Category: Tech

Hunting Demon Sheep

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

The Chuck DeVore for Senate campaign has declared open season on Demon Sheep.  Visitors to demonsheep.org can squish, shear, crisp, or mock the ill-conceived star of a Carly Fiorina campaign video:

Aside from being a fun concept, the microsite does all the right things – it lets users share their demon sheep hunting with friends, and hits hunters up for small donations.

The original “Demon Sheep” web video was designed to distinguish Fiorina from GOP primary opponent Tom Campbell – casting Campbell as a FCINO, or “Fiscal Conservative in Name Only.”  The campy quasi-religious imagery a low-budget sheep costume that looks like it was a pilfered sample from a carpet store made for internet mockery.  But it also made for viral viewing, giving an audience for the negative points the video makes about Campbell.

Though the Demon Sheep video doesn’t mention DeVore, he’s doing his best to capitalize – and as Matt Lewis and I discussed weeks ago, DeVore’s campaign stands to gain the most if Fiorina and Campbell descend into a harshly negative campaign that damages both.

This effort can be successful in targeting conservative activists nationwide for support and donations.  The drawback for the DeVore folks is timing.  Demon Sheep is a month old, and while bizarre, the opportunity to latch onto the initial wave of coverage has long passed.

More about the health care-waves

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

TechPresident has an intriguing behind-the-scenes look at technology behind “On the Air,” the DNC/Organizing for America talk radio call-in project.  OFA compiled the data the site needed (dial-in information for all those shows) from volunteers thanks to a program that emerged from their Innovation Labs division.  The program itself is impressive enough, but the idea of a creative division spitballing ideas is a bold step.

Organizations funded by other people’s donations have to be able to show results, or else the gravy train stops.  A labs division, which may produce one tangible product for every 25 they conceive, seems like a poor investment.  Considering the usefulness of that 4% yield, it’s usually worth the investment.

To use OFA’s example, they now have a database of talk radio programs across the country.  In addition to national programs like the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs, they also have good, current information for regional and local shows.  And don’t forget, OFA still has a massive list of email addresses and – especially important – mobile numbers, which they can filter for voters in a certain state or Congressional district.  So if you live in a district with a competitive House race in September, you could easily get a text message asking you to dial in to your local talk radio show, with the number included.

On the Air is a good innovation, but the underlying technology could have even great applications down the road.  For DNC/OFA donors, this should prove the labs experiment is a successful one.

On the air for government health care

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

With Congressional Republicans and President Obama putting on a meeting that could make Bill Lumbergh ask you to go ahead and drop hemlock in his coffee, Organizing for America is pushing its supporters to talk radio to advocate the expanded government control of health care.

OFA’s radio site gives users everything they need to be good soldiers  the government health care army.   The site provides a link so advocates can listen into various programs and phone numbers to call in.  If they are having trouble getting through, the advocates can click through to another show’s information quickly.  A “Calling Tips” section prepares them for what to expect and how to deal with hosts that challenge their views; and a clear list of talking points helps them stay on message.

The site – and the tactic of calling in to radio shows – will likely not change a single person’s mind about government health care.  After all, most of the folks  listening to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or even news radio probably have their mind made up.  But there are two important possible results that could come of this:

  1. It’s important for any side in a political debate to have voices that come from outside of Washington.  If Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama are the voices of government health care, it is hard for the average voter to identify with their side.  It’s much easier to identify with someone who calls into a news show; for government health care advocates, injecting their views into the debate through the grassroots is vital.
  2. Making the case for personal ownership of health care is not hard, but it’s much more difficult to make that case to someone who has a personal story to tell.  Further, a bombastic conservative talk radio host – with no electorate to answer to in pursuing the goal of entertaining radio – may slip up and insult an opposing caller.  Whether a conservative host is flummoxed by a personal testimonial or overly aggressive, it’s a clip of a voice from the right sounding stupid on health care.  Enough of those clips can indeed change people’s minds.

The key to the site’s success is the “Report your Call” function – something which allows OFA to at once track progress and people.  Remember, the next campaign is just around the corner.

This week’s buzz about Google

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I joined Google Buzz this week.  It was easy – I didn’t have to do anything except log in to GMail.  Google had transformed my private email – including my contact list (which it automatically populates based on my email traffic) into a social networking experience, a hybrid of Facebook and Twitter.  After several privacy complaints, Google made opting out of certain features a bit easier.  It’s still a little creepy.

Tellingly, Buzz allows you to integrate your Twitter feed but not for Facebook profile – another sign of the coming Armageddon between Google and Facebook, which Google will likely get to right after their fight with Apple and possibly after their fight with Microsoft.

How big is Google?  There were three separate stories about Google which made headlines this week.  That’s not three articles – but three separate issues which made news independent of each other.  First was the aforementioned Google Buzz; second was Google’s plan to become an internet service provider; and now comes news that Google is butting heads with the Department of Justice over intellectual property rights of authors as part of their ongoing effort  to become a latter-day, digital Library of Alexandria.

That these are all separate issues leads to them becoming one issue.  Google is seeking to define how you get to the internet, how you communicate with others, and what information/content you receive.  If this scenario continues on the same logical course, Google would become to the internet what AT&T was to the telephone networks before it was broken up by a federal antitrust suit in 1984.

Is Google at risk of an anti-trust lawsuit?  Possibly, but they have certainly done their best to make inroads with the government that would prevent that from happening.  The relationship between Google and the current administration is well-documented.

And if you believe the balance of power in Washington will tip back to Republicans in 2010 or 2012, Google is ready for that to – they are sponsoring TechRepublican’s Digital Boot Camp at CPAC this year.

Fiscal conservatives are sheep. Some are demon sheep.

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 6 Comments

Carly Fiorina’s Senate campaign gets points for creativity – releasing a web video to make a detailed case against her primary opponent, Tom Campbell, that just couldn’t be made in a thirty second ad.  But whoever cut and approved this ad has done more harm than good:

Likening conservative primary voters to sheep is a bad idea on its own, but Fiorina’s folks take it a step farther with the “demon sheep” at the very end.  It’s funny, but in a so-bad-it’s-funny kind of way, which is a bad thing for a political ad in a charged primary.

Sure enough, the parodies have begun almost instantly, and they have been thorough.  You can follow the Demon Sheep on Twitter (@DemonSheep) and ask questions of the unholy beast.  Campbell is using the ad as fund raising fodder, and it has likely helped his name recognition among prospective non-California donors.

More important, the ad – and not the message the ad was trying to convey – is the subject of discussion and media coverage, some of it quite tongue-in-cheek.

Viva la revolucion

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Patrick Ruffini, one of the consultants who helped Scott Brown take back the people’s seat in Massachusetts, wrote an extensive wrap-up of the campaign’s online fundraising in the last month.   The whole thing is a good read, but his assessment of the recent online innovations of each party at the very end is intriguing:

As we have written in the pages of the Washington Post, during the right’s online wilderness years (this “wildnerness” being the mirror image of being in power in Washington) many pundits wondered whether the right was at a permanent structural disadvantage online… [N]ow that the right has needed to use grassroots tools to break the Democratic lock-hold on Washington, they’ve done it in a big way. And it’s happened much faster, and with greater early electoral success, than the evolution of the liberal “netroots” which didn’t really take off until the end of Bush’s first term.

Much has been written about the Massachusetts race, and most of it is an exaggeration.  But the studies of Brown and Virginia’s Gov. Bob McDonnell successful use of online tactics in winning campaigns underscores a running theme – like President Obama, their innovative campaigns were seeking to win an office held by the other party.  All three were on the outside looking in.

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.  Political parties are made up of politicians, so of course they tend to be risk-averse – unless they have no office to risk.

Text donations to…

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 2 Comments

In the wake of the wildly successful mobile fund raising campaign for earthquake relief efforts in Haiti, my Mom emailed me with a thought: could candidates do the same thing to raise money for a political campaign.  The answer: while this method worked very well for Haiti, it may be more trouble than it’s worth for 2010 candidates.

The Rothenberg Political Report discussed some of the regulatory hurdles earlier this week:

First of all, candidates and campaign committees need to collect basic information about all donors including their name, address, and occupation. This is not necessarily prohibitive but candidates would need to establish a “best effort” to obtain the information after the contribution, according to a Federal Election Commission spokesman. This is more of a practical roadblock than a legal one.

Rothenberg also points out restrictions on corporate giving directly to campaigns, which would make it necessary to have an intermediary firm collecting and processing donations.

Then there’s the campaign cost: while the carriers likely waived any fees they would have collected for the Haiti effort, a similar fund raising program might result in charges of up to 40% of the donations, according to one industry source.  That means for every $10 you donate, a campaign might see $6 – and less if there’s an third party processing the campaigns.  Considering the up-front costs of creating the program and sending the texts, the program would have to be wildly successful to pay for itself.

Mobile and text messaging will continue to be important conduits for get-out-the-vote efforts and other messages from a campaign direct to voters, but the infrastructure to turn your cell phone into a “donate now” button isn’t there right now.

A reading from the Blogs of St. Paul to the Ephesians

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

And lo, after one year had passed since the establishment of an official YouTube Channel for the Roman Catholic Church, did the Pope Benedict XVI come forth and say to the flock, Take ye these online tools, and useth them, and spread thy faith far and wide.  And be not discouraged by those who cast doubt, nor by an inability to access a wifi hot spot.

One of the best books available on political strategy is Dedication and Leadership by Douglas Hyde.  Hyde was a bigwig in the British Communist Party who left and became an active Catholic.  His message to Catholics, through this book, was that despite the evils of Communism, the Communist party used effective techniques to recruit and retain membership – techniques which, he argued, could be used by any organization regardless of philosophy, including the Church.  As a modern-day example, Hyde might point to the online tactics which helped elect Barack Obama’s which were then used for successful Republican candidates like Bob McDonnell and Scott Brown.

A wired Vatican fits nicely as another modern-day extension of Hyde’s vision; and any institution that ignores the tools of today as an outreach tool is destined to fail.  Any man-made institution – even if divinely inspired – must recruit to survive.  (Even Jesus Christ Himself knew that He wouldn’t run the Church forever and understood the need to recruit apostles.)

To put it another way: God helps those who help themselves.

Plus, this course of action is far more strategic and savvy than efforts which would simply offer the Church a PR facelift:

CoCo and the Online Campaign

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

New England hasn’t seen an upset like Scott Brown’s win since Superbowl 42 – and much of the credit deservedly goes to his campaign’s ability to harness support from Republicans across the country through online organizing and remote phone banks. Compare that to the other online campaign making news lately: the “I’m with CoCo” movement supporting deposed Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien.

While O’Brien cleverly positioned himself to the People of Earth, the online effort to build support has not been effective – even though it has translated to angry mobs descending on NBC affiliates calling on O’Brien to keep his current gig.  The shortcoming?  The online movement – which appears largely viewer-generated – isn’t focusing on activities which will affect NBC’s bottom line.

Scott Brown’s online efforts were all geared to mobilize voters and volunteers who could drive more voters to the polls.  Outside of fraud and cheating, winning more voters is the easiest way to win an election.

NBC counts votes in two ways: ratings and, more importantly, advertising dollars.  A more effective CoCo Movement might target Tonight Show advertisers, warning them of boycotts.  A well-publicized action against a current Jay Leno sponsor might be a good shot across the bow.

Johnny Carson’s old chair is not “The People’s Seat.”  Rallies and large Facebook groups may snag short-term media attention, but NBC feels like they can win more “votes” with Jay Leno behind the Tonight Show desk and until the CoCo movement translates into viewers and dollars, nothing will dissuade them.

https://jimeltringham.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/conan-the-communications-expert/