Posts tagged as:

democrat

The Web Empowers the Democratization of Democracy

by Brian Solis on November 15, 2008

by Brian Solis


Credit: Barack Obama on Flickr.

My latest post is live on TechCrunch, “Is Obama Ready To Be a Two-Way President.” It examines the transformation of people from mere voters into “customers” in order to create a true two-way era of politics, cut through party lines, and increase approval ratings across all offices. The New Web creates the foundation for people to participate in a crowd-sourced governance.

Highlights

Where there’s victory, there’s also opportunity…

Over 46% of American voters and 22 states sided with John McCain. Either way you look at it, it’s still a significant portion of America who didn’t believe #change or #hope were attributes of the Obama campaign. These voters believed their future lay with another candidate.

Politics aside, whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Independent or member of the Green Party, we can not overlook the power of real world community relations combined with the reach and engagement of online social communities and networks.

Online tools such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter contributed to the netting of record-breaking campaign funding and the staggering galvanization of a younger generation of first-time voters who truly made an impact and a difference.

My question is, what if these same social media tools where deployed to not only communicate “to” constituents, but also to listen and interact with supporters as well as those who don’t currently endorse the President-elect?

I argue that if Obama dedicates a team aside from the outbound crew that “pushed” content through social channels in order to strategically reach, listen to, and embrace the 46 % that voted against him, he might be able to run a truly democratic term and head into the next election with a record-breaking approval rating – curtailing the necessity to campaign while in office in order to focus on the issues we elected him to fix – while also cultivating the country for greater future prosperity.

Winning over, conservatively estimating, 5% of voters who were on the fence but ultimately voted for McCain, accounts for almost three million votes.

This isn’t just about broadcasting content through new channels or merely soliciting feedback, participating in popular networks or actively listening, it’s the ability to identify and internalize themes to precipitate change and earn support through action – not just words.

It’s the art and science of stripping down the politics to reveal truth. This is a political ecology rooted in sociology and conversations. People shouldn’t only have a voice during an election time; listening and responding should be an ongoing practice and process of any office.

For a deeper review of the subject, please read the unedited version at PR 2.0 (includes links to downloadable printable PDF and Word formats).

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Al Gore on World 2.0 at Web 2.0 Summit

by Brian Solis on November 10, 2008

by Brian Solis

Al Gore closed the Web 2.0 Summit with a powerful, inspiring, and uniting keynote that earned two standing ovations and honorary residence in the hearts and minds of Silicon Valley’s catalysts for innovation and change.

He opened the session in response to the first of two standing ovations with a sense of humor, but also a reaffirmation of what brought us together dating back to his Presidential bid in 2000, “Wow, what a week.” The room erupted into applause.

“It couldn’t have happened without the World Wide Web, without the Internet,” Gore acknowledged.

Al Gore documented this election as nothing short of, “the electrifying redemption of America’s revolutionary declaration that all human beings are created equal.”

“It would not have been possible without the additional empowerment of individuals to use knowledge as a source of power that has come with the Internet,” he proclaimed.

His vision for the Web is its sense of “purpose,” which is how we can take the evolution of not only the technology that defines it, but also the people who use it to communicate with one another. “I believe Web 2.0 has to have a purpose,” Gore observed.

Gore envisions a sense of purpose and promise in what he called “World 2.0:” Web 2.0 used for social betterment.

“Just as Barack Obama’s election would’ve been impossible without the new dialogue and new ways of interacting, the only way climate change is going to be solved is by addressing the democracy crisis, and the country hit a great blow for victory this week, but we have to take this issue and raise it in the awareness of everyone,” Gore said.

Gore continued later during his interview with conference organizers Tim O’Reilly and John Batelle, “I think that it is very much in its infancy, barely beginning, and I think that we are not many years away from television sort of sinking into the digital world and becoming a part of it.”

His continued “purpose” is to advance the democratization of media, where people are in control of not only what they consume, but are also empowered to create, distribute, and influence through media.

Al Gore

More at PR 2.0.

For more pictures from Al Gore’s presentation at Web 2.0 Summit, please visit my album on flickr.

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