On AIM today:

3:18pm Kyle Chapman:
i just took a 40 minute nap
and then ate a popsicle
how could run a creative agency without either of those things

Or rather I’m IN the Egotist. The Des Moines Egotist, to be exact.

Here’s an excerpt:

You’re obviously a little left? Does wearing your political colors help or hurt your business?

I’m pretty far to the left. I believe good government exists and I believe it has a role in our society as a safety net. If you lose your job, it’s in our best interest that you have a place to live and money to feed yourself and your children. It’s in society’s best interest that all children get an adequate education starting from an early age. It’s in society’s best interest that I don’t have to worry about going bankrupt if I get sick or hit by a bus. It’s in society’s best interest that all loving adult couples can enter into the bonds of marriage freely and feel like they’re an accepted part of a community.

Here’s the full article.

I found out my fellow Social Media Club buddy and garden blogger Katie Ketelsen had a show on a local internet radio network called Des Moines Amplified.

I kinda weasled my way in there. In the best sense of the word.

Ch-ch-check it out:

My first career path was to be radio. Then Clear Channel crept into Rochester, neutered then killed off my favorite radio station (The Nerve 95.1/95.5) at the time. Thank gravy I found 90.5 WBER. I saw no future in corporate radio and so off I went into music recording for a semester, then political science for a semester, then finally film and video production.

Now with satellite radio and especially the internet and organizations like Des Moines Amplified, my old itch is back and I just may be able to itch it.

I say this not to sound arrogant or self-important: there are not a lot of people who think like me in the political circles I travel. The old way of doing things is still, by many many many, considered the best way of doing things and more than a bunch of times my ideas have been met with the rolling of eyes and nervous laughter.

Big Omaha 2010 brought together people from around the country who think and feel like me. The speakers had put their ideas and passions into practice and succeeded, usually after they’ve failed several times. I felt, for the first time in a long time, that I belonged and my habit of thinking differently and not being afraid was not different at all. “This is my tribe,” I felt.

My absolute favorite moment came when, midway through asking Gary Vaynerchuk a question. I say I want to help elect good people to office and dude offers to fly me to DC for the Government 2.0 conference. Due to some very important family business, I’m unable to go, and he understood.

I’m glad somebody got it on video because after he offered to fly me to DC my mind kind of went blank.

Everyone heaps praise on Gary, and rightly so, but the presentation that stole the show for me was Scott Harrison and Charity:Water. He’s effin’ right. You can’t begin to solve any problems with a society if all you’re doing all day is hunting down water, and worse: that water is killing you.

It costs $5000 to build a well. We raised enough money at Big Omaha to build at least three. I’ve put a link to Charity:Water on my sidebar and I heavily recommend you give what you can. I’ll set up a fund raising page on there soon and make a post about it. Those were the most impacting moments of the conference for me but I don’t want to minimize the other speakers.

• Danae Ringelmann of IndieGoGo was great and talked with me for a while about campaign fund raising after her presentation. Her website is gorgeous, too.
• Robert Scoble interviewed Matt Mullinweg of Automattic and it made me want to go check out WordPress.com again. I’ve been pretty exclusively using self-hosted versions of WordPress but with some of the latest advances, especially the gorgeous TwentyTen theme, I’m going to start recommending it to campaigns if they can’t pay a designer.
• David Hauser of Grasshopper asked us to cheer wildly for every speaker that got up there (and even more glad I wasn’t the only one who did it) as it gave a shot in the arm to every speaker upon their start. He also had the amazing idea of mailing media people and other big talkers a package full of chocolate covered grasshoppers to promote his company’s name change from GotVMail because “it fucking sucked!”
• I’m re-reading Reworked by Jason Fried of 37signals. More than one idea from that book got me the aforementioned eye roll. Great talk, down to Earth guy who spoke with me briefly afterward.
• She wasn’t a speaker, but Wendy Townley, author of Nerdy Thirty sold me a copy of her great book for $5 and it was worth every penny. I may drive to Omaha to give her the other $5. Review coming soon.

Massive massive ups to all the boys and girls at Silicon Prairie News for pulling off such an amazing conference. It was my first big conference and I fear I’m forever spoiled.

I get the eye rolls now, but just they wait. To paraphrase Gary V, we’re changing the politics world, the business world, the technology world, the media world, shoot, THE world, whether they like it or not.

I will be back in 2011 and I want you all to come with me.

Photos by Malone & Company Photography

The website Killer Campaigning touched very briefly on this topic so I’m picking up the ball and running with it.

I want one of these things so badly. Not just to play Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (though I would, all day) but because I can put it to good use for my candidates and campaigns. Politicians are already putting it to use.

At events, my laptop is always with me along with my SLR still camera and at least a Flip if not my DVX100. That’s a lot of stuff to be working at once but I make it work. Having an iPad instead of a laptop would allow me to tweet and live blog much easier from the riser as I won’t have to be juggling a bulky laptop. (I love that laptops are now bulky. Bring on the holograms!)

This was going to be a post where I just make a list of applications and ho hum hope to get some traffic, but then I remembered my Minnesota quasi-counterpart Dusty Trice has an iPad so I figured I’d ring him up on the Skype machine and ask him about it. I got those apps and a lot more.

Check it out:

List of apps discussed:

• MyCongress – Get information about any member of Congress instantly.
• WordPress – The best website/blogging platform EVER.
• Dragon Dictation – This idea never even crossed my mind but I’ll be taking advantage of it. Slap an iPhone/iPad on the podium and fire up this ad as your speech begins. Especially if you go off the cuff you can go back later and look at what works and what doesn’t.
• MiniVAN – Very clever name for a product I hope expands. It’s a mobile version of the Voter Activation Network.
• Pages – Apple’s word processor.
• Numbers – Apple’s spreadsheet program.

So have you used the iPad in another way for a campaign? Any apps we missed? Comment!

If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted in about a month (and who isn’t?) it’s because I’ve been up to things like this:

Billed as “a grassroots film about a grassroots campaign,” a two person crew from Australia flew into Des Moines in 2007 to make, what producer John Barron called, “a film for Australians about Iowans,” and the Democratic Party’s caucus process which he likened to “a noodle market in Singapore.”

This was my first visit to the Varsity Theater in Des Moines. It has a very old school feel. There were no ads for reality shows or food, but instead some “trad” jazz with very calming green and blue spot lights on the screen. I was one of maybe ten people under thirty but nonetheless loved the atmosphere.

The movie featured interviews with with consultants, candidates, and those caucus connoisseurs in the Des Moines media. It was fun seeing some of the people I now interact with up on the big screen. George McGovern, the great former Senator and 1972 nominee from South Dakota, was featured prominently. This was appropriate as he was the one who, after the disaster of the 1968 convention, proposed the changes that moved the Democratic Party’s nominating process out of the smoke filled room and into the hands of the voters.

After describing the 1972 campaign the movie immediately jumps to the 2008 contest. I would have liked to have seen more of the Republican side, but:

1. Their caucus process is a lot more boring,
2. The bigger story out of Iowa was Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton than Mike Huckabee over Mitt Romney.

So, the filmmakers decided to leave the Republican contests on the editing room floor, though John said with the 2012 Republican caucuses heating up, there may be an opportunity for a sequel.

I also would have liked to see some more history.

• 1980 with Ted Kennedy’s primary challenge of President Carter. Especially because Bob Shrum was one of the interviewees.
• Tom Harkin’s run in 1992 rendering the Iowa contest results moot.
• John Kerry’s huge upset in 2004 over Howard Dean and John Edwards.

I had a great time. I greatly enjoy watching other people’s perspective of the 2008 election as my eyes were stuck behind a camera most of the time. The election was, despite Josh Lyman’s philosophy, a place where I found my confidence and changed my life.

3.5/5

Last Tuesday was National Grilled Cheese Day. In honor of it, Emily and I made this video:

Chris Brogan asked his readers to produce a blog post about how story telling is important in their lives. In exchange, you could win an awesome book. The book is probably reason enough to do this, but this post has been on my mind in the months before I started this blog back up so I thought “why not?” Here goes…

Story in a political campaign is everything. Campaigns tell a story. Campaigns are a story. Great campaigns get people to add their stories and relate to their neighbors and get them to support you.

Whether it’s a city council race and you’re talking to people in your neighborhood or you’re running President and you come here to Iowa to speak with people in a cattle auction barn, you begin by introducing yourself to voters and giving them your background. You can have the best 5 point plan on Earth but you’re going to have a hard time selling it to voters if you don’t have a good reason for promoting it.

Give people a story they can relate to.

Barack Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, went to a private high school, Columbia University and then Harvard Law. That’s not the best starting point for the grizzled Iowa Caucus Goer who sees a bunch of suits fly in every four years and tell them how “my 5 point plan will make you rich and cure your bad breath.” Obama won the Iowa Caucus because he related to Iowans on a personal level. His story centered around his family and specifically his mother and the grandparents who raised him. We all have someone who raised us and that’s where he connected. Health care reform because he watched his mother battle insurance companies while dying of cancer. Reaching out to the Islamic community because his family spent years in the largest muslim country in the world.

Get supporters to tell their stories

Part of what we did on the new media staff was to get people’s stories on camera. The field team always had volunteers start by asking “what brought you here?” We got those people to go door to door and tell their stories and say why they supported Obama.

One of the most memorable stories of the campaign was Ashley Baia. (Photo by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.) When Ashley was 9 her mom got cancer and then lost her job after missing too many days due to treatment. Money was tight and Ashley convinced her mom that her favorite food in the world was mustard and relish sandwiches, a meal that didn’t cost very much. She was working for Barack Obama because she wanted to see everyone in America have access to quality, affordable health insurance. Ashley and I worked together during the Pittsburgh Primary and she can tell you a real funny story about my half tattoo if you ask her. Ashley, if you’re reading this in DC, hi there!.

Charles Alexander was 86 years old when I met him. He started volunteering at the Obama campaign office in Boulder soon after his wife of many many years passed away. It was simple work, cutting up flyers and greeting people as they signed in but he came in every day. He won a raffle to meet Barack Obama and when the rest of the office found out about his story, they rushed me over there to get it on camera. Days later it hit 250,000 views on YouTube. Charles’ story was one of struggle and perseverance and he was working on that campaign because he saw Barack Obama get all these kids involved and fighting for those who are struggling like he did.

If you’re a candidate, your life experience has led you to this point where you’re putting yourself out there and asking for their trust and their vote. You need to be able to communicate that story to the masses and empower your supporters to tell their stories to others.

LinkedIn is probably the most misunderstood social network, and I’ll be the first to admit that I’m among those that have not, until recently, taken advantage of it. I’ve been like a lot of others that have a profile but don’t keep it updated. So when Nathan Wright of Lava Row posted this event on the Social Media Club – Des Moines calendar, I was intrigued.

The sign behind him may have helped with attendance...

I wasn’t alone because well over 50 people came after work to hear Sam Mandolfo from LinkedIn give us a short presentation about LinkedIn’s past, present, and future. What LinkedIn is, for those who are not yet on it, is the larger social network geared towards professionals. You won’t find Farmville or blingee pictures there. It is, by design, a little boring. People go there to discuss business. When you go there, you’re thinking about your job/career.

I like to think of it as a dynamic, interactive resume. Chris Brogan calls it a “reputation engine.”

Some of the stats Sam brought up blew my mind.

• 60 million users
• Offices in countries around the world

And this one made us all cock our heads like my shih tzu does when you ask it if it wants to go for a ride in the car.

• 51% of LinkedIn users earn more than $100k per year.

Caaaaaaaan you say disposable income that could be spent on your campaign?

Two points that Sam brought up that I want to share:

1. LinkedIn profiles rank high on Google. If and when a potential employer/client Googles your name (which they will do) they will hopefully see your LinkedIn profile and spend their time on that and not the police blotter story on page 2 from that time in college when you stole a goat for Rush Week. “Your reputation is ten blue links on a white background,” Sam said.
2. Relationships matter. College alumni groups are huge on LinkedIn and having that connection to people can have real-world results. A startup in Ireland raised $230,000 in startup capital and was able to launch. Where’d they get it? Connections on LinkedIn.

Five things you can do to improve your LinkedIn profile.

1. Add a professional picture. No more keg stands or kisseyface in the bathroom mirror, you Situation wannabes.
2. Commit to updating your status and engaging. Although I discourage the practice, you can link your Twitter account to your LinkedIn status from the “edit profile” section.
3. Start/Join an alumni network. Remember Sammy Stoner down the hall sophomore year? He owns half of North Dakota now. Hit him up for some of that sweet sweet venture cash.
4. Applications. You can link your wordpress blog to your linkedin profile. Your posts will show up right there on your profile. There’s a reading list application, polls, a place to put that bitchin’ slideshow you spent all week on only to have the boss cancel that meeting because he had too many whiskey sours on the 16th hole yesterday.
5. Start a group for your company. Invite input from your employees and shareholders.

That’s all for this post. Part 2 will have (depending on sound quality) video of a really good discussion during the Q&A.

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