AFP: Winning Online

Got to meet Davis Jackson who put up a solution on Social Security and Medicare on the American Solutions website. Its an idea up the alley of 15% solution that I proposed some months back.

BTW, 1.3 million Americans have signed the "Drill Here, Drill Now" petition that was put together at the American Solutions website. This is a 73% supported issue.

Other great issues: English as an official language; knowing cost and quality of healthcare.

Ken Emanuelson: Winning victories, but not translating into win races. Mentions draft Fred Thompson and FredHead effort built up from grassroots. Decided to roll over effort into local issues and Congressional campaigns, put it into
Reagancoalition.org. They have a people database and a places database. (It looks like political social networks). "We are trying to connect activists with eachother." he says.

David Kralik: Need a long-term approach to winning; pain online has to do with history, the party out of power uses the new tools to win back.

Ryan Gravatt: We are NOT winning online; works in Texas; Democrats have been reaping what they sowed since 1998 with Moveon.org; mentions RNC is microtargeting 55 year olds, using 16 terabytes of data. On style-vs-substance: Marketing of a website is the factor that brings the audience to the website; high 'bounce rate' if you have bad navigation or bad presentation; appeal is the tools the sites have to get people to feel they are participating or learning from the campaign; don't read pages top to bottom, want bullet points, graphics, etc.

Maggie Thurber: State-level blogger alliance. Cross-reference, to build readers and build connections.

What is winning? How do you know you are successful? Kralik on measurements for success: Every day at American Solutions they look at metrics of success; visitors, money raised, etc. Combine offline and online; measure success of online through offline activity. The conversation may start online but continues offline.

Ken mentions what is needed: User on one site can bring to another site.

I ask about web 2.0 and user generated content and how to leverage it. In his answer, Kralik touts open source tools (Drupal, MoveableType) and two books: "An Army of Davids" and the "The Wisdom of Crowds".

Closing advice: Need to not just online, but online is a tool to win hearts and minds, so success require taking your online activity to offline bricks and mortar world.