I just found Citizen Lab this cool site focusing on the intersection of digital media and world civil politics. It has a range of relevant articles headlines this week include:

Blogs rise above the Nepal information coup

Kyrgyz Websitessubject to unexplained failure and hacking during the Parliamentary Elections

‘Wangba’ crusadeabout the origins of Beijing’s crackdown on thousands of Internet cafés arising from parents concerns about games of Counter-Strike than fears of counter-revolution.

Filtering by South Korean Governmentof Pro-North Websites

Iranian cleric blogs for free expression

I wore my Linux Journal Penguin Party shirt Saturday night party at emerging progressives. It got a lot of attention because the donkey box wasn’t checked - I was asked twice if the Penguin was a Platypus. Only 2/20 of the people I talked to knew it was the linux Penguin.

At the end of the Internet and Politics session there was a great discussion about Netroots [GrassRoots + Online] organizing with Matt Stoller and others:

You can build very geographically distributed constituencies around obscure issues for example - 10,000 people who are active around asylum seekers. This is the new netroots phenomena. The new task politically will be to support these groups emerging and networking together, or as Matt said welding these groups together around key tasks they can accomplish together. An example of a site to look at was Government Bytes, which is a blog run by the National Taxpayers Union.

This assessment of what is possible using the netroots is similar to the long tail phenomena that has been discovered in retail. Well worth the read as it does apply to politics.

So far nobody knows how to do "this" - experimentation and support for those experimenting is important.

These questions came up during the session

What is a good web organizer?
What do you look for when hire one?
How do you evaluate firms who offer services in this realm?

There were no clear answers offered to these questions.

People in the session were clear that overall -

Web organizers have never done fieldwork before - “They don’t get it.”
Field organizers don’t understand online tools,. “ They don’t get it.”

Things could work really well if these two were in synergy. But how do you overcome the language and cultural barriers?

At this point there are few ‘regular organizers’ who have begun building bridges between these two cultures.

I think Educational opportunities need to be made available so there can be more people who have this skill set.

As a campaign gets rolling there are database issues that arise tracking information about people's online participation in a campaign and field organizers contacting these same people. There can be a lot of conflict that arises:

Michael Cornfield from the Pew Research Center on the Internet and American LIfe shared some interesting facts.

Only 1/100th of the money spent in this campaign cycle was spent on internet advertising compared to television advertising. It is less clear how much was spent on the technology and other internet strategies.

People believed that the internet improved the quality of political debate by a margin of 10-1. WOW – this is amazing – perhaps a trusted medium worth investing more in.

People love it once they get online and want more because they are in control:

The intake (what message they read/hear/view)
The time that they spend on each message
Control cost (not spending more) – read national review and not give

More people online looking for political information check both sides of an argument.

The internet instant response capacity because if they want to contribute - it is all within the medium)

Lessons:

Matt Stoller did a great Job blogging the second Internet panel at emergingprogressives.

I thought Michael's presentation about the difference between one to many (traditional campaigns with hierarchical structures, broadcast media, MoveOn) and the network form of the Dean Campaign needed better articulation. Michael drew a few dots on the black board and connected them with random lines – saying that it was like the net because there was no center and if you took out one node it would keep working.

The nature of networks is a powerful concept to understand but it needs to be walked through more slowly. The net does not have ‘a’ center but it does have highly connected nodes - hubs, and super-hubs of connectedness. Scale free networks are important to understand nature of social relationships. 
Appling these concepts to campaigns could be really powerful.

I just left the 5th plenary session that I have heard in less then 24 hours at emerging progressives (perhaps less gracefully then I could have). So far all the folks on stage are 'elders' in the party and movement talking about what they did in the election and how the piece that they did worked and that messaging is key.

There have been virtually no opportunities for strategic face-to-face networking between the young leaders here. I hope that some of the technologies that can be considered when examining politics and how it can be different include face-to=face technologies that have evolved since we got voting for representatives in the 1700's.

Open Space would be great to use in this sort of gathering – it supports large groups of people talking about what they are most passionate about in self-organized groups over the space of the weekend. It was innovated BECAUSE ‘the best parts of a conference’ are often the coffee and lunch breaks, this format supports that quality of dialogue and inquiry over a whole weekend – not just between the talking heads.

At emergingprogressives:
How has the internet changed things:

Fundraising
Productivity
Transparenty
Insurgent media
Politictal
Heterarchical organizing
Good and bad

No one has yet to put together all of these cool new tools. There is no new formula for winning yet - 1/2 of online tool use was to support reach beyond the internet.

I think this highlights the need to learn more about technology and think creatively - where can you do this?

Come to the Personal Democracy Forum in May!
Learn more about online tools for collaboration come to Blue Oxen's Collaboration event in April!
Attend a Penguin Day

At emergingprogressives:

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED.
Per Request of the presenter of the Information.

My question?
How are we (all people) going to learn to use the interent better to engaged the public now and around elections if we don't even knwo what was done durring this last elect.

See this post on Open Sourcing the DNC

The actual technology is open source .

Perhaps understanding the culture of open source and how it works will help us think about new creative ways to engaged in politics.

Those serious about supporting learning about how to use the internet better in politics and broadly in society will choose open up and share so we can collectively learn.

Collective learning and the exchange of information and code is how open source works - it is highly transparent. This is what makes the softare work on millions of computers - you use this kind of software every day if you surf the interent.

At emergingprogressives:
One of the subplots of election cycle is the use of new technology in traditional organizing – basically using databases and maps well to get out vote by calling and knocking on doors. AFL-CIO used logistical assistance to support volunteer field workers and Palm pilot use by ACT. Kerry campaign mainly used the web to recruit volunteers.

Technologies identified - DB management, wireless field organization, websites, maps of union members, Blogging. (No wiki’s, online community sites, meetups.)

I made the closing remark that new tools mean that new things are possible and that there could be a whole weekend discussing what is possible.

Jeff Blodgett Director of Welstone Action opened the session with the age old goals of organizing and use technology tools to help with these.

Harnessing the energy of the base – technology has helped us better connect people together and use volunteers in more efficient way.