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New PdF 2010 Speakers: Julian Assange, Bryan Sivak, and Many More!

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, April 19 2010

With the seventh annual Personal Democracy Forum conference just over six weeks away, here’s an update on some exciting new keynoters and panels. We’re still juggling some speakers and breakout sessions, and I’ll have more details to share soon. But hopefully this will get your juices flowing.

First, we’re pleased to announce several exciting new keynote speakers, starting with Julian Assange of Wikileaks.org, which has been much in the news of late. This will be Julian’s second PdF appearance, after coming to our inaugural PdF Europe conference in Barcelona last year. He’ll be joining a keynote session that we’re calling “In Search of a Theory of Change: The Internet and Democratization,” along with previously announced speakers Evgeny Morozov, Ethan Zuckerman and Cheryl Contee.

Second, we’re happy to announce that Bryan Sivak, the new Chief Technology Officer of Washington, DC, America’s most technologically advanced city administration, will be anchoring a whole track of sessions on “We.gov.” He’ll be talking about the growing OpenMUNI movement along with Jen Pahlka of Code for America and Philip Ashlock of The Open Planning Project.

More on We.Gov Track

While I’m on the topic of our We.gov track, here’s what else we have planned session-wise: Ken Goldberg, the Berkeley University lead developer of OpinionSpace; Anil Dash, the founder of Expert Labs; Ginny Hunt, the project lead for Google Moderator; and Conor White-Sullivan, the co-founder of Localocracy.com; will all speak on Tools for Listening and Engaging the Public. Conor, I should note, may be the youngest-ever PdF speaker; he’s a senior at U-Mass Amherst.

Also in the We.gov track, we’re going to take a close look at Open Source Crisis Response with Katie Stanton of the State Department, Patrick Meier of Ushahidi, Heather Blanchard of CrisisCommons; and Katrin Verclas of MobileActive.org. They’ll be focusing on the recent and ongoing crisis in Haiti as a case study for new kinds of citizen-developer-government-NGO collaboration. We’re also working on a fourth breakout session in this track, of which more details soon.

Skills-Building Tracks Added This Year

If you’re reading your PdF emails, you already know that we’ve created two skills-building tracks covering the application of best practices and emerging technologies. The idea for both came out of last year’s conference, when many attendees mentioned wanting more time devoted to digging in on the nitty-gritty of online advocacy.

The Quick Start Track is for those who want to get up to date with the basics in search engine optimization, online advertising, web analytics, and social media and the Advanced e-Campaign Track will explore advanced techniques for blogs, online advertising, and innovation in online campaigns. Here’s who’s speaking on each one (some speakers still to be announced):

Quick Start Track

Search Engine Optimization: How to Make Sure People are Finding You and Your Cause: Vanessa Fox, creator of Google's Webmaster Central and author of Marketing in the Age of Google; Kevin Lee, CEO of Didit.com and author of Search Engine Advertising; and Sara Holoubek, CEO, Luminary Labs and outgoing President of the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization board of directors

Online Advertising for Beginners: How to Reach the People You Need to Reach Most Efficiently: Peter Greenberger, Team Manager, Elections & Issue Advocacy, Google; Amy Auerbach, Baruch College; Kate Kaye, ClickZ and author of the book Campaign ’08: A Turning Point for Digital Marketing

Using Web Analytics Tools to Make Your Organization More Effective: Case Studies in How to Start: Shabbir Safdar, Measurement Guru; Alisa Aydin, US Fund For UNICEF; Shayna Englin, Englin Consulting; Ken Deutsch, Morningside Analytics

Refining Your Social Media Smarts: From YouTube to Facebook to Twitter: J.D. Lasica, Founder, SocialMedia.biz; Jonah Sieger, Bloomberg '09; Barnet Zitron, Why Tuesday?

Advanced e-Campaign Track

The Enduring Power of Blogs as Organizing Hubs: Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake; Erin Kotecki Vest, Political Director and Producer of Special Projects for BlogHer; Markos Moulitsas, Founder, DailyKos.com

Online Advertising: New Tricks of the Trade: Eric Frenchman, Chief Internet Strategist for Connell Donatelli Inc.; Josh Koster, Managing Partner, Chong + Koster; Mark Skidmore, Director of Advertising & Promotion at Blue State Digital; and Emily Williams, Senior Interactive Account Executive at MSHC Partners and Online Advertising Campaign Manager for Obama ‘08

How the Right is Innovating in Online Campaigns: David All, Founder, David All Group; Mindy Finn, Partner, EngageDC; Rob Willington, online campaign director, Scott Brown '10; Ryan Gravatt, online campaign director, Rick Perry '10

How the Left is Innovating in Online Campaigns: Dan Cantor, Executive Director of the NY Working Families Party; Natalie Foster, new media director, Organizing for America; Stephanie Taylor, co-founder, Progressive Campaign Change Committee; Ari Melber, Net Movement Correspondent, The Nation

Coming soon: details on a track for Developers of political technology, and on a track about Media. Plus, more news about the structure of our plenary sessions, which will be featuring people like Jimmy Wales, Ory Okolloh, John Perry Barlow, Saul Anuzis, Scott Heiferman, Jane Hamsher, Craig Newmark, Eli Pariser, Aneesh Chopra, Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, Bernard Avishai, Susan Crawford, Markos Moulitsas, Clay Shirky, Howard Rheingold, and Arianna Huffington.

News Briefs

RSS Feed wednesday >

What Twitter Won't Tell You About the Election

A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press on Tuesday offers the opportunity to get real about what the political conversation on Twitter and Facebook can — or can't — tell you about the progression of the 2012 political campaign. Pew has found that even among users of Twitter and Facebook, a paltry percentage of people use social networks to get news about politics: Only 24 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 25 percent of Facebook users said they "sometimes" got campaign news through that network, while a full 40 percent of Twitter users in the sample and 46 percent of other social media users reported "never" getting campaign news through either Twitter or Facebook. GO

Navigating New York's "Road Map for the Digital City," One Year In

In May 2011, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg revealed a "Road Map for the Digital City," a plan to use technology to make city government more and participatory, and to leverage the city's tech sector for economic and civic gains.

New York City Chief Digital Officer Rachel Sterne will join our editorial director, Micah Sifry, on a conference call this Friday afternoon to discuss the progress on that road map so far. The call is free and open to anyone to join. You can sign up here.

GO

yesterday >

Pete Hoekstra's Campaign Website's "Offensive" Source Code Changed After Outcry

As if "chop suey fonts" and obvious graphic allusions to the stereotype of the Chinese as the Yellow Peril weren't controversial enough, the group that created an incendiary microsite for former Rep. Pete Hoekstra's campaign has managed to further fan the flames with what it's calling a mistake in its code. GO

Fidel Castro Loves the Internet

“The Internet is a revolutionary instrument that permits the receiving and transmission of ideas, in both directions, that is something we should know how to use,” Fidel Castro told a crowd of supporters on Feb. 4, according to the state-owned Cuban newspaper Granma International. Castro, who made his first public appearance since April 2011, launched his two-volume memoir, “Guerilla of Time,” and took the opportunity to discuss issues of importance to him. Earlier this week, Miranda Neubauer reported that one of these topics was the need for the Internet. Castro has been a proponent of the Internet as a tool for the exchange of ideas since 2003, but the average Cuban citizen faces great difficulty getting online. GO

Claire McCaskill Hires Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner As Digital Director

Missouri's senior Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill has hired Blue State Digital's Alex Kellner as its digital director. GO

Controversial Hoekstra Microsite Targeting Debbie Stabenow Created By The Prosper Group

Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra has caused a firestorm in the past 24 hours with a new campaign ad that depicts China as a young woman riding a bike in a rural area speaking in broken English. The thirty second spot aired in Michigan during the Super Bowl on Sunday, and it accuses Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow of aiding ... GO

White House CTO Aneesh Chopra's Exit Interview

On his way out of the White House and back to Virginia, where he is expected to run for public office — but will neither confirm or deny that's the plan — Aneesh Chopra describes the shape of the post he pioneered as the country's first-ever chief technology officer.

As a result of Chopra's interview with The Atlantic's tech/politics correspondent, Nancy Scola, there's now a public record of what this first-ever CTO thinks the CTO's job actually is ("On any topic that is a priority for the president, my role is evaluate how technology, data, and innovation can advance, support, and improve upon those strategies," among other things) and how it might be improved.

GO

friday >

Slovenian ambassador apologizes for signing ACTA, Poland halts ratification

Apparently, some EU countries are reconsidering their support to ACTA, only a week after signing the agreement.
Helena Drnovsek Zorko, Slovenia's ambassador to Japan, has in fact issued a public apology to her country for signing it. Meanwhile, Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he's halting the ratification process of the international treaty.
Last week people took the streets in Poland, and a protest is planned in Ljubljana tomorrow. GO

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