Political World | Hype vs. Reality in Campaign 08

On the technological challenge of making political news easier to digest…(and my attempts to digest everything being said and blog it up)

With so much information out there on the political campaigns (nearly every one this year had an official blog; unofficial blogs are even more abundant), how to manage content…

Most interesting to me is fellow Bostonian John Della Volpe (he just mentioned Deval Patrick’s extremely grassroots campaign) of Harvard IOP and Social Sphere Strategies.

Anthony Wojtkowiak of the MTV Street Team talks about the difference between the Obama and Clinton campaigns (I lost track of my typing, but looking at his page, I can see that he is not so much interested in politics as he is policy)

Another idea I heard while I was looking at Wojtkowiak’s page (and thus did not see who said it) was that of mobilizing older people (what, older than Gen X?) to use tech to communicate with younger generations (to start a conversation about politics) – very cool.

Final question: What do campaigns need to do to move the needle?

Anthony Wojtkowiak: “Opportunities to open dialogues with people who are interested in the issues that are important…It’s one thing if you have a candidate asking a question that [they’ve rehearsed], but it’s a totally different game when you’re talking to somebody who’s just Joe Citizen…and you have to answer the question honestly.”

Catherine Geanuracos: “All politics is not national – how do we take all that we’ve learned from this very unusual year and [apply it to smaller communities e.g. city councils], and how do we develop tools and use the tools we have to create sort of a storyline around those races and people and create the kind of intimacy that makes people want to get involved.”

Carolyn Washburn: “Creating a community of people who are involved in civic society – better participation/your campaign never stops.”

John Della Volpe: “There are more people who want to be involved than are today…If people, whether street teams [etc] ask what their job is…What are you going to do if you’re president of the United States to keep engaging people?”

Ellen Miller: “If I could wave the magic wand in terms of the current candidates: more openness, transparency build more trust and dispel notions of corruption [and special interest items]. It’s dramatic how people want information and see it as an antidote to corruption.”

Amy Schatz: “We’re seeing a lot of techniques that are being used to build candidates online…We’re going to see them a lot at the local level.”

Michael Silberman: “Move from treating voters like fans and providing them with [new ways to get involved]…Come up with ways to make voters have real, valuable roles in the campaign.”

More after lunch…