Meta

I took yesterday off to recuperate from two weeks straight on the road attending both the DNC and RNC. Today I'm catching up on all my email, bloglines, etc. As part of that, I've got about 150 Google Alerts from the past two weeks and I intend to do a quick media scan to get a sense of what the coverage was like for the progressive youth community. I'll try to post that this week, though it may take awhile to complete. It's probably at least three or four hundred articles to read, and I'll probably double check Lexis/Nexis to make sure I didn't miss anything big.

I'm also working on a big story about my time at the RNC, but I'm going to be pitching it to some magazines, so you may not see anything about it on these pages for a week or more depending on how that goes.

In the meantime, I hope you all won't mind indulging me for a minute in a little meta commentary about this blog, blogging in general, and what it is, exactly, that we do around here.

In the last couple of weeks, I've had a number of people express everything from irritation to anger about the things that get written on this blog. I won't call out names because that would be counterproductive.

In part, I think there is much confusion as to what I do and what this blog is. Am I a journalist? Sometimes. Am I an activist? Sometimes. Being a blogger is a cross between the two. I try to be less partisan and more evenhanded than an activist might be when I can, but I also do not have the time or resources to be as stringent in my standards as a journalist. I'm not responsible for producing 2 - 3 stories a week that are fact checked and read by editors. I'm responsible for coming up with something fresh every single day - often more than once per day - that sheds light on the work happening in progressive youth organizing, attracts readers, and hopefully makes us all a little better at what we do. As such, our work here is more editorial in nature than standard reporting.

If that was all I did, I would have a lot more time to interview and write, and I'd have a lot more empathy for those expressing their displeasure. But blogging is only a tiny fraction of what I do each day. I'm also managing a ridiculous amount of incoming information - from dozens of Google Alerts, hundreds of Blog Feeds, the major national news papers, hundreds of emails, and phone calls; I'm talking to press; I'm participating on conference calls with other organizations; I'm talking to donors; I'm trying to plan ahead so I can keep doing this next year; I'm traveling way more than I would like; I'm trying to recruit new writers to alleviate the publishing pressure and get better quality content on the site; and I'm trying to read political books to stay current.

To be clear, I'm not whining. I get paid to blog. There are so few people who can say that, and I regard it as a privilege that I'm able to do so. I'm hugely thankful to my supporters for that opportunity and I don't regret a single minute I spend on any of these activities. But this is to say that I'm super busy and everyone should have realistic standards about what it is we are doing here.

The purpose of this site is to cut out the bottlenecks in progressive youth organizing, open up channels of information and communication, and make the entire sector of the progressive movement more transparent, efficient, and navigable for the major players and for the new people joining our ranks every day. I know a lot of people would prefer that much of what goes on here happen behind closed doors in private chats and emails, but I don't personally find that useful. That mentality ensures that a few select people get better at what they do, while the younger generation of leaders is forced to learn it all over again via trial and error. It's a really bad way to ensure the passing of institutional knowledge. Judging by the compliments we get for our work here (yes it happens), I think a lot of people feel the same way.

What we do here is far from perfect. We'll get stuff wrong occasionally, and sometimes people will come away with hard feelings from tough criticism. But I think it makes us all better and if a few people are embarrassed now and then, it is still a far superior situation to the "three men in a room" strategy where these types of critiques stay behind closed doors among the leadership.

In the future, I'll do my best to be more fair to all of you out there and your work, but please realize the limitations under which we operate and realize that you don't have to be passive consumers here. Youth organizers and organizations have the ability to shape the message on this site and there are a number of avenues through which you can do so:

• Pick up the phone/email and talk it out with me. I'm perfectly happy to write followups and admit when I'm wrong. A fact that should be very obvious after last weeks' correction.
• Leave a comment in the relevant blog post. This is such an easy thing, yet so few people do it. Anecdotally, the Young Democrats did this frequently when I was criticizing some of their work. Eventually we developed a rapport and an understanding about what they were doing, why, and how effective it was. Today this site is a big booster for their organization because they took the time to engage in a conversation on this site.
• You could sign up for an account and write your own blog. If you are responding directly to something I said about you or your organization, there is a 99% chance that I will put your post on the front page and provide your response with equal coverage to the audience this blog reaches.
• Pre-empt me by writing about your own organization on this blog before I do. I have an open invitation out to any staffer at a progressive youth organization to have a standing column about the work they are doing on this site. People get upset with what I write here because they know that their peers, donors and journalists read this site. As such, good or bad criticism can have a direct effect on the organization's reputation among an influential group of people. Yet even so, very few groups take advantage of the opportunity to represent themselves in this space.

I'd also ask that you consider the limitations under which we work here and what it takes for you to be helpful to us in the writing of a blog post:

• If I or another Future Majority blogger contact you about a something - it means we are writing a post at that moment and need an answer within 1 - 2 hours at most. That may seem unreasonable, but it's the time frame within which we work every single day.
• If you do get in contact with us, make sure it is a real conversation. There are a number of organizations that frequently give me nothing but standard PR speak. That's not helpful to me and that may in fact be why I (personally) may not always ask your organization for a comment.

If you feel like I should be in closer contact with you, I'm sorry. I promise to try harder on my end. But please consider that this is an open forum and you could also step-it-up on your end if you are unhappy with the coverage you or your organization receive on this blog.

Our own Michael Connery at the DNC Youth Council Avail at DNC08. (sorry if the audio is bad)

If you ever wanted to know what we all looked like here we are.

Michael Connery, Sarah Burris, and Kevin Bondelli

I'm attending a panel right now about using social media to build an audience for your blog. It features Matt Browner Hamlin, the Online Director for the Mark Begich Senate Campaign (fomerly of the Dodd campaign and Students for a Free Tibet), Jason Rosenbaum of the Sentinel, Josh Nelson and Cheryl Contee.

Jason and Josh just are discussing best practices for getting content noticed on social news sites like Digg, Reddit, Buzzflash and Stumbleupon and they made an important point. It's very hard to get noticed by A-list bloggers or to break through the clutter on Daily Kos to get on the Recommended list or promoted to the front page. If you don't have solid connections to those bloggers already, trying to get them to link to you is not a great strategy to get noticed and build traffic (even if the audience of those blogs might seem like the most low-hanging fruit). While it may seem daunting to try to break into these social news communities, it can be a more efficient and successful strategy than trying to break through in the A-List blogs.

Other useful tips for using these site:

• Live or die by the headline. Most people try to convey their point and get people to click through to their article. That's a mistake. If you don't get on the front page, you are not going to get a lot of hits. So your goal in writing a headline should be to convince the reader to give you a vote.
• Be good community members. Don't just spam the site, but contribute other interesting articles not written by you.
• Engage the commenters. Just like on Daily Kos, you have to engage the community to build traffic and votes. And on sites like Digg, the number of comments can impact the algorithm and play a role in getting you on the front page.
• Have a small pool of allies - readers or cobloggers - to help jump-start your article with a few votes. It takes no time and on smaller sites like Buzzflash it can quickly help you get to the front page.

Netroots Nation, the blogger-spawned progressive conference formerly known as Yearly Kos, will be in Austin this week from Thursday through Sunday and Future Majority will be there in force.

If you're a young person, young at heart, or curious about the youth vote, here's where you'll find us:

Thursday
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Youth Caucus: 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM; Caucus, Room 18B

My flight gets in at 12:30 and I hope to make it to the latter half of the caucus, but look for Bondelli, Sarah, Jane or other FM contributors mixing with the crowd.

Friday
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Youth to Power Book Signing: 11:30 AM - 12PM; Exhibit Hall Ballroom D, IG Publishing booth #315.

I'll be signing books alongside fellow IG author and blogger Jeffrey Feldman. We also have a Facebook event for this - go RSVP and invite others.

What's Next for the Next Generation? 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM, Workshop, Room 18D.

Jane Fleming Kleeb of the Young Voter PAC joins Gina Glantz and others to discuss how to move a youth policy agenda after the elections.

Saturday
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Online Engagement to Offline Activism: 4:30 PM - 5:45 PM; Panel, Ballroom F

Myself, Jane Fleming Kleeb of the Young Voter PAC, Tony Cani of the Young Democrats, Sam Dorman of The League, Hans Riemer of the Obama Campaign, Maria Teresa Peterson of Voto Latino and Andrew Villaneuve of the Northwest Progressive Institute will lead a concrete discussion on tactics to engage young voters online and move that support offline into the field. Bring your own ideas and be prepared to share.

For those of you who are curious, you can view video of the youth vote panel from last year here.

Celebrity Bartender After Party: Cedar Door’s Biergarten, 2nd and Brazos. 10pm - Midnight.

Once the day is done, we're teaming up with Living Liberally and the Young Voter PAC for a big throw-down celebrity bartender event. From 10pm to Midnight, Markos of Daily Kos, Matt Stoller of Open Left, candidates Scott Kleeb and Darcy Burner and more will serve you drinks. All food and drinks will be free for the first hour. You can buy tix, which go to support the Young Voter PAC, here.

This will be a great way to start your final night in Austin, and if previous years are any indicator, we'll all take the party elsewhere until the wee hours of the morning.

More details below. Hope to see you in Austin.

Sorry for the site hiccup earlier today. We were trying to get rid of a bug with the user profiles and the site didn't want to play nice.

Here's the last of my catchup - a rundown on some stories you may have missed while you were out BBQ and watching giant explosions in the sky.

• The Hip Hop Caucus reports that anti-affirmative action measures will likely be on the ballot in Arizona and Nebraska this fall. Will that be a boon or an albatross around the neck of candidates like Scott Kleeb? I'm not sure. This might rally the Republican base, but young voters are a tolerant group; this could backfire on the GOP.
• Beginning today, the interest rates on student loans have decreased. College Democrats have the lowdown on what that will mean for students.
• The New York Times profiles Chris Hughes and the Obama social networking operation.
• The Rothenberg Report profiled a long-shot but interesting race in which 29 year old Josh Segall is taking on a Republican incumbent in Alabama. I'm going to see about getting Josh to live-blog. If anyone can hook that up, please contact me.
• Sam Stein at The Huffington Post notes that redistricting will be a major issue in 2010 when 32 gubernatorial elections will determine whether Democrats or Republicans benefit most from the next round of gerrymandering.
• Katrina Vanden Huevel has a must-read piece on reforming our voting system - top to bottom.
• Obama is running into some trouble with his supporters over his flip-flop on FISA and everyone from bloggers to Bob Herbert have weighed in. Will Obama listen to the grassroots uprising within his own support base? This is a big test for just how open and bottom-up the Obama campaign really is.

Just got back from my vacation and I'm rested and ready for the long haul through the election. I've been reading through the content from the last week and the guest bloggers did an amazing job. The content on the site while I was away was fantastic. Thanks so much to all those who guest blogged.

For everyone else, be sure to check out the wonderful organizations run by our guest bloggers:

• Living Liberally - political action through social interaction.
• Young Elected Officials Network - Helping elect young people to office.
• Swing Semester - Spend a semester on the campaign trail.
• The League - Culturally relevant outreach to young, underserved communities.
• Forward Montana - Kick-ass youth organizing in the mountain west.
• Young Voter PAC - Electing youth-friendly Democrats.
• Democrats Work - Political action through community service.

And of course, a big thanks to Kevin and Sarah for making sure the site ran smoothly.

I've got a couple hundred emails and a few thousand blog posts to catch up on. I'll probably post periodically throughout the day as I catchup and be fully back in the swing of things tomorrow.

Temporarily bumped to the top since PDF pushed it down the page pretty darn fast. --Mike

I've been mentioning it here and there for a couple weeks now, and those of you who come to the site regularly have already seen it, but I"m happy to say that we're finally through with the redesign here at Future Majority. Aside from the slicker (and I hope hipper) look, there are a few new features that I want to explain very quickly, and one favor that I want to ask you to do for us.

New Features

User Blogs: Hands down, this is the biggest change in the functionality of the site. Previously, only the front page writers (myself, Alice, Kevin) and a few guest writers could post blogs here at Future Majority. That's no longer the case. Now, anyone who is a registered user can post a blog on whatever topic they want, just like on Daily Kos, MyDD, or Open Left. Those blogs will appear in the "Recent Blog Posts" box on the sidebar, right below "Breaking News." Right now, that sidebar is set to display all content posted on FM. As more and more users blog on a regular basis, I'll switch the settings and make all content in that space user-generated. I'll be reading all the user blogs as they're posted, and I expect that some of it will be promoted to the front page. As distinctive voices emerge, I expect that some users will find themselves with front-page posting privileges.

Here's where the favor comes in. Not only do I hope you'll all contribute your thoughts here at Future Majority as you would at the other - and undeniably far larger - online progressive blog communities, but I'm asking you to tell all the young, politically active people you know about Future Majority and encourage them to blog here. This isn't necessarily a selfish ask - there's something in it for you too.

This site has a far smaller audience than the bigger blogs, but the audience is quite influential. Whereas a post by a young person about youth organizing, youth voting, or a young perspective on a policy issue will usually get drowned out on the major blog communities like Daily Kos, on Future Majority what you write will be read by most progressive youth leaders, campaign staffers, funders, and yes, some of the leaders in the blogosphere. In short - it's a great place to get your voice heard without the need to compete with thousands of other voices clamoring to be heard. When candidates like Scott Kleeb and Darcy Burner come on the site, you have a direct line to talk to them without competing against 100 other commenters.

So please join our community, write a blog, and invite your friends to do so as well.

Video Feeds: Yes, we had video feeds in the previous incarnation of the site, but the videos were small and difficult to watch. That's changed. If you click on the video link at the top of the page, you'll find a list of videos getting pulled in from 20 different sites - The Onion, TPMtv/Veracifier, 23/6, News in Color, comedy sites, news sites, kick-ass user sites, youth sites and more. The content is better, but so is the display. Click on one of the thumbnails and you'll see what I mean as the movie begins to play. We also now have the ability to comment and have discussions about individual videos.

Finally, you'll notice in the main sidebar underneath the new user blogs, one large video. This is the featured video - everyday I'll be picking my favorite video of the day and promoting it to the front page in that slot.

Progressive Training Calendar: Look a little bit further down the sidebar and you'll see the Progressive Training Calendar. This is a great widget created by the Center for Progressive Leadership listing more than a hundred progressive training opportunities across the country for the next three months. Pulling information from over a dozen organizations, it's a great resource for anyone looking to hone their political chops and a useful way to stay aware about what training opportunities are available in your area.

Research and Resources: Finally, we have greatly condensed and reorganized the variety of resources available on the site. Click on the Research and Resources tab and you will find fact sheets, reports, voting data, best practices and case studies from leading research institutions like CIRCLE, the Harvard Institute of Politics, The New Politics Institute and Rock the Vote organized and categorized for ease of youth. If you are looking for research on young voters, you won't find this many reports from so many research institutions in one place.

Debugging: One final note - there may still be a few bugs in the system. If you find any, leave a comment here or send me an email through our contact form.

We're going to be doing some back-end work this weekend so the site may be wonky between now and Monday. But it will be worth it. If all goes well, we're going to have a snazzy new design and we'll be implementing user diaries so anyone can come on and post.

Just a quick announcement - I'm going to be on the final episode of Seder on Sundays tomorrow between 4 and 7 eastern. Also on the show - Naomi Klein, David Sirota, and Larry Bartels. We're all discussing our respective books. My segment will air at the top of the show.

Listen if you can. Details here.