Proposed sessions

• What needs to happen for Dems to get field organizing right in 2008? Looking back at 2006 and 2004, what did our organizers and leaders need that they didn't get? How do we get that in place in time for '08? This discussion will begin with the assumption that the movement, collectively, needs to do better than we have recently in the field in order to win in '08. - open discussion moderated by Zack Exley zackexley@gmail.com

• ActBlue: share your experiences from 05-06 and your ideas for 07-08. ActBlue is more than just a fundraising tool: it's a public space where individuals, local groups, and national campaigns and organizations came together to raise $16.5 million for one thousand Democratic candidates and committees this election. If you've used ActBlue before, come with feedback from your experiences this election and suggestions for where we should be going in 2008 -- and if you haven't, come to learn from those who have! (With Benjamin Rahn and Erin Hill of ActBlue)

• Community debate on The Democratic Message: What should the Democratic/Progressive message be now and through 2008? Everyone in the country knows Progressives have are seriously message-challenged. If you can't admit that, don't come to this session. Everyone else: let's talk, brainstorm and debate about how Dems need to change in order to make it to the end zone now that the ball has fallen into their hands.

• Stay Healthy During the Campaign. Campaigns are stressful junk-food planets. Let's create a HealthyCampaign resource book (starting at RootsCamp and here on the wiki, but eventually for print) including recipes for quick, healthful food, tips on how not to lose our primary relationships during the campaign, ideas on kitchen equipment for campaign offices, and guidelines for food at training events.

• The New Politics Begins: Defining the Overarching Narrative of this Historic Election - This was no ordinary election. This election will be seen as the end of the conservative era and the beginning of a progressive one. Or will it? Everyone is trying to spin the meaning of the election their way. The progressive movement needs to frame this election as having all the elements of a historic election that heralds the reinvention of a 21st century progressivism. We’re living through a cathartic moment in politics due to simultaneous transformations in technology and media, in the demographic makeup of the country, and in the emergence of a new governing agenda to meet the new challenges of our time. Simon Rosenberg and Peter Leyden of the New Politics Institute will set up the overarching context and lead a discussion about figuring out the narrative of the election and the truly expansive opportunity that’s opening up. - Simon Rosenberg and Peter Leyden

• Democratic Party's 50 State Program. For the first time in the history of the Democratic Party, organizers are on the ground in all 50 states and have been in place more than a year before the 2006 elections. The organizers hired for these positions are from the states they work in and understand the political landscape and are familiar with the state and local electorate. Their work centered on volunteer recruitment and training, building precinct based teams across the country. Building and training local grassroots state-based volunteer voter contact and GOTV teams proved to be a winning formula in November. The Republican Party has the 72-Hour Plan---the Democratic Party now has a 365 Day Plan. Come to this session to learn more about the 50 State program. - Jason León

• "No Money, No Name, No Staff ... How to Win a Crowded State Leg. Race" Learn how to set up and run a state leg. race for someone who's never run before and has no name recognition. Will include: fundraising, direct mail on a small budget, using web technology with no budget, training your candidate, and how to get a ton of stuff done with supervolunteers/interns. Short talk, then Q&A. - Cammie Croft, cammiecroft@gmail.com

• Ads Ads Ads Let's get together mainstream ad makers, netroots critics, commercial advertisers, and others involved in the ad making process (candidates, campaign managers, etc...) for a discussion of what was good and what was bad about the 2006 cycle.

• The Role of the Network In the final weeks, netroots candidates picked up money or momentum. DCCC and DSCC picked up the energy of the netroots. The Party and 527s pushed media help, issue groups picked up traction on their targets … the election swarm was bossless and leader full. At the macro-level, it was uncoordinated and self-organizing. It is this distributed self-organizing that is of great interest. Let's get together campaign staff to discuss the lessons of 2006 in the network management. In a discussion that covers all of the topics below (communication, field organizing, and technology), we will discuss some examples of progressive swarms that made a difference, and share a framework for building and analyzing networks, coalitions, and movements. How was the network connected? What supported distributed swarmming? What were the problems? How can we build out network capacity for the future? - Marty Kearns

• Effective (i.e. non-sucky) Youth Outreach

• Digitally divided The digital divide now resides within a larger, complex policy sphere ushered in by technological convergence- the advancement in technology that enables telecommunication firms and information service providers to offer the same services, and media ownership rules that govern content and the switch from analog to digital broadcast. Technological convergence places digital technologies and their uses up for grabs creating opportunities for greater representation of who access, produces and develops ICT. Consequently, policymakers, regulators and planners, at once, should understand the intersection of rapid, technological advancement and policies that demonstrate an understanding for the disparate impacts these policies may have. What are the implications for a progressive agenda when those who most likely to participate and support that agenda are not online? How will progressive organizers move online organizing into low-income communities of color? Who will lead this movement? And who will decide?

www.atw730.blogspot.com antwuan wallace

• Engaging super-volunteers for member support.

• Voter registration and mobilization in the immigrant community for the long haul.

• DFA-Link - How Democracy for America built up a social networking site tailored for their membership, and how it was used throughout the cycle. by Luigi Montanez

• The Liberal License - An attempt at enforcing partisan protection on intellectual property we create (software, training material, etc). by Luigi Montanez

• Blog Actions - Taking the idea of contextual advertising (like Google Ads) and using it to promote concrete action on the ground through blog posts. by Luigi Montanez

• DATA DATA DATA Let's hear from the DNC voter file project and from Catalist about what's available for campaigns and organizations for 2008, and how to get to it.

• Online organizing with no budget.

• "Second Life: The New Virtual MeetUp Platform for Politics"; or "Online Politics Beyond MySpace -- A Report on RootsCamp in The Virtual World 'Second Life'" What do Lotus Founder Mitch Kapor, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Dean for America Internet Organizing Director Zephyr Teachout, and musician Suzanne Vega have in common? They've all been spending time recently in the virtual world Second Life. RootsCamp has been running concurrently in the virtual world Second Life every day since the day after election day (http://www.rootscampsl.org). More than 150 people from around the world have participated in this RootsCamp and given us insight into how to use this new social platform replicate the power of offline physical interaction online. Could Second Life be to 2008 what "Meetup" was to 2004? - Andrew Hoppin & Ruby Sinreich

• An Overview of the First Wave (2006) and the Second Wave (2008) of New Media Tools - The progressive movement did a fair job in adopting some new but proven media tools in this 2006 cycle (though we have a long way to go). We’ll look at four of these in this session: Buying targeted cable rather than broadcast TV ads; using search ads and search optimization techniques; engaging the blogs as progressive assets; and speaking in Spanish where appropriate. There were also a bunch of experiments in the next wave of new media tools that will have a huge impact in the 2008 cycle as they get more thoroughly adopted. We’ll look at four of these too: viral video, mobile media, social networking and games. Peter Leyden and Simon Rosenberg of the New Politics Institute will frame this tools space and lead the discussion.

• How do we know who REALLY won? - It doesn't matter how many people we mobilize and get to the polls if the election results themselves aren't trustworthy. The poster child for the 2006 elections is Sarasota County, FL, where the Republican congressional candidate "won" by 400 votes, but 18,000 mostly Democratic voters were unable to record a vote in the race at all on the electronic voting machines. What can we do before, during, and after elections to ensure that election results are an accurate reflection of voter intent? Rebecca Wilson, SAVEourVotes.org

• NOI Generation I Reunion - We bootcamped together in February, let's RootsCamp together in December.

• theballot.org - DIY progressive voter guides. As ballots get more confusing, voter guides become increasingly important. Why should newspapers be the only ones who get to make endorsements? This election theballot.org put the power of voter guides in ordinary people's hands. Demo + feedback wanted + collaborating orgs. Sam Dorman, League of Young Voters

• YOUTUBE/WEB VIDEO CAUCUS/SESSION: '06 surely was the first YouTube election - with the VA and MT races, it arguably was one of the decisive tools that won control of the Senate. Web Video buffs/trackers/pros/newbies should meet and talk shop, the future, best proactices, etc.

• YOUTUBE AWARDS: It would be fun, as part of a YouTube Session/Caucus, to take a straw poll to determine the crowd's picks for best video, biggest impact, funniest, sleaziest, etc. Dan and David from PoliticsTV.com would be interested in helping facilitate, info@politicstv.com

• LESSONS FOR ISSUE ADVOCACY: how can we apply lessons from successful campaigns to non-profits and other groups looking to advance progressive goals? This is a huge topic, but it might make for a good conversation. Steve Geer

• WIKITEAM and NOTES: USING THE WIKI TO CREATE and ONLINE ORGANIZING HANDBOOK at ROOTSCAMP : - There are going to be lots of folks, lots of stories, lots of real wisdom in the crowd. While some participants are sure to be developing books and brands based on lessons learned in the cycle those of us that aren't don't want to pay for private versions of experience next cycle. In a more collaborative roots way let's organize and outline and write the collaborative (wiki creative commons document) from rootscamp in 2 days. Many hands makes light work...48 hours to write the manual for the online workers for the next election cycle. The breakfast meeting will organize note takers, hammer out an outline based on the schedule of sessions, and work hard to document all the case studies, papers, assessments of vendors, anything that might serve the workers that will follow in your footsteps on the next progressive campaign. What do you wish you new going into the cycle that you know now? We have a basis for training the next cycle. Bring laptops! Wiki workers Needed: RooTsGuidetoCampaigns.

• Race, Religion and 2008 Election Outreach : How can progressive organizers take lessons learned from successes and challenges in the 2006 election and deliver effective messaging to minority communities for the 2008 cycle? What are the demographic/psychographic trends to consider, what outreach strategies work, what won't -- both online and offline? What are conservative strategies likely to be and what might be effective progressive responses? Cheryl Contee is willing to help moderate/facilitate this session. ccontee@idi.net

• College Campuses- Black Holes or Gold Mines? Colleges and Universities are oftentimes ignored by big campaigns. The reasons are many- Traditional rules of field organizing do not apply on campuses. Student organizers have a flaky reputation. And it takes significant time and money to organize college efforts. We'll look at ways of overcoming these obstacles and how a number of youth efforts made a significant difference in the 2006 elections. How do you make student organizers accountable? How do you maintain reliable lists when students move all the time? What kind of literature is effective? How do you organize an effective GOTV operation on campus? All these issues addressed and more. If anyone has experience with youth organizing and wants to help me put together this session, e-mail me at hannawaj@carleton.edu

• Targeting, Micro and Otherwise
  We're catching up to the Republicans in this arena, but Democratic campaigns and progressive organizations need to continue to become more efficient at reaching swing and GOTV-worthy voters. How can we improve our GOTV and persuasion targeting? What can the field do to help the data people collect better and more data on voters? What can the data people do to help the model-builders build better models? What can the model-builders do to make their models more transparent and useful to campaigns, direct mail firms, etc.? I'd love help organizing this session from anyone in the voter file or modeling worlds, and from field organizers who used the lists the modelers created. taren.sk@gmail.com and timothy.anderegg@gmail.com and tanyatarr@gmail.com

• Did Your Volunteers Call from Home? Grassroots volunteers made a big difference in many 2006 elections, especially through voter-to-voter phone banking. Did anyone else out there use an online, distributed phone bank program that allowed volunteers to make persuasion, ID or GOTV calls from home? What were your experiences? What program(s) did you use? How did you conduct trainings? Measure success? Uphold standards? Anyone who experimented with distributed phone banking - or wants to learn about this powerful new model - is enthusiastically invited to come talk out the nitty gritty. (No vendor pitches, please!) tate@tatehausman.com

• Modeling for Dummies** How to gather the right data and do the right things with it to create partisanship and candidate support models. This session will take the myth and magic out of modeling. Its not rocket scheince! Come along for a hands-on session of playing with numbers. We'll build a model in the session based on real data from a real campaign.