Nobody Leaves Home Without Their Cellphone: Mobile Strategies for Political and Advocacy Campaigns
Chair: Hon. Mike Panetta, U.S. "Shadow" Representative and Vice President, Grassroots Enterprise
Mike Panetta is currently the Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs and Emerging Media at Grassroots Enterprise where he manages a number of the firm’s non-profit, trade association, and political clients and leads efforts to embrace of new technology for political, marketing and advocacy purposes.
In November 2006, Mike was elected to the position of U.S. Representative in the District of Columbia. The position is often referred to as the "Shadow Representative" and should not be confused with the office of Delegate to Congress, which is currently held by Eleanor Holmes Norton. In this role, Mike is a leading voice in the fight to give the District of Columbia a vote in the U.S. Congress and serves as the Executive Director of the Free and Equal DC Fund, a federal political action committee.
Prior to joining Grassroots Enterprise, Mike was a Senior Consultant at Issue Dynamics, Inc., a public affairs consulting firm in Washington, DC. As part of the firm's Internet practice, Mike worked with a number of clients on online public affairs and campaign management services such as strategic consulting, online media relation services, online recruitment, grassroots mobilization, and web site development for clients including the Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, Verizon, and Mark Warner for Governor.
In the 1990’s Mike was the Executive Director and treasurer of X-PAC, a political action committee for "generation x-ers" that focused on progressive Social Security reform. During his leadership tenure at X-PAC, Panetta petitioned for, and was granted, an Advisory Opinion from the Federal Election Commission opening the door for the use of web-based advocacy spots for political campaigns. X-PAC ran several online independent expenditure campaigns including dumpsantorum.com (which he re-launched in 2005)
and released several web video electioneering pieces during the 2000 election.
Mike also has experience working with government agencies in helping them utilize technology to better serve their communities. Working as a Deputy Task Leader for Internet Development at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as a contractor with Advanced Technology Systems, Mike maintained the agency's flagship site, www.hud.gov and provided advice and counsel
for many of HUD's other Internet projects. Mike also worked with a number of regional HUD field offices on developing best practices regarding local government web sites and the delivery of the agency’s services and trained HUD staff on technical issues.
Before his work with Advanced Technology Systems at HUD, Mike was Membership Director at 20/20 Vision, a non-profit environmental advocacy organization. He has also previously worked for the Federation of American Scientists as the organizational web master and Research Analyst. In both of these positions Mike worked with other non-profit organizations to promote the use of Internet technology for policy and advocacy goals.
Mike graduated from American
University's School of Public Affairs in 1993 with a B.A. in Political Science, and earned an M.A. in Political Science from the same school in 1994 with a concentration in American Politics.
Matt Bieber -
Director of Mobile Community, mCommons
Matt Bieber works with clients in the nonprofit, political, and commercial spaces to create and implement innovative mobile programming, including text-to-call legislative advocacy campaigns, text to-screen initiatives at live public events, and client-specific mobile search programs. He works with a wide range of clients, including Rock The Vote, CREDO Mobile, SEIU, Human Rights Campaign, and the DCCC.
While studying political philosophy at Princeton University, Matt interned for the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, and a presidential candidate. Afterwards, he worked at a quantitative trading firm, D.E. Shaw, in New York. He also spent time working for Blue Dragon Children's Foundation in Hanoi, Vietnam. Just prior to joining Mobile Commons, Matt served as finance director for a congressional campaign in Pennsylvania.
Weldon Kennedy - Online Campaign Coordinator, ONE Campaign
Originally hailing from New Mexico, Weldon is currently an Online Campaign Coordinator at ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History. Among other activities he manages ONE's mobile program. Before joining ONE he worked with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and co-founded the national STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur) Coalition.
Dane Grams - Human Rights Campaign
In August of 2006, Dane was
appointed to the position of online strategy director at the Human Rights
Campaign, the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
political organization. HRC effectively lobbies Congress, provides campaign
support and educates the public to ensure that GLBT Americans can be open,
honest and safe at home, at work and in the community. In his
current role, Dane serves on HRC’s senior management team and is responsible for
overseeing HRC’s online community of more than 800,000 activists.
Previously, Dane headed up the direct marketing program for the
organization—universally admired in the GLBT fundraising community, as
well as national political circles. During his tenure, Dane has
played an integral role in the success of the program, growing the overall
program from $3.0 million in 1997 to over $10 million today. Most impressively,
Dane has grown HRC’s sustainer program, Partners, from 3,000 monthly donors to
over 25,000, now accounting for more than $400,000 each month.
Dane also founded and ran danegramsdirect for more than 5
years. As a consultant, Dane successfully completed the direct marketing portion
of HRC’s $30,000,000 capital campaign for a new headquarters. Prior to this Dane
served as HRC’s deputy director of Annual Giving for three years, and as Direct
Marketing Manager for Greenpeace for four years.
Josh Hendler - Director of Digital Media, Rock the Vote
Josh Hendler is the Director of Digital Media at Rock the Vote, overseeing RTV's online and text-messaging efforts. Josh came to RTV from the Democratic National Committee, serving as the Director of Political Data & Analytics and project manager for the DNC's national voter file. Prior to joining the DNC, Josh directed Internet
technology on the British Labor Party's re-election campaign. He was Manager of Software Development for Kerry-Edwards 2004. Josh also served as a developer and program manager of open source efforts at
the Clark 2004 campaign. Before entering politics, Josh was a technology manager at Major League Baseball Advanced Media. Josh graduated from the Gallatin School at New York University in Philosophy and Politics.
