Frank Ochberg MD is a psychiatrist, pioneer in trauma science, and co-founder of the Trust for Trauma Journalism. We talk about his work supporting journalists as first responders to violence, conflict and tragedy and the need to better prepare them to handle the impact during and after events particularly if they are experiencing PTSD. Frank s ...…

Shane D'Aprile, Co-Owner and Co-Publisher, Campaigns & Elections has just published the Inaugural C&E State of the Political Campaign Industry survey and he shares some insights from the findings: Vast majority of consultants think it is likely one or both major party presidential candidates will be hacked during the 2020 election Large majorit ...…

Michael Luciani, CEO, The Tuesday Company talks about the use of their Team app that was instrumental in flipping the House in 2018. The keys were creating a user-friendly interface to address challenges of organizing and motivating volunteers, ease of coordinating with multiple groups, engaging low-propensity voters, and encouraging sharing of ...…

Rob Griffin, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Tovo Labs brings years of experience working in the digital media world to creating more robust political and advocacy campaigns. We talk about micro-targeting fundraising appeals, overcoming the stigma of using big data by using it in an appropriate way to inform and persuade, piercing the ...…

Anthony Constantino, Co-Founder, StickerMule reminds us of all the surfaces where stickers can be placed to promote a candidate, cause, and upcoming election, as well as identify those who have taken an action like attending a rally or voting. Stickers are easy to mail, can be an inexpensive reward for supplying an email and mailing address, an ...…

Patti Russo, Executive Director, Women's Campaign School at Yale University has helped women run for public office for 25 years. We talk about challenges for women running for president as well as down ballot, characteristics of successful candidates, the value of support from male constituents, explosion of minority women running for office, a ...…

Adam Probolsky, President, Probolsky Research has published results from a survey asking California voters if they support Kamala Harris' run for president in 2020. The survey reveals the strong support Harris has from Asian, Black, Latino and younger voters 18-39 as well as from Democratic and Independent voters. While Republicans were more li ...…

Mike Madrid, Principal, GrassrootsLab has long studied behavior of Latino and Asian American Pacific Islander voters. He reflects on how 2018 was an unusual year for voter turnout making it even harder to predict what will happen in 2020. While voter preference seems to break as much by ethnicity as by age, Mike reminds us that a large portion ...…

Nick Martin, CEO, Datagenomix is a self-described political data nerd and determined to bring big data to small state and local political campaigns. Using their new tool topplr, observations about social behavior can be incorporated into analysis of voter intention resulting in smarter digital campaign ad buys on Facebook. This provides strateg ...…

Kenny Day, AirsNext has designed a multi-media platform for creating and aggregating social media content from politicians and thought-leaders to facilitate hearing, seeing and sharing by a wider audience. Kenny knows the value of storytelling and expressing an authentic narrative. He and his team are focused on helping elected officials, advoc ...…

Steven Alembik, Founder, SMA Communications is an expert on voter data and how it is collected, stored, and made accessible by each individual state. Steven talks about the need to clean up the data on voter rolls using related data bases to track such things as new addresses and deaths to reduce misuse of absentee ballots. Steven also points o ...…

Matt McMillan, CEO and Founder, Buzzmaker shares insights about the intersection of engaging content with on-message content in 2018 political campaigns and talks about candidates who used social media like Facebook and Instagram to reach voters with authentic, relevant messages. While there is a continuing need for high quality political and a ...…

Sean Duggan, VP Advertising, Pandora reflects on the trends that influence the increasing use of mobile audio ads by candidates and advocates to target desirable voters. Once seen as part of the digital media buy, traditional media buyers are starting to include Pandora ads in addition to television and radio ads to reach voters for increasing ...…

Thomas Peters, Founder and CEO, uCampaign talks about their RumbleUp offering which is a peer-to-peer texting environment that proved very successful in 2018 campaigns for engaging voters and driving turnout. The solution was even used in parts of Florida hard hit by the hurricane to make sure people knew where to vote. This is a tool that cand ...…

Bonnie Siegel, Founder, Political Branding Associates worked with many campaigns in 2018 including the successful re-election of Republican Ted Cruz for Senate in Texas against the Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke. Bonnie talks about the need to keep the candidate's brand fresh on the ground and on social media, combating a campaign that has ...…

Pete Martin, Founder and CEO, Votem Corp. is focused on making it easier for people to register and vote particularly on their mobile devices taking advantage of a secure mobile blockchain voting platform. With the acquisition of Everyone Counts, Votem is expanding the universe of those who are being offered the opportunity to vote online. With ...…

Naseem Makiya, CEO, Outvote understands the value of making it easy for campaign volunteers to leverage their own networks as well as reach out to other voters using SMS and a smart campaign app to raise funds, send event invitations, recruit other volunteers and get out the vote. In the final weeks of the campaign season, Outvote is encouragin ...…

Alex Przybelski, Client Strategist, Phone2Action helps put into perspective past, current and future methods of engaging voters, organizing protests, and driving action. Alex talks about impact when constituents tell their own stories and how pop-up protests are increasingly becoming part of the activism landscape. @Phone2Action Phone2Action…

Mark Mellman, President, The Mellman Group has been a political consultant and pollster for 20 years and shines a light on negative and attack ads and why they can be effective, finding the line between accuracy and inaccuracy in political ads, and the example of the Sanctuary City ads that are misleading voters about non-existent policies. Mar ...…

Reed Galen, independent political consultant and chief strategist for SAM, the Serve America Movement, talks about how current events are driving interest in finding an alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties. With an eye on the changes that can be influenced at the state and local level, SAM is getting candidates on the ballot and ...…

Frost Prioleau, CEO, Simpli.fi shares his insights about the value of real time programmatic ad buying to help political and advocacy campaigns find the right person at the right time and in the right place and why reaching voters in the moment that matters the most is the way to break through the ad clutter. He also talks about the value of ge ...…

Domonique James, founder, Politics with Purpose emphasizes best practices for fundraising and persuasion for down ballot candidates as they get close to the date when constituents can begin to vote. With experience as a field organizer with President Obama, Domonique knows that local issues are what voters really care about and the advantages a ...…

Sean Duggan, VP Advertising, Pandora shares insights about the use of audio political ads and how they are increasingly able to reach voters throughout the day especially with the explosion of audio-centric web-enabled devices and access in cars and on mobile devices. Since 2012, Pandora has seen increasing demand from Federal, state and local ...…

Max Fose, President and CEO, IWS worked with John McCain in his 2000 campaign for President and shares some of his memories of the early years of using the Internet in a political campaign. Max realized that two-way communication with voters, facilitated then by email, was the key to driving fundraising and awareness and building a community of ...…

Thomas Peters, Founder and CEO, uCampaign talks about the rapid rise in the use of peer to peer texting to multiply the efforts of political and advocacy campaigns and the evolution of their texting tool RumbleUp. Enhancing outreach from campaigns with a way for volunteers to directly interact with voters brings a personalized approach to calls ...…

Terra Lawson-Remer is a co-founder of the Super PAC Flip the 49th a grassroots organization that is working to elect a Democrat in the 49th Congressional District in California in a race between Democrat Mike Levin and Republican Diane Harkey. Working with community organizations and activists, they are trying to educate voters and turn out the ...…

Ximena Hartsock, Co-Founder, Phone2Action deeply understands the power of technology to level the playing field and how it helps an individual start a protest movement or help it grow quickly. No surprise that Democrats and Republicans are both using online and mobile tools to broadcast calls to action to empower supporters and engage voters. A ...…

Blaine Britten, Director of Digital Services, Stirista has a wealth of demographic, geographic, cultural, and interest-based data about voters that shines a light on how voters make decisions and form communities of interest. Using both historical and real-time data particularly from social media, Stirista works with clients to support multi-ch ...…

Kelly Dietrich, founder, National Democratic Training Committee is using online tools and in-person advisors to train Democratic federal, state and local candidates in the art and science of political campaigns. With free on-demand online classes, candidates and potential candidates can educate themselves about what is required to run a success ...…

JC Medici, VP, PayClearly shines a light on the differences between political advertising strategies and consumer brand ad campaigns with an emphasis on how the political ad landscape has changed over the years particularly in state and local races. He reminds us that estimates of dollars spent in the online political and advocacy ecosystem inc ...…

Omar Passons, attorney, community activist and recent candidate for San Diego County Supervisor. Omar talks about the value of endorsements, driving grassroots support, challenges for a first time candidate, most successful calls to action to his supporters, surprises along the way, and why it is important to run for local office to bring chang ...…

Jim Fox, Services Lead at the NEMAC-FernLeaf Collaborative was exhibiting in the Start-Up Zone at the recent Esri User Conference and he talks about empowering local communities to make better decisions. This public private partnership delivers resilience decision support solutions using visualization and GIS tools to create predictive models t ...…

Brian Franklin, founder and CEO, Campaign Defense understands the immediate need to inform those running political and advocacy campaigns about threats to the security of their digital data and campaign strategy. Campaigns often under-estimate risks from inside a campaign as well as from outside hackers. Training is a critical step in making a ...…

Ben Krompak, Vice President Tulchin Research is excited about the chances for a Blue Wave in 2018 based on early primary results and polling in upcoming races. We talk about turning out the base, appealing to Independent voters, increasing presence of Independent candidates, challenges for women candidates, and what will drive voters to the pol ...…

Gina Glantz, Founder, Gender Avenger has developed a plan to engage women and men in reporting gender balance in selection of conference speakers, speakers at political rallies, and those who are encouraged to become more politically active. The goal is to quantify and share the reports to educate decision makers about the lack of inclusion or ...…

Ben Katz, Chief Architect, ISPolitical has been working with state and local races for many cycles and knows how vulnerable a campaign database can be due to lack of attention to security as well as the way campaigns are run with paid and volunteer staff. We talk about who has the most interest in maliciously modifying, deleting, and stealing p ...…

Brendan Tobin, Head of Growth at Ecanvasser headquartered in Cork, Ireland, has seen field organizing and canvassing techniques around the globe. We talk about the unique characteristics of paid canvassing in the US, best techniques for engaging constituents especially in local races, and importance of multiple visits to build awareness and tru ...…

Shane Greer, co-owner, Campaigns & Elections shines light on the landscape of political messaging from hyper-partisan news sources to fake news to altered video or audio that is nearly impossible to distinguish from real events. With technology from Hollywood and the medical arenas, more people will be able to create fake content that plays to ...…

Patrick Ruffini, partner and co-founder, Echelon Insights is an expert on voter turnout. He confirms there is trouble ahead for the Republican party primarily because of the noteworthy increase in Democratic voters while the number of Republican voters has remained stable. With data from special elections in 2017, Patrick points out that the in ...…

Kip Cassino, Executive Vice President, Borrell Associates has been forecasting and tracking political ad spending for many cycles and has just updated his forecast for 2018 to $8.8 billion up $321 million from earlier estimates. While digital/online and direct mail are seeing some trimming of the budget, television and cable are seeing a shift ...…

Erik Rosedahl, Head of Alliances and Stakeholder Impact, Phone2Action has years of experience helping organize fly-in and legislator days for associations and corporations. He shines a light on all the work that is necessary to insure that the effort of members, speakers and supporters gets the desired result. In the age of virtual activism, th ...…

John Jamieson, SVP Strategic Sales, PayClearly has seen the opportunities to streamline and improve the media buying for political and advocacy campaigns. In the past, buying local radio and television ads and direct mail were relatively easy enough to manage. With the explosion of options to advertise online, on social media, and through mobil ...…

Reed Galen, owner, Jedburghs and Chief Strategist SAM- Serve America Movement talks about his efforts to create a new political party. With deep experience in national, state and local political and advocacy campaigns, Reed and his team have recognized the challenges and potential for an alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties. Bal ...…

Bob Berkowitz is a media consultant, presentation trainer and political advisor and has a wealth of information from his many years covering politicians and campaigns as a nationally acclaimed journalist. He talks about fundraising, need to make sure candidate messages are authentic and clear to move voters to support them, how older and younge ...…

Ernest Landante Jr., president, State House Digital and Advocacy brings deep understanding of communicating with state and local elected officials and the staff that surrounds them. Ernie is excited about using innovative digital lobbyists tools like geo-fencing to deliver hyper-local issue ads, video news releases and tapping into the power of ...…

Henri Makembe, Partner, Beekeeper Group drives home the point that building an authentic relationship with constituents means having a consistent message and reaching out even when nothing is happening. In an age of social unrest and fake news, constituents are wary and need to know that trusted sources are providing news with legitimate calls ...…

Patti Russo, Executive Director, Women's Campaign School at Yale University has been helping women run for public office for over 20 years and is seeing unprecedented demand for information by women interested in getting on the ballot and winning in 2018. With regional events and the yearly Get Ready to Run Conference to be held at Yale this su ...…

Chris Turner, CEO, Stampede Consulting knows that it is essential to treat campaign workers as professionals whether as paid employees or consultants where taxes are paid and insurance provided. Chris is a pro at field operations and understands the value of retaining people who are good at building relationships with voters and walking the dis ...…

Shaun Dakin, Dakin Associates, is a digital communications consultant and teacher and talks about how Gen Z is using social media particularly Facebook and Instagram, best practices for gaining followers of all ages, quality versus quantity of constituent lists, who is actually using Twitter, and best practices for creating compelling narrative ...…

Bonnie Siegel, founder, Political Branding Associates has her eye on helping to grow the next generation of Republican candidates for state and local office as well as developing strategies for getting younger voters to the polls. She also shares some wisdom about what candidates and elected officials should do to keep their brand fresh and how ...…