At the GOP TechSummit on Friday, I gave a joint-presentation with Slatecard co-founder Sendhil Panchadsaram. While I physically delivered the presentation in Washington, DC, Sendhil, who lives in Seattle, Washington participated virtually via chat at TrickleUpActivism.com. With over 250 people watching the UStream of the presentation -- we wanted to truly reach out and communicate with everyone about this idea.
Here's a YouTube video of the presentation (trimmed to get under 10 minutes. We start on slide three below).
Here's the presentation that went along with our speech.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Trickle Up Activism
By Sendhil Panchadsaram and David All
What an exciting time to be a Republican.
With this TechSummit -- Michael Steele and his team of technology leaders like Saul Anuzis, Tony Marsh and Cyrus Krohn have kicked open the doors to anyone and everyone to submit their ideas to help the Republican Party catch up to the Democrats online.
Hundreds in this room, thousands of ideas online. Ning. Twitter. Email. Facebook. Everywhere you look you can feel positive change.
The Republican Party is listening for the first time EVER to its membership.
Some say that the Internet is just a series of tubes. (But we know better.) Thankfully, those people are not a part of this conversation because they choose not to be.
The Internet is me. It’s you. It is all of us. It is a living, breathing place where real people spend a majority of their time everyday doing real things, making a difference.
The Internet has revolutionized politics forever – most profoundly by changing the definition of an activist:
- The 20-minute a day activist who sends emails while waiting in traffic during a commute to and from work.
- The in-between-a coffee break activist who sends tips to bloggers.
- The activist willing to give their candidate access to his Facebook status update once a day to spread a message.
- The stay-at-home mommyblogger who calls voters in targeted Congressional districts via Skype.
Barack Obama’s victory was not due to luck and it did not happen overnight. He achieved victory because he inspired millions of people to campaign for him at all times. It wasn’t about Barack --- it never was. It was about YOU.
These supporters – YOU – used a tool, MyBO, to self-organize, track tasks, recruit friends and volunteers, train, connect, raise money, and turn out the vote on Election Day.
The success of MyBO is impressive and unparalleled. As reported by Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic:
MyBO was responsible for more than 68,000,000 individuals being contacted by the Obama campaign.
But the greatest tool alone can not build a house. It takes carpenters who use the tools to build the house. You can’t have one without the other.
The challenge for the GOP isn’t so much a lack of activism, but the inability to harness it. There are plenty of people out there willing and yearning to help -- the Long Tail of political activism -- they just aren’t tapped as a resource effectively. And if they are tapped, they are not exposed to other causes or candidates of interest so when it’s over – it’s over.
We believe the immediate challenge our party must address if it is to win again is to develop a tool to facilitate and empower massive, distributed activism. With the right formula, the power and stickiness of the network will keep our activists engaged.
We must tap the Long Tail of activism by enlarging the pie through a system we refer to as Trickle Up Activism.
Unlike MyBO which only serves Obama, we see the Republican infrastructure as being a decentralized social network available to all GOP candidates which must be embraced by every campaign, from candidates for dog catcher all the way up to candidates for POTUS.
In the Internet world, there is an emerging embrace of Cloud Computing. The theory behind Cloud Computing is that your average website is often paying too much for resources and often lacks the ability to scale up resources quickly. For example, look at your average emergency website. It is traditionally hosted on a single or a few servers. For your everyday load this is fine. But when an emergency hits, the servers go down because they lack the ability to handle the extra load. Previously the solution would have been to buy the maximum amount of servers required for this maximal load, but this was very expensive. Cloud computing solves this problem by only charging for the resources and has a huge farm of resources that are largely untapped and can be utilized quickly to “distribute the load.”
Similarly, the GOP online infrastructure needs a way to “distribute the load” of activism to utilize resources as needed and a way to harness what is there more effectively.
There are two components to this. The first is how to harness activism more effectively. The social network itself will be comprised of a wide group of “Networks.” Primarily the “Networks” will be Candidates that range from local to federal. But there will also be networks of supporters at sub-levels, e.g., “Republican Reformers for Sarah Palin” or “Bicyclists of Seattle for Sarah Palin.”
The ideal goal is for the ability of the social network to recommend to people different networks they might like based on the composition and activity of those networks as they relate to their own, e.g., the “Republican Reformers for Sarah Palin” might like Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn or Local Candidate X. Or based on the issue networks you are a part of, the network will identify candidates/networks in your area that match what you identify with.
By using technology to make smart recommendations to users we can better harness activism because we are exposing activists to more choices and greater increase their activism. Most activists tend to have tunnel vision and focus only on a certain level or just aren’t aware of what else is out there. For the platform to succeed and grow, we must expose activists to more networks and causes.
The second issue is the idea of “Distributing the Load” a la cloud computing. In a normal network, the network can post messages, events, and “Action Items.” Action Items can be anything from a generic list of things that need to be done to more specialized Action Items that might be built out as time goes on (i.e. Canvass a Neighborhood, Write Letters to the Editors, change your Facebook status for the cause, etc.). Activists would receive points and move up in the system for completing tasks.
The candidate network will normally assign these tasks on their own. However, a group of networks could join together to form a “Coalition.” Within this coalition, the leaders of the coalition could share events, messages, and “Action Items” across the network so different groups and their members can lend a hand or pick up the slack.
An example of this would be the #dontgo movement this summer or the NoStimulus coalition today. A coalition of networks could assemble to quickly distribute tasks to a much larger network. I.e. Call your local senators/representatives/write letters/etc. The Network would allow this task to be distributed among whatever natural networks signed up for this coalition and the organizers of that network to visualize the responsibilities being delegated. On a smaller level this can work for little candidates and that’s where I initially see it being more utilized.
Which brings us back to Trickle Up Activism -- the need to enlarge the network – a thousand points of light. We believe the key to building up this network is to focus on the smaller candidates and the “little guy.“
According to the Assoc. of Political and Public Affairs Professionals, there are more than 50,000 public elections are held in the United States each year.
Candidates KNOW they need an online presence, a place to process donations, and a network. If the GOP makes it cost-effective, e.g., FREE -- candidates will be financially incented to participate.
Every Candidate will get their own “Network” that smaller networks can affiliate with and they can manage. After a while all these little candidates signing up and directing their supporters to the site will add up and you’ll create a large farm for activism. You can then utilize these numbers to “distribute the load” and the Amazon.com-like recommendation features of the network to better harness activism by promoting help across candidates.
The time to build the infrastructure that will help us compete tomorrow is now. We must build the tool and then train skilled operatives to build houses, promote leadership, and grow the pie. Only by working together will the Republican Party achieve victory.
