For those of that are fans of SXSW I’m hoping you’ll follow my work colleague, Emily Reeves, as she hangs out with all of the interesting folks in Austin. She’ll be blogging and on Twitter. Michel Gondry, Quentin Tarantino, Elvis Mitchell and a stellar interactive line-up. This is one festival that won’t suck.
UPDATE: Ms. Reeves talks to KTHV Channel 11 via Skype about what’s happening at the festival.
Here’s the new look of Blake’s Think Tank. I’m sorry to those of you that will miss the photo that was, well, old. Anyway, I went for a cleaner look and feel. All of the features of the old site remain. As always, comments are welcome. And thanks for reading.
Mickey Kaus announced that he would challenge California Sen. Barbara Boxer in the Democratic Primary. Mr. Kaus is a blogger for Slate, and a quite famous one. His decision sparked an interesting question in the blogosphere about the bloggers turned candidates (this is not be confused with blogging politicians, in many instances a dreadful experience for the reader).
Ross Douthat of The New York Times likes the idea.
So let’s have more of it! Let a thousand Kauses bloom! Come what may, there will always be a vast divide between the average wonk and the average politician — between people in the business of dreaming up ideas, and people in the business of winning elections. But our politics would be better off if there were a little more overlap between the two categories as well.
Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic points out a contrarian view on his blog.
It seems to me that the chief barrier to bloggers getting elected to public office isn’t so much their typically introverted personalities or lack of access to money but the mere fact that we’ve accumulated a long paper (pixel?) trail of recording every fool thought that’s passed through our minds over the last several years. Even bright, thoughtful, decent types like Douthat and Klein — and Lord knows, Kaus and Joyner — have written things that would kill a campaign dead, dead, dead if it showed up in an attack ad.
I’ve always loved the idea of serious public personalities running for office whether that be Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the left or William F. Buckley on the right (both ran, one succeeded). I think they make campaigns interesting.
I wasn’t alive in 1965, but reading this piece on the mayoral election in New York makes me wish I was. In that race, Mr. Buckley drew comparisons to the writer Oscar Wilde and the stand-up comedian Mort Sahl. A public intellectual who founded a conservative magazine, National Review, his candidacy was a long-shot from the beginning. But as Mr. Douthat notes, “a pundit or public intellectual doesn’t have to actually win a bid for office to have a healthy effect on a political ecosystem.”
Political consultants are scared to death of blogs and Twitter feeds as much as they are of voting records, which is why most that I’ve talked to over the years discourage anyone desiring a run for office from doing anything lasting, like blasting away on social media Web sites. This is why the counterpoint above has practical merit.
Still, I like where conservative Jonah Golberg came down on the Kaus candidacy.
Obviously, I’d prefer a strong conservative Republican over a moderate liberal Democrat as the next senator from California. But Mickey Kaus would provide the sort of iconoclasm the Democratic party desperately needs, particularly in California. If more Democrats were as empirical and tough-minded as Mickey, the country and the state would be in a lot better shape.
How would he be able to render that opinion without a lengthy public record on which to rely?
Only Google, Yahoo! and MSN drive more news traffic online.
The world is all a buzz about Apple’s announcement of the iPad, a mobile device that is part iPhone, part iMac. The hype was almost too much to bear; people rolled out with phone mock-ups, outlandish theories and imaginations. Nevertheless, the device is here. It seems pretty cool, as is everything that Apple creates these days. My wife has an iMac and an iPhone. I have a PC and a Blackberry. Maybe we’ll buy an iPad. I don’t know.
The announcement comes on the same day that President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union address. It’s an important speech. No, it’s bigger than that. His presidency will hinge on his ability to generate renewed trust, and the only way to do that is to begin a new conversation and keep that conversation going.
If the past year has shown us anything it’s that unlike technology politics doesn’t foster innovation. If it did, we’d have seen more creative and effective responses to exploding health care costs and the need for more jobs, for example. (Don’t go pointing fingers and laughing, Republicans, the egg’s on your face, too.)
However, technology has improved much of what we do today. Our life is easier thanks to our laptops, mobile devices and endless zones of WiFi. On a flight from Dallas to Salt Lake City I conducted business efficiently for $9.95 thanks to the gogo network.
Earlier on Twitter I wrote sardonically that Mr. Obama’s communications team bumped the State of the Union to avoid being trumped by Lost or American Idol (or some other Fox ratings giant) only to be smothered by Steve Jobs and the iPad announcement.
Conventional wisdom says that no one is interested in Mr. Obama’s speech. After all, why care about the state of our nation when there’s a cool new gadget is on the market, right? Or when you can read the copy online?
William Saletan, writing for Slate, raised the question: which is more important, politics or technology. He then determined, “technology, as a driver of social change, is overtaking politics.”
I wonder whether the comparison of the two is even reasonable. After all, social change in inherently political. The engine in many circumstances, particularly in the past twelve months, has been technological.
Which makes Mr. Jobs’ speech today and Mr. Obama’s speech this evening equally important. (You can add to this a review of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech last Thursday on Internet freedom.)
Here’s a fascinating take from the company that served as the digital consultant for Massachusetts senate candidate Scott Brown about their online grassroots campaign strategy. His campaign, like Barack Obama’s before it, provide candidates now and in the future with a wealth of strategic thinking to help their campaigns . . . if they’re willing to see the opportunity (still a BIG if in Arkansas).
Here are some lessons learned from the Brown campaign:
If you’re still one of the few that don’t believe that these types of investments make a difference, compare Mr. Brown’s efforts to Martha Coakley’s. Her online effort was horrible all the way down to her pointless Twitter stream and stagnant Facebook effort.
An e-mail just came in to The Think Tank’s in-box from Steve Patterson, campaign manager for Blanche Lincoln. The subject line was “Facebook” and the message invited me to engage in her online grassroots community: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr.
He writes,
Joining Blanche on facebook and following our campaign’s Twitter feed is a great way to stay plugged in to our online community. It will ensure you’re getting the most up-to-date news and information and the chance to connect with other campaign supporters across Arkansas.
The point of social media is to create a two-way communication between the user and the brand. In order to do this effectively, you have to invite the users to create and engage. In turn, the brand (in this case the Blanche Lincoln for Senate campaign) has to engage, too.
After all, the campaign is aiming to build brand trust and loyalty. In the political sense it’s about making voters feel a greater sense of trust for Ms. Lincoln than the candidate(s) opposing her. The way to do that online is to invite their perspectives (even if they’re negative) and provide them with meaningful and different ways to participate in the campaign. For that to work well (see my.barackobama.com), the campaign has to be willing to give up a bit of control to the user by allowing them to drive conversation, submit content (video, photos, etc.), and communicate with other supporters, either online or off-line.
Earlier I provided an analysis of the impact social media will have in the second congressional district race. Much of what I wrote in there applies to the US Senate race (although please don’t presume this to be a comprehensive social media assessment of every candidate in that race).
Since receiving Mr. Patterson’s e-mail I got to thinking more about the opportunities social media provides to her political campaign.
The first step in building an effective online grassroots community is creating an online hub that connects all of your other micro-communities. The online hub should always house the most robust content in order to encourage users to continue to visit and interact with the site.
Looking at the Lincoln campaign’s online hub, blancheforsenate.com, I was immediately drawn to the “Get Involved” section. As a user I’m given only three options: contribute, volunteer, register to vote. I clicked on Volunteer hoping that it would give me a interesting and meaningful ways to participate.
My hope deflated.
Facebook, the popular social media site, has become an engine for determining public interest in political candidates in Arkansas. If you’re not on Facebook this post won’t mean anything to you. But if you are, there’s a good chance that you heard about Draft Shane Broadway, an effort on Facebook to encourage state Sen. Shane Broadway to run for the 2nd congressional district seat being vacated by Rep. Vic Snyder.
A Facebook group for Paul Suskie, chairman of the public service commission and a former candidate for attorney general, went live last night in support of his bid (still unannounced) for Congress.
Today, Draft Davy Carter went live on Facebook to encourage state Rep. Davy Carter of Cabot to run for the first congressional district seat being vacated by Rep. Marion Berry.
The fan page option of Facebook allows supporters of political candidates to gauge public interest. To-date, Facebook hasn’t driven someone into a political race in Arkansas. But as the site becomes more popular in Arkansas it will be interesting to what if any impact it has.
Social media is nothing new to the political landscape. Just 13 months ago we saw how much social media impacted the presidential election. In fact, the campaign of Barack Obama – like it or not – created an entirely new national public engagement model by created spheres of cross influence that allowed consumers to talk to academics who were talking to media who were talking to the campaign, or any combination thereof.
This was the beauty: there were no walls between the campaign and the electorate, and there was little use for the media filter. Sure, the Obama campaign still spent a record amount on media, but the impact that his community Web property, my.barackobama.com, had on the campaign was significant in generating voter lists, engaging volunteers and raising money.
Mr. Obama dominated the social media game. He generated 2x more Web traffic, had 4x more YouTube viewers, 5x more Facebook friends, and spent 10x more on online staff than the John McCain campaign. As well all know, Mr. Obama received 66.8 million popular votes, 365 electoral votes, and won the election.
In Arkansas we have yet to see a local campaign really harness the power of social media as an engagement and mobilization tool. Sure, campaigns create the obligatory Facebook fan page and they’re on Twitter commenting about, well, everything. But Facebook and Twitter aren’t strategies, they’re tools. And depending on how they’re used can ultimately have little to no impact on a local campaign.
The only announced candidate to do anything effective in the social media realm to-date is Republican Tim Griffin. His online hub, timgriffinforcongress.com, is actually quite good. The homepage has prominent links to Facebook and Twitter, including a live Twitter feed. Users can subscribe to an RSS feed of the blog. There’s an introductory video, too. His “Get Involved” section is fairly comprehensive. It invites users to voluntarily submit information while offering them several specific opportunities to get engaged.
There are additional ways for the campaign to enhance it’s social media presence: First, the site should prompt users to enter their contact (and/or donate) when they first visit the site. Having to navigate to a sub-page makes it less likely that a user to engage. Second, it should give users the ability to interact directly with other users, allowing users to determine for themselves how to engage (rather than being limited to specific list). My.BarackObama.com did this very well. Third, it doesn’t take advantage of other social media tools. Why only one video? Why not a weekly podcast? What about Flickr? Fourth, it doesn’t harness the energy of a campaign by allowing users to create. Why not invite users to post their own videos on YouTube? Photos on Flickr? Host MeetUp’s at their homes? Create neighborhood groups?
Beginning today, bloggers, Twitterers, and others who write online reviews or endorse products using new media must disclose it when they receive free merchandise or payment for writing about an item. The guidelines update the FTC’s 1980 guide addressing the use of testimonials in advertising, remapping marketing rules for the digital realm, where it’s hard to know if the exclamatory musings of fashion hounds and best-disposable-diaper posts by suburban moms are inspired by a great product or a free product.
Time to review what happened today and look ahead to the weekend:
Fight Club: It’s about time someone came to the defense of Henry Allen, the Washington Post newspaper editor who punch a colleague in the face earlier this week. Rex Nelson over at his Southern Fried blog does so today. Like Mr. Nelson, I’m not an advocate for punching folks, although every man has his limits. Mr. Allen reached his. It may cost him his job.
Radio Talk: Arkansas Sunday Edition with Blake Rutherford welcomes Jason Tolbert of The Tolbert Report this week to the program. Sunday. 7 to 9 am. 103.7 FM or listen live online.
Social Media Geek Fest: SWIM is making a comeback after a month-long hiatus.
Doughnut: Little Rock Central’s football season ended last night with a drubbing by Bryant. 0-20 in the last two seasons. Ouch. My reflections on playing for Central coach Bernie Cox.
Oscar!: I need to catch up on my movies. “Bright Star,” “Men Who Stare at Goats,” “Paris,” “Capitalism: A Love Story,” “Amelia,” and “Coco Before Chanel” are in town. And I’m strangely intrigued by “The Box.”
Best Football in Arkansas: It’s the Battle of the Ravine in Arkadelphia tomorrow. One of the most interesting football rivalries in the country between Ouachita Baptist and Henderson State. Players and coaches walk to the opposing team’s stadium. The cops halt traffic. Seriously.
Heartbreak: The Arkansas Razorbacks play South Carolina in a game that keeps a Cotton Bowl bid alive. I’m amped up for it which means the Hogs will get beat. An 11:21 kick off is hardly enough time for me to dive in the sauce.
Watch: Best video of the day. Second best video of the day.
Slither: Snakes are back in the Clinton Center park. Ha, but I mean that literally.
Czeck Mate: The uber-hilarious local blogger @angryceck has some Twitter friends: @happyczeck and @velvetczeck.
Lincoln or Bust, Dawg: Little Rock locals Chad Pekron (@chadpekron) and James Roberts (@jimmyg20) will be in the stands when Nebraska and Oklahoma play tomorrow. Because Nebraska’s where I’d want to go if I had a long weekend to travel.
I’m out. Enjoy your weekend.
I had the privilege to sit down with some bright undergrad and graduate students at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock this week to discuss an interesting project they’ve developed and cultivated. It’s called Project Our House and the goal of the effort is to raise donations using social media tools (Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc.). We engaged in a one-hour brainstorm, which was all kinds of cool.
Check out their blog. Follow them on Twitter. Become a fan on Facebook.
Most importantly, however, engage with them and what they’re doing. It benefits a worthy cause in Little Rock.
Happy New Year: The Best and Worst of 2009 in Politics and Blogging
2009 was an interesting year in Arkansas and beyond. There was good news, bad news and all-together odd news about people, places, companies and industry. Below are my reflections (with a lot more after the jump).
Best National Political Moment
Barack Obama taking the oath of office in front of more than 2 million on the National Mall and millions more around the world. Police noted that there was not a single incident of disturbance on the mall that day.
Best Arkansas Political Moment
Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, much to the ire of his political adversaries, fulfilled his campaign promise to deliver an Arkansas lottery. After a rocky beginning, the lottery took off and millions of dollars will go towards college scholarships for Arkansas students.
Most Unassuming Political Moment That Will Have Lasting Benefit
Gov. Mike Beebe’s ability to trim the state’s budget without cutting jobs of state employees. Arkansas received high marks for its economic standing, including a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country.
Best Political News Get By a Non-News Guy
Jason Tolbert of The Tolbert Report broke the news that Arkansas state Sen. Kim Hendren referred to New York Senator Charles Schumer as “that Jew” in a speech. The story went national instantly.
Most Notable Arkansas Political Figure
Gov. Mike Beebe for his sky high approval ratings and mastery of the legislative and budget process.
Most Notorious Arkansas Political Figure
State Sen. Kim Hendren. See above.
Most Notorious Arkansas Political Figure Runners-Up
State Rep. Beverly Pyle, guns in church enthusiast.
Arkansas GOP Chairman Doyle Webb for his offensive and discriminatory comments about State Rep. Kathy Webb.
Best Arkansas Blogging Take-Down
David Kinkade of The Arkansas Project for his “Ten People Who Should Never Blog” post. It was also the best Arkansas blog post of 2009.
Howard Beale “I’m Mad As Hell” Moment to Which No One Paid Attention
John Brummett bitching at me and David Kinkade on a variety of matters, including the declining newspaper industry.
(more…)