As I announced a few months back I’m now at Be the Change, Inc where I head the efforts in all things Technology (mostly web) with the support of very capable vendors and staff. As part of my role, I help identify technology and develop strategy that will help the organization spread its message and  lead to people become invested and take action in our first campaign.  To fulfill this part of my job, I’ve started attending various conferences and Panels around the City. One of the Roundtable that I attend pretty regularly is the Internet Advocacy Roundtable hosted by Center for American Progress Action Fund and lead by  Alan Rosenblatt.   The Last round table I attend was titled “The future of E-mail Congress  - New Solutions Offered and Old Myths Busted“( word doc of the preso) and there speaker was Daniel Bennett who is Co-author of “The Net Effect: How Cyber advocacy is Changing the Political Landscape” and was a columnist for The Cloakroom. 

The gist  of Mr. Benett’s presentation is that he has developed a technique that will more accurately group emails that each representative receives from various advocacy group so that s/he will not waste staff time reading all the emails and will have a better tally of where constituents stands on any particular issue by looking at the total number of emailed received.  According to him but unverified by anyone in the room, the system works with 95-99% accuracy and is easy to install and works with current e-mail systems on the Hill.  He claims to have tested in some offices with great result and received positive feedback.  In plain English, the system group letters according to a token or URL included each email.  So any given e-mailing campaign would have the same token. For the techie crowd, see some documentation at http://advocatehope.org/tech-tidbits. Mr. Bennett then called on all the orgs present at the lecture to lobby the vendors to start implementing this new system. He claims that there is no financial benefit to him and I don’t have any reason not to believe him. Lastly, Mr. Bennett claims staffer don’t read the letters already so his solution would a least make sure they have a accurate count before the vote.

I have two thoughts about this improvement by Mr. Benett.  As someone whose organization is trying to lobby congress to get legislation passed, this is fabulous. It’s a great tool and we can use to hopefully sway a representative’s mind and maybe get to move away from voting along party lines when we can get people from his district to e-mail him or her.  As person that has friends that work on the Hill, I know this will make their live easier and they will be a little more efficient while at the office and maybe get a few more things done.

As a private citizen, this “improvement” is outrageous.  Call me be crazy but I’d like to think that my representative or his staff would read the vast majority of e-mails and letters that come to them.  It’s their job! They  were elected to serve the people of their district and that includes reading constituent’s mail how ever outrageous they are.  The Reps and their staff are supposed to do what is good for the constituents and the for the country as a whole.  Just because 4999 people emailed about one side of the issue and 50001 email about the other side, doesn’t mean the rep should cast a vote in favor of  the highest bidder. While I appreciate Mr. Benett’s persistence and hard work (he’s been working on this solo for 5 years), I think his solution is the wrong way to go.   His solution is fixing the wrong problem.  I would even go as far as to say it’s making Congress worse.  We, as citizen and their employers, should not accept the fact Reps don’t read our mail or letters. We should def not make it easier for them not to read our letters.    While Mr. Benett’s claim about staffers not reading mail may be true, I refuse to give in his cynicism and make easier for them not to so.  And I sincerely hope others won’t either.

Was that too harsh?…….Naaaaaaaaaah.

All these Facebook events had me thinking:  Of all the politicians and or non-profits, who can really benefits from the extra exposure on Facebook?  At first glance the answer is easy.  Everyone of them can benefit from additional exposure on Facebook and if you subscribe to the theory that all publicity is good publicity, this is even more true. 

Before discussing who has the most to gain, it is imperative to mention that each organization must first determine its goals on Facebook and  its target audience and their habits.  For example, there is no need to for an organization like National Association of Home Builders to create a presence on Facebook, if their goal is to reach more Builders Members.  On the other hand, I don’t understand why an associations like National Minority AIDS Council or the Red Cross, have yet to take advantage of Facebook groups and Apps to promote their activities (at a local level if need be) and even launch education campaigns about AIDS and blood drives, respectively.

That being said, I think some stand to gain more than others.  In my opinion, the most stand to gain are local politicians and local organizations.  Facebook actions (i.e. signing up for events, following local group, viewing a tagging photos) better translate in the real world if they are kept in the small communities where that people can physically relate to and have to be part of every day.  I have no data to support this but one can only look at LateNightShots in DC and its success to get what the idea.  The site works because it drives people to meet and get together offline.   And they can do this because it’s hyper-local. Whether you agree with what they do  when they meet offline is a subject for another discussion.

While national organizations and national politicians can not benefits as much from the basic Facebook features as their local counterparts, they can rely on Facebook Apps to accomplish the same thing.  The Apps can be used as a tool to allow like minded users be a part of hyper-local community that will allow them then to engage with each other and organization/politician online and offline. 

Basically, a successful utilization of facebook to get a message across would be to create hyper-local groups than whose action and support can translate in the real world

Unless you’ve been living under rock, you are probably aware of the all the hype that Facebook has been receiving. With something like 45 millions users, everyone, from politicians to activist/Non-Profit organizations, has been trying to leverage for their purpose and or cause. The first event I attended focused on how political organizations and candidates can utilize Facebook to reach the masses. The Facebook reps started the presentation with statistics about the site, its users and the potential for growth. The numbers were impressive but nothing that hasn’t been published everywhere on the web. Needless to say, I was really excited about that part of the presentation. In latter part of the presentations made following recommendations to organizations and candidate that wished to tap into Facebook users:

• Form groups and keep the content fresh (i.e. pictures, wall post, notes, and posted items).
• Be candid, transparent, and relevant (i.e. don’t used canned photos only, don’t run everything by legal and PR, talk about Grey’s anatomy…everyone watches it)
• Encourage interaction between group members and have actionable items.
• Build Facebook application using the Facebook Platform when you find limitations in current Facebook functionalities (i.e. Barack Obama app & Causes App).
• Purchase various Facebook advertising package to target a specific audience (i.e. all 22-24 yrs old males living in NY) or to gain wide audience.

Post presentation, they had a Q&A. Again nothing exciting, expect you politician profiles can now have more than 5000 friends, and Groups administrators will soon be able to message more than 1000 people at a time.

The second event, titled Facebook Developer Garage, was held at GW the next day. By the title you can see that it was geared towards geeks like me. There was a bit of an overlap between the presentations. The presenters displayed the same stats from the other conference. I guess they can’t really compile new statistics overnight. During the second part of the presentation, the focus was more on the much touted Facebook Platform. To summarize, their message to developers was “build fast and iterate.” They made the case that the platform is young and full of potential. They, as in Facebook, have not yet identified all the characteristics of a killer app. The best way to discover users’ likes and dislikes is by trial and error, which is what they do themselves at Facebook (…think of backlash when news feed was first introduced). After the presentation from Facebook reps, some local developers came up and demoed their Facebok apps. Each of them talked about the challenges encountered while building their app and fielded some questions. I can not end with out a word of thanks for Jesse Tomas and Nick O’Neill for setting up the second event. It was very ad hock, but successful.

Next post what I learned…