I'm really pleased with how everything went at PdF Europe's first conference in Barcelona. We had a great mix of political hacks and hackers from all over the Continent, and the conversations buzzing in the hallways before, during and after each session are the best proof that people were connecting to each other in all kinds of fruitful ways. (Indeed, the continuing buzz on Twitter around the hashtag #pdfeu is the best proof to me that we planted many productive seeds at the Torre Agbar.)

Over on The Hill, Jordan Fabian has the story of how some advocates inside and outside Congress are pushing for congressional franking rules to get clear on how members of Congress can use Twitter. Such a clarification would be an upgrade to the ambiguous understanding now that encourages senators and representatives to either tweet first and ask questions later (as hundreds of Members of Congress do, according to Tweet Congress), or to not use Twitter at all (as hundreds of others of them choose to do). Such franking ambiguity is one of those institutional roadblocks to participation we're always going on about, and the worthwhile question becomes: what are franking rules good for in the Twitter age? Absolutely nothing? Huh.

Well, for one thing, the always helpful Wikipedia tells us that the very word franking comes from the Latin word "francus," meaning free. Franking privileges have traditionally been given to the high and mighty so that they might be able to communicate with their constituents without running up huge bills. (In some cases, all they need do is scribble their names where we commonfolk put a stamp.) On the flip side, restrictions on franking privileges were necessary so that those free stamps and the like wouldn't give too much of an advantage to those in office over those who might really want to replace them in those jobs. When Congress discovered email in the '90s, the traditional way of thinking about franking was stretched, awkwardly, to cover that game-changing technology. But it is being stretched to a breaking point when it comes to Congress and Twitter...

The new GOP.com has launched, featuring a tiny talking Michael Steele, a shifting logo made up of "GOP Faces" submitted by the public, and most importantly a collaborative hub based around user accounts. Steele's RNC has hopes of using the new site as a platform upon which to grow the Republican Party. Dive in and see how they did. (via RedState)

Are you in charge of your organization's email list? Do you wonder if your list is performing up to snuff? What's a good response rate? How is the financial crisis affecting the environment for online fundraising?

This Thursday, October 1st, 1:00-2:00pm EST on the PdF Network conference call we'll be talking with two experts, Marc Ruben and Karen Matheson of M+R Strategic Services. They'll be sharing the results of their eNonprofit Benchmarks Study for 2009, done in tandem with NTEN. It's based on an analysis of online messaging, fundraising, and advocacy data from 32 leading nonprofit organizations. We'll cover topics like...

Here's how Heather Holdridge of Care2, the sponsor of this session, describes its focus:

It's a mad mad Web 2.0 world and hot platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are fast becoming indispensable components of most online campaigns. The echo chamber of the blogosphere is a powerful voice for amplifying your message and the potential for mobile in the US grows daily.