As many of you already know, I have the honor and privilege of working with C-SPAN for the upcoming presidential conventions in Denver (DNC) and Minneapolis-St. Paul (RNC), respectively. The project is twofold: One site for the Democratic National Conventions in Denver (August 25th - 28th) and one site for the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul (September 1st - 4th). I will also appear on-air with my colleagues from New Media Strategies during this time; my first “hit” will be Friday morning at 9:55 AM EST on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.

WHY I LOVE MY JOB. As a trained social scientist, civic-participation-advocate and a former McLaughlin Group dir. of new media & senior writer/producer, who loves (1) observing the ways in which social technologies are fundamentally changing the way we share, receive, react-to and process information and (2) efficiencies, I couldn’t be more excited about contributing to this project (let alone get to call it “work” for the next 2 weeks).

WHAT’S THE BUZZ? Not just because a client is involved, but because I was genuinely interested in what others would make of the project, I was excited to see a variety of folks take interest…

  • Folks attending like Shireen at DigitalSista [#DNC08] and Bill Beutler of BlogPI [#RNC08] (Bill is also a member of the NMS team and my best friend)
  • The Sunlight Foundation — thought-leaders in the transparency movement — noted: “The convention announcement marks a new moment for C-SPAN as a modern Internet information provider. Once a small cable channel with a dream; now with embeddable web video, Twitter hashtags, and aggregated blog posts.”
  • DC-insider blogs like FishbowlDC, Eric Pfeiffer’s CQ Ground Game and FamousDC
  • The BlogHer community released information on their own election coverage, which included mention of C-SPAN’s interest in featuring their coverage on the Hubs (excellent quotation from C-SPAN co-President, Susan Swain): “[…] In addition, C-SPAN has made distribution arrangements with several credentialed bloggers, BlogHer among them, and will be linking to BlogHer’s convention coverage. ‘We love seeing women using C-SPAN’s political coverage to stay informed about issues,’ said Susan Swain, co-president of C-SPAN. ‘We think Convention Hub will give BlogHer’s readers fast access to important video from the two political conventions and at the same time, the Hub’s ‘Bloggers Roundup’ will introduce new readers to the issues you cover.’”
  • Influential tech rockstars (and their respective outlets) Mike Arrington at TechCrunch gave it a first-glance exclusive today, noting it is a “great effort to spice up coverage with user-generated, up-to-the-minute content…” and conceded that it “may have the most up to date news on the conventions.”
  • Frank Gruber at SomewhatFrank (DC-local, friend and favorite) also followed Mike’s lead.
  • Brian Solis worked with his editorial team at bub.blicio.us to cover the release last week, about which Bub contributor Jacob Morgan writes: “News is becoming more of a collective resource as opposed to a one-sided ‘push’ medium and I think C-Span has a lot of potential for engaging it’s users.”
  • JESS3 CTO (and main developer for the sites) Zvi Band gets excited about the TechCrunch post.
  • Even BlogWorldExpo’s blog got in on the love.
  • Leslie: Thank you one and all — more covering who has covered C-SPAN’s Convention Hubs on — you guessed it — the Hubs themselves, stay tuned.

WHO IS DOING WHAT. The sites are being managed and maintained by C-SPAN in conjunction with the the Public Affairs team at New Media Strategies (namely, Howard Mortman, Patrick Ottenhoff and Bill Beutler), of which I am a member and acting Community & Project Manager. I have the doubly exciting role of working with Jesse Thomas and Zvi Band of JESS3 on the site design and development side of things (where I wear a second hat as President).

WHAT MAKES C-SPAN’S SITES SO SPECIAL? I wanted to do a brief overview of what the site has that other news and public affairs outlets might not have thought of during this, the historic first campaign of the digital era (pen nod to author and friend, Garrett Graff). While some news organizations will be promoting their own content and looking to partner with online giants, C-SPAN is taking it to the people. And you just gotta respect that. Like their call-ins and always-rolling footage, they have a reputation for openly involving the American people in the process. Bringing this many perspectives under one “Hub” could not be more in-line with their long-standing mission and what we have grown to expect from them. As I share these feature distinctions, I wanted to parenthetically share my thoughts as “Leslie” (as this is, afterall, me’blog) ’spanning from (1) what it means to me and (2) what it means for the online community as a whole.

  • FACT: C-SPAN is taking an open source approach to event coverage, creating a clearinghouse for convention reporting and commentary. C-SPAN’s Convention Hubs bring together numerous platforms, communities and independent news sources.
  • Leslie: That’s right folks, we are linking to state bloggers, national bloggers, news-affiliate-bloggers, Utterz users, Qik’ers, Twitter’ers… as long as we can get our hands on the content and it is relevant to the conventions at hand, we will work to feature it. Think about the kind of implications this has from both an efficiency-of-information-market as well as a sociological perspective — folks who may have never been interested in the conventions but who love technology can be turned on to one through the other. Similarly, those who are wonkishly into state, regional and national issues on the public affairs front will find the application of social technologies to be as helpful as they are trying to keep up and make sense of each convention.
  • FACT: C-SPAN recognizes the importance of not just covering the coverage, but covering what happens in between.
  • Leslie: The Twitter aggregation isn’t just jumping on some bandwagon (as a commenter over at TechCrunch noted earlier today), it is about providing a valuable, communal “hub” for those interested in the “moments in between” (these are the micro-narratives that I love so much and the very kind of coverage I will be presenting on at the Online News Association’s Conference September 12th & 13th in DC).
  • FACT: C-SPAN will be using Qik cameras, in addition to their trusted CSPAN1 and CSPAN2 camera coverage.
  • Leslie: This is awesome. Awesome in the sense that an organization who has brought us unaduterated content for decades is now Qiking it up a notch and embracing the tools and technologies that have and will fundamentally change the way we view the world — and the world views us.
  • FACT: The Convention Hubs’ “Twitter Roundup” page provides an as-it-happens glimpse of one of my favorite places to visit: The Twitterverse
  • Leslie: This is extra awesome. We all know who will be tweeting with the appropriate hashtags (me! me!)… tell a friend #RNC08 #DNC08.
  • FACT: C-SPAN is making all of its convention-coverage video available for users to search for what they want, clip just the section they need, and embed it on their own site.
  • Leslie: see for yourself! Embedded my first C-SPAN video below… huzzah!