Votes, Bits, & Bytes Opening Event
I’m at the opening event for the Votes, Bits, & Bytes conference the folks at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society organized. I see quite a few blogging friends in the audience, including some out-of-towners who are here for Friday and Saturday’s sessions. I could hit The Dowbrigade in the back of his head with a spitball, but he might think that’s rude.
Because I have to cover for an absent coworker, I’m not going to be able to go to several of the sessions on Friday I hoped to. I’ll blog a bit about what I do with the conference, starting now.
Moderator: Kathleen Matthews, news anchor and Fellow, Kennedy School of Government
Panelist: Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean and Fellow, Kennedy School of Government
Panelist: Michael Turk, eCampaign Director for Bush-Cheney ‘04
The focus this evening is on how the Internet influenced politics in the 2004 US presidential campaign.
Joe Trippi mentioned how a number of people opened their homes to strangers during the campaign by hosting house parties for candidates. Much campaigning happens when people interact with each other, not necessarily when candidates are out campaigning for themselves. Meetups became important tools.
Trippi seems to be doing a lot of the talking. Michael Turk said something I was going to write down, but I forgot what it was already.
Someone (I was looking down; they sound similar) said there’s a difference between campaigning for an incumbent and campaigning for someone who isn’t holding the office.
Turk sees the growth of technology as a big influence on politics. In four years, we’ll be using new tools to participate in politics. Campaigners will provide more things online and what they can do on the Web will be much more sophisticated. A lot of what happens in a campaign today, like television ads, will be online in some format in the future.
I left after about 30 minutes to go to the blog meeting. Several bloggers were there, though, and may provide coverage later. I didn’t see anyone else with a computer.
