President Obama's 2012 campaign unveiled its organizing dashboard Wednesday

The New and Not-So-New In Obama's "Dashboard"

Wednesday, May 23 2012

President Obama's re-election campaign unveiled its campaign "dashboard," Wednesday with a renewed focus on metrics and team-building that the campaign clearly hopes will enable it to better manage its massive base of volunteers and field organizers in what is expected to be a closely-contested presidential election.

The Obama team's 2012 social network retains many of the features of the my.barackobama.com network from 2008, but also includes new ones resulting from the experiences of that initial breakthrough campaign. The most noticeable changes: A sharper focus on individuals, their team units and their performance, the addition of the "Numbers," section, an activity stream that looks a bit like Facebook's activity stream, and a lack of a fundraising component.

Poetry of the Email Subject Line

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, May 23 2012

Micah Sifry discovers the unintentional poetry of email subject lines from Barack Obama's and Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns. Read More

White House Rolls Out New Plan for Digital Government

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, May 23 2012

The White House on Wednesday rolled out a new strategy document on digital government that sets out government-wide goals and priorities for dealing with citizens online, creates a new center at the General Services Administration to encourage agencies to get onboard, and calls for new government-wide standards for IT procurement.

White House Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel and Chief Technology Officer Todd Park unveiled the strategy Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt, a technology conference held in New York City. In their remarks, they framed the strategy as a sweeping reinvention of the way the government interacts with citizens online designed to make it ever easier for people inside and outside of government to improve service delivery for Americans over the web.Read More

Photo: Overpass Light Brigade

Grassroots Politics Makes Wisconsin's Recall Elections Local, and Personal

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Friday, May 18 2012

It's true that both Scott Walker and his opponent, Democrat Tom Barrett, will be a ubiquitous presence not just in emails sent around the country but also on television ads and radio spots inside Wisconsin. As their June 5 recall election gets closer, though, operatives supporting both Walker and Barrett say this election will be a far more visceral experience for voters: Campaigns over the past few years have become better and better at leaning on supporters to fire up their friends on Facebook and use the Internet to organize themselves to go door to door. The recall will be another opportunity to see how much traditional campaigns at all levels have come to rely on the grassroots — and what that means for voters caught in the crossfire of a highly charged election fueled by millions in political spending. Read More

White House CTO Todd Park in April. Photo: Daniel X. O'Neil

First POST: White House Tech On Stage; Disclosure Goes to Court

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, May 23 2012

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: A federal rule mandating online disclosure of political TV ad purchases goes to court; a new service to provide gigabit Internet in six towns is expected to launch today; and more in today's roundup of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More

Precision Network Targets Online Ads Against National Democratic Voter File

BY Nick Judd | Monday, May 21 2012

For Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Democratic online operatives are pulling the curtain up on a series of recent agreements to sell online ad targeting services to progressive causes and campaigns. Precision Network, a new political ad targeting company launched by Change.org alumnus Tim Lim, has announced a deal with NGP VAN that allows it to do more targeted online ad placement for progressive causes and campaigns. Precision takes voter file data from the National Voter File Co-op, an organization set up by state Democratic parties to keep a central, up-to-date voter file, removes personally identifiable information from the data, and matches it against a universe of about 350 million cookies placed on individual computers by a variety of ad exchanges and networks, said the company's founder, Tim Lim. Read More

Change.org.

Online Organizing 2.0: How Change.org Found Its Groove (and Moved to the Center of Online Politics)

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, May 15 2012

For Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: How did Change.org, a political startup founded in 2007, finally find its groove? And what does its sudden emergence at the center of online politics mean for the future of advocacy? Read More

PDF12: Sharing More Details on the Main Conference Program

BY Chris Wong | Thursday, May 17 2012

With less than a month before this year's Personal Democracy Forum, we're getting very close to finalizing our program. We wanted to take some time, however, to share some more details as the program comes together.

As you know, our theme this year is The Internet's New Political Power, and we have a number of great speakers whose talks will go to the heart of an emerging new world. After all, while we've known for a long time that the Internet was enabling all kinds of new political forces, what we didn't know, until recently, was whether the Internet itself could be a major political cause with its constituency.

[Announcement] PDF:Applied | The Civil Society Hackathon, June 9-10

BY Jen Vento | Thursday, May 17 2012

Since 2004, Personal Democracy Media has helped nurture a worldwide conversation about technology’s impact on government, politics and society. This year, we are excited to announce “PDF:Applied,” a two-day hands-on workshop to develop real-world software applications that evince the theme of the 2012 Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) conference: “The Internet's New Political Power.” Read More

[BackChannel] Beyond Media Spectacles: Debates as Conversations

BY Mike Mathieu | Wednesday, May 16 2012

In this post for Backchannel, our ongoing conversation between practitioners and close observers at the intersection of technology and politics, Mike Mathieu of The Seattle Center Next 50 Debate 2.0 Committee describes an effort in Washington State to reinvent political debate for the 21st century. Read More

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This Isn't What Political Air Time Usually Means

MoveOn.org is asking supporters for $150,000 in donations to fly a plane above high-dollar fundraisers for Mitt Romney with "a message that reminds voters how he represents his corporate and 1% donors." MoveOn previously hired a plane to fly over Romney's Liberty University graduation speech with the message "GOP = HIGHER SCHOOL DEBT." GO

There's a New $200 Million Fund for Super-High-Speed Broadband Projects

An initiative to build and test gigabit-speed broadband networks is set to fund up to six next-generation Internet access projects across the country, fueled by a new $200 million broadband development funding program, Gigabit Squared and Gig.U announced this morning. GO

New Rice University Paper Chronicles Impact of the Internet On U.S. Foreign Policy

We all know that the Internet has transformed the way that the United States conducts diplomacy, and the way that it views national security, but where should we look to find evidence of this? This is the wide-ranging subject matter of a new paper published on Tuesday by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper provides a round-up of some of the major turns of events between 2005 and 2011 in the realms of Internet governance, the development of online public diplomacy at the State Department, the evolution of the Internet-fueled Arab Spring, and the establishment of the shadowy U.S. Cyber Command in Fort Meade, Maryland, among other things. GO

Messin' with Lamar Smith, Revisited

Remember that grassroots fundraising campaign to put a "Don't Mess with the Internet" billboard in the home district of Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and sponsor of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act? All of the money required came in, and Fight for the Future, the advocacy group opposing more stringent copyright protections online, writes that the billboard went up. GO

Republican National Convention Organizers Sever Ties With Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions

After eight years producing online content for the Republican National Convention, GOP web consultant Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions is off of the project. "Campaign Solutions was retained to help develop our convention website and digital strategy, but they are no longer involved in convention planning," James Davis, the convention's communications director, told techPresident Tuesday. It's unclear what precipitated the of the relationship between the convention organizers and Campaign Solutions, which has been producing the online component of the event since 2004. But Donatelli's name surfaced in a controversial anti-Obama ad pitch sent to a Super PAC backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which appeared in its entirety in the Times last week. Ricketts has since disavowed the proposal and Donatelli has denied any involvement. GO

PD+ This Thurs 1pm: Thriving Online With Howard Rheingold

I'm really looking forward to talking with author Howard Rheingold this Thursday on the next PD+ teleconference. His new book, Net Smart, is a concise and thoughtful guide to understanding and making the most of the hyper-networked, always-on, firehose of information and distraction that is the contemporary experience of anyone who uses ... GO

City of Joplin, Mo. Launches New Online Center Ahead of Tornado's Anniversary

The city of Joplin, Missouri launched its new web site over the week-end ahead of the May 22 anniversary of the massive tornado that devastated the city and killed 161 people. The new site enables Joplin citizens to sign up for emergency alerts via text message, e-mail and RSS. In addition to those alerts, individuals can also sign up for ... GO

In Virginia, City Council Debates to Include Questions Posed Online

The Alexandria Democratic Party in Alexandria, Virginia has partnered with online civic engagement platform ACTion Alexandria to include questions solicited in an online forum in the final Democratic primary debate for a City Council election there on June 4, ahead of the June 12 election, according to a statement released by the group. ACTion Alexandria hopes to work with both parties during the general election.

Participants in the project can add questions to the forum, or vote on questions that have already been posed, although each user is only given three votes to distribute. Users are also encouraged to use their real names. Questions submitted so far hit on topics ranging from broadband access to a ban on food trucks in the city.

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