Published on Tuesday, June 09, 2009
ARTICLES
Many times at The Heritage Foundation's Resource Bank and Atlas' Liberty Forum, I was asked how to stay abreast of new communications technologies and how to determine which are worth trying. The answer: There is no answer.
New and emerging technologies are hard to keep up with. Weird fly-by-night services that no one thinks will amount to anything, such as
twitter.com, suddenly become The Thing that legislators are using to communicate with their constituents, see tweetillinois.org. And promising services with millions of users, such as myspace.com, get trumped by a more attractive but similar service, see facebook.com.
One way to begin unraveling the evaluation challenge is to attend technology conferences and see what real people think about new technological ideas. The Personal Democracy Forum, or PDF, is an excellent candidate for doing just that. PDF focuses on how technology affects politics.
This year, a group of SPN folks will attend the New York event to glean information, see new tools in action at the booths and hear presentations that focus on what is likely to happen beyond the next election cycle. Among the guest speakers will be: Steve Grove, YouTube; Maria Teresa Petersen, Voto Latino; Craig Newmark, Craigslist; and Baratunde Thurston, The Onion and Jack & Jill Politics.
Here's the skinny:
Personal Democracy Forum 2009
June 29-30
personaldemocracyforum.com
Frederick P. Rose Hall
Jazz at Lincoln Center
Broadway at 60th Street
New York, NY 10023
SPN has arranged for a special discounted registration rate of $350 per person, available at the following link: www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=680311&RegTypeID=224519.
A special rate is available at the Hudson Hotel, 356 West 58th Street, New York, NY 10019, t: 212-554-6000. Ask for the State Policy Network room block.
Staying on top of emerging communications technologies can be a challenge, but the PDF conference in New York offers an excellent way to see new ideas, as well as observe others' reactions to them. Should you go, write me at williams@spn.org when you arrive and we'll compare notes.
Nicole Williams is the management and technology advisor at SPN. Write her at williams@spn.org.
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