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Archive for the '2008 Conventions' Category

RNC08 #4: The Beutler Hub

Published by William Beutler on September 2, 2008 in 2008 Conventions, Republicans, Seriously, Twitter, White House '08 and William Beutler. 3 Comments

I’m finally inside the restricted zone in St. Paul and sitting down at the C-SPAN work area in the Wilkins Auditorium press filing center (adjacent to the Xcel Energy Center) to get some actual work in. Barring any pressing need to write something longer than 140 characters, this will be my last update from #RNC08 in the form of a blog post. The Twitter and Flickr badges below will stay live throughout the week, so keep hitting refresh just as fast as you can manage without risking early-onset carpal tunnel.

Monday update: Now that #RNC08 is over and my tweeting activity is back to normal, I’m moving the Twitter feed back to the sidebar (or it will be just as soon as I figure out why WordPress is balking). But the Flickr badge is just the St. Paul photoset (with more yet to be added) so I’ll leave it where it is.

www.flickr.com

RNC08 #3: Let’s Try it Like This

Published by William Beutler on September 1, 2008 in #RNC08, 2008 Conventions, Twitter, White House '08 and William Beutler. 0 Comments

So here’s the situation: I’m having technical difficulties trying to upload photos or a Twitter plugin — I only just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress — and apparently the IT guy has the audacity to be on vacation on Labor Day.

Instead I’m going to keep tweeting from my iPhone and taking photos from same while uploading them to my Flickr account, and with any luck, you can follow the latest of both through the widgets included in this post. If that doesn’t work, at least you’ve now got the links to both.

Update: No longer; all live content has been moved to the next post.

RNC08 #2: Convention Preemption

Published by William Beutler on August 31, 2008 in #RNC08, 2008 Conventions, Metapost, National Politics, New Media Strategies, Republicans, White House '08 and William Beutler. 2 Comments

Minneapolis-St. Paul by air

The image above was taken about five minutes before descending into cellular service to find five copies of the same press release in my inbox saying that most convention activities have been suspended (at least tomorrow) in anticipation of Hurricane Gustav.

And to think, I could have accepted an offer to be bumped to a Monday flight, which would have gained me three round-trip tickets (on AirTran, but still).

Whatever happens, I’m still on the clock for NMS and C-SPAN, so I don’t expect this will quite turn into a paid vacation. But I don’t know quite what to expect. Depending on how serious the damage from Gustav proves to be, it could be quite a morbid one.

N.B. I first tried posting a version of this from my iPhone from the airport, but something went awry. If I can’t get this fixed, this will put a serious damper on my plans to “mo-blog” or “iPhlog” the convention. Assuming, of course, that there is a convention. Meantime, you can always follow me on Twitter for the latest.

RNC08 #1: Don’t Call it a Comeback

Published by William Beutler on August 31, 2008 in #DNC08, #RNC08, 2008 Conventions, C-SPAN, Hotline, John McCain, Journalist Bloggers, Metapost, National Politics, New Media Strategies, RNC, Relaunches, Twitter, Web 2.0, White House '08 and William Beutler. 1 Comment

C-SPAN 2.0 Featuring New Media Strategies
If you are a frequent reader of Blog P.I., you (and thanks to the MyBlogLog widget in the sidebar, I know who some of you are) may have spent a few seconds out of the past week wondering just where I’ve been. Of course, as my last post two weeks ago made clear, I was about to spend the coming fortnight-and-a-half working on C-SPAN.org’s Convention Hubs: first DNC08 and now increasingly RNC08.

For 168+ hours now I’ve been working literally around the clock — to be more accurate, one revolution of the hour hand each solar day — finding and spotlighting blog posts from national and state-level media and political blogs, and running a Blogads campaign involving changes to the artwork and copy reflecting each evening’s developments (I like how it’s rendered on BuzzMachine best). I’ve also done C-SPAN TV twice, sitting on the back of my sport coat, focusing just beyond the camera lens, depending on the bug in my ear for cues, reporting on the latest buzz from the left- and rightosphere from the offices of New Media Strategies.

This week my role shifts, and in a dwindling few hours I’ll be flying to St. Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention. As the Blue Team returns from Denver, the NMS Red Team will be shipping out to the metropolitan area where the Coens’ Fargo mostly took place. I travel both in my capacity as a representative of C-SPAN at the convention as well as an official, RNC-credentialed blogger, so I will do my best to share the experience with you.

This will be a new thing for Blog P.I., but a second time for me as a blogger at a GOP convo; in 2004 I was part of Hotline’s convention team in New York City, and I blogged the convention in my off-hours. Then, I took some pictures with my crummy first-ever Sprint camera phone, most of which were uploaded to a server I long since forgot to pay for. This time I’ll be blogging it here in this space, using my iPhone camera and WordPress app, available free of charge from iTunes (which by the way now is really crying out for rebranding).

For the next five days or so, I expect to be taking photos and posting them with minimal presentation, reserving most of my reporting and commentary for a widget from my Twitter account, which will appear here shortly. This is basically the opposite of what Blog P.I. has been in its two years-plus existence; whereas my blogging has primarily comprised several times-weekly essay posts (such as this one) I will instead switch to frequent, quick-hit posts that will take you inside the moment (I’m pretty sure I can do this).

If you’re going to be in the Twin Cities this week, gimme a shout (see the contact page). If you know me from e-mail or the Blogometer or Blog P.I. and want to say hello, drop me a line. If you know of a party, breakfast or similar event that’s either open-invitation or you can extend one, consider me interested. Need a mug, thumb drive or baseball cap emblazoned with the C-SPAN logo? We can probably work something out.

And but so, I’ll get back to packing a week’s worth of my least-unprofessional attire and making sure I don’t leave anything behind, with the DVR playing the Oregon Ducks’ 44-10 victory over the (Huck the) Fuskies as I close up shop here and make my way to the Lesser White North.

More coming soon.

C-SPAN 2.0 (Ft. New Media Strategies)

Published by William Beutler on August 13, 2008 in #DNC08, #RNC08, 2008 Conventions, Barack Obama, Blog Consultants, C-SPAN, Cable News, DNC, John McCain, Metapost, New Media Strategies, RNC, Television, Twitter, Web 2.0, Web video, Website Design, White House '08 and William Beutler. 9 Comments

C-SPAN 2.0 Featuring New Media Strategies
I don’t write about clients often. When I do it’s really something, and this is really something: New Media Strategies will be working through the conventions with C-SPAN, perhaps my favorite Beltway news organization, to run their Convention Hub. The website was designed by NMS partner JESS3, will be maintained by the multi-partisan Public Affairs practice, with editorial oversight and video from the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network. I wish I could show it to you. I can’t just yet, but as I said, it’s going to be really something.

What I can offer are details about the Convention Hub microsites. There will be two, one for each convention, with video and blog coverage around the clock:

  • C-SPAN will provide exclusive video from the conventions, and for the first time, this C-SPAN video is searchable, clippable and embeddable. As someone who has tried (unsuccessfully) to jerry-rig an embeddable C-SPAN video, this is a huge leap forward.

  • NMS will feed the latest convention reporting and blogging to the Convention Hub around the clock. Or as our official language puts it, “extensive real-time blogosphere coverage using NMS’s proprietary combination of software and trained human analysts.”

  • C-SPAN Campaign 2008 LogoMore about that software another time; all I can say is that it answers the questions I’ve asked about such analysis tools.

  • The Hub will also include Twitter feeds of users using the hashtags #RNC08 and #DNC08 (and surely other tags, as their usage rises).

  • The site goes live at c-span.org/politics later this month. The Democratic Hub will be at c-span.org/politics/DNC08 and the Republican Hub will be at c-span.org/politics/RNC08.

  • NMS will have a presence at each convention to help to facilitate coverage and promote the Convention Hub. It certainly doesn’t hurt that we have bloggers credentialed to both (see you in St. Paul).

  • There is more, but I’m not exactly sure what I didn’t see in the press release that’s public, so I’d better hold off for now. At the moment, this is the only public hint on c-span.org:

C-SPAN Convention Hub banner teaser

Meanwhile, the C-SPAN Convention Hub is already drawing praise from one of C-SPAN’s (few) notable critics. The Sunlight Foundation has differed with C-SPAN before over distribution of copyrighted C-SPAN video, so they are enthusiastic about the open nature of the Convention Hubs:

The convention announcement marks a new moment for C-SPAN as a modern Internet information provider. Once a small cable channel with a dream; now with embeddable web video, Twitter hashtags, and aggregated blog posts.

As a longtime C-SPAN junkie, I couldn’t be more proud to play a small part in this project. How dependent am I on the C-SPAN network?

  • I wake up to Washington Journal every weekday morning (my Twitter account will bear this out).

  • Before I found podcasts, I’d listen to streaming Realplayer segments from the program (I still listen to the podcast of Brian Lamb’s Sunday night Q&A).

  • Back in college I would sometimes wake up early (4 a.m.) to catch particular episodes live, such as the first of the Hitchens-Sullivan conversations with Lamb, shortly after 9/11.

  • If it’s the weekend and my television is not on baseball or football, it’s on BookTV.

  • The tagline of my personal blog, The Washington Canard, is: “Where C-SPAN is the local TV news.”

The good news is that it’s a supportable addiction.

And by way of conclusion, a confession: I want this searchable video for my own reasons. On Election night 2004, The Hotline worked all through the night covering the coverage, as the election tipped from Kerry winning the exit polls to Bush winning the popular vote. If you’ve seen my Facebook photo, this is where that crazy image comes from.

As usual, C-SPAN cameras were in the office for Chuck Todd and Vaughn Ververs to offer recaps, also deep into the morning hours. Sometime around 3 o’clock in the morning, I informed friends watching from the coverage back on the West Coast to look carefully: As the cameras rolled, I picked up a plastic trash bin and… well, I danced through the background.

The waltz, I think.

I entered left with vulcanized dance partner, twirling across one shoulder, behind the talking head, past the other shoulder, and exit right. To this date, it’s still my best television appearance. And I look forward to the day, much sooner now, that I can embed this on Blog P.I.

Googling the Conventions

Published by William Beutler on July 14, 2008 in 2008 Conventions, Advertising, Democrats, Google, Republicans, White House '08 and William Beutler. 1 Comment

The Google Adwords “buy your rivals” strategy can be a very effective way of putting your message in front of Internet users who wouldn’t necessarily think about your brand, product, service, candidate, issue, argument, party, or even your party’s nominating convention.

So let’s try Googling the major party political conventions. First up, the least interesting result, searching republican convention:

Google results for Republican Convention

As we can see, the RNC already has the top organic search result, the one that says Republican National Convention 2008 - September 1-4, 2008.” And yet they have also bought the top paid search result, the one against the light yellow background, which might seem like a poor investment. But maybe not, as we’ll see when we Google democratic convention:

Google results for Democratic Convention

It may have pained some in the GOP to put money down for the “ic” version of this word, but at least they have the satisfaction of having the absolute top search result on this page. While Republicans are generally considered to trail Democrats online in organization, infrastructure and overall support, here we can see that someone at the RNC (presumably under the direction of Cyrus Krohn) is thinking about how to overcome this disadvantage. And speaking of disadvantages, let’s see what happens when we drop the “ic” and search for democrat convention:

Google results for Democrat Convention

Now that is most certainly a good investment. It may pain the Democrats to compete, let alone pay money, for the (often) grammatically incorrect non-”ic” variation on their party’s name, but then Google searches don’t necessarily have to be grammatical to be useful. If the DNC or the convention committee have money in the budget — and this may be part of the problem — they’d be smart to get on that ASAP.