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What Not to Miss at Campaign Tech

We’re incredibly excited to be attending this year’s CampaignTech.  With an incredible list of speakers, this event promises to offer valuable learning experiences and a valuable opportunity to connect with thought leaders and industry insiders.

Colin Delany, founder and editor of epolitics.com, recently guest posted on the CampaignTech blog about why he’s going to CampaignTech:

Plenty of online events talk about what we SHOULD be doing with digital politics. The Internet Is Going To Change The World, after all! But in the meantime, practical communications professionals are using online tools every day, to find supporters, spread messages, raise money and organize people to act both online and in meatspace. CampaignTech presenters are more often practitioners than theorists or digital advocacy ideologues: they’re people trying to get things done in the real world. To me this perspective is refreshing, and usually educational.

That mentality – ‘The Internet is Going to Change The The World’ – is a common subject for conferences, articles, blogs and other content.  But it’s rarely (if ever) composed of useful, actionable insights into how you can use the Internet to change your world.  Insight of that nature is immensely valuable, and it’s promising to hear that this is the focus of CampaignTech.

So why are we going to CampaignTech?

CampaignTech Innovators

The CampaignTech Innovators program provided phenomenal recognition to individuals who are truly changing the space.  While of all the winners are deserving gamechangers, we’re particularly excited about a few of them.

David Binetti is CEO and co-founder of Votizen, which allows voters to find politically like-minded individuals within their social networks and encourage them to participate in causes or campaigns.

Serenety Hanley is Vice President of Grassroots Targeting, a Republican microtargeting firm that helps campaigns find the right audiences.

Jason Rosenbaum, Senior Online Campaign Director of Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), is another innovator we’re incredibly excited about.  The PCCC is an advocacy organization, founded in 2009 by two former MoveOn.org organizers that supports progresive causes and candidates.

A session highlighting these innovators, the Innovators Keynote, will be held Thursday at 3:30.

Sessions

Utilizing voter data to target messaging is hardly a novel component of political campaigns, but targeting voters online is still an emerging space.  Confusing and often difficult to navigate, the voter targeting space is the topic of not one but two CampaignTech sesions.  Thursday’s session on big data and politics should be an enlightening look from some of the experts, including Bryce Cullinane of Resonate and Rich Masterson of CampaignGrid.  The second session, The Ad Targeting Landscape & the 2012 Election Cycle, will focus on the latest trends in audience targeting.  Audience and behavioral targeting are changing so rapidly, it can be hard for those outside the industry to keep up.  Both sessions promise to be can’t-miss.

Online fundraising has the potential to significantly level the playing field for campaigns by allowing for low-cost and efficient grassroots fundraising.  But that doesn’t mean any campaign can get started and be successful today.  Friday’s panel, Social Media Fundraising Can Lower the Playing Field in Campaigns, explores how campaigns can properly implement online fundraising channels and use social media to drive engagement and ultimately, donations.

Thanks to social media, the nature of influence is changing, and these changes have significant ramifications for how campaigns can leverage others’ influence online.  There are two sessions on using the Internet to reach influencers.  The first session, which features Michael Beach of Targeted Victory and Dave Binetti of Votizen, focuses on using the Internet to find and reach out to influential voters ( http://www.campaigntechconference.com/session/reaching-influential-voter ).  The second, featuring Google’s Andrew Roos and Twitter’s Peter Greenberger, is geared toward reaching Washington influencers through social media.

These are just a few of the sessions offered at this year’s Campiagn Tech.  You can find the rest of the agenda here.

As a digital media firm, we’re particularly excited to meet new people in the political space, and to share our digital knowledge and experience with others.

So, why are you going to CampaignTech?