I will be excitedly live blogging from this year’s Personal Democracy Forum, which is taking place in Manhattan over the course of the next two days. The conference, something of a who’s who (and a who’s doing what and how) in the world of “user-centered politics,” is expected to bring to light plenty of refreshing examples of how folks are effectively organizing and ultimately making things happen

Tuesday

5:14 pm: Notes on the closing plenary:

• Obama girl was here.
• Obviously. Also, we were led to sing through a Twitter-themed version of a Pete Seeger song. I am an instructor at a leadership camp so I am used to singing like an idiot but it was, admittedly, a slightly painful. But a good pain? Josh Levy did, though, rock the acoustic guitar.
• Influenced by Rushkoff’s speech this morning, PDF announces that they are changing Personal Democracy Forum to Participatory Democracy Forum.

Panel: Redefining Leadership in a Networked Age w/ Scott Heiferman, Craig Newmark, Joe Trippi, Brian Behlendorf, and Gina Cooper:

• Heiferman: We believe in the power of self-organized groups.
• Heiferman: What do groups of groups look like? Structure is underrated. The social network can’t get everything done.
• Cooper: We have to be our own leaders. We have to talk with each other. We have to inspire one-another. We’ve seen people-powered-politics. What will people-powered-government look like? How will Barack Obama fight the bureaucracy once he gets to Washington?
• Cooper: The burden is on us; it’s not going to be done for us.
• Newmark: There is a difference between having a boss, who tells you what to do and you do it accordingly, and having a leader.
• Newmark: Many people are seeing 2008 as a year potentially as notable as 1776 with regard to the new ways in which participatory democracy is introduced to governance.
• Newmark: I want there to be a fair fight between both candidates so that this can be a true participatory year.
• Newmark: Change, of course, is a cliche in this election cycle. But candidates do have to get the message that they are not the boss.
• Newmark: The kids are alright.
• Heiferman: #pdf2008 Decentralized power! WWFD (what would Foucault do)?
• Newmark: Part of leadership is knowing when to get out of the way of the people.
• Cooper: Once people have a voice, they’re going to continue demanding to have that voice. Obama’s brand and authority will be lost if they do not heed the will of the people.

3:52 pm: Notes on Ideas that Spread Win: Going Viral Online featuring Jason Calacanis, Jonah Peretti, Ami Dar, and Sean Parker:

• Peretti: High quality content does not often get a viral push. Quality content is sometimes a liability.
• Calacanis: It is dangerous to put something up online, making it look authentic, then finding that it is not actually authentic. Dar: Authenticity is THE biggest thing.
• Dar discusses a phenomenon in Budapest where some social activists put their ideas in the public eye by coordinating 500 people to wear a related t-shirt — real-life virality.
• Calacanis: YouTube stills come from the exact middle frame from the video, so marketers are now using that frame to put woman or shots of cleavage to up their hits.
• Dar: Even if a message is going to 3 million people, one person is opening the email. So it is important to write the message to the one human being who is reading it. When the few people who will then get back to you actually get back to you, you respond directly. And people actually remember that.
• Peretti: The Bored at Work Network (BWN) is a network of people who are at work and bored enough to make all of this stuff popular. Also, cleavage makes people click links, but not forward (because forwarding says something about the forwarder). So forwardable links should resonate with users.
• Peretti: The problem, though, is that contagious media is usually silly (the opposite of your cause). Also, what goes viral is radically unpredictable.
• Parker: Something can be viral, even if the viral exponent is less than one. Paypal is a good example, as receiving money from senders required recipients to join.
• Calacanis: Two schools of building a case – a) get big logs together, dump some gas, and strike a match b) get some kindling or coal, continue to add necessary components, build it up, and then it finally explodes. Throwing gas around is inauthentic and ineffective in the long term.
• Dar: Lots of ideas spread and don’t win. It is not actually true that ideas spread will necessarily win. MoveOn is big, but how many battles have they actually won? Very few.
• Calacanis: Engagement is the new virality.

2:07 pm: At the local blog breakout session, here are some concepts thrown around:

• Dynamics on the local level versus the national level are different. On the local blog, you’re more likely to learn about local politicians, neighborhoods, hearings, etc. On the national level, it’s partly about entertainment.
• IP tracking shows that servicemen and women are staying in touch with their local community by using local blogs.
• Community activists can’t keep meeting exclusively in a church or community center — Blogging can keep people, information linked accordingly.
• Ed Cone: “What happens online is only as valuable as what happens off line.”
• Colorado Independent: Corporate Media, “as we all know”, does not do a good job of covering local politics.
• Colorado Independent: “What’s happening on the ground [at the political conventions]? Nobody gives a shit about pageantry.”
• Izzy of the Sam Adams Alliance: “We, as bloggers, are here to win. We’re not here to educate. We’re here to put information out there, hope people take it and run with it from there.”
• Ed Cone: Destroying and winning is less popular when it comes to local politics; hyper-partisanship is big on the national level. It is less fun to attack your neighbor in the same way you might go after a faceless person in blog land.
• Bob Cox of the Media Bloggers Association (in the audience): Most dangerous thing to do for a freelancer is investigative reporting. You’re very likely to face litigation as a result. Be advised that litigation is a reality. Check out the Media Law Resource Center.
• Audience member: How much traffic do you need in order to be considered a contender of any kind? Liza Sabater of the Daily Gotham: To get to those massive amounts of traffic, a huge amount of money is put into that effort and success is manufactured. But even with less traffic than those sites, I look at where visitors to the site are being referred from and traffic is coming from the government and the military, etc. And that makes me realize that I have some influence.

12:25 pm: It’s not really called 2.0 anymore, is it?

11:19 am: Just talked with Ben Geyerhahn [from Click To Blue] about what is actually required of bloggers who wish to monetize their model. “It’s a small business,” he says. “It needs to be looked at it that way. 70% of time should be spent on content, but then the other 30% should be focused on development and getting people to look at the site.” He will be talking more about the topic on a panel later on in the day.

10:56 am: I just chatted with Bernard Sifry, conference co-chair Micah Sifry’s father. He expressed great pride in all of his children and talked a bit about Micah as a kid. The elder Sifry exposed his boys to computers at early ages, going back into the late 70s. He had me laughing a great deal, and he said, “Look – I got you laughing. And at my age, that’s the best thing to get people to. Laughter is the best medicine.”

10:36 am: Was just interviewed by MobLogic.tv and was asked: “What do you wish to declare independence from?” I answered by saying that I wished to “declare independence from apathy” and then waxed unpoetically about why that is the case.

Pictured left is MobLogic’s attractive and, by all appearances, competent host Lindsay Campbell interviewing someone who is not, in fact, me.

10:15 am: Steven Clift, a builder of e-democracy, talks about US policy on participatory, networked democracy:

• We need Democracy.gov to promote bottom-up democracy. He suggested this, but was told by someone in the State Department that it exists, but it is essentially part of our propaganda presence outside of our borders.
• There are interesting examples in Estonia, Japan, and Australia regarding positive policy for facilitation of e-democracy. Though there aren’t many examples of e-democracy policy anywhere in the world – including in the US.
• Americans need to ask ourselves why this isn’t happening here.
• There are no public forums on Government websites.
• All public meetings must be announced online. They should be online immediately after they occur. All public media should be recorded in digital form.
• We need to invest in e-democracy tools in government. E-notification, working like Google Alerts, are necessary. We also need public hearings online.
• Government needs to be able to listen and we need for them to provide tools that we can talk to.

9:50 am: Jonathan Adelstein, the present chair of the FCC, discusses information and the transformation of government [hilariously, he opened by playing the harmonica so that he could tell people that he's played at Lincoln Center]:

• If jobs are being outsourced via broadband, why can’t we increase broadband usage in the US to insource it here?
• In 2000, 3 million people gathered to fight further media consolidation.
• The Internet was formed on ideals of open neutrality.

9:45 am: Larry Lessig is somewhere right around amazing. His slide-show is unbelievably amazing:

• “The government gets it wrong; destroys conditions of trust.”
• Bribery was not a crime in Congress until 1853. In some districts at the time, 25% of voters sold their vote.
• Things are better today, as individuals are better but the problem is that corruption is much worse. It is more pervasive. “The government’s fingers are everywhere.
• “Money destroys the opportunity for trust.”
• We need something more than an every-four-year “hope fest.”
• Change Congress is a bi-partisan reform movement. Driving reform to begin to make this system different
• Rather than just focusing on “change,” Lessig wants to focus this ideal on a system that nobody trusts: Congress

9:12 am: Morley Winograd, who has written extensively about the rise of the Millennial/Civic Generation, talks about the Millennials and the rise of the civic generation:

• Millennials identify with Democrats at nearly 2:1.
• 38% of Millennials think this country will be better after the 2008 election.
• First generation in more than four decades where a plurality identify as liberal, not conservative.
• There is a departure from “independent” identity.
• Generation in which “girls rule and boys drool.” [I am not exactly sure what this means].

8:50 am: From Rushkoff:

• “It’s not the network, stupid. It’s the people, stupid.”
• “You can either be an in-charge individual, or in charge collective.”
• “The glory is in the doing; it is in the continued, actual participation.

Roundup: Writing is like voting. You can do it anywhere, from the safety of your own home. Though we need to reprogram our culture; it is an open-source culture. The thing we should want in ‘Age Obama’ is that Democracy is a participatory event. They are there to create the conditions where we can do stuff for one another.

8:33 am: Back in business. Sitting in the Rose Theater, anxiously awaiting a speech by Douglas Rushkoff. I have been a big fan of Rushkoff’s writings and thoughts since a friend brought them to my attention a few years ago. From his site: Democracy as we know it was built around the notion of the individual. Democracy as an open source phenomenon needs to be something else entirely – and it may look and feel strange to those of us raised on Enlightenment ideals of individual rights and possession of property. It’s a collective phenomenon that requires intelligence, participation, knowledge, and collaboration.

Monday:

1:39 pm: Josh Levy and Danny Moldovan of Change.org discuss decentralized organization, social movements, Foucauldian power and more. Questions asked: Will Obama heed the will of his supporters, or will he use “people power” to leverage a different agenda? Why are movies still following a narrative in which only one person is responsible for saving the world? 12:30 pm: There is sort of a fight between a former-Edwards online coordinator and a McCain online coordinator. “You don’t need to use a computer to know how the Internet is influential,” the McCain coordinator casually suggests. “That’s the point, though” exclaims the Edwards coordinator. “You do.”

11:50 am: Paul Downey stands with his illustration of how openness works on the Internet. He discusses user tendencies and wonders whether we’ll ultimately use our new networking capabilities for good or evil. We discuss how radio was used to mobilize atrocities in Rwanda and opposition in the Balkans. We’re both bummed out that we’re not watching Clay Shirky speak. Downey works for BT, thinking through issues related to openness.

10:50 am: Shaun Dakin of StopPoliticalCalls.org discusses with us his (and the rest of the country’s) aversion to robocalling. As the founder and CEO of the National Political Do Not Contact Registry, he has been invited to speak on the Senate floor on the behalf of American’s who are infuriated with phone harassment. “Robo-calling,” he says, “has become like the nuke race. I have talked with politicians who want to stop using them, but they feel as though they can’t possibly stop if they think their opponent will keep using them.”

10:04 am: Scott Heiferman of Meetup and Andrew Mason of The Point discuss site re-design and a upcoming panel discussion. A ton of non-creepy schmoozing is going down at present. Folks are hocking their wares. If you’re here, feel free to stop by. 9:30 am: Everyone is milling about accordingly. Talked briefly with Joe from blogads and touched base with the Electronic Frontier Foundation at their stand. We’ll talk with them in a bit. Any question suggestions for that?

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On this day, June 17th, 2008, the news brings to our attention super-young organizers, thoughts on Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty, a look at how to take action, suggestions on how to blog from the road, and much, much more.

• The third in a three-part series on Public Participation Theory
• What would Trotsky read? The left decide to get into organizing… book clubs.
• Even more of the same on how Americans are [politically] using the Internet
• Need to blog from the road? Here’s a way to do it.
• The youth, social justice, and thinking outside of the box.
• The All-Powerful Drudge and the art of the Internet boycott.
• Wiki-what? Britannica pulls stick out of their…
• A conservative considers Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty
• And finally, Mr. Shirky and the leveraging of the network for social action.

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Mike Connery is a regular contributer to to Future Majority and MyDD and an occasional contributor to TechPresident and the Huffington Post. He also serves on the board of Young Voter PAC. He very recently authored Youth to Power: How Today’s Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow’s Progressive Majority, a book that details the role of the Millennial Generation in modern progressive politics. He talks here about taking his book on tour, how young people are involved in politics in ways previously impossible and how the face of organization has changed in the rise of social platforms.

Make Something Happen: How was the tour?

Mike Connery: It was very hit or miss. Portland, Oregon was great and the Oregon Bus Project was very helpful. We got on the radio there and the place was packed, totally full. In other places, the groups weren’t quite as helpful. It was educational in that respect.

The book was well-received by everyone, minus the College Democrats.

MSH: Why is that?

Connery: They’re not exactly painted in the best light in the book. An old mentality really holds them back. They’re part of the DNC and they still operate from the top down. Even with Howard Dean in charge, they’re not getting a lot of support from the DNC and state parties in terms of money. The Young Democrats [of America] left the party in 2002 because they were better able to raise money on their own. In doing so, they have transformed over the years and created real field campaigns that have been helpful to the party. The College Democrats made the wrong decision.

MSH: Did you run into any rockstar activists or organizers on the road who really blew you away?

Connery: I met a lot of rockstar people out there. In California these two kids, Ian McGruder and Barak Wouk, came to this one event that took place at Berkeley. They make these great videos that the California Democrats actually use. They’re great. They’re really interested in the Obama campaign, but they’re also really concerned with making young voter outreach a part of what they do.

MSH: How have things changed in the past few years with regard to how the Millennial Generation uses the technologies available to them?

Connery: In the past four years, the interest has been there but the technology hasn’t been in place until now. When we were working the Music for America in 2003 and 2004, we were publicizing on Friendster but not many people were using it. We had done a series of Daily Show-style satirical videos and they were quite good. They were getting 100 thousand hits or so and this was before YouTube had come along. Everything–blogs and even the Dean Campaign–was centralized.

Now, content finds you. YouTube links can be embedded to the blogs you go to go to regularly. News stories are similarly versatile. I very recently read a PEW study about where young people get their news. It’s not that they’ve stopped looking. They still go to CNN and MSNBC but a huge chunk of the people polled say that they hear about their news online. We’re seeing the long tail of distribution. You go to a blog and that blog covered a story, or you see something mentioned on Facebook. Everything is so decentralized. All of this started in ‘03 and ‘04, but we’re so far ahead of that now. Information finds you where you are.

MSH: How are new paradigms of information distribution changing the ways that young people are becoming involved in political organization?

Connery: In terms of organization, it wasn’t possible four or five years ago to do a lot of things that you can do now. Music for America piggybacked on 2,400 live events and we used an open source content management system to organize for events. We were able to create this automated system online where most of the organization was taken care of.

Millennials have a whole different perception of how news is distributed. Have you seen the Here Comes Everybody video by Clay Shirky? He’s really got it. How much time did I spend watching Seinfeld and Friends instead of doing something proactive? I am at the older end of the Millennial Generation and I got my news from Meet the Press, The Nation and the New Republic–when it was still somewhat respectable–but now that all is different.

When I worked for the Dean Campaign, they had no money and I was working in Brooklyn and we were trying to figure out how we were going to proceed. From there, the participatory nature in campaigns began to rise. They has been changing the game. People are now putting their own commercials that are comparable to those made by parties or candidates up on YouTube. There were all these kids throwing keggers for Obama. There was an Act Blue page that organized something like Beers for Obama where these guys were putting their beer money towards his campaign.

MSH: What seems to have changed most is the element of comprehensive participation – Has this essentially posed a challenge to older, more traditional top-down organizations, where they now have to change how they operate?

There is now an expectation that participants are able to mold the political process. That is the expectation now and anything less doesn’t make any sense to young people. They have grown up as participators. Take Hip Hop, which is 28 years old or whatever. It introduced sampling and mix tapes and then we eventually got into mash-ups. There is all of this crossover that has become an expectation in everything that we do. Now your Flickr and Facebook crosses over and there is that same joint culture between you and your social network. The nature of all distribution is participatory; not passive.

Older, outside nonprofit organizations like GreenPeace are not adapting really. They’re hooked into these traditional canvassing models where they run slave labor canvass campaigns. There is very little room for upward mobility or a career with what they do. They’re not interesting. Groups like PIRG are interesting and exploring different ways to accommodate participation. This is especially the case for student PIRGs, which are changing deliberately. They’re using stuff like mobile communication to mobilize their volunteers.

Organizations like the Oregon Bus Project, groups using Facebook to organize events, and other groups doing peer-to-peer field work, are the ones that are really interesting. These are groups that are helping to convey that political action isn’t just taken care of during one day of hard work a year. It is a lifestyle. This culture of participation is changing all former perception of how we engage.

MSH: Is it an organizational unwillingness to change that is encouraging independent innovation?

There are some groups that are doing interesting stuff. The labor unions are even trying. SCIU is now working with something called Qvisory, which is a social networking/AARP for young people thing. It just launched and that will be interesting to watch.

But yeah – The older groups didn’t appear to be getting enough done. People were unhappy with the strategy and results. It was insular, DC-oriented, top down, and unappealing to a lot of people. If you have a desire to participate, the tools are now available to compete with these groups. You use Facebook and MySpace to organize, YouTube for messaging, CMS to bulk mail, and so on. The tools are out there and if you’re unhappy with how they’re working, just create it. The cost to do so is radically lower.

Clay Shirky presents a great example in his book about the abuse that took place in the Catholic Church. The church was organized from the top down and that prevented any organization within the church to do anything about the problem without approval by the Vatican or the Arch Diocese. Now with these tools factoring in, you see the rise of Voices of the Faithful who came out speaking out against the scandals. This was previously impossible without these tools. The same as everywhere else that benefits from these tools, this would have been otherwise impossible a few years ago.

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…when we:

• Contemplate the importance reciprocity in Internet action with Beth Kanter
• Talk to Justin Massa, founder of MoveSmart.org, about how punk rock led to community development
• Assess the successes and challenges of Meetup organizers with over 10 seasoned players
• Find out what makes The Great Clay Shirky tick
• Take a look at why everyone we interview talks about Saul Alinsky as if he were a deity
• Shoot the shit with Ze Frank
• And much, much more

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A great interview with Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, The Power of Organizing without Organizations.

-Filed in Uncategorized