personal democracy forum
Personal Democracy Forum Superlative Roundup
Most popular government representative: Vivek Kundra
With about 80% of the attendees identifying themselves as Democrats, it's no surprise that the many Obama campaign and administration representatives should be well-received, but the real rockstar was the White House CIO, who used his time at the podium for a demo of . The new dashboard displays how more than $70 billion tax dollars are being spent on IT projects by the major government agencies. Kundra, who received a standing ovation, said a blog will be up in the next couple of weeks, so users are invited to provide feedback as they continue to improve the beta site. What a cool example of how web 2.0 technology can be used to facilitate more transparency, accountability and collaborative problem-solving in the U.S. government. As Decker Ngongang of Generation Engage pointed out, it could be interesting to see nonprofits use this model to show how their donor dollars are being spent.
I heard him speak at the National Geographic Explorers Symposium a few weeks ago, so I knew the PDF crowd was in for a treat, but his standing ovation (the largest one, and the only one given besides that for Kundra) demonstrated his ability to speak to the larger cultural impacts of social media. A cultural anthropologist and media ecologist at Kansas State University, Wesch gave an amazing presentation entitled "The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube Culture and the Politics of Authenticity." He talked about what he and his students have discovered about vlogging, and people's attempts to connect without constraints via YouTube. I also particularly appreciated his analysis of the progression of "whatever" from a 1960s "I don't care. Whatever you think," to a 1990s "Whatever, I don't care what you think," and his call to move the meaning of the word to "I care. Let's do whatever it takes...by whatever means necessary."
I was reminded a few times, that online organizing is not really an end in itself, it's a tool we should be using to get people connected and active offline. In the "Twitter as a Platform for #Organizing and #Fundraising" panel, Allison Fine and Amanda Rose gave examples of how Twitter was a powerful tool to mobilize people for offline events. Allison Fine discussed the Twitter Vote Report campaign during which voters could help others stay informed about how election day was going, what problems were cropping up, and what was happening on the ground. Amanda Rose explained how Twestival came about, and how 10,000 people gathered offline in 200 cities to raise $250,000. She also mentioned that registration opened this week for Twestival local, a second iteration of the fundraiser taking place on September 12 and allowing each city to designate their own local beneficiary. The idea that we can't neglect the offline piece of organizing was reiterated by Joe Rospars of the Obama Campaign. He said the widely celebrated new media components of the campaign were always linked to offline activities and were never seen as a replacement for traditional methods.
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Personal Democracy Forum Day Two
Amazing set of speakers at the plenary this morning at PDF.
Doug Rushkoff, the author of Open Source Democracy, opened the session. He gave a passionate denunciation of the oxymoron of putting the ideas of “personal” and “democracy” together. Going back to the origins of the notion of the individual in the Renaissance, Rushkoff explained that the rights of the individual reduce a sense of community and inevitably to more centralized, and powerful, government. Read more »
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Personal Democracy Forum (cont'd)
Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post gave a typically candid and sassy talk. I’ll summarize her pointed jab at the mainstream media: Read more »
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Personal Democracy Forum Live
Kari and I are at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York City today and tomorrow.
You can see a live stream of the happenings here.
We’ve seen a few fascinating presentations this morning. We saw a demo of Linkfluence, neat spirographs of communities of bloggers through links between blogs.
Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake was a great example of how a blogger can taken an issue (hers was the Valerie Plame affair), run with it, and build up a following. However, I questioned her “actions” boiling down to taking ads out in newspapers. It’s very MoveOn.org. Is that the best we can do, take online passions, and take it to on land media?
Then Patrick Ruffini spoke (he’s a conservative blogger). He said, “A small networked group beats a large atomized group any day of the week.” Interesting — but I wonder when those small groups become impenetrable cliques?
Interesting stuff, more to come!
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