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Internet Advocacy Roundtable

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The Internet Advocacy Roundtable is a forum brought to you by the Center for American Progress Action Fund's online advocacy program.  We feature in-depth discussions about digital technology strategies for  engagement, advocacy, and policy campaigns.  We strive to help the advocacy and policy community use digital technology more effectively and provide a gathering for those working in this space to network and learn from their peers.  Our speakers are drawn from experts in the field and our audiences typically include many other experts, as well as people new to the field.  The format is designed to maximize discussion time.  As a result, we have consistently lived up to our reputation that our speakers will learn as much from the audience as the audience learns from the speakers. The Internet Advocacy Roundtable was started in August 2005 and now carries on the tradition of our earlier Online Progressive Advocacy Network (OPAN) series.

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Upcoming Events

Next Up, Comprehensive Immigration Reform How We Will Make It Happen

January 21, 2010, 12:00pm - 1:30pm

RSVP here

During his candidacy and his first year in office, President Obama repeatedly promised to overhaul immigration early in his first term. The fastest growing new voting demographic, Latino voters—who flipped four states from red to blue in 2008—fully expect President Obama to keep that promise and work with Congressional leaders to advance immigration reform this year.

Opinion polls consistently show strong support for comprehensive reform among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike, because it is a practical solution that generates revenue, protects workers and honest employers, and restores fairness to a system in crisis.

Please join CAPAF's Internet Advocacy Roundtable, Netroots Nation, and America's Voice for a lively panel discussion about the policy and politics of immigration reform led by Nico Pitney, National Editor of The Huffington Post and featuring Markos Moulitsas of the DailyKos, and Faiz Shakir and Andrea Nil of ThinkProgress.org and WonkRoom.org. The event will kick off with remarks by Representative Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL), who recently introduced comprehensive immigration reform legislation, H.R. 4321, into the U.S. House of Representatives.

Previous Events

The Progressive Revolution Will Be Tweeted

Thursday, September 24, 2009

At this Internet Advocacy Roundtable, we collaborated with PCDC, or Progressive Communicators of DC, for a training to help you take full advantage of the power of Twitter. We learned how to use Twitter, what tools are available for managing your program, and heard how two progressive organizations (AAUW and the Center for American progress Action Fund) are using Twitter to advance their mission.

Bloggers On The Bus

Thursday, July 16, 2009

At this roundtable we discussed blogs and other new media’s impact on the public discourse, and how the progressive movement can use new media to help promote a broad policy agenda in 2009. The conversation featured Eric Boehlert, author of The Bloggers on the Bus, and Faiz Shakir, Editor in Chief of ThinkProgress.org. It was moderated by Media Matters founder and CEO David Brock.

Shaping the Message

Thursday, June 18, 2009

At this roundtable we looked at what constitutes successful messaging for branding, engagement, and advocacy. We’ll also talked about how messages are shaped to influence targeted audiences; how language practices and protocols shift; and the role of new media and social networks.

Campaigns for Sensible Defense Priorities

Thursday, May 21, 2009

President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have proposed a Defense Department budget that begins reprioritizing how we spend our defense dollars. So we assembled a panel of online organizers who are working on this issue for this Internet Advocacy Roundtable.

Getting Wired for Progress

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Whether you view our energy challenge through an environmental, economic, or national security prism, one thing is clear: we need to break our addiction to oil. For the United States, that requires a commitment to developing clean sources of energy and the construction of a clean-energy smart grid. While the Center for American Progress is developing policy proposals to get us there, advocacy groups across the political spectrum are working to mobilize the public, and lawmakers to turn these and other proposals into reality. This panel features the internet strategists behind several of the leading campaigns pushing for a clean energy future. Learn how they are leveraging online strategies to educate and mobilize a diverse and broad-based audience of citizens and policymakers. This Roundtable is part of a national conversation on the smart grid and clean energy. To view the conversation on Twitter, click here.

Video Strategy for Advocacy

Thursday, March 19, 2009

 

How can video enhance your online advocacy campaigns? Videos can tell compelling stories and potentially go viral, spreading your campaign message across large audiences. But what is the best strategy for using them? Should they be professionally made or made by your activists? Should they be made in-house or out-sourced? And what is the best way to convey your message in video? The March 2009 Roundtable explored these questions with a panel of leading video experts from the advocacy and political worlds, including videographers from both the McCain and Obama presidential campaigns. We looked back on the 2008 elections and past advocacy campaigns to apply lessons learned to the use of video for advocacy.


Deconstructing Feminism 2.0: A Debrief on the Feminism 2.0 Conference

February 19, 2009

 

Feminism 2.0 (February 2, 2009) brings together the leadership of major women’s advocacy organizations and online women’s communities to further the connection between today’s issues and women’s voices. In order to help draw lessons from this gathering, CAPAF’s Internet Advocacy Roundtable has invited the organizers of the conference, along with Jessica Arons, director of the Center for American Progress’s Women’s Health and Rights Program, to share their thoughts on the conference and the future of advocating for women’s issues in the digital age.


Netroots Nation DC: Internet Advocacy Roundtable at the Center for American Progress Action Fund

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Internet Advocacy Roundtable hosted a special event with Netroots Nation and Think Progress Wednesday, January 21, on how new media tools might be used for governing under an Obama administration. New media tools and online organizing have proved to be the future of political campaigning, but what of governance? Now that the election's over, many are asking: What's next? 


What's it Worth

Thursday, January 15, 2009

 

Your video just got 50,000 views on YouTube and 25 blogs picked up your campaign and posted stories on it. What's it worth? We are pretty comfortable figuring out how much a one minute story on the evening news is worth in paid advertising, but when it comes to online "hits" the conversion isn't so obvious. In addition to the size of a website's audience, we have to figure in, among other things, whether the site has tools to share the content out to the social web and whether or not its audience is likely to do so. It gets a little tricky figuring out what it is worth online. >Join us on January 15, 2008 for a Roundtable that will explore how we might value earned online media in paid online media terms.


Measuring and Impacting the Online Debate

Thursday, December 18, 2008

The rapid growth of social media has increased the fragmentation of the channels of public discourse. With tens of thousands of blogs and social networking discussions promoting and opposing virtually every public policy issue, advocacy campaigns are faced with a host of new challenges including:

  • Which of these online discussions are influencing the larger public debate on an issue and which of these are reinforcing the beliefs of those that already agrees with them?
  • How do you identify the best messages, messengers and points of influence to either move specific audiences or to transcend a single audience and shift the entire debate on an issue?
  • Are your opponent’s messages about to become viral? Are yours?

This Roundtable explored how organizations can best address these challenges using social network analysis.


2008: A Great Web Campaign, or the Greatest?

Thursday, November 20, 2008

The 2008 Presidential campaigns pushed the limits of online campaign strategy. Not only did the campaigns use the web, but as techPresident says, the web used them, too. Now that it is over (or will be by the time we have this Roundtable), it is time to ask if this was a great web campaign or the greatest. And while you may quickly say it was the greatest, simply because it was the latest, let us first reflect on whether the campaigns took full advantage of what they could have done, before drawing conclusions. This Internet Advocacy Roundtable looked back on the 2008 presidential campaigns with a panel of journalists and bloggers who covered the web campaigns.


Crowdsourcing Message and Policy Development

Thursday, October 16, 2008

In 2006, with less money and less name recognition than his opponent for Senate, incumbent Orren Hatch, Pete Ashdown took an innovative approach to his campaign website. Harking back to a tradition of elected representatives being delegates of their constitutents will (rather than trustees), Ashdown included a wiki on his website where voters could edit and develop his campaign platform. This collaborative process, made easy by the web, foreshadowed a growing practice of letting large groups of citizens to collaborate on developing political messages and policy platforms. But why should we let the crowd do this? According to James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, large groups of people are simply smarter than small groups and individuals, on average. For example, Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, in The Spiral of Silence, shows that long before asking people in surveys "who they will vote for" can effectively predict an upcoming election, asking them "who they think will win" will get the prediction right. This Roundtable focused on crowdsourcing message and policy platforms with a panel of speakers who have managed crowdsourcing programs and developed new software to make these programs more effective.


Here Come the Millennials, Politics Beware

September 18, 2008

We are only just beginning to glimpse at the massive shift in American political dynamics wrought by the internet generation coming of political age. The Millennials, as they are often called, are more than web-savvy, they are web natives. They have grown up using the social web to engage in the world of politics and policy. Evidence by massive turnout in the 2008 primaries, it is clear that all bets are off when it comes to predicting the impact of young Americans on politics and policy, at least based on past behavior. The Millennials use MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter as if they were born with the technology embedded in their psyche. Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, authors of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics, shared their insights on how the Millennial Generation is using new technology to dig deep into politics.


Blogwars Comes to DC

August 13, 2008

We all know that blogs have become a political force over the past few years.  But how much of a force and in what way do they affect politics are debatable questions. In his new book, Blogwars, University of Kansas Communications Professor David Permutter explores the rise of blogs and their influence (or faliure to influence) American political life.  He argues that, contrary to popular belief, blogs are not as influential as many think.  He does, however, argue that blogs improve democracy and enrich political culture.


The Rise of Online Independent Media

Friday, July 25, 2008

 

In response to concerns that the mainstream media (MSM) has abandoned its commitment to doing real investigative journalism, a new breed of individual citizen bloggers emerged to fill the vacuum. But with a few notable exceptions, bloggers working alone or on small teams are hard pressed to marshal the resources and access necessary to truly meet the challenge of providing hard-hitting, investigative political reporting. Rising to fill this gap between an MSM who won't and bloggers who want to, but often can't, a new cadre of independent media websites are meeting this challenge head on. Backed by the financial and staff resources of non-profits and independent news organizations, independent news websites are combining the best of both worlds, bringing us timely and well-researched investigative journalism once again. The July Internet Advocacy Roundtable featured a panel of independent media publishers and editors drawing from the new online-only and the older offline-gone-online independent alternative media. Speakers included Tracy Van Slyke, Director, The Media Consortium, and Ali Savino, National Program Director, Center for Independent Media


Reaching Diverse Audiences Online

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Identifying your audience is a key first step to any advocacy campaign. After that, you have to figure out how to reach them.  Are they online? Where? Are they using SMS or Twitter on their mobile phones? What blogs do they read? What social networks and social media websites do they use? And where else online do they gather? The answers to these questions will determine the strategies and tactics you use to reach them. The June Internet Advocacy Roundtable presented a panel of experts who are in the trenches, targeting diverse audiences.


The Future of Emailing Congress - New Solutions Offered and Old Myths Busted

Thursday, May 15, 2008

 

With Congress receiving hundreds of millions of emails a year, the workload for staffers is crushing. Despite the soaring numbers of emails flowing into Members' inboxes in the past few years, there has been no increase in their staff size or technology budgets in twenty years. Everyone, from Capitol Hill to advocacy groups to grassroots advocacy software vendors, is scrambling to solve this problem. Our speaker this month, Daniel Bennett, may just be the knight in shining armor riding to our rescue. Daniel has the great advantage of having helped to develop the email capability for the congressional correspondence systems and, with that perspective, has developed an elegant solution to the problem - XML Topic Tags.  Watch our discussion about this innovative solution, as well as an exploration of the history of how Congress handles email. Daniel also bust several myths about how the Congressional email system works.


Party On...line with the RNC and DNC

Thursday, April 17, 2008

The Republican and Democratic parties both are out in full-force online, spreading their messages, organizing voters, and building up party infrastructure. This month, the Internet Advocacy Roundtable is excited to provide you with a glimpse into the e-strategic minds of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee. Our panelists have been working at the very heart of internet strategy for their respective parties and their insights should provide for a very thought-provoking discussion about how the Internet is serving their needs. Speakers: Mindy Finn, former Director of eStrategy, Mitt Romney; former Deputy eCampaign Director, Republican National Committee and Tracy Russo, former Chief Blogger and Deputy Online Communications Director, John Edwards; Former member of the Democratic National Committee Internet team.


Outvideoed - Web Video and Advocacy

Thursday, March 20, 2008

With the spread of broadband access to the web, digital video has become a powerful tool for persuading citizens and policymakers to participate in advocacy campaigns, donate money, and pass laws and policies. Among those doing online video, our March speaker is one of the most famous and successful. Robert Greenwald shook the media world with his expose Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism and has since ventured into the world on online video with his Brave New Films project.  Since its launch, BraveNewFilms.org has had more than 14 million views.


Online Advertising Strategy for Advocacy Campaigns

February 21, 2008

Americans spend more than a third of their media consumption time online, yet advocacy campaigns rarely spend more than one or two percent of their advertising budgets online.  Even accounting for the lower costs of online advertising, this just doesn't make sense. Online advertising is not just good for mobilizing activists and raising money, it is good for persuasion and setting policy agendas.  The private sector gets this, but the policy and political sectors lag behind.


Through the Looking Glass: Government Transparency Resources for Advocacy


Thursday, January 17, 2008

Without really knowing what our government is doing behind the scenes it is difficult to effectively advocate for policy changes.  Thankfully, several websites have emerged in recent years to shine a bright light on these inner workings.  Check out our video from this in-depth discussion of how these resources can help your organization be more effective advocating for your causes.


Winning with Widgets

Thursday, December 20, 2007

In a world where it is getting harder and harder to bring people to your website, we can now use widgets to bring our websites to them.  Widgets are miniature webpages that can be grabbed and posted by anyone to their own website, blog, or social network profile.  Widgets can be used to widely distribute your action alerts, RSS feeds, subscription forms, or any type of content/function you can put on your website... just smaller.  And because widgets are posted on someone else's website, all of those people who trust that website's owner will be encouraged by them to connect with you through it.


Turning Online Activists into Donors

November 15, 2007

 

 

Need to walk your activists up the ladder of engagement?  Activists are so important to campaigns for shaping public policy, true, but many would love to help in other ways.  As all of us in the non-profit world know, fundraising is an ongoing effort.  While many of your activists are happy just taking action on campaigns, many others would love to help build your advocacy community with financial support.  The trick is finding the best way to ask them.  The November Internet Advocacy Roundtable featured a discussion with Rick Christ, an expert at turning your online activists into donors.


FREE: The Latest & Greatest Free Tech Tools for Non-Profits

October 29, 2007

A vast array of free tools is available to help non-profits leverage the internet to achieve their goals. From social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, to social media sites like YouTube, Digg, and Flickr, to blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress, the opportunity to deliver information, mobilize action, and build strategic communities has never been more affordable. Following the panel was a reception and tech fair featuring demos from Google, Yahoo, Care2, Joomla, and Pledgebank, courtesy of Google, Inc.

  • We have set up a Google Docs resource page with links and materials from this event here.
  • View the video of this event (right click to download, left-click to watch if you have Quicktime - 175MB .MP4 file)


Meet Ups and House Parties: Then and Now

October 18, 2007

This month, Internet Advocacy Roundtable features a panel discussion on how to use online tools to create offline gatherings. From the "early" days of 2004, when MeetUp changed the political landscape,to today, when Party2Win and Eventful join MeetUp to offer more powerful tools for organizing people online and offline, it is not only true that all politics is local, but now all virtual politics is virtually local.


Congressional Constituent Relations Management (CCRM)

September 20, 2007

New technologies are creating new opportunities for Congressional offices to improve communications with constituents. From email tracking, to constituent profiles, to wikis, to blogs, the ability of Congress to deepen their relationships with constituents has never been greater. At the same time, constituent communications has exploded over the past five years, making innovation in how offices communicate a necessity, not a luxury.

Previous Online Progressive Advocacy Network (OPAN) Events

Leveraging Social Networks for Progressive Organizing

March 8, 2007

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr have grown exponentially over the past two years with combined memberships exceeding 100 million. Similarly, social bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, and StumbleUpon have transformed the way readers discover new content online. To date, only a handful of advocacy groups have successfully used these platforms to connect and organize progressive activists. NOI and the CAPAF hosted a panel discussion with a few of these pioneers and the technologists who are shaping the tools they use.


Online Strategies in the 2006 Election

December 1, 2006

With each election cycle, the internet plays a larger role in political campaigns. Most candidates now depend on the effective use of online tools for fundraising, communications, and organizing volunteers. Each election also provides an opportunity to test new online technologies and experiment with innovative techniques and strategies.  The New Organizing Institute and the Center for American Progress Action Fund hosted a discussion of Online Strategies in the 2006 Election. The panel explored what worked, what didn't, what to look for in the future, and how lessons from political campaigns can be applied to issue advocacy and non-profit communications.


Previous Pre-Center for American Progress Action Fund Internet Advocacy Roundtables

Contact: Alan Rosenblatt at arosenblatt@americanprogressaction.org for more information about the Center for American Progress Action Fund's Internet Advocacy Roundtable.