NDN Weighs In on "The Wired White House"

Alan Boyle, MSNBC.com's Science Editor, had a terrific report today on what will no doubt be President-elect Barack Obama's tech-savvy Administration.

In his CosmicLog post, Boyle quoted Simon at length about what we can expect from "The Wired White House:"

Rosenberg said it will be common for government agencies to host videos and blogs (as the Transportation Security Administration does already).

"You're going to see competition at the weekly Cabinet meeting between the DHS secretary and the HHS secretary over who had more views on their YouTube video, and who had more comments on their blog," he said.

Global Webcasting of presidential addresses and press briefings - perhaps translated into multiple languages - is likely to become routine. That policy could well filter down to other governmental agencies and even other governments, Rosenberg said.

He pointed to the example of David Cameron, the leader of Britain's Conservative Party, who stars in a series of "Webcameron" videos that touch upon his party's policies as well as his personal life. "You can watch videos of him washing dishes in his sink," Rosenberg said.

Boyle also included Simon's vlog on how we can expect Obama to reivent the presidency. You can watch it here:

Boyle also interviewed Scott Goodstein, who was a guest panelist at yesterday's NDN/New Politics (NPI) forum on the New Politics in the Age of Obama:

Scott Goodstein, who served as external online director at Obama for America, was in charge of attracting millions of social networkers to the cause via Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other gathering places in cyberspace. "I was very lucky and fortunate to have a campaign that was willing to take the time and opportunity to recognize the power of viral communication and more information about these social networks," he told me.

Goodstein said the secret of success lay in taking advantage of the networking tools already being used by a rapidly increasing proportion of the population: computers, cell phones and other mobile devices. "Usually, campaigns are 10 or 15 years behind other consumer trends," he said.

For instance, one of the tools devised for the campaign was a downloadable application that could turn an iPhone into a hand-held political operative. "We were able to organize people's address books based on who their friends were in battleground states," Goodstein said. The campaign could also send out messages tailored to different geographic areas.

Simon and Scott, the External Online Director for Obama for America, were joined at the standing room-only forum by Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum, and Tim Chambers, long-time NDN/NPI collaborator, co-founder of the Media 50 Group and Principal at Dewey Digital.

Visit our New Politics Institute site to learn more about our powerful new tools series, which we plan on updating in the months to come.