Power to the People

So it looks like local start-up Politic2.0 is launching its next-generation political site this morning with an event they're billing as ConventionNext. Should be interesting to see how it works...

This is what I got in an e-mail from Daniel Holsinger, Politic2.0's president and founder:

Politic 2.0 will host its first ConventionNEXT -- a forum for bloggers to interact with politicians.We have had a tremendous response from the local Utah political community. Congressman Chris Cannon is extremely excited to interact with bloggers. Off-site participants will be able view real time streaming video of the event and ask/vote questions.

1) Please Register at ConventionNext at Politic2.0
2) Apple's video/media player is required for streaming video.

The Agenda

8:50-9:00

Technology Overview, Introductions by Randall Bennett, VP Community

9:00-9:15

Congressman Chris Cannon remarks

9:15-10:15

Questions & Answers with Congressman facilitated by Daniel Holsinger, President/Founder of Politic2.0 Submitted Questions will be voted up/down by on-site/off-site participants (in real time). An alpha version of the question/voting system can be seen at conventionnext.politic20.com after 8:00PM Tuesday night.

( Our interactive question process uses a system like digg.com )

Daniel Holsinger, President of Politic 2.0 will moderate the questions from the voting system, working the questions from the top down. The system will continue to be live and as he finishes each topic, and he'll continue to ask questions from the top.

While this is going on, two other things will be happening:

The bloggers in the room and those paying attention on the net will be encouraged to write blog entries on each of the topics Congressman Cannon is addressing (instead of one big blog entry about the whole thing, although they can do that if they want).

These posts will be automatically discovered by TagJungle and reported to Politic20, causing them to automatically show up on Politic20.com under the topic that is being blogged about. Participants will also be strongly encouraged to participate in rating, writing and commenting on the Politic20 wiki pages about the event.

The event pages on Politic20 will have two columns; the left column will be the wiki side, showing sections for ratings, reviews, comments, discussions, etc. The right column will show the most recent blog posts that are relevant to the topic of the page you are on. TagJungle will also be harvesting links from all blog posts and will be providing Politic20 with lists of the most popular video, audio, documents and urls related to the topic you are viewing. These lists will be displayed above the blog posts from TagJungle.

10:15-10:30

Wrap-up and networking

10:30-11:00

Finish-up blog posts, talk with other bloggers, talk with us about Politic2.0, etc.