NDN Blog

Thursday New Tools Feature: Change.gov *(Remix!)*

Today,  the Washington Post ran an excellent piece by Ceci Connolly about how President-elect Obama's incoming administration has "begun to draw on the high-tech organizational tools that helped get him elected to lay the groundwork for an attempt to restructure the U.S. health-care system." From the article: 

The Obama team, which recruited about 13 million online supporters during the presidential campaign and announced its vice presidential selection via text message, is now moving to apply those tools to the earliest stages of governing.

"This is the beginning of the reinvention of what the presidency in the 21st century could be," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the center-left think tank NDN. "This will reinvent the relationship of the president to the American people in a way we probably haven't seen since FDR's use of radio in the 1930s."

This is something that NDN has been talking about for some time: indeed, healthcare was the specific example used at our October 28, 2008 forum with Simon and Joe Trippi (for the C-SPAN footage, click here). It is good to see that the Obama administration is working to live up to its promise of a more open, bottom-up government. As the Washington Post article reports,

The Obama team chose to begin its high-tech grass-roots experiment on the issue of health care because "every American is feeling the pressure of high health costs and lack of quality care, and we feel it's important to engage them in the process of reform," said spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter.

It started with a simple 63-second video posted on Change.gov, in which health advisers Dora Hughes and Lauren Aronson posed the question "What worries you most about the health-care system in our country?"

That triggered 3,700 responses, from personal tales of medical hardship to complaints about "socialized medicine." The cyber-conversation was interactive, allowing individuals to reply to one another and rate responses with a thumbs up or down. The top-scoring comment, a pitch for a "paradigm shift" toward prevention, had 82 thumbs up.

This is not the only good sign for open-source government coming from the Obama camp. This week, the transition site Change.gov eliminated its old, traditional copyright policy and implemented "an Attribution 3.0 Unported License which allows anyone to use and even 'remix' whatever's found on the site, just as long as they tip their hat to the transition project as the original source of the material," according to TechPresident.

This approach of letting anyone use the content in creative ways has already paid dividends; separate versions of Change.gov have been created for the iPhone and for other mobile devices, as well as an embeddable Change.gov widget (below).

For more on how Obama will reinvent the Presidency as we know it, please see:

NDN: Week In Review

There's always a lot happening here at NDN, so in case you missed anything, here's what we've been up to in the last week:

"Millennial Makeover" Named One of NYT Critic's Ten Best Books of 2008 - NDN proudly congratulates its two newest Fellows, Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, on the selection of their book, "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics," as one of Michiko Kakutani's 10 Favorite Books of 2008. Kakutani is a Pulitizer Prize-winning book critic for the New York Times.

In her list describing her favorites, Kakutani wrote about about Millennial Makeover:

Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics by Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais. In what turns out to have been a highly prescient book, the two authors predicted that 2008 would be a "change" election, informed by new technology and by the outlook of a new generation of millennial voters, who tend to be more inclusive, optimistic and tech-savvy than their elders.

To view Kakutani's entire list, which includes Millennial Makeover, please click here. To read more by Morley and Mike, please review their new essay on how the Millennials who voted for Barack Obama in overwhelming numbers are poised to reinvigorate our nation's civic life.

NDN Post-Election Analysis - Following on Morley and Mike's always-prescient essays, Sunday's Washington Post had an excellent analysis of Virginia's changing electoral landscape, detailing Democratic gains with Hispanics, African-Americans, young people and upper income and more educated voters. In a new essay, Simon notes that the story of what happened in Virginia in 2008 mirrors what happened across the nation, and makes very clear the GOP's problems are structural as well as temporal - they simply are not building a party and a coalition suited to the demographic realities of 21st century America.

NDN Event Dec. 12: A New Coalition and a New Map - In keeping with the themes mentioned above, NDN will be hosting an event to discuss one of the more important outcomes of this year's remarkable election - the emergence of a new and very 21st century Democratic electoral coalition, and a new and very 21st century Electoral College map. Joining Simon for the discussion will be Morley Winograd, co-author of Millennial Makeover, and Andres Ramirez, Vice President of NDN's Hispanic Programs.

The event will take place at NDN's offices on December 12, from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Lunch will be served, and seating will be first-come, first-served. Space is limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible. For directions, maps, parking, and other information, please visit the event page.

Prescription for Curing a Recession: A Stimulus for the Long Run - With word coming from the National Bureau of Economic Research that a recession is official, and already a year old, the need for a strong economic stimulus package has never been clearer. President elect Obama has said signing such a package into law will be his first order of business after his inauguration, and, as Jake Berliner wrote, there is now broad consensus for a package that gets money onto the street now by investing in America’s long term prosperity. Michael Moynihan explained the Obama plan for a stimulus package, which seems to be on track, and Simon Rosenberg and Rob Shapiro laid out an argument for "A Stimulus for the Long Run."

NDN Event Dec. 11: Forum on Latin America and the Economic Crisis - NDN is proud to host the Honorable Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank and former Ambassador of Colombia to the United States, to discuss "The Current Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Latin America." This briefing will take place on Thursday, December 11, at 3 p.m. at NDN, 729 15th St., NW, 1st Floor.

Please RSVP as soon as possible. The event is open, but space is limited. Refreshments will be served. Please visit our Web site to view past events with the Ambassadors of Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and the Vice President of Panama.

Building the Electron Superhighway - NDN’s work on Clean Infrastructure, including a recent event with Congressmen Jay Inslee and Earl Blumenauer on Grid Modernization, argues that investing in 21st century infrastructure is crucial to America’s economic well-being. Michael Moynihan recently blogged on an interesting proposal to create a national electron superhighway, which could serve as a key component to a modernized electrical grid. For more on clean infrastructure, visit the Green Project on the NDN Blog.

NDN Seeking Winter and Spring Interns - NDN is looking for interns to join our staff this winter and spring. If you or someone you know is interested in working at NDN during this exciting period, please refer to the internships page on our Web site or contact jobs@ndn.org for more information.

From the NDN YouTube Archive - This week, the featured video from our YouTube channel is then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton speaking at the 2006 NDN Annual Meeting. Yesterday, President-elect Obama announced Senator Clinton would serve as his Secretary of State.

Weekly Immigration Update - To find out what's new in the world of immigration reform, be sure to check out Zuraya Tapia-Alfaro's weekly immigration update. In this weekly feature, she comprehensively catalogs all the latest immigration-related developments.

Daily Roundup - The NDN blog’s newest regular feature is a daily roundup of economic and political news. Posted each morning by Sam duPont, the roundup includes the best analysis and latest news from mainstream and new media around the Web. Be sure to check it out!

Monday Buzz: "Millennial Makeover" in NYT's Top 10 of 2008, the New Voters, Electron Superhighways, and More

It was a banner week for NDN fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais: their book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics, was named one of the top 10 books of 2008 by New York Times' Michiko Kakutani. From the Times feature:

In what turns out to have been a highly prescient book, the two authors predicted that 2008 would be a “change” election, informed by new technology and by the outlook of a new generation of millennial voters, who tend to be more inclusive, optimistic and tech-savvy than their elders.

Their work on Millennials was also featured in MarketWatch, the Toledo Blade, and the National Journal. The National Journal piece, "Where are the New Voters?", also features NDN's work on Hispanic issues:

"It's another indication that America went through a civic realignment in 2008," said Morley Winograd, a fellow with the progressive think tank and activist group NDN, and co-author of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics. Hispanic voters, too, have swung decisively to Democrats, NDN experts note, and increased their share of the electorate by 62 percent in Colorado, 50 percent in Nevada, and 28 percent in New Mexico.

Michael's recent essay, "Building the Electron Superhighway," was featured in the Huffington Post and Grist.

Rob was quoted in Forbes on President-elect Obama's economic team:

Rob Shapiro, an economist who was a top official in Clinton's Commerce Department, said Obama's selection of Geithner and Summers, as well as his wooing of Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, reflect Obama's interest in attracting expertise and people of strong will.

"It tells you that not only does President-elect Obama have respect for expertise, but that he is very comfortable in an administration with very major figures," said Shapiro, now an official with NDN, a think tank formerly known as the New Democratic Network.

Rob also was featured in the Huffington Post, Carbon Tax Center, and Computer Weekly.

Monday Buzz: "The Wired Whitehouse," Millennials' and Hispanics' Growing Electoral Clout, and More

In tandem with our enlightening event last week on the New Politics of the Obama Age, NDN also appeared in several stories over the past several days talking about how Obama is using technology to reinvent the presidency, including a front-page story on MSNBC, as well as stories in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Future Majority, News24, and Fox. The MSNBC article, which also embedded Simon's recent video blog on how Obama will Reinvent the Presidency and quoted our Obama Age forum panelist Scott Goodstein, began like this:

After a historic presidential election, the tech-savvy campaigners who helped put Barack Obama in the White House say the nation is in for an equally historic four years of tech-savvy governance.

The way the Obama campaign used blogs, texting, social networking and other Web 2.0 tools to win this month's election is just "the tip of the iceberg," said Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the political advocacy group NDN.

Rob was quoted on subjects ranging from the proposed auto industry bailout to the impending economic stimulus in the Telegraph, CNN Money, The Age, the Daily Mail, and the Independent. From the Independent article:

Robert Shapiro, an economic adviser to Barack Obama's campaign and former US under-secretary of commerce for economic affairs, was particularly helpful to the Prime Minister. When Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, asked him what was the risk of a big stimulus package, he said there was "no risk, there is a cost – but there is a very large risk if we choose not to do it".

Our work  on building a durable 21st century majority coalition also made its way into the media narrative this week, with New York Magazine wondering, "Can Obama Hang On to His Youth Coalition?" and Crooks and Liars asking, "The Latino Vote: Can Democrats Lock It Up for a Generation?" Morley and Mike's work on Millennials also got play from DailyKos and the Jackson Free Press; NDN's work on immigration and Hispanic issues was featured in the Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, the Reporter, Hispanic Trending, the Latino Journal, and Immigration Daily.

From the New York Magazine article:

this particular generation of young people are aligned with Obama on social issues. As a group, the "Millennial Generation" — those who will make up the under-30 crowd in the next several elections — are reliably more liberal on issues like gay marriage and stem-cell research than any other generation — and that's not likely to change, said Michael D. Hais and Morley Winograd, authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics. They predict that young people will continue to vote Democratic, catalyzing a "political realignment" in this country that will play out in the next thirty years.

And from the Denver Post article, "Texas as a Swing State?":

Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, a veteran of the Clinton administration, said that Republicans have alienated Latinos largely because of the immigration issue. Rosenberg is the founder and president of NDN, a Democratic think tank that studies immigration and other issues.

He said that Republican rhetoric surrounding recent immigration bills in Congress offended all Hispanics. A major measure that would have given illegal immigrants a path to citizenship failed last year after a revolt from conservatives, who denounced it as an amnesty for lawbreakers.

"If they do that again, it’s going to be catastrophic for the Republican Party," he said.

Rosenberg said that Texas could become a swing state as early as 2012 depending on the level of Latino participation and whether the Democratic Party will continue to make investments in the community.

Finally, Simon's recent essay, The Long Road Back, was featured on DailyKos in Kos's Midday Open Thread, and our report on computer training for American workers was featured in Progressive States.

NDN: Week In Review

There's always a lot happening here at NDN, so in case you missed anything, here's what we've been up to in the last week:

The New Politics of the Obama Age - Using a whole array of 21st century tech and media tools, the Obama campaign created a new model of a people-powered politics that will be emulated by candidates, governments and non-profit organizations in America and throughout the world. Joining with our sister organization, the New Politics Institute, NDN brought together an excellent group of experts in a special forum last week to take an in-depth look at how we expect the lessons of this historic campaign to shape governing, advocacy and campaigns in the 21st century. To learn more about some of the issues addressed at the forum, please check out:

  • This recent CosmicLog report by MSNBC.com Science Editor Alan Boyle, The Wired White House, which extensively quotes Simon and our forum panelist Scott Goodstein, the former External Online Director for Obama for America.
  • This piece by Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post, Obama Raised Half a Billion Online, which quotes Goodstein as well.
  • NDN's recent video on the President-elect's use of new tools and media, Obama to Reinvent the Presidency.
  • The New Politics Institute's powerful set of work explaining how to best use the new tools of the emerging politics.
  • Video of our event at the Democratic National Convention, Two Million Strong, and Growing, with Simon, Joe Trippi, Google's Peter Greenberger and Obama for America Deputy Media Director Macon Phillips.

Clean Infrastructure Goes First - Last Tuesday, NDN hosted a Capitol Hill forum entitled, "A Vision for a Modernized Electric Grid: Clean Infrastructure for a 21st Century Economy," with U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee and Earl Blumenauer, FERC Commissioner Wellinghoff, and other energy experts. The forum built on a number of NDN recommendations for clean infrastructure investment, starting with the upcoming economic stimulus package.

Momentum has been building behind NDN’s recommendation for a green stimulus. Last Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that President-elect Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff-designee Rahm Emanuel "...promised that a major economic stimulus would be 'the first order of business’ for Mr. Obama when he takes office Jan. 20. The focus of spending will be on infrastructure, specifically 'green infrastructure.'" For NDN’s take on Emanuel’s statement, click here.

NDN to Host December 11 Forum on Latin America and the Economic Crisis - NDN is proud to host the Honorable Luis Alberto Moreno, President of the Inter-American Development Bank and former Ambassador of Colombia to the United States, to discuss "The Current Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Latin America." This briefing will take place on Thursday, December 11, at 3 p.m. at NDN, 729 15th St., NW, 1st Floor.

Please RSVP as soon as possible. The event is open, but space is limited. Refreshments will be served. Please visit our Web site to view past events with the Ambassadors of Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and the Vice President of Panama.

Considering the Big Three Bailout - As Congress sent CEO’s of the Big Three auto companies back to Detroit with the word that they needed to come back with a plan, NDN Globalization Initiative Chair Dr. Robert Shapiro considered the economic necessity of a bailout, coming to this conclusion:

The American auto industry now faces a kind of life-or-near-death moment, and if the President and Congress turn their backs, the results could drive down the economy much further. That's the only reason to countenance a bailout for an old industry that doggedly resists modernizing itself -- but under the current circumstances, it's a compelling one...

...Since the Bush Administration is at least partly responsible for what now faces the auto industry -- and now faces the rest of us, too - they should put their weight behind new help for automakers and auto workers. But the bailout shouldn't be a handout. The industry needs both a shake-up and a technological shift, and strings tied to the federal assistance can help make both happen.

Click here to read his whole analysis.

More Post-Election Analysis from NDN: The Long Road Back and More Millennial Makeover - As Simon wrote in the first in his new series of essays on a post-2008 GOP recovery:

"Absent huge Democratic mistakes in the next few years, the Republican Party's road back could very well be a long one. They just suffered their worst Presidential defeat in 44 years, and have now suffered crushing defeats two elections in a row, a rarity in American history. The Democrats have more ideological control of Washington than any time since the mid- 1960s. The Democrats themselves have thoroughly modernized in the past few years, building a very 21st century and potentially durable coalition, discovering the first new electoral map of this new century, employing the very latest and very potent tools to speak to and engage the American people, and have become fully focused on the big issues the American people now face. The center-left movement is also regenerating, and has created an investment and entrepreneurial capacity that has a very good chance of building a truly powerful and modern ideological movement to complement the modernizing Democrats. And of course, the Democrats are led by a thoroughly modern man, America's first true leader of this new century, Barack Obama, who so far has shown uncommon leadership potential for a man so young and so new to the national stage."

Read the full text of the essay, which was featured on Daily Kos, here.

New NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais, authors of the groundbreaking book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, & The Future of American Politics, also made it clear that the Republicans are going to have to find a new path. In their most recent essay, Morley and Mike wrote:

"The 2008 election not only marked the election of America's first African-American president, it also saw the strong and clear political emergence of a new, large and dynamic generation and the realignment of American politics for the next 40 years.

The first large wave of the Millennial Generation, about one third of the young Americans born from 1982-2003, entered the electorate to decisively support President-elect Barack Obama. Young voters preferred Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% vs. 32%). This is well above the margin given by young voters to any presidential candidate for at least three decades, if not at any time in U.S. history. In 2004, young voters preferred John Kerry to George W. Bush by a far more narrow 10 percentage points (55% to 45%). Moreover, the support of young people for Obama crossed all ethnic lines: he won the votes of a majority of African-American (95%), Latino (76%), and white (54%) young people.

Dispelling the myth that young people never vote, Millennials cast ballots in larger numbers than young voters had in any recent presidential election. About 23 million young people, an increase of 3.4 million over 2004, accounted for almost two-thirds of the overall 5.4 million increase in voter turnout. Their participation increased at a rate greater than older generations. As a result, young voters increased their overall share of the vote from 17 percent in 2004 to 18 percent in 2008. In contrast to previous recent presidential elections, a majority of young people voted in 2008 (53%), and in the competitive battleground states, youth turnout was even higher (59%). This was significantly above the 1996 (37%), 2000 (41%), and 2004 (48%) levels. In the earlier elections, "young people" were primarily members of Generation X, an alienated and socially uninvolved cohort; by contrast, the young voters of 2008 were mostly members of the civic-oriented Millennial Generation."

Read the full analysis here.

New Tools Feature - In this week’s New Tools Feature, I offered a preview of NDN’s upcoming white paper on Web video and the 2008 election by Dewey Digital and Divinity Metrics. A few key take-aways from the report:

  • The Obama campaign produced 2,000 official Web videos over the course of the election, compared to 376 from the McCain campaign.
  • There were 123,000 non-Campaign Obama videos, compared to less than 70,000 for McCain.
  • Videos by or about Obama received more than 1 billion views over the course of the election, compared to 613 million for McCain.

As NDN and our affiliate, the New Politics Institute, have argued for some time, Web video has very quickly become an essential component of successful political campaigns, and is now becoming a powerful tool for governing as well (see this recent post about President-elect Obama's first weekly YouTube address). To learn more about how Web video has permanently altered the political landscape, and for tips on how to use it effectively, check out our New Politics Institute paper, Reimagine Video, and be sure to stay tuned for our upcoming white paper!

Weekly Immigration Update - To find out what's new in the world of immigration reform, be sure to check out Zuraya Tapia-Alfaro's weekly immigration update. In this weekly feature, she comprehensively catalogs all the latest immigration-related developments.

Daily Roundup - The NDN blog’s newest regular feature is a daily roundup of economic and political news. Posted each morning by Sam duPont, the roundup includes the best analysis and latest news from mainstream and new media around the Web. Be sure to check it out!

Reminder: The NDN blog will be on holiday hours from November 26 to December 1.

Obama Pledges to Pass Economic Stimulus in Weekly YouTube Address

In his weekly YouTube address today, President-elect Obama addressed the worsening state of the economy, and vowed to pass a sweeping economic recovery bill as one of his first acts in office. Listen to his full statement here:

NDN has been a strong advocate for a stimulus package that invests in our long-term economic future as well as focusing on short-term recovery. To read some of our recent writing on the topic, check out Simon and Rob's essay, A Stimulus for the Long Run, and Michael's essay, Accelerating the Development of a 21st Century Economy.

Aside from the policy Obama is proposing, one interesting thing about this Web video is that Obama is now using the medium to build support for his initiative, using the internet as a powerful tool to advance his agenda by employing and expanding the base of supporters he built through the election.

More Amazing Numbers from Obama's Online Operations

Earlier today, we noted that President-elect Obama had gathered one million subscribers to his mobile service by the end of the campaign. In an excellent piece in the Washington Post, Jose Antonio Vargas reports some more amazing figures that show concretely just how effective the Obama team's tech-saavy approach really was. From the article:

3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once...

...In September, his single biggest month of fundraising, Obama amassed more than 65 percent of his record-shattering haul -- $100 million of the $150 million -- from online donations, aides said.

...Obama's e-mail list contains upwards of 13 million addresses...Four years ago, Sen. John F. Kerry had 3 million e-addresses on his list; former Vermont governor Howard Dean had 600,000.

...On MyBarackObama.com, or MyBO, Obama's own socnet, 2 million profiles were created. In addition, 200,000 offline events were planned, about 400,000 blog posts were written and more than 35,000 volunteer groups were created...On their own MyBO fundraising pages, 70,000 people raised $30 million...Obama has 5 million supporters in other socnets. He maintained a profile in more than 15 online communities, including BlackPlanet, a MySpace for African Americans, and Eons, a Facebook for baby boomers.

Before this election, there were many people who saw these new tools as gimmicky and essentially unimportant; skeptics pointed to examples like the ultimate failure of the Dean campaign as proof that the internet could not win elections.

Those skeptics may be reconsidering that position right about now. 

Obama Campaign Had One Million Mobile Subscribers

Tonight the Obama Camp brought out their mobile numbers: 1 million mobile subscribers.

A million people signed up for Obama's text-messaging program. On the night Obama accepted the Democratic nomination at Invesco Field in Denver, more than 30,000 phones among the crowd of 75,000 were used to text in to join the program. On Election Day, every voter who'd signed up for alerts in battleground states got at least three text messages. Supporters on average received five to 20 text messages per month, depending on where they lived -- the program was divided by states, regions, zip codes and colleges -- and what kind of messages they had opted to receive.

And for grins, see this snippet predicting this from our 2006 white paper, Mobile Media in 21st Century Politics:

Imagine this very realistic scenario: In the heat of the 2008 election, 1 million activists – all of them connected in a collaborative web both on their PC's and their mobiles – conspire in a collective act of mobile democracy.

...let's say a candidate has emerged that "gets" the power of the Internet and its mobile cousin. All their traditional media and Internet action combines with a call to mobile action. No speech ends without a call for those listening to join the campaign on their mobile phones – then and there. And this candidate has inspired a small portion of his base - 1 million people - to each devote ten minutes of their time to mobile action for the Presidential campaign.

Thursday New Tools Feature: The New Mass Media

As Tim Chambers mentioned at our great forum today on the New Politics of the Obama Age, NDN has partnered with Dewey Digital and Divinity Metrics to produce a white paper on Web video and the 2008 presidential election. Divinity Metrics collected an amazing amount of data over more than 400 days of the election cycle, from more than 150 different online media services and platforms, and this data allows us to take an in-depth look at how specific events during the election played out in the Web world.

For now, as a preview, I'd like to offer a few key numbers from the report:

  • The Obama campaign produced 2,000 official Web videos over the course of the election, compared to 376 from the McCain campaign.
  • There were 123,000 non-Campaign Obama videos, compared to less than 70,000 for McCain.
  • Videos about Obama received over 1 billion views over the course of the election, compared to 613 million for McCain.

There are several things to take away from these numbers, but I think perhaps the most important is this: With a combined 1.6 billion views between just the Obama and McCain videos this election cycle (approximately 2 billion with all the presidential campaigns included), Web video is no longer an emergent medium. It now falls, definitively, under the heading of "mass media." And it's not just a question of reach, either; because Web video does not come through a middle-man, and is often sent to the viewer by family or friends, it can have a strong, direct impact that is hard for other media to match. 

As NDN and our affiliate, the New Politics Institute, have been saying for some time, Web video has very quickly become an essential component of successful political campaigns, and is now becoming a powerful tool for governing as well (see my recent post about President-elect Obama's first weekly YouTube address). To learn more about how Web video has permanently altered the political landscape, and for tips on how to use it effectively, check out our New Politics Institute paper, Reimagine Video, and be sure to stay tuned for our upcoming white paper!

Obama's Text Guru Goodstein Joins Thursday's NDN/NPI Forum: New Politics of Obama Age

UPDATE: Be sure to attend (or watch) our March 10, 2009 event with Joe Rospars, the new media director of the Obama Presidential Campaign and founder of Blue State Digital, one of the nation's leading new media consulting firms. There will also be a live Web cast of the event, for those of you that can't make it in person. 

***

NDN is pleased to announce that Scott Goodstein has been added as a panelist -- his first appearance since returning home from the campaign -- at our Thursday, November 20, forum on the New Politics of the Obama Age. Goodstein was External Online Director for Obama for America, and developed the campaign’s social networking platforms. His pioneering work  included running the first political campaign to launch niche based social networks like BlackPlanet, Eons, MiGente, AsianAve, Disaboom, etc. He built the campaign's lifestyle marketing strategy and developed the "street team" materials used in battleground states.

Scott GoodsteinGoodstein also created and implemented Obama Mobile, an advanced communication strategy that included text messaging, downloads, interactive voice response communication, a mobile web site (WAP), and even an iPhone application. To read more about the amazing work Scott did for the Obama campaign, check out this article by the Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas. The article also quotes Tim Chambers, who is a panelist at the event on Thursday as well. To read about Obama's entire new media team in a larger profile by Vargas, click here.

Prior to his work at Obama for America, Goodstein was founder of Catalyst Campaigns, a public relations firm that specialized in lifestyle marketing and online organizing. In 2004, Goodstein co-founded Punkvoter.com & Rock Against Bush and evolved these organizations into becoming a $4 million young voter mobilization effort.

Goodstein will join Simon Rosenberg, President of NDN, Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and Chambers, co-founder of Media 50 Group and Principal at Dewey Digital, to discuss how we expect the lessons of this historic campaign and its use of new media to shape domestic and global politics in the years to come.

Thursday's event is from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at NDN, 729 15th St., NW, 1st FL. Space is extremely limited, so please click here to RSVP and arrive early to ensure a seat. See you Thursday for what promises to be a truly compelling discussion.

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