Networking

Everyone knows the term “social networking” or “social networks” by now. Most people are a member of a social site weather it be myspace, friendster, or some other site. There are literally 1000’s of different social sites. Some are more social than others and some probably shouldn’t even call themselves “social. but since that’s the big thing now days, everyone jumps on the bandwagon.

Basically it’s come to the point where everyone and every different group has their own little online club. They are generally broken down in the following ways.

The first, and biggest social groups are general sites like myspace where anyone and everyone signs up. There is no deciding factor on who should signup. If you’re looking to meet people in your area, Myspace is usually your best bet because of its HUGE userbase. I don’t know the exact number of members, but they have millions. Each town you can find 1000’s of your peers with an account, even tiny towns have a good presence on the site.

Second, you have social sites that target by race or religion, or even sexual preference and even, like this site, political preferences. These are definitely smaller than normal social sites but the members also seem to have a much tighter bond. Sort of like a small town feel where everyone knows everyone.

Third you have geo-location social sites. For example we have one in my town called Fort Myers Business Networking. I’m not a member myself because they charge money and I’m definitely not going to pay for something that should be free. But most decent sized towns do have social sites, just search Google for something like “[your town] social” and things will pop up.

Weather you like it or not social sites are going to remain popular. Just like social groups in real life have always been around, we will always have social sites on the web too.

"How do we use RTP website" is the name of a blog post over at RebuildTheParty's ning network.  The author of the piece offers this advice:

A couple of folks, responding to my blogs, have asked how we use this website beyond just chatting. Good point. Here is how I intend to use it. 1. To identify activists in my home state (MD) and get them to start to organize events as our network builds. 2. To identify people with particular talents (IT or otherwise) or particular expertise in subject areas that allow us to organize and to respond to the lies put out by the Democratic Administration and the media. 3. To work for and fund specific candidates that support our views and positions. I believe this website was designed to be a tool, not an end in itself. It can be useful for seeking information and resources, but the rest is up to us.

I completely agree.  These technologies will not change the face of Congress tomorrow, nor will they give us a Republican President today.  But they give us the opportunity to be ready for 2010 and to be ready to take the fight to the liberals.  Never again will we be caught flat footed.

This is my advice: Network, network, network. Find fellow travelers, exchange ideas and interests, extend your network online (twitter, facebook, youtube, blogs) and offline (events, phone, fundraising, campaigning, etc). We have a lot of networking to do to surpass the libs.

We've seen the Gold Standard, the Housing Standard, and the Dollar Standard.  What's next?  Will the Information Standard be the real measure of value that we often refer to as "wealth"?  How we create, accumulate, aggregate, package, protect, invest and proliferate information is what's most likely going to influence and grow monetary, sociocultural and political capital. 

With the exception of technologically innovative methods of knowledge accumulation and proliferation, the methods of creating and promoting Liberal Intelligence have remained fairly consistent since the rise labor unions and labor activism which evolved into the civil rights and social justice activism of the 20th Century.  These methods include printed materials, public demonstrations, speeches, rallies, civil disobedience, literature, theater, art, music, film, and media coverage which cumulatively result in mass participation which lead to public and academic support. 

Conservatives don't usually embrace mass demonstrations and don't enjoy the same media coverage or support from the arts, students and academics.  Watching the success of Liberal grassroots movements online, it's tempting for the Right to follow the successful lead of its opposition.  The thought that if only the Right had its own version of the The Nation, Daily Kos, AlterNet, Talking Points Memo, MyDD, Open Left, et al, we would have a more cutting edge capability is fine until one realizes that we already have National Review Online, RedState, InstaPundit, PowerLine, Michelle Malkin, Free Republic, The Next Right, and so on - all helpful, with many more great sites such as #dontgo, Team Sarah, Rebuild The Party, SmartGirlPolitics, not to mention Twitter aggregates, MySpace and Facebook groups on the way.

But what can Conservatives create that's separate but equal to Liberal collective action?  I believe that Conservatives have an ability to both centralize and decentralize authority, to delegate up to representatives and down to the grassroots in a networked hierarchy that rolls individual contributions into a consensus that can be mobilized. 

Opinion can be "Interesting and Thepautic", but it's not Quantifiable Data

Most of the sites mentioned above proliferate opinion.  Several of the Liberal Information sites seek to drive behavior, which can be especially powerful during a campaign.  But opinions expressed in the form of large blocks of text are not quantifiable data.  What I mean by quantifiable data is a small block of information which can be stored in a database, linked to relevant associated data, and either reported back to the public in the form of "the public needs to know this!" or reported to executive decision and policymakers in the form of "the voters want leadership to know this!".  Think binary (yes/no, good/bad, accept/reject) responses to survey questions, think brief statements, URLs, or Tweets as opposed to blog posts, diaries or comments. 

We know that the Democratic Party mobilized a mighty army of GOTV propaganda and boots on the ground during 2006 and 2008, but how responsive is that leadership to its grassroots, and vice versa?  While we heard a great deal of antiwar lipservice throughout the Democratic Primaries and General Election campaigns along with bailing out Main Street as well as Wall Street, the installation of an Obama Administration's centrist/moderate cabinet of Chicago School free market economists and foreign policy hawks would seem to indicate a counterintuitive disconnect.  The Republican Party can listen and implement its constituents' needs, and it can do so better, faster and smarter through the application of  Business Intelligence.

Use the corporate Business Intelligence model to create Conservative Information Intelligence

We're having great debates on whether we should have a Washington-based Ideas Czar, a British model Shadow Cabinet, whether Libertarian values should override Social Conservative values, whether Realpolitik should supersede Reaganism, and so on. But what do the majority of our constituents really need and want from our leadership?  I suggest we take these debates out of the hothouse echo chambers of opinion and march them into the field as follows:

1. Obtain funding for a GOP Central Information Office (CIO) with an executive and technical staff including Oracle Database Administrators along with web developers, data analysts, report writers and infrastructure (server/network/data security) specialists.
2. Create a secure central data repository (data warehouse) to accumulate, aggregate and report on information collected from the far reaches of the Conservative Information Network (CIN).
3. Task the GOP-CIO with outreach to the following types of decentralized Conservative Intelligence gatherers and providers: conservative websites, weblogs and social media sites, local RNC offices, local and syndicated columnists and talk radio pundits (including blog talk radio) and the offices of conservative elected officials at all municipal, county, State and Federal levels. 
4. Task the GOP-CIO with developing a mission, a strategic information management plan, a formal set of requirements for designing the initial warehouse schema, and a set of easily reproduceable templates/widgets for collecting information onsite or forwarding users to formal survey sites (like "MyGOP.com" for example)
5. Employ a mandatory business rule throughout the CIN of affiliated sites that every user who takes a survey or participates in a poll must provide a verifiable email with voter registration affiliation and demographic information. 
6. Task the GOP-CIO with "data stewardship" to eliminate prank users, spammers and other forms of distraction and disinformation.
7. Ensure that each site in the GOP-CIO network has the ability to collect donations as well as data, and pay any fees necessary to display a banner such as "McAfee Secure Site".
8. Enable (train, fund, provide widgets) for each CIN affiliated site to display data feeds from the GOP with the data that "the public needs to know".
9. Seed the data warehouse with the list of registered Republicans and their email addresses, and task the GOP-CIO with providing a weekly email newsletter indicating "what's hot" and "what the public needs to know" throughout the GOP network of affiliated websites.  A good prototype for this is the Sacramento Bee's "Capitol Alert" email.
10. Identify every elected Republican official's email in the database and aggregate information under the category of "this is what the local, State and Federal leadership needs to know" by district, State and Region to help provide informed decision support.

In the corporate world, managing cultural change in the form of "User Motivation and Training" is always the biggest challenge associated with Business Intelligence.  Local RNC chairs may need to draw users in through "Life of the Party" get-togethers and/or send their staff out into the field to knock on the doors of their constituents and literally show them how to log in, bookmark their favorite sites, and use them so that we can have more conservatives participate.

If it turns out that 8 states prefer a Social Conservative national platform but 42 states prefer a fiscal/security conservative platform, then a report could be distributed indicating why the GOP has taken a particular policy position based on participatory democracy - at the same time providing needed information to local candidates within those 8 states indicating how they can best strategize to win their down ballot elections.

There are so many opportunities here to interact face to face as well as online, to collect ideas and consolidate them into workable proposals and projects, to proliferate information virally and help the GOP represent its voters by making better popular policy decisions, collecting donations, promoting worthy candidates and re-forming the Republican Party that it almost seems a no-brainer.  Nonetheless it would take a professional, well-funded, well-organized and highly motivated team to make it a reality.

What do Conservatives think? 

• If you're a Conservative leader, are you interested in acquiring, analyzing and disseminating information in this 2-way fashion and would you actually use public input to drive your policies and decisions based on your voters' values and needs? 
• If you're a Conservative webmaster, are you interested in belonging to a Conservative Information Network to extend the participatory democracy platform to your users? 
• If you're a political information consumer, are you interested in using participatory democracy tools to contribute your ideas and opinions to leaders, and to hear directly from them in return?

Cross-posted at Lagomorphic Tendencies