Archive: Year: 2009

"I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship… The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth." --Historian Deborah Lipstadt, February 20, 2006, in reaction to the Austrian conviction of David Irving for denying the Holocaust. I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. My mother, Anna, spent most of World War II in hiding, along with the rest of her family, in different parts of Belgium, where she is from. They were fortunate to be sheltered by people involved in the Belgian resistance. Many other Belgian Jews were not so lucky. This past winter, I visited the Dachau concentration camp on the outskirts of Munich, along with my younger brother David....

I'm spending the day at a conference on "Money in Politics 2009: New Horizons for Reform" at the National Press Club, convened by the Brennan Center for Justice. Mid-day, I'll be moderating a conversation about the role of the internet in changing the political landscape with Lawrence Lessig and Adam Bonin. I'm also tweeting occasional observations from the event using the hashtag #bccfr, in case you're really hungry for this stuff. Michael Malbin just kicked off the first session with a very interesting talk based on his work and research at the Campaign Finance Institute on whether the so-called "small donor revolution" of the Obama campaign is a reality. Here are my notes on his talk, which I found quite refreshing...

Run, don't walk, to go watch Max Harper's detailed presentation on the "Hope Factory," the Obama campaign's system for connecting media, membership, fundraising and activism over the course of 2008 race. I've seen and participated in dozens of talks on "how they did it" but never heard anyone put it all together in one place in quite the way Harper does. Harper joined the Obama video team in July 2008, where he piloted the concept for the "Blueprint for Change" videos. Harper's talk is anchored around how the campaign understand the various uses of video, but as you'll see, he offers an overarching analysis of how all the parts fit together that strategists of all stripes will want to study. Here's...

If most media outlets covering the presidential campaigns had anything to say about it, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and other social media phenomena would get all the credit for making 2008 the most digital election ever. But that’s only part of the web story. Surely no campaign staffer worth his salt would deny the potential impact of a Barack Obama supporter posting a link on her Facebook page to the candidate’s site. However, the fact is many of the campaigns used a far more measurable online campaign tactic: paid online advertising. As early as January 2007, candidates still in the exploratory stages had begun buying ad space on the Web. Granted, they spent little compared to what they allocated to television...

For a federal agency that has struggled for years to modernize its computer systems, this is pretty impressive, and just a tad worrisome: Sometime yesterday afternoon, a woman named Liz Thompson posted this tweet: "Roh-oh, looking at an email in my spam folder from Federal Bureau of Investigations saying, "Message from FBI." Dare I delete?" Not longer after, @FBIPressOffice replied, "@thisfullhouse Yes, you dare.. and report it to our internet crime complaint center: » link to ic3.gov." Thompson seemed a bit surprised by the interaction, tweeting "They ARE watching," and then, in reply to two friends, "I know, kinda scary ...

Jeff Jarvis is now up, keynoting at the Government Web Managers Conference. As with prior posts, my notes that follow are semi-verbatim but not be taken as exact quotations, though when I put something in quotes, it's a good rendition of what someone said. My comments and observations are in [brackets]. Sheila Campbell introduces Jeff by telling the audience that he got to DC in part by Twittering his need for a ride from Baltimore, after his Amtrak train from NYC was delayed by a flood in that city. The audience cheers. Here's Jeff's rap: You are the best hope we have for transparent government. You are the link. You feel your shoulders just got heavier? Well, I'm here to offer some...

Sheila Campbell and Rachel Flagg kick off the second plenary session of the Government Web Managers Conference, noting that this the seventh annual web managers conference. (In 2001, it was just 12 people sitting around a conference room, Sheila notes.) They also note that these sessions are open to the media, but the breakouts will be off the record. Up next are Katie Stanton, director of citizen participation for the White House, and Bev Godwin, director, online resources & interagency development, White House. Their topic is citizen participation and engagement, and we expect to hear about new initiatives to engage the public online, and what people can do at their agency to build greater participation with target audiences. Again, here...

Here are my semi-verbatim but not perfectly precise notes from this morning's speakers at GovWebCon. Random comments and observations from me in [brackets]. Martha Dorris, Acting Associate Administrator of the Office of Citizen Services and Communications, GSA, opens the morning: "You are the front lines and directly impact the lives of the American people. This is a great time to be a public servant." The question now, is where do we go from here? She cites Obama's Day One memo on openness and transparency...

I'm attending the Government Web Managers Conference in Washington, DC, today and tomorrow, and I'll be posting periodic updates as the event unfolds. Some 400 web managers from the federal, state and local level are here, a sold-out crowd in fact. Last year, my colleague Andrew Rasiej spoke at the conference and reported being struck by how many attendees viewed Barack Obama as the presidential candidate most likely to open up government use of the web. It's still a bit early, obviously, in the Obama administration, to make full judgments about whether that expectation is being fulfilled, but over the next two days I hope to be able to report on some of the most interesting developments. This morning's keynote...

Jeremy Bird, the deputy director of Organizing for America, was back in South Carolina for the Democratic party state convention. In this video, shot by a local activist, he talks about the intensive community organizing model that was "in many ways started here in South Carolina" during the campaign, and promises that OFA is going to staff up across the state and cover "every county, every precinct, every block, every neighborhood." That's an audacious goal, reflective more of the Obama campaign at its height than anything the Democratic party has had in the state (or in just about any state) in the past. I'm gathering notes on OFA's continuing development, hopefully for a longer piece (if time ever permits me to...