It's day two of IPDI's Politics Online Conference and I just sat through a great panel titled, "Practical Data Strategies for Mobilization."

The Panelists:
*Dave Leichtman, Technical Project Manager, Blue State Digital
*Clay Johnson - Founding Partner, Blue State Digital
*Ben Self - Founding Partner, Blue State Digital
*Judith Freeman - Co-founder and CEO, New Organizing Institute

The panel talked about practical ways to manage and use large amounts of data.

Ben on integrating data:

Integration is not a family value. Unless there's a good reason to integrate different data, it's an easy to waste a lot of time and money.

Accountability:

The beauty of the Internet is that it's brought a new level of accountability to politics. You no longer have to wonder if an ad is going to work. Upload it to Youtube and see if people watch it.

Four principals for managing data in politics:
1. You need to be able to draw a straight line between what you want to do and if gets your candidates elected.
2. What do we already have that gets us there? As opposed to reinventing the wheel.
3. How do we measure success?
4. Do a small, cheap test. Speed should take priority over almost anything else.

Julie

Organize data in a way that makes testing analytics as easy as possible.

Clay

The first thing an organization needs to do is know, what data do you have? And then, who needs the data?

SQL

SQL is easy to use. Sit down and learn SQL, even if you're just a blogger.

User-Interface Matters

User interfaces really matters, especially on the editorial side. A bad UI makes you want to use the program less. It's the difference between taking five seconds to approve a comment vs. one second. Those four seconds becomes extremely valuable over time.

The panel was one of the most informative I've been to at this conference, and now I'm motivated to learn SQL. Apparently it's easier then learning French.

A personal gripe for conference attendees:
I think it's extremely rude to ask a highly personalized question to a panel/speaker and expect a highly personalized response while the rest of the audience is forced to listen.

My organization wants to build application x - what should we use to build this?

Seriously? Can't you just wait until after the panel to ask your question and not waste everyone's time?

Off to lunch now. Yesterday's meal was gourmet, so I hope today's lunch lives up to past precedence.