We’re pleased to announce that Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey and probably the most net-savvy elected official in America, will be joining Personal Democracy Forum 2010 as a keynote speaker on the final plenary, June 4th. His fellow panelists are Arianna Huffington, GOP technology chair Saul Anuzis; Web 2.0 guru Tim O’Reilly, and New York Times technology columnist Nick Bilton.
Why is Booker the most net-savvy politician in America? It’s not just that he has more than one million followers on Twitter (1,065,044 to be exact). Nor is it because he probably has more local followers, per districta, than any other elected official (actually, no one really knows for sure, but he’s got four times as many followers as he has constituents). It’s because he really uses social media naturally, and because it’s making him a better listener, a better community-builder and a better mayor in the process.
Here’s what my colleague Nancy Scola wrote after Booker won a Shorty Award for Government:
Booker is engaged, human, willing to bring a shovel to someone’s driveway after they complain about the snowfall, and he has a habit of quoting spiritual leaders in his tweets. Not to be crass about it, because Booker seems committed to revitalizing Newark, but there are worse ways for someone like Booker to develop a political platform beyond their immediate political circumstances. It’s hard to tweet as much as Booker does and keep up a fake persona, and as those of us who live in the great and insane state of New York can attest this week in particular, it potentially of benefit to voters and good politicians alike for us to really know, in advance, what the measure is of those that we chose to elect to office.
And here’s a taste of him talking about how he uses social media:
The closing plenary will be the capstone for a great conference. We’re expecting to cover:
-How Booker has changed how he does his job as mayor and thinks as a leader when he is contact, 24-7, thru two-way media like Twitter and other online social networks;
-To what degree Booker and other government officials and agencies are starting to reinvent government as a platform, and what more is needed to engage citizens more fully in the process;
-How open and interactive media platforms (such as HuffPost and O’Reilly Media) are succeeding as business models for the serious journalism of the future;
-Whether politics is genuinely being changed for the better (being made more transparent, accountable and participatory) thanks to participatory media;
-What the leaders and doers at PdF should be focusing on next: building better filtering tools; making more platforms for mass collaboration on civic projects; opening up more data–what else?
If you haven’t registered for the conference, don’t wait any longer.