RNC Tech Summit...just a start...but it's a start

[Saul Anuzis]

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/rnc-holding-summit-to-embrace-web-2.0-2009-02-09.html

RNC holding summit to embrace Web 2.0
By Reid Wilson
Posted: 02/09/09 03:45 PM [ET]

Following two election cycles in which Republicans saw Democrats best
them in technological innovations, the Republican National Committee
is throwing open its doors to conservative technophiles for a
technology summit to get input on how to improve.

Bloggers, Web 2.0 fans and others who see technology as the next step
toward reasserting the party will meet at RNC headquarters on Friday
and will be given an opportunity to address the new administration for
periods of five minutes each.

The summit comes after the race for Republican National Committee
chairman delved deeply into discussions about Twitter, Facebook and
other social networking opportunities, which many felt the RNC did not
take full advantage of during last year's elections.

New chairman Michael Steele, in proposals made to RNC members before
his election Jan. 31, put an emphasis on technology as a way to win
elections.

"We can't be satisfied by catching up. We must learn to be better,"
Steele wrote in his "Blueprint for Tomorrow." "We must assemble the
best and brightest minds, get to work, and win the technology battle."

The meeting is being spearheaded by Michigan Republican Party chairman
Saul Anuzis, a member of Steele's transition team who has been one of
his party's leading technology advocates. He blogs regularly, uses his
Twitter account constantly and was the most vocal RNC candidate
advocating an emphasis on Web 2.0 applications.

Anuzis has pushed for an open-source approach to improving the
committee's technology, which would open the committee's software and
programs to a wider array of improvements from tech-savvy supporters
across the country.

But some Republican technophiles expressed skepticism that the summit
will lead to any new ideas.

"The RNC is doing something smart in soliciting advice from a growing
group of GOP tech strategists," one online party strategist said. "Or
at least in principle, it is."

"A lot of those same strategists, myself included, are concerned that
this could turn into nothing more than a pitching ground for the usual
crop of consultants based in D.C. who are interested in getting a hold
of potentially lucrative RNC contracts," the strategist continued.

In recent years, several younger Republican consultants have made good
money off of their online experience. Still, the party lagged far
behind President Obama during the 2008 elections, and efforts to ramp
up the GOP's technological operations have some Republicans worried.

[Randy Covington]

Saul,

I believe we must use Open Source platforms for a variety of reasons. Among them:

1. A great many open source advocates willingly contribute knowledge, talents and skills that would cost large amounts of resources that could be better spent on elections.
2. A great many open source technologies already exist to serve as a platform for taking us where we need to go. They include, Civcrm, Drupal, Wordpress. We are a political party first and not a technology group. We do not exist for the sake of developing new technology and the most efficient use of our resources is the adoption and improvement and modification of existing technologies that can supply the tools necessary to
our goals.

Use of consultants in the past and "big business conservative" approach led to lucrative contracts for consultants, but poor results in the use of the technology. That is because only the grassroots can really determine the tools that best serve the creative energies that will drive us to restoring our rightful place.

Additionally, I heard (posted at Redstate.com) and confirmed to me by another very prominet New Media Conservative blogger that the RNC had some time ago sold the Voter Vault technology and database and signed a very lucrative leaseback on the data and use of the software. I can only convey that this is one of the stupidest and possibly corrupt actions that may have occurred.

First of all, I, was never asked by the party if they could sell my data. They may have retained that right in the Privacy Policy, but it was wrong. Secondly, the data belonged to the Party as a whole. Did the RNC vote for this transaction to occur, do they even know to this day that it has occurred? I have tried to find out, but no one seems to either know anything about this or is willing to talk about it.

The value of the data is only as good as its currency. What agreements were put in place to maintain the data, what agreements were put in place to protect the data. Is it possible that the new owner of the data (I heard it was FLC) could sell it to people dedicated to defeating the Parties interests? NO the data beleongs to us, it should never have been sold and if it was we need to undo this transaction somehow, or start over from scratch.

Laslt, these use of the technology is only as a platform for enabling the communication between party members to foster and extend the creativity and knowledge sharing that can leverage the energy of the grass roots. We need to think outside the box, we need to have a vision that the platforms is to serve all demographics and constituency in a manner that promotes open, creative interaction among all members and groups within the party.

Saul, I supported you for Chair because I felt that on an intuitive level, you understood the power of what we were missing because we had become so caught up in the process. The IT infrastructure was run as if it served the large monolithic, old line interests of a Giant Corporation. What we need is management of an IT platform dedicated to bringing disruptive, creative energetic leveraging of an entrepreneurial undercurrent that is the rightful heritage of the GOP.

We are not a "whitebread" despite what our opponents always wish to portray, we just communicate like one. That is why we lost the youth vote. We live in an era that past by n terms of how critically important contituencies socialize, communicate and educate themselves (digitally versus through print media). The evidence of this is in the shriveling of the papers. Young people do not read them because they found a method of informing themselves that better suits their lifestyles. Us older Conservatives are abandoning the Newspapers because we have come to recognize they are no longer "news" organization and we no consider the product defective. IN Five years the NYT and LAT will be gone from the planet.

The good news is that the power is our for the taking. Our poor showing these last cycles can be turned around by re-enforcing the core principles that made this the party of freedom and opportunity and unleashig the shackles of the past that tied us to methods and practices that did work in the past but are no longer adequate to our goals and needs. I look forward to your leadership. I look forward to Chairman Steele providing the leadership to refocus the party on the core values that make us Republicans.

I have included a link to the Civicrm webBlog and the Drupal and Wordpress Sites as well.

I will also say that as to communities sites, we of course need to be on Facebook, however, I believe their is an inclination to liberal politics there that could harm our full and open use of that site. I believe that NING provides a richer environment from that perspective and that we should focus on that as a commercially available platform for communities. We could also build our own so to speak using .elgg, an open source platform for communities. These are topics for internal discussion among the groups you are forming.

In the end, our strategy will involve all of these platforms and sources as that is the beauty of New Media and Web 2.0. It extends the reach of the network exponentially.

[Crazy Conservative Momma]

This is great! I am not technically savvy at all! I recall writing computer programs in high school AP Calculus, but I was, by far, the least math capable in my class! My point is, I can't help much in the arena of tech :( However, I love to write, and wrote quite a bit for our paper in the last town where we lived. So, I look forward to learning how and where I can write on the internet in order to promote the Republican agenda. I comment on news posts, blogs and also did so during the election. We need more conservative voices out there in the blogosphere! I know that, during the election, Obama's people had loads of bloggers, and that they were quite influential. I really feel that this can help the RNC reach many more young people, since they are plugged into the internet in such vast numbers.

[William Chappell]

If your goal is to collect information such as contact information or demographics that will ultimately wind up in a party database, then define the tables for us. We don't need a common application. We need a common result and a place to upload those results as raw data.

[JEAN MACALLISTER]

I checked out USTREAM.TV. It is great! And free! Let's start using this now.

[Saul Anuzis]

Please send specific suggestions...we'll set up a ning or other platform after the brainstorming session to get more specific ideas and input. Thanks.

[GOP First]

An open source implementation is a great idea and is totally doable as a means to reduce costs and spur innovation. Still requires the RNC to at least define the core requirements and roll up it's sleeves as a lead developer. Pieces of the solution are totally commoditized already and might be best served by an existing commercial solution like a CRM application and email/text marketing applications. You should be the RNC's CTO, Saul.

[Saul Anuzis]

I'm hoping to use as "open source" process and platform as possible. I think we need maximum flexibility and scalability....and the easiest way to do that is to have easily programable applications. The data and integration needs to be proprietary, but I'm hoping we come up with some open source type solutions...however, that may not be possible?

[GOP First]

Thanks Saul. Am from the executive ranks of the software industry (particular experience in marketing software applications) hoping to participate...hoping and trying to present ideas 1. on creating a network of social networks to build the online republican army and 2. to have the RNC build a tech platform blueprint of a seamless technology solution consisting of preferred software vendors with deeply discounted pricing, custom applications from the RNC and custom integrations from the RNC - which give an out of the box, integrated adn most cost effective tech backbone to any elected official or candidate should they chose to take advantage of it. Am afraid that, like the article referenced says, the ideas will be limited to the same old group of tech consultants floating around DC. How does one submit ideas to be considered for a 5 min. speaking slot?

[Whitehorse (Robin Ray)]

Excellent work Saul. I think the vast majority of our elected Republicans "get it" in that we need to return to fiscally responsible conservatism & limited government conservatism, & using the tech available to build new & enhance existing tools to get the message out & mobilize will combine to lead us to greater success. It is a start, a good start!