Slatecard.com is a utility to support and enhance Republican activism and was created by David All, a well known DC interactive strategist and Sendhil Panchadsaram.

Slatecard PAC is an independent, federally registered political action committee (PAC) which acts as a “conduit” to raise money online to help Republican candidates for federal office in compliance with the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA).

On Tuesday, Slatecard announced the deployment of its candidate portal software, “Take Control,” (takecontrol.slatecard.com) which gives candidates and campaigns total control of their respective directory profile and donor information.

It’s interesting to see the Republican camp finally gaining ground in the online fund raising side of things.  Democratic strategists have been light years ahead in this area.  I recently asked a prominent Republican strategist why this is the case, and he confided in me that “digital creatives/strategists are the key to online fund raising prowess.  It just so happens that the dems have a monoploy on this kind of talent as these folks are more liberally leaning.”

It looks like the talent pool may be shifting, albeit slowly.

-By Peter Corbett, follow him on twitter

While the event was titled “The Rise of Citizen 2.0: Radically Rethinking Democracy in the Digital Age,” I think there was a sub-text to the event that was as interesting, if not more so, than the idea of a Citizen 2 dot oh (which is how the Yahoo!s were saying it. And yes, they call themselves Yahoo!s).

Briefly, the Citizen 2.0 as defined by Yahoo!’s research is a voter who is engaged in multiple ways online — from social networks, to meet-up groups, to simple emailing — and who is “sparked” to find more information online when a topic/person/place/thing comes across their radar that leaves them wanting to know more. Said another way, Citizen 2.0 = big fan of Googling, Wikipedia, et al.

Moving forward… given the setting (DC’s famed Willard Hotel), the speakers (Karl Rove, Max Cleland), the attendees (I would wager most were over the age of 40?!) and the cocktail/hors d’œuvre after party (top shelf, all the way around)… this was no Internet-is-for-the-young OR the Internet-is-for-people-in-their-pajamas-living-at-home kind of scene. I have been to quite a few events, conferences and workshops in the new media space and let me tell you, this was the fancy-schmanciest yet. It was also the first where there were secret-service looking types walking around and talking into their cuff-links (okay, the latter part of the sentence was a stretch, but you get the point).

(kind of looked like this)

And if we follow my (errr, Durkheim’s) “look at the shadow if you want to know about the form” logic from my post about Startup Weekend, then reading these cultural symbols (people, place, things) points to the emergence of a few other new “2 dot oh” species:

The “influential 2.0″ - I would roughly define this term as fitting people in positions of power/decision makers, or are people who have direct in-roads to these influentials — in sectors such as government, business, etc. — that are getting hip to the existence and importance of “the blogs.” Hearing that Karl Rove reads blogs would be an example of this — he is both influential in his own right and, well, you know, has influential friends.

• … and by “the blogs”… I mean to say the conversations and ideas being shared online… I would also include the things that are actually broken online by websites, blogs and media sources alike (read: the 24/7/365 news cycle).
• … and in agency speak… an “influential” is an actual thing/person as opposed to an adjective.

The “strategist 2.0″ - Strategists and consultants — such as those from the political, PR and advertising phyla — who make their money leveraging the influence, relationships, fundraising potential, Word-of-Mouth marketing, etc. from “the blogs” (and other online media, groups, networks, outlets, and so on). A few points here:

• While Rove did not go much further than talking about micro-targeting and e-mail lists, it seems that he could be called a strategist 1.5 (falling short of the full 2.0 as he did not seem to embrace an integrated new media strategy of harnessing the power of social media, blogs, etc. — oh, and he is sort of not doing this anymore, so that also must be taken into account… he was mostly talking in terms of “in the 2000 and 2004 races”).
• But, to Rove’s credit, he does have an iPhone and does use a Macbook. He was a self-proclaimed fan of Apple.

And finally,the “politician 2.0″ - Ok, now I am even starting to annoy myself with all the 2.0 add-ons (and yes, I know people have already killed the meaning of “2.0″ by adding it onto everything and probably have applied it to this arena already) but let me have just one more. A few additional points:

• We have already seen the neotenistic form of this animal from the candidates in the 2008 presidential election with everything from Barack’s social network (yay Blue State Digital), to live-blogging on the FredFile (full disclosure, Fred is a New Media Strategies client), to the multiple announcements made via canned videos on websites, not live on TV.
• One of the speakers at the Yahoo! event made the point that perhaps in 20 years, there will be a candidate who will leverage all of their online connections and their online persona to actually become president. That would be interesting and not out of the realm of possibilities (so take note, all of you hustling out there on Gaia, mebo, Facebook, myspace, iminlikewithyou, etc).

Looking at the photo below 2 years ago, save for the Yahoo! banner in the background, you would have been safer to guess that the caption would be about some traditional business or media event or some traditional outreach (e.g., $500 a plate dinner), and not some event with the phrases “new media” or “Internet strategy” or “Web 2.0.”

Stating the obvious at this point, but reinforcing an overall trend in the [influential] DC area, and frankly, in other influential regions across the country as well… when it comes to who is listening and caring about online discussions, outlets, tools, networks and technologies… the “influentials” appear to not only take this new medium seriously, but they are willing to put/putting it to work. The private sector certainly has a leg up in this arms race, but it looks like the public sector is finally catching on as well.

The National Journal Magazine (a beltway publication) also got in on reporting this trend about 2 months ago with a [great] cover story about the use of new media by tried and true DC institutions like associations, lobby shops and, oh, a little place called Capitol Hill. It would have been great to post some of the article here, but I have spent the last 20 minutes trying to track it down online with no luck. Subscription only. So ANTI the new media philosophy. Sorry, NJ, no links for you!

While the foundation and beginnings of relationships and business partnerships have certainly already begun, I think it is key for the DC/MD/NOVA tech communities to keep the political/public sectors and their respective “influentials” / “decision makers” in mind when it comes to everything from events, to clientèle, to resources.

——————————————-

For all the photos fit to click, NOVA-native/designer-strategist extraordinaire Jesse Thomas has a great gallery over on his Flickr account… and a great post too. So does my colleague at New Media Strategies, Bill Beutler.

cross-posted in parts by Leslie Bradshaw

Articles in today’s Washington Post:

Bulding a Community Byte, By Byte

and

Web’s New Field of Dreams Emerges in DC

…Kleiner Perkins has indicated that they’re not at all interested in funding any more Web 2.0 ventures.

“We have absolutely no interest in funding Web 2.0 companies,” says Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins.

This should be of little concern to the DC tech community, as the talent pool here is not married to building ‘2.0′ style businesses necessarily. It’s fixated on building out great ideas - and there will always be money for that.

If anyone needs some guidance in terms of getting over the Web 2.0 bingefest, Steve Rubel posted “Five Simple Sobriety Steps for Web 2.0 Kool Aid Boozers“. Time to detox.

-By Peter Corbett

I ran into Eric Litman at the nclud Halloween party and we chatted a bit about his plans for WashingtonVC (WVC). As of November 1st, Litman joins WashingtonVC as their new managing director.

About WVC:

WVC intends to establish itself and promote its parts in 6 major US cities, DC, NY, BOS, SEA, SF, LA, and eventually expand accordingly.

Within each of those cities, we will partner with local business leaders to permanently infect their communities with our charitable works and business offerings.

The WVC model stands out in my mind for one simple reason - they already own a large portfolio of brandable domain names, and they’re seeking talent to build against those assets. Typically, startups are born from an idea, the strategy is refined, and the brand identity is wrapped around those initial steps - in this case…it’s brand (or at least ‘name’) first, idea second, execution third.

For a guy like me who grew up in the ad agency/brand space this is very interesting. It validates what I’ve been promoting within the tech community for a while now - that BRAND MATTERS. When you have a brand that “hits folks between the eyes” it makes getting traction that much easier.

I’m interested to see how WVC will engage the community here to source ideas for their portfolio of domain names.  Perhaps there’s a elevator-pitch-a-thon on the horizon?  Interested entrepreneurs could pick a domain name, and give their :30 second pitch on what they’d do with the domain.  WVC would judge the pitches with perhaps a couple other non-WVC panelists who have specific areas of expertise (i.e. for the non-profit domain names, maybe someone from Greater DC Cares or the ASAE would co-judge).

-By Peter Corbett

One of My Music’s niftier tricks: if myMusic doesn’t have a song you’re looking for, it will show a video from YouTube instead (YouTube has a license for video content from a few major lables). Users can provide feedback whether or not the video is appropriate to the song they were looking for.

Qloud boasts an impressive roster of investors, first and foremost being Steve Case’s Revolution LLC. In addition:

Case is joined by a number of online and music industry luminaries as investors and board members in Qloud, including the founder of Island Records, Chris Blackwell, who discovered U2 and Bob Marley and was recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; the founder of Launch Music, Dave Goldberg, who most recently headed Yahoo! Music; the former head of AOL’s online music properties, Jim Bankoff, who will now serve as Qloud’s chairman; Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman Emeritus of AOL and Chairman of Revolution Money; and music industry executives Paul Vidich, formerly EVP Strategy and Business Development of Warner Music; and Tom Ryan, formerly Global SVP of Digital and Mobile Strategy of EMI Music.

No word if these are all investors or advisors, but impressive nonetheless. Qloud’s founders, Mike Lewis and Toby Murdock are former AOL’ers.

Qloud itself has been through a number of iterations; an initial launch a few years back featured the same social features, only integrated with iTunes’ desktop player via a plugin. This approach is very similar to Last.FM/Audioscrobbler. The site went underground for a period of time, reappeared again briefly earlier in the year in beta mode, and finally reemerged as a Facebook application.

Qloud’s offices are in downtown Silver Spring, across from the Discovery Channel, and they’re looking for a Director of Operations.

Since it’s launch, the site has been steadily updating with the latest events, and has attracted a strong following in the DC tech community. According to Mr. Karchner, the site has about 400 subscribers; subscription to event information is available via an RSS feed or via email.

Some background on Mr. Karchner: Ross moved to the DC area in 2005 from Harrisburg, PA. While in Harrisburg, Ross built Localfeeds.com, a site that aggregated content from RSS feeds by geographic location, allowing users to read or subscribe to a feed of posts by city/state or zip code. Localfeed’s was one of the first RSS aggregation applications, with a good reputation and a decent usage. Unfortunately, a server crash took down Localfeeds, and the site went underground for a while, surfacing periodically in new forms, but never making it’s way back to it’s former glory, and is still missed today. Ross works at Strat@comm, a division of Fleishman-Hillard, blogs at Ross Notes and can be seen at most DC tech events.

The new service takes a bit of time to get used to, but once you do, it’s relatively easy to edit a video. By dragging and dropping videos into the edit space, you can then use start and end markers to delineate the segment you would like to include in your new video. The service then allows users to save their remashed videos to their account and share with their contacts.

Searchles remixing technology is similar, although not as full-featured, as functionality offered by Jumpcut, which was acquired by Yahoo last year. Searchles focus is more on sharing than on publishing, so their functionality makes sense in the context of taking a longer video and clipping the parts that are relevant.

Searchles was founded by Chris Seline, and is located in Northwest DC, and has raised just less than $1 million dollars in angel funding.

HolaNeighbor! is a tool for creating social networks around hyper-local communities, such as an apartment building, city block, etc. The site offers tools to allow members of the network to post information, and plans on moving into hyper-local advertising by establishing relationships with existing coupon mailers and local businesses.

The site is up and running at holaneighbor.com, but still needs a bit of fine-tuning and polish; but for a weekend’s worth of work, it is impressive. The challenge will be getting people to continue to contribute past the initial weekend, and finding people to take the technical platform that was created and build a business out of it.

I was very surprised that Startup Weekend is more than just a bunch of coders and geeks getting together and hacking out a site; there was a significant amount of business development and planning taking place as well. One group worked on a business plan and competitive analysis, while other worked on branding and marketing strategy, even producing a few commercials for the site (available on YouTube). The end result is more than a functioning site; it’s a company that can be built and funded, and eventually grow into a business.

Check out the DC Startup Weekend blog for information and updates on HolaNeighbor! and we’ll post here with significant updates.