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The Bivings Group attended the Politics Online 2009 conference in Washington, DC, earlier this week to listen to and participate in a large-scale dialogue on how technology is and is going to change the political landscape. Here are a few important lesions I learned.

1. Politicians are getting technical

Actual politicians, not just their IT and communications departments, are learning how to use web tools. Secretaries of State and members of Congress addressed conference attendees on how they’re using new technologies to make their jobs more effective and to improve communication with constituents. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is working with Google on the Google Voting Information Project.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen manages her own Facebook and Twitter accounts, rather than handing the task off to an assistant. The cost of stressing out her communications team a bit is worth it for Secretary Bowen to connect directly with Californians.

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Bivings Group Director of Client Services Andrew MacDowell spoke to a panel focused on gaining and utilizing a large supporter base for initiatives online. The panel, titled “Fishing with a Keyboard,” was one of dozens of break-out sessions included in the 2009 Politics Online conference held in Washington DC April 20-21.

Click here for information on The Pickens Plan by the numbers.

Last week, Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) beat CNN's Breaking News Feed (@cnnbrk) to the one million follower mark on Twitter.  This was after a challenge that enjoyed some viral attention last week that even gained coverage by mainstream media organizations like the Associated Press.  In response to his victory, Kutcher exclaimed: "We can and will create our media… Victory is ours!"  He feels that Twitter will help people bypass old media news organizations — like CNN — to get information.

However, I'm not sure if CNN really lost in this challenge.  Kutcher is a widely popular actor, and the fact that he could even rival it for attracting Twitter followers is evidence of this.  That is why his challenge was actually a great thing for CNN, even though it lost.  

During Kutcher's challenge many people flocked to the breaking news feed to follow.  I'm sure that some people feel that it would be a disgrace if a celebrity was able to trump an established news organization.  What would that say about our society's priorities?  

Needless to say, this challenge inspired many to follow CNN's feed — if for any reason other than to help it beat a celebrity.  Thus, many more people now will receive CNN's updates and links to its website now via Twitter.  Let's not forget all the "free press" it brought CNN.  CNN didn't lose here, especially since it won't suffer from the door bell prank its founder Ted Turner will suffer is no longer with the organization.

Energy advocates and online mobilization experts gathered at the Center for American Progress Action Fund in Washington, DC, to talk about successes and challenges in gathering activists both on and offline.

Heather Lauer, director of online strategy for the Pickens Plan, talked about the process of gathering the Plan’s 1.5 million-plus participants and building a social network to connect members. (As the technical partner of the Pickens Plan, The Bivings Group has provided ongoing development and support on the Plan’s web communications network, including its primary site and its Ning-based social action network, Push.)

Other organizations, such as the Energy Action Coalition, built supporter bases through focusing on the goals of a particular voting group. The EAC spread its message among young people throughout college campuses and focused empowering the under-30 vote.

No matter the strategy, all members of the panel agreed on the importance of coming together in a combined effort to face energy challenges and the need to reach out to a growing base of supporters.

"We have a tremendous amount of education that needs to be done and we also have no time. This is not something that the good guys are going to win on the inside," said Brad Johnson of ThinkProgress.org.

In order to reach a broader base, Michael Silberman of 1sky.org emphasized 1Sky’s tactic of organizing community events around key issues, which can be effective both online and off. Silberman and his team worked with Greenpeace to organize rallies and push constituents to contact legislators during Congressional recesses.

While enticing audiences to participate in specific events can be a highly productive way of gaining new members, participants on the panel said it is not as effective as maintaining a long-term, sustained strategy of support.

“We’re relying on dedicated Moveon.org members to motivate other members,” said Michael Sherrard, who works on Moveon.org’s recent Power Up America campaign. “To make real progress is going to require a building crescendo of organizing.”

On top of organizational strategy, the panel discussed effective messaging methods of both within their supporter bases and with the public. Panel moderator and Associate Director for Online Advocacy Alan Rosenblatt recommended using a closed-audience SMS communicator to share messages within your group, and “leveraging Twitter makes that dynamic more public” if you are aiming for a broader audience.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund promotes regular InternetAdvocacy Roundtable discussions as part of its Wired for Progress program. Online attendees can watch live streams of discussions and submit questions online. A listing of past and upcoming Internet Advocacy Roundtables is available here.

While Amazon is way ahead of the competition in the race for control over the soon-to-be billion-dollar e-reading industry, the game has just begun, and major players entering the field might make for a much more interesting battle.

Barnes and Noble, whose business has been slipping over the past decade with the increase in publishing costs and the slump in sales, in March paid nearly $16 million for Fictionwise.com, a Scott Pendergrast company launched in 2000 with an eye to corner the e-book market.

With an e-book supplier as large as Fictionwise, Barnes and Noble seems to be taking slightly different strategic approach than Amazon, which is focusing many of its resources to turn its Kindle and Kindle 2 into the iPod of e-readers.

Last month, Barnes and Noble released a free e-reader for BlackBerry devices, utilizing Fictionwise’s content, which comes in a variety of formats. The BlackBerry reader should allow Barnes and Noble to create a supporter base by the time it launches its own complete e-bookstore, which might happen before the end of the year, according to PaidContent.org.

A new online bookstore that competes with Amazon will take the pressure off of content providers and onto hardware developers, which is how the e-reading game becomes fun for consumers.

While the Kindle 2 has gotten rave reviews, emerging new models of e-readers threaten to challenge its success by giving e-readers a variety of options.

Readius, a pocket e-reader soon to be released, has one up on the Kindle for portability and uses a flexible “e-paper” screen developed by PolymerVision.

Readius market release has not been confirmed yet, but the company plans on launching in Europe and then North America.

Sony’s Reader boasts “e-ink technology” that makes the screen easy to see even in direct sunlight, a feature built after complaints that the first Kindle was hard to see in some weather conditions. Although the Reader is simpler and nearly $100 cheaper than the Kindle 2, Sony may need to boost their content partnerships to compete with Amazon and Barnes and Noble’s e-book selection.

I spent some time today playing with Yammer, which allows organizations to essentially set up their own private micro-blogging community limited to their employees.  Put more simply, it allows a company like us (The Bivings Group) to set up our own private Twitter. 

Yammer works great!

There is a lot to like here from a technical perspective:

• Sign up is simple.  You join simply by signing up with your organizational email address and you automatically join the network. 
• The user interface is great.  The design is very similar to Twitter, so it is very easy to use and familiar. 
• It has a great Adobe Air client.  You can use Yammer via a slick desktop program that is reminiscent of Twhirl, which is a compliment. 
• There are some great additional features you won’t find on Twitter.  Yammer includes the ability to create and subscribe to groups, upload files as part of your updates and view an organizational chart of your company the system creates for you. 

This is a nicely made web application.

What’s the point?

After playing with Yammer for a while and inviting some of my colleagues to join me, I’m left struggling to come up with a reason that a company would need a private micro-blogging network.  We certainly don’t at Bivings.  I have millions of ways to communicate with my colleagues already.  I can get project updates from Basecamp, chat on Instant Messenger, send individual or group emails using old fashioned Microsoft Outlook, keep tabs on folks via social networks like Twitter and Facebook, or god forbid, simply walk across the room and talk to folks. 

I don’t have the problem Yammer solves.  I don’t imagine many others do either.

Confusing to employees?

Jason Fried from 37 Signals wrote a few great posts last week about how Get Satisfaction’s set up sort of passively forces companies to use their service.  Yammer has a similar problem.

I was the first person to sign up for the service from an @bivings.com email address.  By doing this, I automatically created a network for The Bivings Group without really being aware of it.  After joining, I am encouraged to invite colleagues to join me on Yammer as a way of spreading the word, and they are encouraged to do the same after they sign up.  With the big “Bivings” branding at the top of the page and a bunch of work colleagues participating, this thing pretty quickly starts to look like a company-sponsored site even though its not.  This could lead to confusion for employees at larger companies.

If, as a company representative, you want to take control of your Yammer network to clear up this confusion and exert some administrative control, you have to claim the network on the Yammer enterprise services page.  There is a free version of Yammer for enterprises, but to sign up you have to enter your credit card, and a lot of the functionality you’d want as a company administrator is only available if you pay Yammer’s per user fees.  For its silver and gold versions Yammer charges $1 and $5 respectively per user, which means the service gets expensive pretty quickly.  At 30 people, it would cost The Bivings Group $150 per month for the entire firm to use the product. 

Perhaps more importantly, I do not see any way for a company to opt out of Yammer completely should they not want their employees to use the tool.  So the only way for a company to really exert control is to sign up for either a free or paid Yammer account for their domain and start monitoring it. 

I would be fine if Yammer were either 100% unofficial or 100% official.  Trying to have it both ways seems sketchy to me though.  This middle ground can lead to confusion among employees and/or kind of coerce companies into using it. 

I think Get Satisfaction is a little sketchy in the same way, as it is trying to have it both ways too with its official/unofficial customer services pages.

What do you think?

Note: The following letter was originally sent out via email to friends of The Bivings Group.  We have started sending these updates out once a quarter.  If you would like to be added to the list, add your name here.

Dear Friends,

Many of you have asked how we are faring, a reasonable question given current circumstances.  Never ones to gloat — maybe we’re a bit too superstitious — we are nonetheless happy to reassure friends and colleagues that The Bivings Group is well positioned for these turbulent times. 

For the benefit of all concerned, we hope Warren Buffet’s widely circulated comment that “the economy is falling off a cliff” was an overstatement; we know we’ve been less “buffeted” by the storm. Inevitably in this climate we’ve parted ways with a couple of clients, but we’ve been fortunate to welcome a number of new ones (along with a few clients who have returned to work with us on new projects).

As such, we are moving ahead, prudently but optimistically. Fueled by federal government spending and the needs of advocacy groups and not-for-profits, our pipeline is surprisingly strong; we’ve even hired a couple of new folks. 

A few highlights of the quarter:

• We’re honored to be the technology firm behind the Pickens Plan, and pleased to report that the Plan’s website has won the Reed and Pollie awards.
• We were delighted to have the opportunity to redesign the website for the National Peace Corps Association (i.e., returned Peace Corps volunteers, myself included) which now includes a social network.
• We designed and launched new sites for the Personal Democracy Forum and TechPresident.
• We completed a new site, “Wild Australia,” a joint project between the Pew Charitable Trusts and The Nature Conservancy.
• Our ImpactWatch work with H-P picked up another award, the PRSA Totem award.

In other news, we’ve started a state government transparency project, added a sixth language — Russian — to the International Center for Journalists’ online network, and are very happy to provide technical support for Edmund Burke High School’s DC Filmfest, which is fast becoming the city’s premier high school film festival.

Meanwhile, not knowing any better, we’re sticking to some old-fashioned ideas. We scout for solid opportunities and look to grow revenues while keeping a lid on costs.  As always, we place a premium on client relationships and the quality of our work.

And we continue to be mindful of those less fortunate, including those who have recently taken it hard on the chin. Redoubling our philanthropic efforts this year, we are reminded of what the late Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm once said, ”Service to others is the rent you pay for room on the earth.”

Wishing you all the best,

Gary Bivings
April 7, 2009

We have been writing a lot of self promotional blog posts about our work on the Pickens Plan web program lately.  I am going to write one more and then I promise to move on to other topics. 

The last three days, the Pickens Plan has been holding a virtual march on Washington in support of the elements of the Plan.  The team has recruited over 4.5 million virtual marchers and there has been tons of online activity this week around the March.  In support of the effort, we built some social media tools that help spread the word about the March in various online communities.

Using Hashtag to Promote Action

Prior to this week, the Pickens Plan team hadn’t really been using hashtags as a way to organize content on Twitter.  In advance of the virtual march, we launched the #pickensplan hash tag through our Pickens Plan Twitter account and encouraged supporters to use the tag to promote the Plan.  To promote the tag, we also launched a page on the virtual march site that aggregates all mentions of the tag.  The page includes a leaderboard that recognizes the users that have used the #pickensplan hashtag most frequently and tools that allow users to post Pickens tweets right from the page itself.

This strategy has worked well, as the #pickensplan hashtag has become ubiquitous and a great many users are promoting the march by tweeting our suggested messages.

Contacting Congress via Facebook and Twitter

A big part of the virtual march centers around asking activists to contact their legislators in support of the elements of the Plan.  Like everyone else, the site includes the ability for people to send emails to Congress.  To surround the situation, the Pickens team also launched a page listing member of Congress on Twitter and Facebook and encouraged users to reach out on those venues.  You can see a screen grab from the page below.

If you check out #pickensplan on Twitter, you’ll see examples of supporters reaching out to their Representatives using these tools.  Given its closed nature, it is more difficult to show the results on Facebook.

You can learn more about the Pickens Plan virtual march here.