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More: http://www.personaldemocracy.com/conference From: http://www.personaldemocracy.com/node/584 A Quick Guide to the Second Annual Personal Democracy Forum, This Monday, May 16 By Micah L. Sifry, 05/11/2005 - 10:04pm With the second annual Personal Democracy Forum just days away, anticipation is building. Here's a thumbnail sketch of what to expect: First, a wonderfully varied and experienced array of presenters, including Tucker Eskew (Eskew Strategy Group), Scott Heiferman (CEO of Meetup.com), Hugh Hewitt (The Hugh Hewitt Show), Arianna Huffington (The Huffington Report), Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine.com), Dianah Neff (CIO of Philadelphia), Joshua Micah Marshall (TalkingPointsMemo), Markos Moulitsas (DailyKos.com), Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Jay Rosen (PressThink), Doc Searls (Linux Journal), Dave Sifry (Technorati and my officially smarter little brother), Andy Stern (SEIU President), and Omar Wasow (BlackPlanet.com). Second, a clear theme. If I had to put it in one word, it would be "networks." Politics is no longer the province solely of big organizations, big-name politicians and big-foot journalists. In the last year, we've seen the blossoming of a 24-7 cosmos of self-starting, citizen-driven networks of bloggers and activists, some working in concert with older players and some totally new and independent. They’re raising their own issues, conducting their own investigations, and building their own powerful coalitions. The Morning Brew We're going to come at this theme from many different angles through the course of the day. Starting us off, Meetup’s Scott Heiferman will give us a vision of the "Napsterization of organization." Then Mindy Finn, the deputy director of eCampaigns for the Republican National Committee, will offer the political insider's perspective. Closing the circle, Martin Kearns, who advises an array of enviro groups, will explain the emerging world of "network- centric advocacy." Then, for the rest of the morning, the main auditorium will be focused on this phenomenon of networks as it is playing out across the political blogosphere. Dr. Michael Cornfield and Jonathan Carson will unveil the first harvest of their study of the role of top political bloggers in the last two months of the 2004 election, using a unique database of over one million messages gleaned from blogs, political chat sites, mainstream media coverage and the presidential campaigns themselves. Prepare to be surprised at what they're finding. Grassroots Media’s Dan Gillmor will offer a first response to their draft report, and hopefully Mike Krempasky--whose site Rathergate is at the center of one of their case studies--will have some comments as well. That'll be followed by three "high-order bits" (i.e. short, data- and idea- rich presentations) from Dave Sifry, Doc Searls and Leslie Harris, Senior Advisor at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Dave will map the growth of the blogosphere and help us see how the biggest blogs are starting to rival top news sites, while at the same time show how the "long tail" of millions of bloggers is creating a new media system far more influential than any group of brand-names. Doc will challenge us to expand our understanding of the Net as a place, not a pipeline, and offer a ringing call to keep it free from government interference. Which will lead right into Leslie's offering: some baseline principles for keeping the Federal Election Commission from over- reacting to the rise of robust political speech online. Meanwhile, the first of our breakout sessions will be taking place simultaneously. In one room, a diverse group of tech organizers--Allison Fine (E-volve), Kaliya Hamlin (Planetwork), Mike Krempasky (RedState.org), Jo Lee (CitizenSpeak), Sheldon Rampton (Center for Media and Democracy), and Dan Robinson (CivicActions), moderated by Christian Crumlish (author of The Power of Many )--will offer a guide to the best free and/or cheap tools that anyone can use to enhance their organizing power. And in the other breakout room, two panels will explore two very different but equally important subcultures online: first, conservative talk show host and blogger, Hugh Hewitt and BeliefNet's editor-in-chief Steve Waldman will describe the varied worlds of religious faith online, with Halley Suitt of Halley's Comment moderating their talk. Then Omar Wasow of BlackPlanet.com (which has over 16 million members), Chris Rabb of Afro-Netizen and Liza Sabater of CultureKitchen will delve into the changing dynamics of African-American community on the Web. Then we'll have a short mid-morning break. You might use it to visit with our stellar array of conference sponsors and exhibitors, including Burson- Marsteller, Civicspace, ElectionMall Technologies, iStandfor, Kintera, Leadership Directories and the Open Resource Group. You also may find yourself accosted by the CNN film crew that will be attending the conference, or some of the many other working journalists coming to cover the event. Be nice to them. Especially be nice to our own Brian Reich, who will be posting a rapid-fire series of podcasts from the conference, featuring his own commentary and interviews with many of our speakers and attendees. (Luckily for him, podcasting gear weighs a lot less than that satellite dish and transmitting equipment Al Franken wore when pretending to cover the presidential election as a free-standing correspondent for Saturday Night Live. An A-List Clash? Then, we'll all reconvene in the main auditorium for a big panel with a deceptively modest title: Using the Net to Move Your Issue. The speakers, Carol Darr (Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet), Hugh Hewitt, Joshua Micah Marshall, Markos Moulitsas, and Christopher Rabb, are sure to clash on a variety of questions, and stand-alone journalist Chris Nolan, who will be moderating, assures me that there will be absolutely no time wasted on the "Are bloggers journalists" question. Following lunch, we ease back into the forum with three simultaneous breakouts. The first, for people who want to learn the best practices in online political advertising, features three speakers who have basically defined the field: Michael Bassik, who has managed online ads for a host of Dems from John Kerry and the DNC on down; Eric Porres, who can match Michael campaign-for-campaign, only on the other side of the aisle; and Henry Copeland, whose Blogads platform leads the emerging field of, well, blog ads. The second breakout will herald the arrival of a new book, Extreme Democracy, and feature comments from several people who’ve written chapters in it. If you want to understand the flowering -- or emergence -- of people-driven/tech- powered politics in the last few years, this book is essential. And finally, for those who want to delve deeper into the challenging legal issues raised by the FEC's impending rule-making on regulating the Internet, our third breakout group will continue chewing on the question, with longtime campaign finance expert Ellen Miller moderating and Mike Krempasky, one of the leaders of the online campaign to keep the FEC out of this arena adding his view from the trenches. Then back to plenary mode for another look at the new potential of tapping networks, as seen through the experience of one of the country's top labor organizers, Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, the nation's fastest growing union. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he's exploring the new technology with alacrity, starting his own blog and developing a new online activist arm, PurpleOcean.org, in the hopes of re- igniting labor's fortunes. (I'll be interviewing him one-on-one. Luckily he's a really easy guy to talk to!) Wifi? Because! Stern will be followed by a colloquy on the promise of municipal wifi, another way to bring networks to more people. One of the country's leaders in this burgeoning movement, Dianah Neff, the Chief Information Officer of the City of Philadelphia, will offer her insights on the importance of this fight and how to win it. And then PDF founder Andrew Rasiej, a candidate for New York City Public Advocate who is making universal low-cost wifi a central theme of his campaign, will add his observations on why the moment for this issue has come. We'll split again at this point for a choice of three breakouts. The first, in the main auditorium, will focus on how politics overseas is changing. Trading insights will be Zack Exley, fresh off a stint working for the Tony Blair/Labor campaign in England; Harish Rao, a Dean campaign veteran who just spent a few weeks aiding the bloggers of Beirut in their fight for democracy; Hossein "Hoder" Derakshan, the Iranian who started the Persian blogging movement (where one of the current presidential candidates blogs!); and Nathon Gunn, who helped run Paul Martin's Internet campaign for Prime Minister of Canada. They’ll be assisted by moderator Rebecca MacKinnon, who has been all over the world lately building the Global Voices blogging movement. The second breakout, "Changing Your Organization's Internal Culture," is for participants who want to take what they're learning back to their own organization and make sure real change starts to happen. Two leaders who are in the midst of that very effort, Gina Glantz at the SEIU and Jed Miller at the ACLU, will help frame the discussion, and Michael Gordon (Group Gordon), Marty Kearns (Green Media Toolshed), Online Organizer Amanda Michel and Ravi Singh of ElectionMall Technologies will round it off, poked and prodded by moderator Andrew Rasiej. Our third breakout is for people who like lists -- the email kind -- and want to know more about how best to build them and how to engage their base in meaningful action. Several experienced veterans, Tom Matzzie of MoveOn, William Greene of RightMarch, Kathy Mitchell of Consumers Union, Greg Nelson of CTSG/Kintera and Juan Proano of Plus Three, will ground this panel in their hard-won experience. And moderator Matt Stoller will make sure to keep it lively. Clues to the Future After another break, we close out the day with two plenaries. The first, a conversation between Craig Newmark, the founder of community bulletin board giant Craigslist, and Zephyr Teachout, one of the Dean campaign's online organizing whizzes, will explore whether a Craigslist-type site focused on enabling political activity could work. One clue: it's harder than it looks. The second panel, an all-star discussion on the future of political media, will feature Chuck Defeo, who went from running the Bush/Cheney ‘04 online campaign to advising talk radio conglomerate Salem Communications on its Web efforts; Tucker Eskew, deputy assistant to President Bush until the end of 2003 and a top communications strategist; Arianna Huffington, the columnist and former gubernatorial candidate whose new mega-blog, The Huffington Post, is making a huge splash; Jeff Jarvis, the former editor of Entertainment Weekly whose BuzzMachine.com blog is must-reading on an hourly basis; and Jay Rosen, the NYU press critic who regularly serves up the most thoughtful dissections of the new and old media on his blog PressThink. Jennifer 8. Lee, a reporter who is one of The New York Times’ rising stars, will make sure the trains run on time during this dynamite discussion. After which, we'll all retire to a nearby bar, Coda, for a more than well- earned drink. Or three. And a chance to keep networking, the old-way. If you haven't registered yet for the conference, there's still space, and you can register online here. Or, we'll likely be able to accommodate you at the door (it's at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave at 34th Street). If you're already registered, we're looking forward to meeting you, and continuing the conversation we've had on this site.... -- Steven Clift http://publicus.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Past Messages, to Subscribe: http://dowire.org *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To UNSUBSCRIBE instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** New RSS XML Feed Available: *** http://www.mail-archive.com/do-wire@lists.umn.edu/maillist.xml
