March 2006 Archive

Quick Update: Both Olga and Anna have met are planning on meeting with President Bachelet and have been successful in generating some news coverage (See Centre Daily and Santiago Times). For more information, they have also released a press release clarifying some of the mistakes on the Santiago Artle (including the fact that now 27 lawmakers have signed on, above the original 14). I include the press release for clarification and you can learn more at http://www.findboris.com.

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Recently, I was at the IPDI Conference (see earlier post)
and met a young lady who is waging a two woman campaign to generate visibility on an American citizen’s kidnapping that occurred in Chile over 20 years ago. Interestingly enough, after twenty years of uncertainty and frustration, the Weisfeiler family might finally get the information they have dearly sought after these many years with a personal meeting with the new President Michelle Bachelet this coming week. But they need our help to get Senators and Representatives to sign on to a letter to show the US Congress’ support for closing out this case.

On Christmas Break in 1985, Professor Boris Weisfeiler from Penn State was on a hiking trip near the Chilean border where he mysteriously disappeared. Chilean authorities (after a cursory investigation) concluded he had drowned and promptly closed the case.

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Just got a couple of press releases from Zack Rosen in the past seven days - first, announcing the launch of the alpha version of the hosted version of Civicspace (see them at www.civicspacelabs.org). Then, today, Zack announced the “fiscal sponsorship” of the non-profit arm of Civicspace - working through the auspicies of Compumentor. With Kieron and Andrew leading the for-profit arm and Zack doing what he does well (evangelising) - we shall see how the next phases of Civicspace works out. I, for one, am very interested in seeing how Civicspace (hosted) competes against the likes of Convio, Kintera, GetActive, OrchidForChange, DIA and others in the space.

I am a *big* fan of the open-source/shared building premise that Civicspace offers - sharing the technology across the universe of Drupal developers. But the challenge is how to drive the community of developers toward what will deliver for particular constituencies. It will take time to develop a fully-fleshed product and then to establish the brand (as Kieron and Andrew are working on) but the challenge tends to be the market opportunities - and how things will drive development priorities. I anxiously await the next stages of development…

Tags: Civicspace Zack Rosen

Listening in on the SXSW conference with Henry Copeland from blogAds moderating. At the conference, Marcos (from DailyKos), Michael (from redstate.org) and Ruby (from NetCentricCampaigns) are discussing the impact of blogs in the coming elections.

Interesting content - and seems to carry on from the IPDI conference - that the future techs will be: mobile platforms, social networks (my read: detailed databases) and easy publishing will begin to enable others to speak out that are still not part of the conversation as of yet. Michael suggests that politics will still use the techniques they already are comfortable with today - and just use tech to enable it. Essentially - reduce the friction and speed up access and visibility of action through the web and telecoms medium (read: Asterisk and mobile).

Tags: SXSW mobile campaigning

During IPDI, I had a number of campaign consultants speak to me about various companies and their technologies. In the course of the conference, I discussed database solutions (e.g. voter file database management like Aristotle and NGP), web content management solutions (e.g. DIA, OrchidForChange, civicspace, iStandFor, GetActive), bulk email services (e.g. ExactTarget, WhatCounts, Sparklist, ConstantContact), blogging and podcasting services (e.g. TypePad, Blogger) and contribution services.

While all of these technologies have their strengths and weaknesses, the real magic is not specifically in the technology. It is in the process behind it - how does one use the tools in an effective manner with the right content and respoinse system behind it?

The best contribution engine coupled with the easiest bulk email system will do very little if:

• the content is not compelling,
• the response to customer needs are not met, and
• if the campaign does not “interact” with the constituents.

The Internet and the type of interaction that people expect from an Internet site is at a higher response level than what has previously been assumed. The Internet (like the McCain-Feingold Finance Laws) brings everyone down to a common level and can bring power to individuals that were previously unidentified as strong influentials. But, in order to handle the change in dynamic, campaigns need to get the tools (read: technology) and the talent (read: people with process). The question is: how do you find the right process to improve your interactions to generate what you want (read: donations, volunteers and votes)?

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Spent Tuesday and Wednesday at the IPDI conference catching up with various friends and vendors. Excellent panel on mobile solutions (see Mozes and POLItxt) and a discussion on VoIP and softPBXes (think Apache for the phone services) and how it will revolutionize the political industry. A sunning summary of what I learned:

“The Changing Media Landscape” - with Chris Nolan, David Weinberger, Dan Gilmore and Alex Jones.

Personal technology are forcing a conversation to occur whether through blogs with individuals discussing amoungst themselves or social network spaces forming (e.g. myspace, facebook) that are becoming the new “town halls” or “third spaces” in this medium. And even though 100 years ago, the explosion of publishing that occurred with the advent of an inexpensive printing press eventually lead to a consolidation of media channels as seen today - this explosion will have to be handled in a much different issues because of ease of publishing, ease of distribution and ease of access. (paraphrasing Dan here). Services like Digg and other collaborative news sites (like NewsVine) will begin to create and dominate the community awareness of news content in a collaborative sense, instead of relying on large media brands to select the appropraite content to a wide audience.

One question I still have - will access to capital for marketing or government agreement with carrier restrictions (e.g. net neutrality) be the friction that causes tthe slow-down and consolidation. As with every ecosystem, there tends to be an explosion of growth and then a winnowing down of the growth to the strong few. A recent article spoke on this - tho I do not remember where it was. (Special note: Chris Nolan - exceptional moderator with her focus on the audience level of understanding).

One more thought: as these sites begin to proliferate - I would wonder why Digg or NewsVines do not create versions of their services (like syndication/white labels) for different communities. One lesson from eGroups that I thought was particularly well-suited to eGroups was the creating of ccgroups.com - essentially a Christian Community eGroups that solely supported the Christian Community mailing lists (Disclosure: I was the Director of Marketing for eGroups and built this deal). Interestingly, during the time I tracked it - ccgroups was either the third or fourth most prolific “grouping” on eGroups at the time before acquisition with Yahoo! (below the main site, eGroups Japan and adult content).

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