twitter

You've probably heard that the Republicans - as I type - are throwing a tantrum in the dark on the floors of Congress. What do they want? Congress to reconvene for a vote on energy legislation to bring down oil prices. This despite the fact that every serious person says there is nothing congress can do in teh short term to lower prices and Republicans obstructed energy legislation meant to address the problem earlier in the session.

Lacking cameras, or even lights, the GOP has been Tweeting their tempest in a teapot out to the conservative technorati and it's starting to get noticed.

Some progressive folks thought - why not have a little fun with this and flood the Twitter feed with nonsense and/or progressive messages.

Here's my suggestions on what Tweets to send to #dontgo:

• Link to Gore climate speeches.
• Link to Obama's energy policy.
• Link to Think Progress's coverage of the issue.
• Rick Roll them.

Here are a couple of my thoughts about the Netroots Nation conference as a whole.

Gratuitous Use of Paper

Tony Cani was the first of our group to really point out the ridiculous amount of paper being used at a progressive blogger conference. Starting with the attendee bags to the handouts for every little product, issue, and event, unwanted paper was everywhere. Over at Grist there is a good commentary about the paper use as well as pictures of all the paper in the registration bags. Tony had some really great lines about the paper use: "It's amazing how every progressive organization's desire to limit paper use ends with the opportunity to hand something out for their organization" and "If only this were a conference where you knew people would be able to access the conference materials online" *note sarcasm. Next year Netroots Nation plans to be more environmentally friendly and carbon-neutral, so we will see what changes will be made.

The Youth Are Here

Another observation made by a lot of the serial attendees is that the demographic now includes many more young people. Wiretap has a story about this, which quotes me on the issue, that you should check out. I think that the transition from YearlyKos to Netroots Nation might have helped open the conference up to more young bloggers. When YearlyKos was first conceived, it was designed to be a really large meet-up for the contributors to DailyKos, a Demographic that is much older than people imagine. As we move towards a general netroots conference from a site community specific one, I think that the number of young attendees will increase. Here is my quote from Wiretap that covers it a bit more:

"Blogging is not as exciting a tool for Millennials as it is for older generations. Social networking and other very quick tools for sharing themselves trump the blog as a form of expression. The older generation has never been able to express themselves to an audience before, yet are not entirely comfortable with this next step that Millennials have taken. For older generations, blogging is the new pamphleteering. I also think that the older generation writes more for the sake of writing where Millennials are writing for their friends."

Twitter is Useful

Twitter was used quite effectively at the conference. The use of the #NN08 hash tags allowed people to see what fellow attendees were saying, where they were at, what surprise guests have arrived, and to meet up with other people.

I had another interesting observation about Twitter in one of the panels I was sitting in on Saturday. I sent out a tweet with the link to my recent coverage of the conference on Future Majority, and I see the person sitting in front of me get the tweet, open the link, and read it without even realizing the guy that wrote it was sitting right behind him.

I think as Twitter becomes more ubiquitous and people have more experience using it at events we will learn more about how twitter can be a very useful and effective tool for communicating at conferences.

Conclusion

I had a great time at Netroots Nation meeting a lot of people that I had only worked with online previously, as well as people I met completely for the first time. I'm looking forward to doing it again in Pittsburgh next summer.

Those were just my thoughts about the conference, what did you think? Leave a comment and share!

Alright, so I know I have ranted on this before, but the video I just saw on Politicker has me riled up again. Here is the video:

Notice a few things here. First, the poster the guy is holding in the video spells YouTube wrong. Bad sign. Second, McCotter has only had the account for 3 days, after the whole Twittergate scandel broke.

Now this isn't just some tech geek having a gotcha moment with a screen shot (it is that, but not just that). The point I made in my earlier post is that bringing the franking rules up-to-date was something that both Republicans and Democrats could have both supported and worked together to do in a timely and cooperative fashion. Unfortunately, the Republicans don't want to let that happen.

I'm a true believer in the concept of Congress 2.0 and using the new tools the internet has provided us to enable our elected officials to communicate more effectively. As a matter of fact, most of the Democrats and young voters I have spoken to agree. The idea that the Republicans have turned this into a partisan battle sickens me, especially since there isn't really any disagreement to be fighting about. They have created a straw man argument in order to call the Democrats Stalinists and use all those Russian sounding Communist words they remember using back in the Cold War.

Progressive organizations have been leading the way in the use of the internet and social networking tools in the political sphere. The Republican Party is not the great defender of the freedom of the internet (just look at their stances on net neutrality).

So how about we stop with the rhetoric and name-calling, put our Russian-to-English dictionaries away, and actually work to get these rules updated since it's something almost all of us agree on. And please try to spell the name of the website right in a video that you are posting to that website.

So that's my rant. If you were expecting a useful internet tip or something I actually wrote one on my personal blog. Ironically, it is about the self-populating Twitter links used by the Let Our Congress Tweet site.

So, what are your thoughts on this whole thing? Let us know in the comments.

We've been having this ongoing conversation about better access to our government both as a form of transparency and as a way to connect with our Representatives who both serve and ... represent us in Congress. We've even watched as John Culberson (R-TX) and Tim Ryan (D-OH) battled it out in real time over the Energy Bill on Twitter.

This week Culberson has waged his own mini-war against the House for shutting down his twitter activity.

On July 8th Culberson Tweeted

1. " I just learned the Dems are trying to censor Congressmen's ability to use Twitter Qik YouTube Utterz etc - outrageous and I will fight them."

2. "Dem "Supreme Soviet" leadership of House would have to approve every Twitter before I could post it!!!"

3. They want to require prior approval of all posts to any public social media/internet/www site by any member of Congress!!! "

7. " I also must have a preapproved disclaimer on every Tweet that it is an official communication from a federal official for official business"

They go on. He's fighting about this in a very partisan way, but with Tim Ryan in the same boat, its not a partisan issue....(I agree with Dave from TP on this) its a tech issue.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, our Franking Rules are just so out of step with where we are (and indeed where we're going) that there needs to be some kind of update. Most notably, there should be an update that encompass new technologies that will be created in the next half hour to two years. This whole telenovella actually began as an attempt to make our rules better, if you can believe it...

This began when, in attempts to "get it," ...

"Democratic Representative Michael Capuano sent a letter last month, written in bureaucratese, to a House administrative committee, trying to propose that Congress should create a more official way to represent official congressional communication on the Internet. The letter, dated June 24th, has been widely circulated by a Twitter user and Republican representative named John Culberson, who rallied congressional allies against the proposal...

Capuano is trying to update an existing set of rules that requires House members to submit some web and email communications for approval before being sent. Here’s the text of the rules in question, that I found via nonprofit The Sunlight Foundation’s Open House Project blog post on the matter."

Despite their own convoluted confusion and explanations, the two sides seem to both want the same thing.

"Culberson, as you’ll see if you watch his Qik video, is sincere about his desire to let congress members say whatever they want on any service. Capuano, via his press release, pays homage to the same idea, even if he can’t effectively translate that sentiment into his proposals."

Despite Culberson's partisan blame, he's aligned many supporters from the left as well as the Sunlight Foundation who has started the site Let Our Congress Tweet. While we all seem to be on the same side, its also important to note the members who don't have a side at all on this issue, because they have no idea what the Internets iz. Much less what The Facebook and the Google are up to.

Hopefully, these new dramas will bring to light a better understanding for members who are a bit technophobic or who have staffers that are fearful of losing control. Lord only knows what could happen... Representatives say the Darndest Things!! Holding people's feet to the fire might become the standard, and people like you and me might be able to lobby our members in real time on Facebook through our status updates. Ahh to dream....

Flowgram - Flowgram is a screen-casting tool that lets you walk people through the use of a website, comment on items online, or a number of other applications with audio and text commentary.

SlideRocket - SlideRocket is an online presentation application that allows you to create rich presentations with a lot of features, effects and transitions. You can see one I made here.

Summize - Summize lets you search the Twitterverse for keywords to see what people are tweeting about your organization or cause.

This post is an attempt to unravel the mystery that is Twitter for the youth organizing community. While Twitter is pervasive amongst the early adopter crowd, it is just now beginning to gain traction with regular internet users.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that consists of 140 character "tweets" that are broadcasted to a person's subscribers. Think Facebook status updates but not constrained by Facebook. The question you are probably asking yourself is "if this is essentially the same thing as Facebook status updates, why is it even useful?" Well, here are a few reasons:

• With Facebook status updates, only your friends see them. With Twitter, anyone can subscribe to your updates.
• Facebook updates are more one-way than Twitter. Twitter users can direct message or reply to tweets, creating two-way communication.
• For the most part only people that go to your profile will see your status updates. Twitter updates are sent directly to subscribers.
• Twitter works with text messages (SMS), instant messages, and online.

Here is a video from Common Craft that explains the concept:

Getting started with Twitter

The first thing that you need to do is go to Twitter.com and set up an account. You can set up your cell phone, AOL Instant Messenger, and/or Google Talk to send/receive tweets. Once you have an account, start sending updates and find people to follow. You can start with me.

Enough about the basics, now it's time to see how you can use Twitter as an effective tool for your organization.

Applied Twitter

There are a number of ways that you can use Twitter for the benefit of your organization. The first is as a general SMS communication tool. SMS short codes are extremely expensive, which rules them out as an option for most organizations. Twitter provides a free alternative. You can set up a Twitter account for your organization and encourage people to subscribe to it. Use it to send announcements about upcoming events, rapid response items, to share links, etc. While it is true that currently most Twitter users are technology early adopters, those people tend to be online influentials, those who help get your message out there. As more and more users sign up for Twitter, the more effective a tool it is.

My favorite idea for using Twitter involves intra-group communication. Though Twitter does not currently support group functionality, using the free GroupTweet service gives you that power. Let's say for example that your group is at a conference and wants to be able to easily communicate with one another during it. I'll use the Young Democrats of Arizona and the upcoming YDA conference in Nashville as an example. I create a Twitter account named YDAZNashville. I register the Twitter account on GroupTweet. I make sure everyone in the delegation signs up for a Twitter account and follows YDAZNashville and I as YDAZNashville follows them back. I now have the equivalent of an SMS Google Group to coordinate the delegation during the conference. Whenever someone in the delegation sends a direct message to YDAZNashville, like (d YDAZNashville Everyone needs to head to Room A for welcome reception at 7), everyone in the group will get it.

I am sure there are a number of creative ways that you could use such a service in your organization.

Tips and Tools

If you have mobile internet on your phone, you can access Twitter at m.twitter.com.

To direct message someone you send "D username message" and to reply "@username message."

To share links easily without worrying about length you can use short-url services like TinyURL.

There are a number of Twitter desktop applications you can use. My favorite is Twhirl.

If you have a Blackberry, Twitterberry is a solid application.

The Twitter Facebook application allows you to use your tweets as status updates.

Links to Twitter Resources

Ultimate Guide to Twitter Tools

101 Must-See Twitter Resources

Twitter Tools, Tweaks and Theories

Newbie's Guide to Twitter

Big Juicy Twitter Guide

What the Web Strategist Should Know About Twitter

I hope that this helps. Now go sign up for a Twitter account and think of ways you can use this tool for your organization. Don't forget to follow me.