Block Type #1: Them (people and organizations)

At times, it’s in someone’s best interest for a problem to persist. Companies often consider it in their best interest to skimp on employee benefits, for example. It’s in the best interest of my upstairs neighbor to practice the piano at 11pm.

Campaigns on The Point are modeled specifically to break blocks like this, by manufacturing the tipping point that makes it in the block’s best interest to get out of the way. In the above example, consumers might organize a boycott against a company that only begins once enough people join (the tipping point) such that the loss of them as customers will cost more than offering benefits to their employees. Or they might offer a carrot instead of a stick, by creating a campaign pledging business to a company that provides exceptional benefits.

Block Type #2: Us (you, me, and everybody)

Certain problems are solved by getting people educated. To reduce the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, for example, we need to be aware of their existence and understand how to prevent them.

While the Web has a proven potential to quickly and cheaply spread information, often those most affected by these problems aren’t online. And I don’t know about you, but when I’m online, I’d way rather be reading about video games than STDs.

So I suggest finding a way to turn an “us” block into “them.” Identify an organization that can help increase awareness, and target a campaign at whatever is blocking them from doing so.

Why I bring this up

While these block categories aren’t a strict dichotomy, thinking about your problem this way helps determine the best tools for solving your problem. And more importantly, it moves us beyond blunt “catch-all” tools like petitions or letter writing campaigns, the potency of which are often at the mercy of PR.

Identify your block, and you’ll find many ways to leverage the power of individuals above and beyond raising a stink.

[Sen Obama's] meeting with Angela Merkel taught him a whole new expression.

“When we were talking about Iran,” he told me, “it turns out that carrots and sticks in German is sweetbread and whips, which I thought was a little more evocative.”

At Netroots Nation 2008, Dr. Lawrence Lessig spoke as a keynote and presented Change Congress, his new initiative to use connective tools to help steer the government body into a new direction. I asked Lessig why, after 10 years of tackling copyright and intellectual property issues, he had decided to move on Congress. He responded, “We had hit a level of success, the issues were no longer hard, and I felt like I was getting lazy so I said ‘I’m going to throw everything I am doing away and do something different.’”

Even more amazing, he explained, “And I in fact said, ‘I am going to do that every ten years. Every ten years I am going to throw away all of my intellectual capital and work on something new.’” And so here he is, trying to corral Internet grassroots activists on the left and right to act against what many consider to be a failed government body. Here, he discusses using the carrot model to change the government, how true change has to be “purple” and how he plans to attract the attention of the not-so-obvious audience.

Make Something Happen: Outside of a crowd like those at Netroots Nation, which is predisposed to being supportive of your work, how do you plan on bringing the attention of the public to Change Congress?

Lawrence Lessig: We’ve got a big push now to grow a list of people who want to participate in as many different ways as we can. Part of what the Trippi organization is doing is helping us think about how to parse, simplify, or extend the message so that it can reach a wider range of people than those who are otherwise coming to events like [Netroots Nation].

I spent an enormous part of my life speaking and not all of the speeches are ones that I give for 2000 person audiences, so I speak in every venue I possibly can to get people to think about that. Everything I produce, I make available for other people to use as well.

I think that’s as much as we can do right now. As this thing gets going and other people who are running campaigns begin to incorporate this message into what they’re doing, I think that will be another kind of leverage point that will be very important to us as well.

MSH: Is public dissatisfaction with Congress correlative to the public’s feeling of disengagement with the process?

Lessig: I think there’s a number of things that plays into it. Some people are skeptical that [9%, the number of constituents happy with Congress's performance] is a meaningful number. The important thing to do is to see how it has changed over time. So if you don’t think it’s 9% and you think that it’s 15%, the one thing it’s not is 40%. Just after World War II, it was above 70% so part of it is that people have become disengaged. Part of it is that they just don’t have faith that there is any integrity in the system — that Congress is just particularly bad at drawing lines and fighting this particular president on certain issues, that they’re so quick to think that it’s worse to be seen as an obstructionists. But I think it’s better to be seen as an obstructionist of bad policy than I think it is to support this policy of the present administration. But even the best leadership is not going to restore the type of faith in this institution that we need — that’s fundamental to reform.

MSH: Are there any examples or success stories where you have seen people use connective technologies to spread awareness or illicit reaction? Stories where you realized that your mission is now possible?

Lessig: I think that some of the things Sunshine does with lobbyist [issues]. Bloggers like Matt Stoller, who put up the voting record and asked people to fill out information about the particular things [with regard to voting records]. Models like Wikipedia — What’s interesting about this is that they invite people to participate in their pajamas, meaning it is in a context where it is very easy to be connected and doesn’t require a huge demand, but then gives you a feeling like you’re making a contribution to something that is public and important as the inspiration. We’re seeing more and more of that.

But there’s been no organization that has really achieved the percentage of efficiency that I think is possible. We still have a lot of learn and to build from.

MSH: You noted in your presentation that Change Congress will have a panel of bloggers intended to be critical of the organization. Why do you find doing that important?

Lessig: It’s the ethic of the net. When you look at what happens on the net, [participants that] adopt an ethic of openness, [can help protect] from criticism. When you contrast that with a corporate ethic and a corporate website, where everything is closed and just great, I realize which side of the divide we’ve got to be on. So that wasn’t conceptually hard.

What’s hard is organizing it in a way so that it’s not self-destructive because it’s so easy for critics to take over space and to drive other contributors out. Figuring out how to architect that to the best advantage is not easy to do.

MSH: What concerns and criticisms about the model are you hearing back from this community?

Lessig: There is a concern about the substance of particular things, and this is likely because we haven’t made the message clear enough. My response to that is that we haven’t endorsed as much as we have made available. We might expand those and it might turn out that some are not relevant. If nobody cares about earmarks in the end, then maybe earmarks disappear. Making clear that what we’re doing is trying to facilitate a language with which we can understand, criticize, and change Congress. Not having a set of Ten Commandments is a hard thing to get people to be able to do.

MSH: How is Change Congress using the carrot model with regard to leveraging political activity?

Lessig: It will make it very easy for people to focus on the flavor of a forum that they care about, and then go out and support particular people who match that. Right now we’ve got a list of [supported] candidates, or you can go to an ActBlue,or a Slate Card page eventually, where you can support all of the candidates. What I want it to be is basically you make your representation that takes you to your ActBlue page and then you can make a choice to support all of them or pick which ones you’re going to support individually so that it’s just a simple 1, 2, 3 and then you support it so that candidates begin to say, “Wow. Where is this money coming from? Oh. I see there are people in my district who think this is important and they do something about it.”

MSH: Do you think that Congress knows what’s coming?

Lessig: No. And that’s our chance. They have a vague sense, but they don’t have a chance to focus on it because they’re still focused on getting funded in the old system. So I think we have eight years to build the alternative before it penetrates enough before they figure out how to co-opt this as well.

MSH: Does anyone in there get it?

Lessig: There are particular people who I am inspired by. Tennessee Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper is one; (Massachusetts Democratic Congressman) Ed Markie understands a lot of these issues. I wouldn’t say that my list of candidates is actually comprehensive enough.

MSH: You have said that you think that this change is purple (supportable by both the left and the right). You really believe that both sides are going to be able to work on this issue?

Lessig: I think that’s the only way we succeed. When RightOnline had that conference and wrote me and said, “You know, we’re having our conference at the exact same time [as NN08],” I wrote back and said, Why didn’t you invite me to talk?” They responded that they can’t invite everybody so I just said “OK.” [laughs]

We’ve got to learn how to speak about these issues in a way that includes the widest range. This is a matter of the constitution. We have to pledge support for reform of the constitution that makes it so the system functions.

[Lessig discusses Change Congress at Personal Democracy Forum 2008

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=_obGaWfkDgs[/youtube]

Liveblogging from Netroots Nation

Sunday:

12:42 PM -

It looks like other folks are writing about NN08 as well. Here’s a taste:

• I found this to be funny: Bob Bar showed up to the conference yesterday and strolled around the convention center.
• A good overview of NN08 by Joe Garofoli ]of the SF Chronicle]. We sat together at the Pelosi thing.
• Speaking of the Pelosi thing, I wrote a piece about it for Time (I secretly hope no one will hiss at some of my “old media” tendencies).
• A good (Huff)post on Krugman’s appearance, which I missed (sadly)
• Coverage of the decline in blogger profanity panel and thoughts on said coverage.
• Were you being spyed on? A Kos blogger blows the cover of a righty pretending to be a lefty as fodder for posts.

10:57AM - A friendly-looking, somewhat heavy kid in his late teens, rifle case slung over his back just approached me, asking if I knew if “the gun show were here [at the Austin Convention Center." He said, "I wonder if its down on this level. I asked around but it seems that folks with the orange name-tags [Netroots Nation attendees] don’t know much about it.

10:46 AM – Everyone that hasn’t already left is on their way out of the convention center. On my way in, I passed Jay Rosen, who looked as epically knowledge-filled as always. Here he is on a (very) short video from TheUptake defining citizen journalism:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcYSmRZuep4[/youtube]

10:37 AM – My conversation yesterday with Prof. Lessig was great and I look forward to posting something more substantial about it tomorrow. He discussed how Change Congress plans on employing the carrot model, presentations, and more. I asked him if he thought that Congresspeople on the whole have a sense what’s coming in the context of the ability of constituents to leverage power in a whole new way. He did not, he said, and for him that is part of the reason why the time to act is now

Saturday:

04:44 PM - Lots of milling around going on right now. People are getting end-of-the-conference antsy. I had a great conversation with Colin from ePolitics. His site is a fabulous resource for anyone who is looking for a how-to tool re: the field of political organization on the Internet.

02:06 PM – Blogging Creating Political Community Around Film (with Wendy Cohen of Screening Liberally and Participant Media, Tracy Fleischman of Live From Main Street, Jacob Soboroff of Why Tuesday?, and Jim Gilliam of Brave New Films).

• Great panel – It’s too bad I have to leave early.
• Check out The Uptake – Dude from the site is talking about it from the audience.
• Gilliam also discusses Meet The Bloggers, an interesting Meet The Press style version of a blogger talk show.
• Gilliam discusses Brave New Theaters, an interesting tool that helps folks organize socially conscious film screenings.
• Cohen – We’re into DIY, but we also like DIWP – Do It With Partnerships. We have speakers from NGOs who come to the screenings and discuss issues featured in the film.
• Cohen discusses Screening Liberally, and how they’re informing the public using independent films and documentaries. They have a blog, take action.

12:37 PM – Blogging Lessig’s keynote:

• “In order to solve the climate crisis, we need to solve the democracy crisis.” – Al Gore at TED. The democracy crisis, says Lessig, is an addiction to money. Our system, like the alcoholic is addicted to his drug, is addicted to its drug – Money.
• Lessig worked the video of the O’Reilly freakout into his awesome presentation under the guise of pretending he was having technical difficulties.
• Every contribution you make, add 9 cents to it and so as to puzzle candidates who receive the support.
• Lessig – Join us. Take the pledge. Follow us. Opt in by texting 69866.
• Change Congress is deeply purple (bipartisan), says Lessig.
• When the bloggers brought the issue of Trent Lott being a bigot back to the public attention after the traditional media forgot about it, we realized how powerful citizen media was becoming again.
• Lessig – The press our framers were focused on were pamphlets (like “back-in-the-day” blogs.
• Lessig – Bloggers and net activists are integral to making this democracy.
• Lessig – By 1785, the founding fathers had realized that representatives had become dependent on institutions, which were “constitutions against dependence.”
• The government gets easy questions wrong because of the distortion of the way money plays in Washington.
• Lessig is one of the best performance artists alive.
• Lessig – At 9% of people feeling as though Congress is doing a good job, the people’s feelings about Congress will be within the margin of error.
• Lessig – Why did Democrats change their vote on telcom immunities? The Democrats that flipped received twice the donations as those who did not. Why would we expect the public to believe that these circumstances are unrelated?
• More hissing. Liberals really hiss.
• Lessig – Trust is built by keeping money off the table. Think about Wikipedia. Money poisons trust. It is the key we need to focus on.
• Lessig, black shirt against a black backdrop, looks like a floating head.
• It hasn’t begun yet, but the food’s happening. I’ve heard chatter that indicates that attendees feel as though there was a “screw the vegetarians” memo that went out to the food vendors.

12:07 PM – I am preparing to blog about Larry Lessig’s keynote. We’ll be talking with Lessig later today, and I’ll feature notes based on our conversation later this afternoon. I’ll definitely be posting a larger, more substantial post about our conversation about Change Congress and Internet collective action very soon.

08:02 AM – Blogging Ask The Speaker Pelosi:

• Sorry about the slowing of coverage.
• Gore has trouble discussing the environmental impact of meat-eating.
• Gore has already received 3 standing ovations.
• Gore – The engines of distraction is already hard at work.
• Al Gore just showed up. Obviously.
• Sort of more-meandering answers seem to be losing audience members.
• Pelosi – “If you don’t like abortion, you should love contraception.”
• Pelosi – “Abstinence-only education is dangerous to the health of our young women [...] We should not be holding them hostage to our political considerations [...] We need more pro-choice member of Congress.”
• Pelosi – “Faith and science are compatible searches for truth.”
• Pelosi – Our first step was to win the congress. Now we need to win the White House.
• Moderator Gina Cooper is doing a really good job of challenging Pelosi.
• Audience member screams to Pelosi -”Answer the question [on FISA]!” when she dances around the answer.
• Mention by moderator of arresting Karl Rove gets standing ovation.
• Pelosi, as she has said elsewhere: The philosopher Hannah Arendt once observed that nations are driven by the endless flywheel of violence believing that one last, one final violent gesture will bring peace. But, each time they sow the seeds for more violence.
• Pelosi – Green is an issue of national security. It is a moral issue. We have to pass this planet onto the next generation better than we found it.
• Pelosi – Thank you, Netroots.
• Gina Cooper: Protesters will be kicked out and the event will be halted.
• Code Pink is in the lobby, protesting, calling for impeachment.

07:40 AM - Showering the parties and late-night pizza off of me and heading over to see the Speaker Pelosi event. There has been word of a “very big” surprise guest. Thoughts? I’m not even going to speculate.

Friday:

03:02 PM – Blogging Milblogging: How the Troops’ Writing Affects Our View of the War (with Alex Horton, and Richard Smith and Brandon Friedman of VoteVets.org and moderated by Kevin Maurer, a 5-year embedded AP journalist):

• Q: Our son was serving in Iraq and found that Air America was blocked by the military. Has that happened to you? A: Richard Smith: I tried to get VoteVets in Afghanistan and it was blocked. Brandon Friedman: This was before VetVoice. So we didn’t really have the podium online to tell other people. I verified that with other folks in Afghanistan, too. Vet’s for Freedom is too.
• Brandon Friedman: All you can do is tell people the truth.
• Richard Smith: As bloggers, if you have any questions and you don’t have any experience in this field, please feel free to ask us questions about these issues or if you need any clarification.
• Q: What can the progressive community do to help the VetVoice community? A: Brandon Friedman: Ideally, we would like our site to be the central clearinghouse for all veterans who are blogging. Anything you can do to drive veterans to our site can ultimately help us. Also, if you read something on the site, shoot it around and tell people where you got it. It helps us spread the message.
• Q: What have been some successes with regard to some of the things you’re paying attention to? A: Brandon Friedman: The Fort Bragg barracks disaster. It got onto YouTube, put on by a soldiers dad. Then it hit the wire and didn’t get picked up. We put it on the site and blasted it to everyone then it finally took off. And then there were investigations and people everywhere were paying attention to “Moppergate.” There was also a soldier, Will King, who had PTSD and continued getting denied by the VA. The VA finally said that his involvement with VoteVets suggests that he was fine and they indicated this in his letter, along with the fact that he had suicidal tendencies. We blew this up on VetVoice and published parts of the denial letter. He then got a letter that was dated three days after we put this up and the VA had reversed their decision, explaining they had instated “an administrative review.”
• Q: When you write your blog, who do you have in mind as a reader? A: Alex Horton: It really changed from when we were deployed to writing about the GI Bill, etc. The target audience is anyone who is left off by where the traditional media ends. Anyone who listens. Any civilian or veteran who is paying attention. Richard Smith: If I read something that is wrong, I try to right it. If I read something right, I try to shine a light on it.
• Richard Smith: We can be very critical, but it is more against the civilian leadership than it is about the military leadership.
• Brandon Friedman: It’s very difficult for a regular reporter to get into the weeds, because for someone in the military, it’s their actual living experience.
• Richard Smith: The traditional media can shine a light on something, but we can put a laser pointer on it.
• Brandon Friedman: Our leadership is predominantly military.
• Q: Did blogging push you to be politically active in the way you are now? A: Brandon Friedman: I was always a news junkie, but I was never really into the political side. I eventually came around to it. Now, every progressive organization is trying to figure out how to get military guys involved with them. There are a lot of guys out there who care about this stuff. And now organizations are coming to us and trying to get us to get them involved.
• Q [to audience]: Why do you read these blogs? A: Audience member #1: I read it so that when I go to the VA to volunteer, I will see things that we need and I get in front of politicians all of the time. And reading the blogs, I get a sense of other things that we need. I then read on Military.com that we need training for PTSD issues, and then I got a sense that this is a resource that needs to be addressed. Audience member #2: I pay attention because it helps to fill in a voice that is missing elsewhere.
• Q [to Alex]: How did you feel with Rush Limbaugh’s “phony soldiers” remarks last year? How did it affect you? I really enjoyed your post about it. A: My parents got involved. They are from Dallas and are pretty conservative, but they aren’t really listening so much anymore
• Q: Is there a red/blue division like there is in the civilian blogging world? A: Brandon Friedman: There are a few right-wing military blogs and a few that are a little more normal, like ours. Very few are a-political. It’s still very taboo in the military for troops to maintain being a-political. I left active-duty in 2004, really before blogs exploded. Alex Horton: People in the military tend to be more conservative, but when you talk about national security and veteran issues, it is not really a partisan thing. They want what’s best for the military. Some people may have disagreements on what is best. But it’s not necessary partisan. Alex Horton: There is not really a big rift like in the political world. It is one big small small family.
• Brandon Friedman: A lot of people don’t understand that the military typically supports this. There is a lot of misinterpretation of what the military actually does. Some people think we go overseas and water board people all day long. Or throw rocks at kids. It is in military influence for us to get people to know what’s going on.
• Q: How do you reconcile your voice with the chain of command? A: Alex Horton: Security is important, and you’re supposed to check with the chain of command for this reason, but what I was saying didn’t really go against our stated purpose.
• Horton: Started his blog to better explain to his family what he was doing and how he was involved. The blog went from criticisms of his higher ups to battlefield reporting. He thinks there is a desire for this sort of reporting and a voice that comes from the perspective of the military?
• Brandon Friedman: Read blogs in 2004 but didn’t know what he was really getting into. He had emergency surgery in 2006 for his appendix, then realized how interactive the news could be. “I felt like I could offer something. I started writing on Daily Kos under a pseudonym. I wrote more and more and really got into it. From there, we set up VetVoice, which is set up similarly for Kos, but it is primarily for troops.
• [Milblogs] represents a revolution in the ways that wars are covered.

01:45 PM – Blogging John Hlinko discussing how to connect to blogging/campaign audiences

• Q: What do you consider a good click through rate on an email? A (from audience): It has nothing to do with day or time – It is all about the subject line. If it is really compelling at 4 on a Friday, it is going to get opened.
• The more you personalize, the less you tick people off and the less people unsubscribe.
• Q: When I see what my parents listen to/believe online, it is email/very web 1.0. So is there any value in considering responding in this format? A: One way that we addressed this is by making emails look like they were coming from a candidate’s Blackberry. When you look at what does well at YouTube, it’s never necessarily what looks professionally done.
• Re: “Obama is a secret Muslim” rumors: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Winston Churchill.
• One of the most exciting things about mobile is that the most exciting things likely haven’t happened yet. Maybe people haven’t put together the peanut butter and chocolate together yet to understand how good it is.
• Q: How do you look for what resonates with people? A: We do message testing. So we come up with the message and then we go through the rather dry act of testing.
• Q: How do you respond when the other side is being funny, viral, and creative? A: The trite answer is to say to do it better and more often. But also, you don’t want to take active steps to give more traction to what they’re doing.
• While promoting a movie called Park, sort of a gay coming of age story, the publicist’s name was James Dobson. They used this to promote the film, writing stuff like, “James Dobson loves this lesbian movie,” and stuff like that. “We didn’t get sued, which was our goal, but it was still very fun.
• Assume your email recipient believes they’re getting 117 emails a day. Imagine yours is number 118. Are they really going to read that?
• “People believe you [a promoter of a message] are full of crap. They do, however, believe their friends. People want to be inspired. See Will-i-am.
• “Take action, Get action” is the motto of his dating site for Democrats. Hilarious. He’s proving that we’re basically advanced monkeys that still act/concentrate on instinct.

01:35 PM – I was struck by something an audience member at the “Working from the Inside Out” said to me. A grassroots activist/organizer in Florida for the Democratic Party and DFA, she talked about the amount of elected representatives she runs into that don’t know about many of the issues, or even how to navigate around on the web. “We need to get to them as soon as they get elected,” she stressed to me, “but a lot of people don’t know how to get in there.”

She went onto make a suggestion that I recognized, as I, too, have been a party organizer. Those who are interested in getting close to a campaign or candidate simply need to volunteer for the campaign, as it gets them close to many future staffers. In my experience, many of the people I worked campaigns with went onto work as staff members. “I know a Republican representative,” she said, “and he’s even said to me, ‘It’s hard to say ‘no’ to someone I have seen licking envelopes at my kitchen table.”

Great point.

12:30 PM - A great note on the lunch with Kos and Harold Ford from Todd Beeton from MyDD:

He then spoke about how ridiculous the traditional media is, especially when he is asked about Obama’s so-called move to the center. It’s clear from what ends up getting written, that what he says goes in one ear and out the other because his response doesn’t fit into their “move to the center” narrative. As Markos says regarding Barack Obama’s FISA vote:

“We weren’t mad at Obama for moving to the center, we were mad at him for NOT moving to the center. There was no popular movement in favor of this bill. If you ask most Americans I think they’d tell us that they do not support the government spying on Americans.”

10:37 AM – Blogging Working from the Inside Out: Success Stories in Netroots Organizing: (with Timothy Karr and Craig Aaron of Free Press, Adam Green of MoveOn.org, Liz Rose of the ACLU, Andre Banks of Color of Change, and Joan McCarter, a Daily Kos blogger):

• Timothy Karr of Free Press: We’ve learned as much from user-generated YouTube videos as we have from high-payed consultants.
• I really love the term “astroturf,” meaning fake grassroots.
• An audience member points out the fact that aiming at Washington is important, but there are 50 other capitols that need our attention at the same time.
• Q: How much coordination is there between big groups/organization [with the grassroots] – How do we learn from the Republicans and create a leaner machine? A: Liz Rose of the ACLU: The groups do work together well. Sure, there is some competition (for resources and some candidates). On Jena 6, we loaned attorneys. As far as duplications, that has something to do with funders, based on where they put their money and why.
• Q: How do you deal with contentions with your own side? Do you ever find yourself disagreeing with an element of what you’re defending and if so, how do you deal with that? A: Andre Banks: What we did know is the [Jena issue] was that there were kids who were involved in a bad case and they needed a fair shake. It wasn’t about whether each of them was a good citizen, or if everything that they had done previously was right. Every person deserves legal recognition and that’s what we’re trying to provide. That’s why we were there. The larger question is something we take into larger consideration. Joan McCarter: For me, its about the issues, so while I disagree with Barack Obama on his stance on FISA now, I realize he will be easier to agree with in the future.
• Adam Green of MoveOn.org: We still need to get as many people on our side by reaching out to them directly.
• Andre Banks: With regard to Jena, this story was a success because it represented to a lot of people in the African American community something that happens a lot there. And the successes keep coming.
• Andre Banks of Color of Change: What we try to do at Color of Change is to figure out if black people are interesting in putting their time and money towards social change and we have found that yes, it is true.
• Joan McCarter: We don’t just need more Democrats; we need better Democrats.
• Joan McCarter: It’s hard to talk about successes with all that’s been going on in FISA in the past weeks. But, we did help propel it into the media and thus we set up a good foundation for the incoming congress. The fight didn’t end ten days ago. It’s going to continue with the ACLU and many of these people who are up here and who are working on it elsewhere.
• Timothy Karr of Free Press discusses the successful netroots fight against anti-net neutrality legislation in 2007.

10:00 AM – A set of notes and observations on Don Siegelman, who spoke at Netroots Nation.

09:15 AM – Blogging From Dean to Obama: Four Years in the Internet Revolution (other observations can be found here):

• Karl Frisch of Media Matters is one funny dude.
• Joe Trippi: We’re at such a ridiculous early stage. We’re all still pioneers. At Dean, we were the Wright brothers and Obama was Apollo 11. You know – Safely launching got you into the White House.
• Q. Why aren’t nonprofits catching on to these technologies quicker? A. Karl Frisch – [To do this] you need to know your audience and make sure that what you’re doing is servicing them. DFA guy – You need to reach out to/be in touch with people who might not feel otherwise empowered.
• Q: How do we convey to politicians that we need they themselves to blog themselves? A: Joe Trippi: “Howard barely used email. He tried really hard to blog and he was basically like, ‘You guys are terrific.’ I would give candidates who are struggling with it/trying to figure it out your attention. Reward the folks who are trying.”
• Q: Because campaigns are working from the bottom up, does it make it hard to form a message? A: Joe Trippi: Obama is a good example of a bottom up campaign where everyone on the bottom doesn’t necessarily agree with Obama (FISA).
• Karl Frisch of Media Matters – “If you call everyone ‘your friends’ and call yourself a ‘maverick,’ the press won’t ask any questions when you mess up.”
• Joe Trippi: In the television age, people could fake it for 30 seconds and then they could make it. Now it’s trickier. The television age came about in ‘60, when Kennedy won, and that’s how it is now. The problem for the candidate is they can’t fake it anymore for 24 hours a day.
• Guy without name tag from Democracy from America - It’s all about authenticity. With George Allen’s case, people were more upset about his comments because it seemed like it really said something about George Allen.
• Joe Trippi: There’s someone out there who will capture McCain, or Obama, [in a Macaca moment].
• Q: What is possible with video inside of campaigns? A: Joe Trippi: With DeanTV, we created YouTube before YouTube created YouTube [...] Then, we never could have predicted YouTube coming up down the road. Now, thinking of what will come up four to eight years down the road, I agree with Karl – It will be mind-blowing.
• Karl Frisch of Media Matters – During the next campaigns, people are just going to be blown away.
• Everyone on the panel is ripping on Trippi in a hilarious way.
• Joe Trippi on what he’s excited about – Pretty soon, these campaigns are going to be completely managed from people involved in Dean-like campaigns, not people like me who really come from a top-down world. And somewhere down the road, we’ll see 40, 50, 60 members of Congress that come from the Dean/Obama model, or who worked for OffTheBus, or whatever.
• Amanda Michel of HuffPost’s “OffTheBus” – “Off the bus wouldn’t work if it wasn’t for the community. We’re completely dependent on our community.”
• Guy without name tag from Democracy from America - DFA came from the Dean Campaign, showing that even if Howard wanted to kill the movement, he couldn’t.
• Amanda Michel of HuffPost’s “OffTheBus” – We focus on the story. All of the ambiguity is removed. Similarly to the way Wikipedia works because everyone knows what an encyclopedia article looks like, OfftheBus works because people know what a news story looks like.
• Karl Frisch of Media Matters – It’s really about the content, while it is nice to be put on the map by O’Reilly and Limbaugh as being “crazy.

8:30 AM - Heading over to “From Dean to Obama: Four Years in the Internet Revolution“

Thursday:

8:58 PM – Howard [!]:

• The end. Time for a drink.
• Dean: “You can never sit back. The lesson we’d like to pass onto you is you can’t ever be absent from politics. Not now. Not later. You can’t. Voting only gets you a D. If you want to nourish democracy, you need to continue doing what you’re doing.”
• Dean: “We reach out to Evangelical Christians, because they believe in alleviating poverty, climate change, and relieving suffering in Darfur. And those sound like Democratic issues to me.”
• Dean: “If you want moral authority, you cannot have torture. You cannot have Guantanamo Bay [...] We need a higher authority than the people attacking us [...] Barack Obama will restore the moral authority of America.”
• Dean: “Won’t it be a pleasure to have someone in the White House who knows the constitution?”
• Dean: “The republicans are exclusive. We are inclusive. It is no coincidence that [the most diverse] members of Congress are Democrats.”
• Dean: “When your average campaign donation is 68 dollars, you are owned by no one but the American people.” And: “Texas is back. The Democratic party here is reborn.”
• Mid-speech, Dean gets his first standing ovation for raising his voice about the 50-state-strategy. People love it.
• Dean: “Barack Obama is the hope of the future of America [...] his job is to heal America.”
• How “netroots,” exactly, is it is to cheer for the chairman of the DNC every half-minute or so? Sure, this was a success for the Netroots, but how critical are the netroots allowing themselves to be?
• Howard Dean is finally out. Is he coloring his hair? He looks good. He thanked Gina Cooper for putting it all together.

08:02 PM – The lead up to Howard:

• Nevermind about Gina Cooper. She was not introducing Howard. That was a tease. But there’s a dude from some sort of Democrat Stonewall organization who says: “I was empowered by Howard.” Amazing. He is asking us for us to go by the DFA booth to go sign the thank you card for Howard Dean.
• Baratunde Thurston: I shouldn’t have gotten interacting you you people. And when I say that, I mean it “that way.”
• Gina Cooper is talking about Netroots Nation on stage, readying to introduce Howard: “With the force of a pixelated tsunami, we put Howard Dean into the position of the chairman of the DNC.”
• There are reportedly 2,000 of us here.
• Audience members hiss — literally make a hissing noise — when Fox News comes up in a speech. Then Clark goes on to talk about how upsetting political name-calling really is when you look at our history.
• Clark is having all public service-people standing up one profession at a time. Will the veterans stand up? The meter-maids! Yes! The meter-maids! Stand up!
• Gosh. I can’t get over how handsome he is.
• Clark: “You all come from every background possible, but you’re all united for good government that takes us in the direction that we must go.”
• Clark: “We started stopiranwar.com and you know what? It’s still there.“
• Clark: “70,000 people on the Internet [through an Internet draft] made it possible for me to run for office.”
• Is Netroots Nation the only place that Gen. Clark continues to get a standing ovation? He is still very attractive.
• Brandon Friedman, editor of Vote Vets, introduces Gen. Wesley Clark. VoteVets, at name, gets an ovation.
• Baratunde Thurston drops some great slavery jokes.
• “If you have a pager, just leave. There’s actually a very short bus waiting outside to take you back to 1994.” -Baratunde Thurston.

05:25 PM - Time for a drink or two with my conference-hopper buddy Alex from Eventful and then on to see Howard speak.

05:25 PM - This is a really great photograph of a conference-goer checking out a hand-written list of all of the US soldiers that have died since the start of the conflict in Iraq. It is just one of very many photographs coming from this dude’s Photobucket feed.

05:03 PM – I spoke briefly with the ever-impressive Michael Silberman of Echo Ditto. He talked briefly about the work he’s doing at present for the 1Sky Education Fund. It is a fascinating organization, well-worth checking out, that is focused on climate change and organizing using the “Internet and old-fashioned neighbor-to-neighbor outreach.”

04:25 PM – A hilarious piece of Kevin Bondelli’s blog post today:

A funny thing just happened. A couple of guys were walking by in the hotel that weren’t associated with Netroots Nation, and one says to the other: “there are a lot of people in this hotel using laptops, huh.” I bet this lobby looks really strange to people that don’t realize that there is a blogger conference going on.

04:16 PM – Netroots Nation is huge. The Austin Convention Center is huge. These people’s ambitions are huge. I saw in the comment section of someone’s blog a joking statement about bumping into all of the wide-eyed newbies. I, indeed, am one of those wide-eyed newbies.

03:02 PM – At a session with Blogs United about best practices, etc.

• “We’re seeing a very interesting moment in politics. The Internet and the field are becoming one. Using a Google Map, people are able to find other supporters of a candidate or an issue. This is something we can take advantage of. It’s a process and a journey. It’s not an either or (online v. “reality”) as it’s evolving.
• “People are now getting involved. This story needs to be told. Nobody is talking about them and these people will ultimately be the heroes. These are good stories.”
• From someone in the audience: “I am a retired AP foreign correspondent, and my old employer is paring down their local coverage. Is anyone here filling in that void?” Everyone seems to have a story about how they have contributed.
• “A well-developed local blog infrastructure is more powerful than Google-bombing.”
• Someone from Roadblock Republicans is here talking about using satire and animation to message accordingly.
• Someone going into a podcasting business says that market research has shown that progressives over thirty prefer to listen rather than watch things online.
• Everyone in this group are all political activists who have come together to promote liberal/progressive causes and politicians. They trade ideas on best-practices with the help of a Google email group.
• It’s interesting seeing this, a community of bloggers who have been in touch for years, come together face to face at the conference. They all feel right at home with each other and it’s interesting to see how much more streamlined online-exclusive communities are becoming.
• “Sometimes blogging is a slog – It’s hard getting that post up every day, or even every other day.”

03:00 PM – Another great piece about Netroots Nation. This one is featured in The Center for Media and Democracy.

01:30 PM – At a Democracy for America training on crafting campaign messaging:

• The next couple of months is the big sweet spot. If you’re trying to get something interesting off the ground in October, you’re probably not going to get very far.
• Q: How did George W. Bush create an imagine in which he was raised in Connecticut in a similar “elitist” way to other candidates, and he could end up passing himself off as an everyman. A: I think history is going to judge us darkly as Democrats.
• If you can make a message a referendum on a particular issue, that is strong for you.
• Kerry, by trying to take “the high road” by not addressing the Swiftboat issue, lost control of his message. “When we take a highroad campaign, we get our ass handed to ourselves.”
• In 2004, the Bush Campaign’s campaign was rock-solid. They suggested that they were strong, consistent, and secure. By default, Kerry was the opposite of each.
• People want to know: Who’s more one of us than the other person? This is why Barack Obama is being painted by the other side as an “elitist.”
• Messaging is not a list of issues. Voters have a sentence or two in their bind on which they base who they vote for.
• It’s not about biography, and this is what is hurting John McCain. If biography was important, John McCain would have gotten the nomination in 2008.
• Experience is not how campaigns are one. If you look at presidential races, those with the least experience usually win. If it’s about experience, look at the president, who had no experience.

01:40 PM - Great article in the Dallas Morning News about Netroots Nation.

01:34 PM - Haven’t eaten in nearly 12 hours, thus I am thankful that Wired For Change was somehow responsible for getting a bag of chips into the free crap bag that you’re given at conferences. I’m also grateful to whoever thought to put a fortune cookie in there, though it was smashed to hell before it got to me. There’s also a condom from Center for Constitutional Rights. I wonder how many folks at this internet and politics event are going to put that to use.

01:00 PM - There was a rally today featuring Howard Dean, who will also later this evening deliver the keynote address. Some reports say that the numbers there were at around 100 people but I got the sense that it was much more than that. He fired up all of the congregating liberals like it was 2003 again. Heeeeya! [A special thanks to Robert Harding from The Albany Project for the photo]

12:43 PM – I am excited for the Dean speech this evening. There’s still a lot of buzzing about Pelosi and how she’ll address the I-word issue. Further, we’re excited that we’ll be talking with Larry Lessig about Change Congress on Saturday. Stay tuned.

12:36 PM – I want a taco.

11:11 AM – It looks like I spoke way too soon. The hotel is standing firmly in my way. The bureaucracy gods are keeping me down.

10:19 AM – After a nearly Homeric trek from Boston, Massachusetts to Austin, Texas, I am finally in town and nearing a place where I might be able to actually get over to the Austin Convention Center — So long as a bank, a Jet Blue flight delay, or a disgruntled hotel employee doesn’t stand in my way, I should be there shortly.

Last Chance for Animals and Best Friends Animal Society, two animal welfare groups working together on this issue, will set up education tables outside of pet stores where they will inform patrons of the origins of where the animals come from. They will feature photographs of the conditions in which the animals are purportedly bred and offer shoppers general information about puppy mills.

In contrast to the action we highlighted yesterday’s news report, this technique is especially interesting. Yesterday we highlighted a protest organized by the I.W.W. Starbucks Union—one that placed some focus on the theatrics of political theater. This back and forth between the effectiveness of tactics reminds me a bit of the debate inspired by the piece by Sally Kohn published in the Christian Science Monitor last week (that nearly the whole of the Millennial activist community chimed in on) about whether or not modern activism is effective because it doesn’t have the Situationist sheen of old activism.

Yesterday I stated that it would seem it makes more sense to bring a large group together and inform/impress with a presence rather than to bring together a small group of people and turn off spectators with confused imagery and political theater. Confusion is fine if irony and chaos is what a group is trying to convey, but if there is a message and it is distorted by an unwillingness to connect with onlookers, this is an unnecessary waste of resources. While political theater is not being denied recognition of its importance, applying it to every protest scenario might be ill-advised.

The animal groups appear to be striking an interesting middle ground by coming together to provide a small collective interested in educating the public rather than overwhelming the public or establishment with a presence. As it seems the group’s goal is to discourage support of puppy mills, and since they likely won’t be able to set up a stick-and-carrot model in which supporters agree to buy X so long as the store doesn’t provide Y (in this case, milled puppies), this appears to be a sensible way to engage with patrons.

In your experience, which is the better way to demonstrate? Is theater necessary for informing onlookers? Or is a more concentrated, person-to-person effort important? What, as an onlooker, do you find you’re more compelled to pay attention to when passing a demonstration?

Also in eAction news:

• Public art and collective action.
• Folks come together to fund their own candidates.

This April, after six months in beta, we stopped and asked ourselves, “Knowing what we know now, if we started The Point today from scratch, what would it look like?” Later this month, we’re releasing a major upgrade that answers that question.

In brief, these changes make The Point simpler, more flexible, and easier to integrate as a tool for other online communities. We’ve also added a few new ideas, steps forward in our understanding of campaigns that yield powerful new applications.

This is the first in a series of posts that will showcase the changes in our upcoming release. Please let us know what you think!

Dangle a Carrot

The Point was designed to allow people with a shared problem to find each other, reach critical mass, and exercise their power – by boycott, strike, or some other collective action – to not merely ask for change, but force it. So instead of acting by yourself to stop a t-shirt company from using sweatshops, organize with other customers, and start a boycott only once enough join for the boycott to be a greater cost than legitimate labor.

Our users, however, observed another technique of persuasion: Instead of threatening to take business away, promise to bring it. Show that t-shirt company how many new customers they’d gain by changing policy. It’s a perfect compliment to The Point’s toolkit. Ultimatum campaigns are the “stick,” and this gives us the “carrot.”

We think of carrot campaigns as petitions evolved. By backing your demand with the promise of action, you’re not just asking for change, you’re showing how it can be in everyone’s best interest. Here are a few examples:

• We pledge to eat at Dave’s Diner if they offer more vegetarian choices.
• We promise to volunteer for the first Congressional candidate in Chicago to take the Change Congress pledge.
• We are raising a pot of money that can be collected by whoever unlocks the iPhone 3G. No one’s credit card is charged unless it happens.
• We will buy our shoes from the first major brand to move its manufacturing facilities back to US soil.
• We’re putting money in a pot for our friend Adam, who looks exactly like Big Boy, if he dresses like Big Boy this Halloween. No one’s credit card will be charged unless he does it.
• We will all buy bicycles from the first store to offer us a 20% discount.
• We are pledging money towards the purchase of a polka dot iPod, if Apple agrees to make one. The money will not be collected unless it happens.
• We will donate to Uwe Boll’s favorite charity, but only if he promises to never make another movie.
• We will move our business to the first eBay competitor that charges sellers less than 3% per transaction.
• We will help pay Hillary Clinton’s campaign debt if she pledges to neither seek nor accept the Vice Presidency.

Rounding off the model

It’s easy to cook up a carrot campaign for nearly any situation. They’re no more structurally complex than petitions, but far more powerful. This is in contrast to ultimatum campaigns, which often demand up-front research to determine a tipping point that satisfies the cost-benefit analysis.

And notably, carrot campaigns are a nice way to induce change. This is particularly useful for dealing with small businesses, where you want to engage your target in something that feels more like a conversation than an argument.

Carrot campaigns are a logical extension of The Point’s big idea: Create the conditions for collective action to be worthwhile, and people will participate.

Coming up in part 2, we’ll preview the new interface for starting campaigns.