman. Just win, make the sale, as nothing succeeds like success, a consequence that can be very ugly – certainly during the campaign itself and occasionally later.

Read the rest of this entry »

Calling all students in the Washington, DC area …

What does the Internet mean to you?

Is it all about social network or entertainment or healthcare … or all three?

How is broadband deployed, and how do we insure continued growth?

What role should government play? What role shouldn’t it play?

That’s what we want to find out.

So please come and discuss your thoughts and concerns with leaders from the broadband community.

Please join us November 6th from 5:45 to 6:45 pmat the GSPM library of GWU, 805 21st Street, NW, Suite 401, Washington, DC, 20052. Food and drinks will be provided. Sponsored by NextGenWeb.org.