NDN

NDN at the Univision Forum

You've seen the news articles. This past weekend, we witnessed history as Univision hosted the first-ever Spanish-language Presidential forum. NDN was there and played a vital role, as our argument on the rising influence of the Hispanic electorate helped frame the event. Click on the thumbnails below for larger pictures of the events we held around the forum, as well as two pictures from the forum itself (courtesy of Univision):

For more on NDN's work on issues affecting Hispanic communities, including our efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, visit our website.

NDN in the News

Here's a quick roundup of the press NDN has received recently, starting with a few mentions around the YearlyKos Convention:

- Simon is quoted in the LA Times discussing the opportunity facing Democrats to create a lasting majority.

- Joe Garcia, Director of NDN's Hispanic Strategy Center, was quoted in the Washington Post blog, The Trail, discussing the level of diversity in the progressive blogosphere. Joe's quote was also featured on Daily Kos.

- Simon is quoted in the Washington Post citing the appearance of the major presidential candidates as evidence that the blogosphere is a significant player in politics.

- Simon was interviewed by The Hill on the evolution of the Democrats' approach to Cuba policy.

- While praising Gov. Howard Dean's efforts to make the Democratic Party competitive heading into 2008, Simon is quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review saying that Dean will mainly be judged on whether his work helps deliver a Democrat to the White House.

NDN in the News

A roundup of this week's mentions of NDN in the mainstream media:

- Simon is profiled as one of GQ Magazine's 50 Most Powerful People in DC. Aaron Banks shines more light on Simon's ranking here.

- Joe Garcia, NDN's Hispanic Strategy Center Director, was featured in The Hill discussing how the Democratic-led Congress is approaching US policy towards Cuba.

- Simon is quoted in the Financial Times discussing how the Democratic candidates are beginning to discuss the issue of globalization more directly. As he says:

“There is a legitimate conversation to be had about globalisation,” he said. “But it is not a xenophobic one. If you want to find xenophobia on the campaign trail that can be found among the Republican candidates when they talk about illegal immigration.”

- Simon is quoted in Bloomberg on Hillary Clinton's strategic move to court the Hispanic vote.

Two Links

Hello, NDNblog readers.  This is Aaron Banks, a very proud former NDNer making my first return to this site since leaving NDN to join the ONE Campaign as their new Online Campaign Coordinator, where I'm very closely involved with our historic ONE Vote '08 initiative.  You can learn more about that campaign on the front page of Daily Kos, which has a great post today by DemFromCT on ONE Vote '08 and our newly released poll numbers out of NH.

But I'm not here to talk about me.  The real reason I'm posting today is to embarrass my former boss, Simon Rosenberg, who GQ just named the 37th Most Powerful Person is Washington.  For those of you keeping score at home, that's 7 spots ahead of Ed Feulner and he's been the head of the mighty Heritage Foundation for 30 years!

Well, that's 5 links after I promised to only send 2.  I hope to be back as often as you'll have me, sharing items that I think NDNblog's readers might find interesting.  And to everyone at NDN, keep up the great work. 

The future of global advertising

The Times ran a rather remarkable article today about the future of advertising.  An excerpt:

It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.

Or so says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas, the advertising agency in Boston that was acquired by the Publicis Groupe for $1.3 billion six months ago.

Now Mr. Kenny is reshaping the digital advertising strategy for the entire Publicis worldwide conglomerate, which includes agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and the Starcom MediaVest Group and the global accounts of companies like Procter & Gamble, American Express, Hewlett-Packard and General Motors.

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or — eventually — a television.

More simply put, the goal is to transform advertising from mass messages and 30-second commercials that people chat about around the water cooler into personalized messages for each potential customer.

“Our intention with Digitas and Publicis is to build the global platform that everybody uses to match data with advertising messages,” Mr. Kenny said. “There is a massive transformation happening in the way consumers live and the data we have about them, but very few companies have stepped up to it yet.”

Publicis announced last Tuesday an important step in its digital plan: the acquisition of the Communication Central Group, a digital agency in China founded in 1995, for an undisclosed amount. The agency, to be called Digitas Greater China, will give Publicis a foothold in the Chinese advertising market, which analysts within Publicis estimate is growing at about 20 percent a year, much faster than global growth in the market, which hovers around 5 percent a year.

“There’s a chance to invest right now in China, India, Russia and Brazil, which will pay off big over the next five years,” Mr. Kenny said. “These economies are going to boom, and ads there are going to go directly to mobile and directly to the Internet.”

Beyond the growth potential, Publicis executives see these economies as important sources of low-cost labor for a Digitas subsidiary called Prodigious, a digital production unit that works with all agencies in the Publicis Groupe. Prodigious already uses workers in Costa Rica and Ukraine to produce copious footage for companies like G.M.

Greater production capacity is needed, Mr. Kenny says, to make enough clips to be able to move away from mass advertising to personalized ads. He estimates that in the United States, some companies are already running about 4,000 versions of an ad for a single brand, whereas 10 years ago they might have run three to five versions. And he predicts that the number of iterations will grow as technology improves....

Off to YearlyKos!

NDN is off to YearlyKos! If you find yourself in Chicago, come swing by the panels we're leading and participating in. Our schedule is below:

Friday, August 3rd

09:15 AM

The Political Impact of Web Video Through 2008
Peter Leyden, Director of the New Politics Institute and Dan Manatt, Founder of Politics TV
Location: McCormick Place Convention Center: Room 106 A & B

02:30 PM

Dawn of a New Politics Presentation at YearlyKos
Simon Rosenberg, President of NDN and Founder of NPI, and Peter Leyden, Director of the New Politics Institute
Location: McCormick Place Convention Center Room: 101 B

04:00 PM

Modern Campaigns
Moderated by Simon Rosenberg, President of NDN and Founder of NPI. Also participating will be Democratic campaign strategists Joe Trippi, Jerome Armstrong, and Stephanie Cutter.
Location: McCormick Place Convention Center Room: 403 A & B


Saturday, August 4th

09:15 AM

Immigration and Hispanics: The Policy and the Politics
Moderated by Joe Garcia, Director of NDN’s Hispanic Strategy Center. Also participating will be Eliseo Medina, Executive Vice President of SEIU, Cecilia Muñoz, Senior Vice President in the Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation of NCLR, and Congressman Luis Gutierrez (congressional schedule permitting).
Location: McCormick Place Convention Center: Room 404 A-C

10:30 AM

The Middle Class: The Problems it Faces and Progressive Solutions Participating will be Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, Director of NDN's Globalization Initiative and former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs
Location: McCormick Place Convention Center: Room 404 A-C

Come see NDN at Yearly Kos this week

For those in Chicago for the 2nd Annual Yearly Kos Convention this week, there will be plenty of opportunities to see the NDN team.  Four of us are speaking on five different panels, and NDN is holding a casual happy hour for its friends on Thursday night.  See below for more details.
 
As you may be aware, Markos Moulitsas, of the blog Daily Kos, and the founder of this convention, is a very good friend of ours.  He was a founding team member of our new affliliate, the New Politics Institute.  He has spoken at many of our events over the years, starting all the way back in 2003.  And last year I wrote the foreword to the book he co-authored with Jerome Armstrong, Crashing the Gate.  You can find out more about that book and read my foreword, which offers my thoughts on the rise of the blogs and netroots, here.  

NDN's strong presence at what will probably be the influential gathering of progressives this year is a testament to the strong work our team is producing these days.  Hispanic Strategy Center Director Joe Garcia has put together - and is moderating - Immigration and Hispanics: The Policy and the Politics, a panel looking at the future of immigration reform.  Globalization Initiative Director Dr. Robert J. Shapiro is on a panel entitled The Middle Class: The Problems it Faces and Progressive Solutions.  NPI Director Peter Leyden is running a session on The Political Impact of Web Video Through 2008, a subject we have dedicated a great deal of time to this year.  I will be moderating Modern Campaigns, a panel discussing how all changes in media and technology are changing campaigns and advocacy.  The panel will feature Edwards Campaign Advisor Joe Trippi, blogger and consultant Jerome Armstrong, and respected communications advisor Stephanie Cutter.  Finally, Peter Leyden and I will be presenting our much-talked about PowerPoint presentation, the Dawn of a New Politics.  
 
So if you are in Chicago this week, or know anyone who is, come by and check out the latest thinking from NDN - or just join us for a drink on Thursday night at 5:30 PM in the M/X Lounge at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, 2233 South Martin L. King Drive.

Friendly reminder: YearlyKos is around the corner

Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle highlighted the significance of this week's YearlyKos Convention. As you have read on our blog, NDN will be there and will be well-represented.

Tapping the Resources of America's Community Colleges: New paper and event in DC tomorrow

In a new paper released today by NDN Globalization Initiative Director, Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, we lay out a simple plan to provide tens of millions of American workers with essential IT training. Under this proposal, America's community colleges would receive federal grants to keep their computer labs open three nights a week, staffed by instructors who would provide basic - and free - IT and computer instruction to any person in the community who walks in and requests it.

The new paper, Tapping the Resources of America's Community Colleges, is the second in our Series of Modest Proposals to Build 21st Century Skills. The first paper, A Laptop in Every Backpack, called upon the federal government to equip every U.S. sixth grader with a laptop, so that students - the workforce of tomorrow - have the tools necessary to access the internet and build IT skills. Alec Ross, of the remarkable advocacy group, One Economy, and I co-wrote this paper.

Taken together, these papers urge the U.S. government to make a new national commitment to giving all American workers and students the skills needed to use modern information technology and navigate the emerging global communications network. Providing these skills is one component of a broader economic strategy advocated by NDN to ensure that globalization works for all Americans.

Please visit our website to read these papers and the accompanying introduction. For those of you in Washington, we invite you to attend our event tomorrow on IT Skills and Training for the 21st Century Economy. The event will be held in the Capitol, room H-122, from 10:30-11:45 (*please note the new room change). Additional event details may be found on our website.

Helping to make sure that all Americans benefit from the opportunities of today's economy is one of the greatest challenges facing American policymakers. For the last several years NDN's Globalization Initiative has been offering original and compelling thinking about how we can best meet this important challenge. I am proud of our work, and hope you will find this new paper, and its companion, helpful.

This Friday: NPI New Tools Campaign - Stage 2

Last summer NPI launched a campaign to get progressives to adopt four key new tools that helped boost prospects in the 2006 campaign. Come to an event on July 27th in DC where we launch the campaign around this year’s set of four more tools and explain why they are important and how to easily get started using them.

This Stage II Campaign will expand to promote “Reimagine Video,” “Go Mobile,” “Leverage Social Networks,” and “Target Your Marketing.” We also will update our previous pitches to “Buy Cable,” “Engage the Blogs,” “Speak in Spanish,” and build on our earlier use Search Ads to become the broader “Advertise Online.”

Each Tool will have a short, practical memo to politicos about why this tool is important to leverage, and how to get started using them. The memos are written by practitioners who deeply understand the tools and how they can be used by politics. Many of these experts will be at the launch event to talk and answer questions. They include:

Jed Alpert, CEO and cofounder of Mobile Commons, which helps political people leverage mobile media, on “Go Mobile.”

Dan Manatt, CEO and Executive Producer of PoliticsTV.com, which focuses on internet TV for the Netroots, on “Reimagine Video.”

Laura Quinn, CEO of Catalist, which has built and operates a national voter database for progressives, on “Target Your Marketing.”

Henry Copeland, founder and CEO of Blogads, one of the very earliest ways to advertise on blogs, on “Advertise Online.”

Jerome Armstrong, founder of MyDD, one of the first political Blogs, and Coauthor of Crashing the Gate, on “Engage the Blogs.”

And Ali Weise, NDN Executive Director and former deputy director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, on “Buy Cable.”

The New Tools Campaign, Stage II
Friday, July 27
Phoenix Park Hotel
520 N Capitol Street, NW
10am - Noon
Light refreshments will be served

Please RSVP to Tracy Leaman at tleaman@ndn.org or 202-842-7213.

Feel free to spread this announcement around. The more progressives who understand the powerful new tools and new media we now have at our disposal, the better. Thanks.

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