2008 will be my sixth Politics Online Conference. I’ve been involved in the conference in one way or another since 2003. I’ve watched it grow from 70 people in the basement of GW’s Media and Public Affairs building to hundreds of people gathered in GW’s conference center.

And I’ve also heard six years of feedback about the conference, most of which has been incredibly instructive.

That’s why I’ve been working with a tremendously gifted team of IPDI staffers (led by our conference manager, Sam Levenback) over the course of the past six months to change the way the Politics Online Conference operates.

The 2008 Politics Online Conference will:

Be content-focused.

IPDI is a place to convene, and I want the conversations we have to be interesting and possibly even mean something. This year, we made content the most important focus, bigger in our minds than lining up more sponsors than ever or running the best publicity campaign in the universe of conferences. One of the ways we did this was by asking people to chair panels. Panel chairs are responsible for recruiting speakers and developing the topics for their panels. Well post a draft agenda for each panel on our site beforehand, along with links to various resources on the topics – multimedia content, blogs, articles, research. People can post questions and add topics for each panel to address.

At the same time, we know some of our attendees come to our conference looking for solutions and services. We’ve set aside a meeting room so that these people can meet with some of our sponsors. However, sponsor pitches and sales presentations are not included in the lineup of panels.

Look at new topics.

One of the panels I’m looking forward to the most is a plenary panel on Pervasive Politics. Alex Pang of the Institute for the Future is leading a discussion about the impacts of ubiquitous computing and emerging technology on politics. What’s ubiquitous computing? It’s probably not what the typical politico thinks. Check out panelist Adam Greenfield’s book on the topic, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. We blogged about it a few months ago. Genevieve Bell from IBM, Garrett Graff from Washingtonian (see his upcoming book, The First Campaign), and Tanya Tarr (AFL-CIO) will look at the policy, campaign, organizing, and governance implications.

Some of the other panels I’m looking forward to include a breakout panel on vlogging, chaired by Schlomo Rabinowitz and Jay Dedman of Vloggercon, as well as a discussion-based panel that looks at whether peer production can create better public policy. Check out our agenda for a longer list.

Contain a different mix of panels.

Some of the panels at our conference will look more closely at technology. We call these the Tools & Tactics panels. Others present case studies for accomplishing a goal, such as fundraising, strategic communications, local e-gov, or young voter mobilization (the Case Studies track). Other panels are discussion-based and at look at topics like radical transparency, cyber warfare, and tech policy (Ideas track).

An entire section of panels was created and voted on by our community, and they’ve designed some fantastic panels. For a full list, check out Sam’s recent blog entry.

Finally, we’ve reserved our breakout rooms over the lunch hours so that attendees can reserve time to hold “open mic” discussions about topics that interest them.

Encourage more networking.

The 2008 Politics Online Conference has two networking breakfasts, two networking lunches, and a cocktail party, but there never seems to be enough time to meet people. This year, we’re encouraging our partners to host pre-conference events with us – extra panel discussions, cocktail parties, and book release parties before, during, and after the conference.

Have a bigger venue.

This year, the Politics Online Conference will be held at the Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel. We have two floors of conference space to spread out, hold sessions, mingle, and dine.

We are all looking forward to this year – a new location, a fascinating lineup of topics. And we’re still on the look out for creative, interesting new ideas. Email usually works best – ipdi@ipdi.org.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Politics Online Conference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.