My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition: Queen of Spain

I had the pleasure of meeting Queen of Spain Blog political blogger Erin Kotecki Vest on my last My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition. She only had 30 minutes to share since she was going live with her weekly show The Sunday Inquisition w/ the Queen of Spain from 7-9 pm pacific time. I'll talk more about that following my summary of our ooVoo chat. Erin was connecting from Detroit where she was visiting with family and also joining the call was Digitalsista Shireen who I had met earlier in the day and Jill Foster. This was my third ooVoo call of the day and I was back at home by then and eager to meet the Queen of Spain.

"Erin Kotecki Vest spent ten years as a broadcast journalist in Los Angeles, Orlando and Detroit winning six Golden Mic Awards with LA news institution KFWB. She now serves as Political Director and Election 08 Producer for BlogHer.com as well as contributing regularly to the Huffington Post, MOMocrats.com, and her own site Queen of Spain Blog."

Since we only had a short time with Erin we mainly talked about her life changing Blogher interview with Obama. She wrote about it in a two part series on her blog here and here where she gives behind the scenes details of the experience, her emotional state and how she prepared for the interview that changed her life.

On her blog she said,

"I wasn’t supposed to be doing the interview."
"I shopped at the Eugene, Oregon Target at 8pm Friday night for camera-ready clothes, notecards, and hairspray."
"I met the Senator from Illinois in the hallway of Roseburg High School while he was on his way to use the rest room. I know this. He told me so."

Our ooVoo conversation started with Jill asking the Erin how she prepared. Erin said the Blogher community drafted collected the 12 questions which were not secret so there was no fear of being ambushed. Each candidate would have time to prepare and this made it easy for to do interview. She counted her blessings and didn't have to go crazy. The on-camera interview was conducted in Roseburg, Oregon, by Erin with input from Contributing Editor Kim Pearson. She got through 7 of the 12 questions in the 10 minutes and on her blog she said, "This interview was not a surprise investigation by us. We’ve had these questions on the record since the BlogHer conference last July. So I knew this was not going to be a ‘follow up question’ or ‘on the spot attack’ type of interview. That helped. Back in the day I would have been plotting 40 follow ups and 40 different takes on those follow ups depending on his answers."

I asked Erin of the politicians she's interview who seemed the most sincere. She said Obama was the most genuine she ever met, he's charismatic, he had no handlers, was not so scripted or protected with every word out of his mouth and that was a relief for her. Momocrats said when Obama speaks and does his "ums" he reminds you of that college professor that was a little absent minded, but you saw the wheels spinning, watched the gears go and you see how brilliant he is.

The blogging community is growing she said and high profile people like Michelle Obama are now blogging on Blogher. When asked how could McCain supporters could be engaged she said she's not sure how to get them to support Obama and she's not trying to change their minds. Her biggest worry is the undecided voters and independents.

On her blog she said, "I love being a blogger. I love being a blogher. I love that after I interviewed the man who very well could make history I could tell you this story, and scream and cry. Years ago I could never have done that." Now they call her for interviews and she doesn't wait their call. Although she said she's still hasn't heard from McCain's people.

Once again our ooVoo time was up and Erin had to go. Her humor, fun spirit and passion for the political process and citizen activism was a real inspiration and 30 minutes of conversation was not enough. So after our ooVoo chat ended I logged onto Erin's Sunday Inquisition show and couldn't help but notice that Jill and Digitalsista were there too.


The main topic of that broadcast was about Lee Stranahan and how he's been banned from posting at Daily Kos, a liberal political blog after he started talking about the John Edwards scandal which finally broke on mainstream news yesterday. There was a lively and energetic discussion and Stranahan joined to share his side of the story. He said has been doing short video parodies on YouTube since December and cross posting on Kos 2-3 months ago starting posting on Huffington post doing comedy. He's been looking at Edwards scandal and his post, Say It Ain't So, John -- Why Progressives Need To Get Out In Front Of The John Edwards Affair Rumors 180,000 views, went viral, hugely viral. He thought he made his point clear that he was a progressive democrat and wasn't prepared for all the harshness and extreme backlash.



Related links:

• BlogHer EXCLUSIVE: Barack Obama answers policy questions from women who blog (Video) | BlogHer
• Erin Kotecki Vest Meets Senator Barack Obama, Part One
• Erin Kotecki Vest Meets Senator Barack Obama, Part Two
• Erin Kotecki Vest - The Huffington Post
• Erin Kotecki Vest: Banning Bloggers -- I've Heard Enough Singing From the NetRoots
• My Left Wing:: Irrefutable Proof Of The John Edwards Scandal
• Lee Stranahan: John Edwards Needs To Stop Taking The Fall!

My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition: In The Pink Texas & Every Dot Connects

As I mentioned in my last post, I participated in three separate My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition videoconferences last Sunday. For my second session I found myself back at the Starbucks in San Francisco using the T-Mobile Wifi and my trusty Macbook. I didn't mentioned earlier that I actually don't live in San Francisco but I was there early Sunday morning because my son and his band, Shatterfish, were playing at the San Francisco Marathon (view their Qik video here) and I was roadie, tour manager, tech support, driver and video broadcaster. But I found a local wireless hotspot close to where they were playing and was able to join the previous session with Matt Parker and this one hosted Eileen Smith and Mike Chapman. Also joining the conversation was Digitalsista Shireen Mitchell, founder and Executive Director of Digital Sisters/Sistas, Inc and author of the blog Women Wired In. Phillip Robertson from ooVoo joined briefly to assist with connectivity issues.

"Eileen Smith is the editor of texasmonthly.com and also the editor of a satirical political blog named In the Pink Texas." In the Pink Texas says, "She has an affinity for pinot and an irrational fear of breeders, orphans, Catholic nuns, sobriety, lactivists, miniskirts and speaking on panels. She tries to respond to all comments, especially the ones that refer to her as a sociopath."

Needless to day she offered great conversation and insights on the 2008 Presidential Campaign. On her blog, Eileen had this to say about participating on the ooVoo panel,"When my blog friend and yours, The Other Guy, started telling me about some new, exciting platform for online communications and digital media, I quickly said “unsubscribe” and hung up the phone. But then he told me it had something to do with a live video chat and I’m like, sign me up. Who am I to pass up yet another opportunity to embarrass myself and the entire staff of Texas Monthly?"

Joining Eileen as co-host was Mike Chapman who "has over two decades of experience in public relations and public affairs. Joining the Capitol Hill staff of Congressman J.J. "Jake" Pickle after college, he was mentored by one of the nation's most successful statesmen... He is a founding member of the Austin Social Media Club, the international Social Media Club, and a number of organizations with interests in online communications strategies and technologies."

On his blog Every Dot Connects, Mike wrote about the upcoming My ooVoo Day In The Pink by saying. "The Pink Lady and I don’t always agree and when we don’t, she’s always right. Well, except on a few issues and I won’t mention what they are... Here’s a hint, I supported Barack Obama and she still wants Hillary to take it to the convention. Other than that, we agree on everything. Politics can get really boring for normal people. Eileen gets that and makes the issues of the day fun. She isn’t Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert…she’s better. Recently, she posted about our upcoming panel, which just happens to be on Obama’s birthday (I thought you’d like that Eileen) and, once again, she cracked me up."

Once we all got connected, Mike started by talking about the power of the social media world and political activism. Instead of just telling our friends we can now tell the word through our blogs and that things news reporters wouldn't write about bloggers and commenters would. He went to Netroots Nation and said they were a very fervent group. Eileen added that there was no middle ground in Netroots Nation. Shireen said she went to Blogher and that Netroots has the view of being extermists but you also get a sense that they are bringing up things that people don't want to touch.

I admitted that I felt out of touch with the issues and that it had been several months since I sat down and read the paper. Most of time is spent in the tech blogosphere but joining these conversations helped me connect back to the political dialogue. We all agreed that the media distracts and that with the overall media coverage the extremes get media attention. Eileen pointed out that nobody is talking a economic plan.

We went on to talk about the Presidential campaign strategies. Mike thought that Obama is taking a risk by not committing to specifics and waiting for opponent to make a mistake. Reagan was the best at this. Not saying anything and looking presidential. Clinton tried but was not as successful. Shireen also thought that it's dangerous too and when you use surrogates you get caught in a bind. You're guilty by association and the media pounces on you. Which is what happened to Obama earlier in his campaign when sermons by his longtime Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright produced an explosion of controversy. (More on Huffington Post...)

Eileen said that candidates don't really control their campaigns anymore and the media is looking for candidates to slip up. Every politician need to be aware of the viral quality of negative stories and get into talking about real policies. They're trying to use old school public relations messaging but we're not putting up with it anymore. It will be history making on who handles it best.

Overall, it was a great conversation that ended too soon. I had to leave early to pick up my son and his band mates since the SF Marathon finished up early. Eileen and Mike had one more ooVoo chat scheduled the next day and I had one more myself later in the day with Queen of Spain. More on that in my next post.

My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition: Matt Parker Political-Buzz.com

I had a busy day last Sunday talking politics with a number of different people across the political spectrum during three separate My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition videoconference sessions. The day started early Sunday morning when I found myself connecting from a Starbucks in San Francisco for a 9:00 AM PDT session scheduled with Matt Parker, editor for Political-Buzz.com. Matt started Political-Buzz.com in 2006 and has both founded and worked on several political blogs and web sites in the past five years. He connected from Florida and we were joined by Mr. Spike, Joe Giglio and Mark Impomeni who were all connecting from different locations around the country.

The topic was: General Q&A on the latest news and some predictions about the Presidential Campaign and it turned out to be a lively discussion about the hot topics/hot button issues in campaign.

We first discussed race issues and Obama's recent comment:

"Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. What they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know: 'He's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

The questions raised were should McCain have taken a stand? Is Obama culpable? Why does it have to be race? An interesting conversation ensued and it came back to the fact that old habits are hard to break when it comes to politics (in reference to the Willie Horton incident) and the race card tends to get played.

We moved on to our support of the candidates. Joe was a Hillary supporter who has gotten over it and said the "dream team" ticket less likely as people get behind Obama. He added that you need to think one thing - January 2009 ends the era and McCain is more of the same. Mr. Spike likes McCain and his policies on immigration, global warming and the economy. He said Republicans are about spending less and taxing less and that McCain is the best choice. I support Obama and agreed with Joe on the goal to clean house and the mess created by "W" and get Obama into the White House. Mark dropped off early in the call so we didn't hear much from him.

We went on to other issues like the economy, the environment, offshore drilling, media coverage and several themes emerged.

• The economy is in poor shape
• Change is operative word in this campaign
  
• There's a lack of substance and credibility in the media coverage
• It's incredible that Iraq seems to be off the table
• Not a lot of discussion of the issues like what were doing in our ooVoo chat
  

For me, it was refreshing to feel challenged in my knowldege of the issues, my political beliefs and this session ultimately raised my awareness of the political process.

Check out Matt's weekly podcast available on iTunes politicalbuzz.com or follow him on Twitter @politicalbuzz.

UPDATE: I'll discuss the two other My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition video chats I had with In The Pink Texas & Every Dots Connects and Queen of Spain in later posts.

UPDATE 2: It's interesting to note that the mainstream media finally broke the John Edwards Sex Scandal today I recalled when we all signed off for this session Mr. Spike held up a handwritten sign saying, "Free John Edwards Love Baby." This story had already made the rounds in the political blogosphere and I cover it more on my Queen of Spain post.

My ooVoo Day With... Political Edition: The Bivings Report

I spent an hour on Thursday talking with Todd Zeigler and JW Crump of The Bivings Group, a Washington, DC-based Internet communications firm, along with three others (Steve Peterson, Alex Clover and BestSellingShow) who joined an ooVoo video conversation as part of My ooVoo Day With: Political Edition. Todd Zeigler, Senior Vice President of Client Services for The Bivings Group, led the videoconference which focused on a new report they just published on their blog, The Use of the Internet by 2008 Senate Campaigns. We didn't really talk political issues but discussed the key findings of their report on how politicians use the internet in their senatorial campaigns.

This is an excerpt from the introduction of the report:

"As the Internet changes and grows, so should the efforts of Senatorial candidates to use this technology to strengthen their campaigns. It is an excellent medium to reinforce their platforms, find new voters, and reach as many people as possible. In addition, new Web 2.0 technologies give candidates the ability to interact fully with their constituents."

You can download the the full report outlining their methodology here.

They looked at 68 candidates "26 Senate incumbents and 41 Senate challengers, including 36 Democrats and 31 Republicans" and shared these "intriguing findings" from the report:

Incumbents are using the web more aggressively than they have in past cycles.


There is no real difference in the way Republicans and Democrats are using their campaign websites


Many of the features being used to great effect by Presidential campaigns are not being used by Senate candidates


Many candidates are advertising their presences on third-party social networks on their campaign websites.


The number of campaign websites with blogs has increased greatly, from 23 percent of campaigns in 2006 to 40 percent in 2008.


Candidates this election cycle are utilizing multimedia (audio and video files) more than in previous years.


Some basic features were present on virtually every campaign website
(more detail on their blog...)

This graph shows the percentage of candidates using each of the web site features they looked at:

As part of our ooVoo video conversation, we discussed the use of blogs and how influential bloggers had become in the 2006 elections with the example of Joe Leiberman's defeat in the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont. The Washington Post noted that "Lamont built his campaign initially with the enthusiastic support of the "Net roots" -- bloggers and other Internet-based activists -- and then expanded with a grass-roots campaign that attracted rank-and-file Democrats who opposed the war and who complained that Lieberman had neglected the interests of his home state."

The Bivings Report didn't identify any similar grass-roots campaigns in 2008 but did notice a difference between Republican and Democratic web sites. Republicans were more likely to have blogs, multimedia elements and video while Democrats had more team building tools. The blogs they saw were very dry, no comments and not up-to-date. None of the candidates were video blogging and had not integrated any real social networking. Most of the web sites focused on funderasing and had either welcome messages, video clips syndicated from news sites and no real compelling content. Todd Zeigler said he was following several candidates on Twitter and noted some of them did have a "cluster of icons" on their web sites representing their social networks but mostly recycled content between Facebook and their websites. He said most of them probably know the secret to video, that it's a lot of work.

Here are of a few the web sites they liked:

• Saxby Chamblis 08 - Issues, Facts, Events - Saxby.org (Georgia) His welcome message starts right away so turn down your audio
  
• GordonSmith.com - Re-elect Senator Gordon Smith (Oregon) Made Todd Zeiger want to go to Oregon
  
• ScottKleeb.com (Nebraska)
  
• Al Franken for Senate (Minnesota) They thought this one was the best

Everyone who joined this video conversation were first time ooVooers and said that it worked well and that they would ooVoo again. I have three more My ooVoo Day With: Political Edition video chats scheduled this Sunday which I'm looking forward to with Matt Parker on General Q&A on the latest news and some predictions about the Presidential Campaign, with Eileen Smith and Mike Chapman on Presidential Campaign 2008 and with Erin Kotecki Vest on Obama.

Thanks again to the people at Crayon and ooVoo for hostings these great events!

About Todd Zeigler:

"In his time at The Bivings Group, Todd has helped manage online campaigns for the firm's biggest political clients, including Friends of Fred Thompson, Governor Bobby Jindal, the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. In working with these clients and others, Todd has developed ambitious e-advocacy programs and custom Internet applications, helped manage crisis, and created and implemented online marketing strategies."

About The Bivings Group:

"In the name of full disclosure, The Bivings Group currently does work for a variety of Republican organizations and a few Republican candidates for office."

About My ooVoo Day Political:

"My ooVoo Day Political is an eight day online video chat event joining leading political bloggers covering the entire spectrum of belief and persuasion with their communities, fans and friends - enabled by ooVoo, the leader in face-to-face multi-person video communications"